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With the failure of Wish on one of their most important milestones, Disney Animation has only 1 chance left to make this right, their 100th Fully Animated Film. That is the only chance they have to show that they still have it, however to do so, they will HAVE to disregard Wish in its entirety. No references, no recycling of characters or plot points, nothing. However, I feel the Disney of old is too far in the past for their 100th fully animation film to be not better than Wish, but worse, and may actually bring the company to its knees, if not kill it entirely.
Amazing review! There isn't much I think I could add, apart from the fact, that some of the story could have been salvaged if instead of having him locked up in a mirror being treated as a joke, it was presented as a way to keep him from harming others, until his wife finds a way to cure him.
The message of "he's too corrupt to try to save" is such an awful message, especially after spending the first half of the runtime painting him as a victim.
calling him a villain is a red flag imo, he's right in what he does and he's doing his best as a good person but everyone goes after him for personal interests including the protagonist lol
I'm reading a story on Ao3 called "The Great Wish Movie Rewrite" by WhatIWish where Magnifico is the protag. It does a good job of showing how despite his mistakes, his side of the story was understandable. I think he is more sympathetic than Asha in my opinion.
I think it's a perfect reflection of the kind of people in Hollywood. Superficially caring, utterly destructive, extremely entitled, & makers of villainy.
Magnifico had a traumatic past, and because of that trauma he tries to hold tightly to what he has. And then when his security is threatened and he starts to lose hope, he falls back to using an abusive substance... And he's _irredeemable_ because of it. Thanks Disney, what a hopeful message. :/
Right? "If your untreated trauma causes you to do something bad then you're an irredeemable piece of shit that deserves to suffer for all eternity'" is not exactly the kind of message one should want to send to ANYONE, much less CHILDREN. The moral of Wish sounds like something plucked out of a religious extremist's mind imo.
The fact that he was locked in a mirror and NOTHING is said about curing him, or helping him is kinda disturbing. Especially since Disney has this habit of redeeming villains for weird reasons but then doesn't redeem the one guy actually could be redeemed?
that's why no one wants to see asha again in future disney movies, she's the type of person your therapists would advise you never interact with because they'll take everything good from you
Also gotta love just how quick and completely heartless his wife was. Like damn, she turned her back on him with absolutely no hesitation, not even the slightest inkling of a hope that maybe the husband who she previously seemed to have a perfectly good relationship could be saved. Nope, he opened big scary book and said something kind of mean... he's beyond saving... oh and hey all of a sudden I get to be the sole reigning monarch of a kingdom I had no real hand in building! Totally not suspicious.
@@c-puff Ah, it makes sense now! His parentage isn't from EARTH! He's a Skywalker! Those guy's tend to turn evil at the drop of a hat, suddenly, this all makes sense.
magnifico is unironically set up to be the hero. “noble scientist’s selfish and power-hungry assistant gets snubbed, so they go out and find a power to surpass their former master” is literally an age old villain setup. and it would honestly have been such a refreshing idea to have the protagonist we’ve been following all along turn out to be the villain in their own story, and while magnifico still wouldn’t be a great person, angry and traumatised, he wouldn’t be evil. but no, disney decided we’ve had enough of twist villains since they used them so badly so many times, they decided to this time screw up a traditional setup instead. bravo.
If Magnifico was the hero, it would’ve been a far more entertaining story. Maybe he slowly lost sight of his original goal for his kingdom, growing an ego because he became so loved. The lesson he would have to learn is remembering why he started the kingdom to begin with. Maybe even lose most of his magic for a good portion of the film so he’s not top dog and is flung back to the weakness he feared. Heck, his magic book could act as this film’s version of Aladdin’s magic carpet; being able to move on its own and having a personality through how it moves and shows its pages. That way they could have the sidekick without having an annoying voice.
@ alternatively, the book could still be evil and Asha could steal it for that added leg up against the perceived evil of Magnifico. she would have had ample opportunity to hear about it from him.
We can't even get a villain couple so you bet we can't get a villain protagonist. I swear they better utilize the villain couple idea in the near future, I DEMAND MY POUND OF FLESH!
Y'know what would have been a great option? Twist hero. I adore the villain couple idea, but what if Magnifico actually realized his mistakes? Or what if it was revealed that he was genuinely protecting them and Asha's actions put them in danger?
If they removed the entire "book that makes you evil if you touch it" shit and opened the movie with an actual flashback of kid Magnifico losing his village to magic invaders instead of a vague opening narration, they could have made something intersting. Magnifico sensing Starboy's presence and being afraid of it, starting to become paranoic and wanting to prevent, in his mind, the potential downfall of Rosas and its people, to the point of consuming wishes for power eventually becoming not too different from the very people he was afraid of.
Agreed. Maybe even make Magnifico have a PTSD sort of scene. As It would further help in showing why he's so desperate in finding the "Magic User". After all, If you're traumatized enough to have a panic attack the moment someone with magic, who isn't you, arrives on the Island. Then It would make sense for someone like this to start to make bad decisions out of fear.
What if Starboy was the magic invader in a sense. He got bored and went down to a little village and started granting everyone's wishes. Starboy knows nothing of humans or how they work. He just wants to help and have fun. When he leaves the village, everything is in chaos. This traumatized Magnifico and has him paranoid about granting wishes and stars. Asha is now needed to ground Starboy somewhat and teach him how people work and how granting every wish might not be the best idea, but also teach him how he can still help people.
@@marybrunsman4742This would have been a very interesting setup for Starboy's backstory, that at some point he was so out of touch with humanity he didn't see how his power caused harm, even if he had the best of intentions. Even in the case of Disney deciding not to do that as to not paint one of their protagonists as "evil", they could still do something along the likes of Starboy having been manipulated or forced into granting wishes for the invaders. There was so much potential in this movie, and it all went unused.
15:30 "A twist villain only works the first time you watch a movie." Counterpoint, while the initial jaw dropping moment of any twist can only be felt on the first watch, twists can still be enjoyable upon multiple watches if they are set up properly and have engaging lead ins. If that happens then rewatches allow one to enjoyably notice all the signs that foreshadow the twist that they might've missed beforehand. Twist villains, specifically, can also still work if their pre-twist personalities are just another side of them or enjoyable in their own right. King Candy is enjoyable on multiple watches.
It's so great to look back and just see all the hints dropped. He looks the same, is shady af but you kinda didn't register that at first and when he goes into the code you can even see his name being all weird while Vanellope's code looks like its been ripped out.
Facts. A twist villain is good forever if well done. And in a world where twist villains became common, the good ones are arguably better over time since in the moment, you might roll your eyes at yet another trope
My son's only thought while watching Magnifico was that he needed to be hugged. Everything else about the movie was not important to him. He's 9 years old. To me, it feels like Asha was not supposed to be in this movie if not to cause the king to lose his mind. She doesn't have an arc, she doesn't have a reason to do anything because her kingdom is rich other than safe. They should have let the king be the protagonist. It feels like the movie was made for an activist niche who wants to see overthrown kingdoms, riots, and powerful people punished just for being in power. There is nothing Disney about it.
Rameses being a tragic character is so on point. Like, we want to see him fail, but it HURTS to see him mourn his son. You hate seeing him furiously chase down the Israelites. And the moment when he screams out his brother's name at the end is heartbreaking. He's a phenomenal character and villain.
My favourite thing about writing these videos is applying the same lens to good animated projects and realising even more just how good they are. The prince of Egypt is a masterpiece of a film for so many reasons. It's visual storytelling is insanely good as well.
@c-puff Yeah, almost every single frame is gorgeous. And the sound track is my personal favorite in animation. Only barely beating Hunchback (just because I hate that gargoyle song, lol).
@ Oh the Hunchback soundtrack is literally insane! (apart from the gargoyle song lol) Even not considering Hellfire, Hunchback might legit have the best music of the renaissance period. Which sounds like blasphemy against Howard Ashman but it's true. "The Bells of Notre Dame" is ridiculous. As is "Out there" which has to be tied with "Part of your world" for best "I want" song
@@c-puff People sleep on my main man Clopin who gets more songs than the main characters and shows up at the end to punk them, then save them, then leaves without a word.
Disney: We didn't use AI. Journalists: How did you get the visual effects? Disney: We used This was so funny that it had me go through the five stages of grief backwards.
3:38 Finding out that Wish was made with the help of an IN HOUSE AI simultaneously makes so much sense on why it looks so bad and yet I still can’t wrap my brain around what an absolute lie that Disney stooped to in order to make this film look the way it did.
Also if we try our best to ignore how shitty this is artistically.... just IMAGINE the absolute waste of money it took DEVELOPING their in house AI.... and for what....
AI seriously only belongs in assisting SFX artists. Spiderverse used in-house AI for that very purpose and you won’t even notice, which is the highest praise AI could receive. It’s best used as a niche tool to help speed up small but tedious tasks. The only big use of AI that I find isn’t absolutely tasteless is for things like test renders, though the AI art theft issue still rears its ugly head from that since you can’t properly source your inspirations unless it’s a closed system with only in-house training data.
@ Not to mention other models getting thrown under the name of "AI" due to technicalities in how they work, when in reality they are not exactly the same as Gen AI that techbros are using to scrape fanfics with.
The worst part...the absolute WORST part...is that the premise was legitimately great and Magnifico as a character is part of that strong premise. Too bad no effort was made to actually follow up or build off that premise, effectively wasting it in the most bafflingly self-inflicted sabotage imaginable.
26:54 rule 1. You can't make someone fall in love with you. Rule 2. You can't kill anyone. Rule 3. You can't bring anyone back from the dead. It's not a pretty picture. AND I DON'T LIKE DOING IT!!
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Stuff like Wish makes me wish that Walt Disney actually was cryogenically frozen and that one day he will break from his icy tomb, avenge himself upon his decrepit company and arise as The Lich King of Anaheim.
I'm busy reading his biography and despite not being far into yet, he would NOT have stood for this slipshod production AT ALL. Which makes it all the more annoying that the company keeps parading him around as a marketing tool.
All this is just making me imagine how beautiful this could've ended, with Star Boy helping Magnifico grant his wish and help him through his unresolved fear and paranoia. But not with a wave of a hand, to show the audience it's not that simple. Like the Queen, Star Boy helps him see the alternative, see the path to make the right choice. And give Magnifico the ability to take that path instead of just being defeated like any other villain.
I disagree on the matter of twist villains. If they're foreshadowed well and their actions before the twist make sense, I.E. they are done well, they can really work and make repeat viewings even more worthwhile.
That's true, yeah. I could have elaborated on twist villains as a concept in a broader sense, but I was hyperfocusing a little on the way Disney has been using them. Which is that Hans in Frozen being a villain happened when they decided Elsa shouldn't be the villain any more. And since that switch worked, they followed this pattern or writing for other villains like Bellwether
@@brandonlyon730 King Candy is really great, not only he has great foreshadowing (his race goggles painting his eyes yellow, his helmet having a stripe down the middle like Turbo's etc) but he acts like an actual villain even before the twist, he sets his guards on vanelope and ralph, he manipulates ralph into betraying vanelope and of course he imprisons vanelope after saying he was only trying to protect her. The problem with twist villains is that before the twist the story has nobody fulfilling that role, but King candy acts very shady and very charismatic, honestly he's what magnifico should have been, disney was great at making manipulative villains as both king candy and mother gothel proved, i have no idea what happened in that writer's room that caused magnifico to come out.
Which is the problem. A proper twist villain is like king candy. There's hints, things you may miss the first time like Hans looking up at the chandelier over Elsa before dashing over and yanking the crossbow up hitting its support and dropping it on her. Modern writing is hero, hero, 3rd act "Aha I was evil all along." When they haven't been doing anything to even hint at that.
@Senkoau Hans has a problem as a twist villain because he only has that scene as a hint of his evilness, Elsa being planned as the OG villain hurt his development as one, and that's why the "The trolls make him evil" theory is very popular among fans. However, at least he has some charisma that compensates for the lack of development in his twist. I think Tiberius Rourke from Atlantis is another good example of a twist villain, there are multiple hints of his future villainy during the movie along with Helga's, and then there's a plus in his revelation with the rest of the crew also being on it before having a change of heart
Considering personal wishes I've asked for that teetered on selfish and somewhat rude, Im with Magnefico that some people do not deserve their wishes granted.
Deserving is a whole can of worms anyway, when it's much simpler to address the fact that some, even many, people's wishes are downright cruel, evil, or harmful and would actively make the world a worse place. Like the C-suites, etc. who want to replace everyone but the uber-rich with AI slaves that don't require money and only generate wealth for their masters.
Seriously like…what if someone dreamed of marrying someone who’s already happily married with a family? Or someone like maleficent? Not all wishes can be granted without thinking about the ramifications
I wish to be the hero of a monster attack, I wish so and so love me not Gunther, I wish all X were kicked out of the kingdom, I wish I were the king of my own kingdom. Most wishes should be vetted carefully and he's granting one a month and if you want you can just leave instead of giving it up and try to make it happen yourself.
It's an absolute crime they referenced the Cinderella transformation sequence and NOT transform her dress. Was so mad. Also nitpick but for a town called "Roses" there's barely any rose motifs. They use a lot of blue too, which isn't associated with roses. But there's a lot of star imagery so maybe it should've been called Estrellas(Stars) instead. Kinda wish they did lean into the rose aspect though since they could have emphasized the thorns. Thirdly, I saw someone mention that they could've had the queen break the spell with "True Love's Kiss" and it makes sense, especially since it's supposed to be a tribute to other Disney classics
I really recommend "The Great Wish Move Rewrite" on AO3 by WhatIWish, it makes you understand Magnifico much more and shows his side of the story. The author changed the star to Star Boy with Asha as the antagonist, and fleshed things out a lot more.
48:30 when you said he'd seemingly lost all sense of his primary motivation, it made me realize there's an interesting idea there that wasn't used. His one wish is to protect people. After the evil magic, he doesn't care, doesn't know about that anymore. His wish was taken away. (and replaced by an evil entity, but that could have been changed to be the person he could have become with the same power he earned, but without his character-defining goal that motivated him to seek that power and be a good person. Alternatively, the great evil he founded his kingdom against was connected to the corruption of wishes, which is why he was dedicated to protecting them). Having his own wish and working for it led to him being a powerful sorcerer and respected king. But his wish was taken away. There's a difference, in that his subjects don't have something evil placed in them after he takes their wish, but there are parallels as well. His wish ceremony, deliberately or not, prevents the motivating goal that would lead to more like him coming into existence. But it also keeps more like evil him from coming into existence. That conflict is something Disney could have explored but didn't.
Honestly, Magnifico should been the hero of the movie, stopping a wild teen from making all dreams come true, even the terrible ones and plunging the world into utter chaos XD
While watching this, I came up with a concept. What if Magnifico is hailed as this gracious king that offers protection from an unknown evil and grants people’s wishes out of love. One of the stories that’s used to show his kindness is that the queen was a castaway that arrived on the island alone and scared, and he took her in and they fell in love. Over the course of the story, the queen whispers to the king and sows seeds of doubt in him which makes him paranoid that Asha is using him to hurt his kingdom. Filled with paranoia, he goes to hunt Asha, and the queen is left to run the nation. Now that the queen is in power, her mask falls, and is shown to be a true evil. This is what makes Asha stop running, and she confronts the king directly. She shows him that the queen is manipulating him, and they join forces to stop her. When foiled, the queen manages to escape and takes the king’s magic book. In doing so, she reveals that she was actually sent by the unknown evil outside of the kingdom, and she had a plot to take the kingdom over that the king fell right into. Depending on what they do next, they could make a good setup for a sequel or have clean ending where the threat from outside is vanquished.
So basically animated version of Dark Souls 2, and I’m all for it. DS2 aside, imo it would make a better setup for an homage to Snow White: Asha can go into hiding with the help of her 7 friends which would give opportunity to show off their individual traits and abolish the need in having a talking goat.
Don’t you hate it when the writers realize too late that they’ve written their villain to be too sympathetic and reasonable, so they tack on a last-minute plot-point to justify treating him as an irredeemable force of evil? “Oh no, the corruption is permanent! So just forget about the motivations and goals we set up before.”
I agree it really felt like the irredeemable part was slapped on hastily. Correct me if im wrong, but development of wish was within the year it released. So for some reason the big anniversary movie...gets hella rushed....
I haven't seen the movie myself, just reviews, so you pointing out that Magnifico displays obvious signs of PTSD really blew my mind. And you know, if they actually went with that idea that is a really good way to have a complex yet genuinely bad villain like these people wanted. Because not everyone, but some people with PTSD DO become really awful people as a result of their trauma, but if an audience learns that there's a reason for the anger and violence, it doesn't make how they lash out okay, but it does add layers to them. It would be pretty sad to keep the current ending where he gets trapped forever instead of helped though. Too bad I'm pretty sure they had no idea what they were so close to hitting on. Any potentially interesting plot points in this movie feel like they are there DESPITE the writers, instead of because of them
I like the concept of Wish being something like a Disney proto-myth: That it's some long lost history that over thousands of years all got adjusted and re-written into their versions of fantasy stories like Cinderella, Snow White, Frozen, Tangled, etc. Shame I they clearly had a different, dumber idea by the end of it.
My understanding is that Wish cost something like $200 million to make. I would think it would be a matter of common sense to use a small fraction of all that money to hire some first-rate writers to do the script work. I don't understand why an outfit like Disney Studios is willing to settle for second-rate (or worse) writing. Why don't they insist on the best? I just don't get it.
@@MrSatampra it wasn't relevant to the video but it's reported Wish lost Disney $130 million. Disney as a whole will pour money into every ounce of a product except the writing.
because they're capitalists. their main interest in doing what they can to heighten profit, and since capitalists are scared of SPENDING money they go out of their way to do the bare minimum to keep their coffers full. its why so much of their recent releases have been so...similar seeming, they want to chase what they think will be the easiest way to make the msot profit, whcih is basically nsotalgia bait. (its also why they're cutting out trans character stories in their upcoming stuff, to avoid scaring off anti-wokes and upseting people in light of the rise of transphobia, for fear of alienating too many people and losing money)
Just guessing here but this feels like a lack of definite vision to guide the narrative. Likely they had a bunch of different executives with different agendas and preferences being reported to at once, so everyone wanted and insisted on different things and no one was truly in charge or the project. Leading to it just being a mess. Like one exec that wasn’t writing the script wanted a “pure evil bad guy” and another wanted a “sympathetic one” and the writers couldn’t say no to either one and as such had to please both rather than choosing a direction and going there. They likely also had issues with how they produce scenes of the film. In a normal production you have a team write the script and hand those out to those that make the one screen scenes. But to make the film production more efficient, Disney likes to do both. Leading to them spending a ton of time and money into scenes that they have no use for but can’t wait and pay for new ones, so they rewrite the script around those scenes. This has famously happened in the black widow movie, where the sky diving through debris big action scene at the end, was shot, filmed and edited before it had fully realized basics of the films plot. But it cost so much and they have such strict deadlines, that they used it anyways
@@MrSatampra And that's just the creation budget. That's not counting the marketing budget. But yeah money is only good when allocated to the right areas.
Bob Iger never considered himself an artist. Even when he first got hired he was quoted saying something like, "I'm a business man. If the movie is good, it will be called art eventually." He never respected movies as an artform. Walter's rolling right now.
I honestly think that the biggest factor on why people say that “Magnífico is good and Asha is bad” is because the fact that Disney wanted the audience to be on Asha’s side, but not giving us an actual reason to do so and people decided to be on Magnífico’s side just to spite them, and also the scene of the people demanding the wish ceremony was another big factor
Asha is just really bland. Like, why should we even root for her? She's really selfish(she wants somebody else's wish to come true but this is also quite self-serving), kinda arrogant(assumes she knows better than the wizard who has been doing this for years) and acts like a moron(really Disney, stop it with the cooky, so quirky characters already).
So true. I read a fanfiction called The Great Wish Movie Rewrite on AO3 by WhatIWish that explores Magnifico as the protag and Asha as the antagonist. It makes a lot more sense without changing too much, just a change in POV.
@@eriktheos6022 Watch out or the shills will call you a bigot for not rooting for their girlboss protag. Don't you know that the entertainment industry makes movies their staff wants instead of the audience and we're all just supposed to clap for them for it 😂
Magnifico was basically being used by the people of his kingdom. Before he arrived, it was more or less a wasteland and they only got together because he granted wishes and only then were they willing to do much of anything. They didn't give a shit about him, they just wanted the wishes. Also: he was a guy from a quite humble beginning who build up a kingdom to make people happy... did they just make Walt Disney the villain?
I like how they went on and on about how Namaari wasn’t really a villain and how everyone she totally trust her, when she did basically everything to prevent Raya and her friends from saving the world and would even blame the former for things that she did. Meanwhile, Magnifico created a perfect utopia where people aren’t even forced to give up their wishes but he’s irredeemable.
One thing i swear i remember is him being marketed as an irredeemable "classic" didney villain. But im pretty sure they wrote him as somewhat sympathetic and then realized they didnt have enough time to figure it out. So low and behold he becomes "irredeemable" by being possesed by a book...
@ There is actually some pretty good art of her and Magnifico anyway. Some people drawing what could have been with them being an evil couple. Or just enjoying the angst potential.
@@c-puff Ah, shouldn't have underestimated this fandom on what they could do with all the scrapped concepts that's been found. Bless them, they're so powerful~
"Self-aggrandising has been wrapped in a smokescreen of self-acceptance." You know, I have been searching for a good way to describe the mess that is social media right now and I finally found it! Thanks a ton. About the topic at hand, yeah, sounds like the problem Disney has been having for years now. They just don't know where they are going, are too terrified to lose money by insulting anyone, so focus too much on what they don't want to be without actually creating an identity.
The thing that really gets me about Magnifico's fate is how the rest of the cast and the film's narrative treats it as an unambiguous good thing. It could have still worked if at least his wife if not everybody else viewed it as a horrific tragedy that they were forced to imprison this person who used to be a decent if flawed person for eternity for the sake of the good of the kingdom. But nope. Giving him a fate worse than death is portrayed as obviously a great thing. What were the writers thinking?
honestly having the queen cry as she picks him up or show regret or SOMETHING other than that smug smile like... damn woman. you "loved" him for decades but three days with this random citizen and all that's gone?
On top of being such a lame movie, they had the gall to mimic Jafar's defeat, as the being sucked into the gem or staff or whatever looks like they traced over Jafar being pulled into the lamp with Iago, and to further sell it, they had to have someone handle it with a satisfied smirk, but with no valid character to do that, they rolled dice and landed on the queen.
Your breakdown of Magnifico made me realise something very important. Magnifico is Disney's Batman (Both went through something traumatic and then dedicated the rest of their lives to ensure no one else went through what they did)
You learn why this movie is ugly in the first 6 minutes and even worse, it was intentional. Honestly, it looks like a typical, WAY cheaper 2010s CGI show for toddlers, where they couldn't put much effort into lightning and depth. And additionally, the animation is too good for its look, clashing even harder. They should have made it look like Paperman, or Puss in Boots.
They need to realize what they wrote him as, he's got pretty strong hero material, they just went at it the wrong way. Nothing that can't be fixed with a sequel tho.
@@c-puff It's silly, right? Hahah I love this character deeply, he means a lot to me as someone who has lost so many loved ones. I hope they fix what they did, it would be one of the nicest things in recent fiction, they just need a really, really good writer who understands grief properly If you're interested, there is a novelization where the story is a tragedy and it's underlined how the book is a spell he needs to be saved from. There's no indication of him being the villain. He asks the star "where were you when I needed you, why did it take her for us to meet?", and his wife reminds him his kingdom does a lot of good, referring to wishes as "his wishes" to maintain his sense of security. He treats them like children, sings to them, reassures them when Asha is invited in his study by saying "it's okay, you know I would never let anyone hurt you". They ruined it by reducing him to a "villain", and I don't understand why. One can only hope Disney goes back to memorable storytelling and gives this character some justice.
Changing the movie's ending over a crying 7yo hurts. I've said it before, Magnifico should have been Disney's version of Mustapha Mond from Huxley's Brave New World. But now it turns out the real Disney Mustapha Mond was... Disney themselves.
Magnifico had to be locked away in a mirror forever and put out of sight. Too bad he didn't have someone there to give him a good old true love's kiss and break the curse. Like, someone who loved him, like a wife or something. Oh well.
They literally could've made one the wishes stolen be to get rid the king because they loved his wife causing an evil curse to fall on him. Then Asha has to figure out how to break the curse by adventuring a bit and then runs in telling his wife love breaks the curse. Include a fighting the crowd moment to get to him in time before the kiss and it's already better may not be great.
Wish has so much potential that it absolutely failed to capitalize on that it turned into a bit of a Rorschach test; different people will look at the film and come up with very different solutions about how they would fix it, especially with regards to Magnifico. Do you take him back to the proper villain he was in the earlier drafts? Do you take his villainy in a different direction? Do you keep him as he is, a good man having a bad day during his mid-life crisis? Or are you someone like me, who would make Magnifico a clear good guy while also introducing a new character to be an actual classic Disney villain? If you're curious, my idea for an actual villain is an evil wishing star with the working name "Monkeypaw". He sees wishes as proof that humans are selfish, and sees the act of wishing as incredibly arrogant as it's basically asking fate to bend over backwards for them. He has decided to punish humanity for the sin of wishing by granting wishes in the worst possible way, a la the infamous Monkey's Paw. This changes the context of Magnifico "hoarding" ungranted wishes, as he's protecting them from Monkeypaw.
Man, Magnifico was wasted on this movie. His backstory really set him up to be a perfect, sympathetic character and his behavior through the movie could have been him acting out of desperation and paranoia (even if rather extreme in character ). And where they REALLY dropped the ball was making his use of the Forbidden Book irreversible. All the while, I was thinking "why not burn the thing"? I mean isn't that the usual way of breaking the curse of a magical artifact? Destroying it? Sure, make him lust for power while under the book's spell, have him behave like a villain, but you CANNOT tell me there was no way they couldn't have brought him back by destroying the freaking book and have him redeemed, albeit remorseful, in the end!
The mention that Disney doesn’t want to make characters unlikable out of fear of hurting marketability hits hard. Consider things like the Cruella movie, or the Boba Fett show, which star beloved characters who were once incredibly evil, but sands off everything even remotely unsavory about them, leaving them bland and unrecognizable. And both those projects failed. Honestly, the Disney movie I think of most when it comes to unlikable characters is the Emperor’s New Groove. Kusco is a very entertaining protagonist, but also the biggest sack of shit imaginable. And the whole movie wouldn’t have worked had he been secretly a sweet guy or misunderstood from the start. He was a complete shitheel from the start of the film and had no desire to be better, which makes his growth into a decent person even better.
The video is out! (throws confetti) Thank you for your sacrifice in actually watching the official behind the scenes and trying to make sense of the movie. Wish really feels like the death keel for Disney. It's kind of depressing, but it feels like Disney just isn't the same. I hope they turn it around, but Wish doesn't give me the confidence they'll even try with animated movies :/
the more i see of this movie the more pissed i get at all the missed potential and all the really interesting ideas people come up with. someone mentioned queen amaya breaking the evil spell on magnifico with true love's kiss and i agree, like... with all the other classic disney reference's in there, you couldn't go with THE most iconic one?
I believe that one of the reasons why the writing in Disney movies has gone down hill, is because the people in charge listened to too many hacks that run around the movie industry and say: "Writing is easy, if you can't write you suck. Here look at my perfect little gremlin Charaktere I wrote! He is perfect with no flaws."
Magnifico is a GOOD person. The story just does everything it can to make him evil. Dumb. P.S. What do you mean Magnifico isn't the good guy? Tell me, what does he have to do to be the "good" guy then if he isn't already? Does giving everyone a safe land, protected from all evil, which he doesn't charge anyone for, and as an added bonus, he even grants wishes, what? That's not GOOD enough? What else he needs to do? Sell his kidneys? Livers? His heart? Give everyone unlimited money? Man, you are just as bad as Asha.
I agree that Magnifico is the good guy. Maybe a little vain, but he went out of his way to build a prosperous, wealthy kingdom with no hint of scarcity or need, and all he asks for in return is one wish.
It just went public a few hours ago 😭 I honestly don't look at my views because I just know I'll get obsessive about them otherwise. But thank you! 💖 I work hard on these!
from what i can gather (since i haven't watched the movie and going only by what was said in the video) it seems like they wanted both a full on over the top hate-able villain and at the same time they wanted him to be sympathetic. which does make me wonder if its possible to pull off, but it is very clear it didn't work in this case. if they really wanted a villain that was more "morally gray" (for lack of better words) so the audience would feel mixed about it, they should not have given him this ending. instead of a more tragic and ambiguous ending to his character, he is treated as just an irredeemable monster, so if the story itself treats it's villain as irredeemable, if the ending of his story is that, how is the audience suppose to have these mixed feelings on him? intentional mixed feelings that is. because as is now everyone is confused in a bad way, since the story itself feels confused. they probably tried to please both audiences: people who love over the top classic disney villains and the people who prefer more sympathetic type of villain. as a result they failed, that is my theory at least. although i really do wonder if its possible to make a villain hate-able and sympathetic, there may be examples out there. lke certain iterations of the joker. maybe some game of thrones characters?
Part of me wonders how much audience testing messed up this movie as well. Going by the "Into the Unknown" documentary, Frozen 2 was MASSIVELY changed due to confused audience tests 8 months before the movie was suppose to release. And with this being their big 100 year milestone, I imagine it was over-tested like CRAZY and they kept getting conflicting feedback. But we have no way to know that at the moment. And this was such a disaster I don't think they'll let many of the details reach the public to try and save face.
@@c-puff yeah, it feels like a movie that was changed a lot after conflicting feedback. it sounds especially true after hearing that they changed the ending over a 7 year old crying. what happened to the disney that wanted to make kids cry.
@ If nothing else, doing this video got me to get my hands on a copy of Walt's Biography which is considered the most trusted and accurate because I need better info on how Walt responded to things specifically because of things like this. These filmmakers kept waving him around to prop up their movie and it made me really angry, Especially since it didn't take much research to find clips of him often saying the exact opposite like what I included in the video. I'm sure I can find some clearer indication on how he felt about making children cry 😂
@@c-puff yeah, its sad that children's entertainment doesn't seem to be the same anymore. i know i sound like an old man, but fuck, back in my day children movies made people of all ages cry in fear sadness and joy. now its mostly safe slop to make money. also, quick question you mentioned two animated movies around the middle part about war, something about kelts, what are they called again? i've never seen them before and they look neat.
@ "The Secret of Kells" by Cartoon Salloon and "The Thief and the Cobbler Mark 5" which can be found here on youtube. (The Thief and the Cobbler is an entire rabbit hole of its own)
It's interesting how Aisha goes straight to "totally not stealing the wishes" rather than asking for them back as they wish to leave and try to achieve them or better getting her grandfather to ask for his wish back. If he actually wants it.
This is why current hollywood makes their villains all dumb as rocks relying on current social commentary. They don't know why they are evil or have any counter arguments to authoritarianism. So the average audience will come out thinking the villain is reasonable.
It would be cool if someone did a rewrite of the king being the hero and 'princess' of the story, trying to stop a spoiled teenager and his secretly evil wife. Can you imagine the betrayal? The angst? Or have him see how selfish people really are and run away with said wishes. Only the truly good and worthy have them granted. Honestly, he's a better God mother, maybe not perfect but who is? I can see him see future characters like cinderella, or Snow White and granting their wishes because he runs into genuinely good people. I don't care magnifico is the hero of the story, and Asha is the villain. If the movie don't want me to feel that way they shouldn't have written it that way
I'm of the opinion that Magnifico is the hero of the movie and gets pushed into villainy by being antagonized without good reason. "With great power, comes great responsibility" - Benjamin Parker. The sentence that shaped Peter Parker into the Hero he became. Words that Magnifico lived by until a threat presented itself.
Thank you exactly not to mention he was having a trauma response to his own home being destroyed so he took drastic measures to try and stop that from happening which in turn made him become a villain there are ways that they could have written him in the movie to make him tragic but instead they try to act like he's even from the beginning when he's not !!
i feel the "greedy thieves" thing could be twisted in an interesting way to make Magnifico more villainious, not jsut to show him as reasonable. Like it depends on perspective. Like what if he saw ANYONE trying to get him to help with his magic as "thieves", as in he is so entitled he sees literally anyone asking him for help as a 'thief' trying to 'steal' what they don't deserve. He becomes so paranoid, entitled and protective of his powers he keeps everyone down so noone can take his magic for themeselves, and takes away their wishes so they can never want more and thus 'steal' from him with their wishes, and he gets their adoration and trust. just one i idea i got from that line.
The use of NST makes so much sense. The uncanniness of the movie's style makes so much sense now. I don't even want to get started on the music or the lyrics. Disney should be embarrassed to produce such slop especially on their 100 years anniversary
50:22 I just realized how bad this sounds. Remove all the magic from the equation and it just sounds like "if you did one bad thing in the past, you'll always be bad going foward"
honestly, wouldn't it be better to make magnifico be a hero along side the main character against a wishing star that turned the wishes into horrible things, or a invading power. something dark and show that he tries to protect his kingdom, but fails and the people and the main character have to help to keep the kingdom safe.
It always amuses me when narrative falls apart if you look at it too long. Like how in Star Wars 9 Palpatine takes over Rey's body and retires to have the First Order keep ruling the galaxy.
I’m glad you referenced Transformers One. It was such a good movie and to do the objective so much better than Wish it’s not even funny. (Not that that is hard to do)
I feel that the problem with twist villains is twofold 1) a good one should be a surprise on the first watch but on a second watch you should be able to spot some hints to their true nature, but Disney/Pixar tent to not put any hints(like with Yokai(BH6) and Bellweather(Zootopia)) or cheat like with Hans(That stupid smile scene), the only good twist villain that i remember is king Candy/Turbo. 2) Like you said overexposure variety is the spice of life I don't think we would be tired of twist villains(and misunderstood villains or non-villains recently) if they weren't like "Oh people thought redeeming this villain was cool lets make the next 20 villains redeemable". That's why twist villains don't work at least in my opinion.
i miss it when a villain is just a villain not hiding his bad guy stuff no fake "oh look im a good guy" bs. it has become such a rarity that it becomes very refreshing when you see one. you can have an absolutely evil person and viewers still enjoy them.
to be fair, the deleted scenes are better than the final film and asha is supposed to be mature, amaya and magnifico are supposed to be evil and we're supposed to have a wish tree and star being able to talk.
The fact that 14 year old me made a character like magnífico but made clear that he was broken and grieving man trying to make (what he thought) the best thing possible trough extreme means is kind of mind boggling tbh
Honesty, Magnifico was more vain than narcissistic. The difference is that he cared about the people and not just about himself. He is a lot like Snapdragon in High Guardian Spice: they both were too good for the movie/show they were stuck in.
If I were in charge in the 100th anniversary film for for Disney this movie should have been 2d animated and should have been some epic adventure like Lord of the Rings but with the 90s Disney renaissance vibe and maybe make chernaobg the villain.
Apparently there were talks for possibly doing it in 2D, but it was decided against. Disney gave a really lame reason about "pushing technology forward" or some such garbage but we don't have a clear answer as to why. My guess is they didn't want to put in the financial effort of building a 2D animation team. And also Iger especially is so obsessed with Disney being a tech company like Apple, he probably had a stroke at the very suggestion of not using whatever fancy new tech he was trying to sell to investors. (he loves doing that)
@@c-puff makes sense, fuck Iger. hes the reason Disney is currently only doing CGI animated sequels or live action remakes. It was under him that the 2d animation division actually was canned completely in 2011 I think. glad hell finally be gone in 2026. even tho i dont trust his successor will be better
@@c-puff yah. screw iger. i hope his successor is better tho i dont trust that. doesnt help hes the reason the endless sequels, remakes, and killing the 2d division
22:02 You know this is reminding me of Encanto With the protection and new home and such Not entirely but considering that it popped into my head when talking about the villain of this story says something This video has been great so far Just wanted to get this thought out first
Watching this video, there was so many little things I wanted to say. But none of it was connecting together and that felt like a consequence of this movie. There's so many contradictions, half-baked ideas and discarded good ideas yet there's always another problem with this film that you would point out. I felt like I was fighting Kenshiro, Jotaro and Luffy and I could see Sailor Jupiter rolling up. The film clearly couldn't agree on anything other than women are queens and deserve more power and this is the end result.
This is why I had to very early on focus in on ONLY Magnifico. Because as you can see in my opening paragraph, there is SO MUCH going wrong if I focused on everything I'd get overwhelmed very quickly.
I would like to see a follow up to this movie where asha has to come to the reality that some wishes shouldn't be granted no matter what a wish from someone who wants to take over the whole world or some that wants to see a who group of people wiped out
I was thinking about that, too. That ethey have to free Magnifico to revert the chaos back she accidentally creates. Maybe also finding a cure for his addiction. The whole "he can't be saved" is so lazy. But then I would have loved that plot, pampered girl creates chaos and king has to fix it, more in the first place. Second the original idea of villain couple and the daughter stopping them with her star boyfriend.
For the past few years I've been steadily growing more and more convinced that something about badly written villains makes them some of the most compelling morally ambiguous heroes.
Same thing in Peter Pan & Wendy, he played Mr. Darling but not Captain Hook like its traditionally done with the two roles, including the original Disney film. And he would’ve been more entertaining as Hook then Jude Law.
An easy fix would have been to add a scene where a guard tells magnifico that the enemies are attacking more and more, maybe his power is getting weaker as he ages and the invaders are starting to gain territory, or they are also studying magic, then you have him use the book out of fear, maybe having his wife confort him at the beginning but when she's not there he starts panicking, maybe have the book be a character and be the actual villain, maybe the book was the one who caused his parents to die
Hey I'd just like to point out that magnifico is basically working off of 0 hours of sleep, the movie takes place over what two days? when exactly does he sleep in that time? Quick answer he doesn' sad tired wizard King is trying his best also why are we trusting the *evil* book to tell us what is an isn't possibl?!
Perhaps the single worst part of this movie is not so much the self-serving moral, but rather, the implication that the only thing wrong with the "oppressive and corrupt" system to manage wishes is simply that it's a straight white man who was in charge.
yesss I’m so excited for this video!! I’ve seen a lot of different opinions on whether he was evil, misunderstood or badly written (we all had a phase of that magnifico lover account right?), so I can’t wait to hear your thoughts :)
When people ask "What is Magnifico's motivation," I feel like it's more of a "Where did his motivation go" instead, because it does feel like the trauma motivation is forgotten later in the movie when they try to gaslight us into believing he was just a villain from the start And the fact that the only use of AI in the movie was for his magic flame effects almost makes it sadder, it feels lazier than using AI for the writing That Disney quote at the very end of the video reminds me of the Scrooge McDuck cartoon where he teaches the triplets about economics and how to invest their money smartly
I appreciate the idea of what Prince of Egypt did as a movie. That movie is PIQUE cinema; best movie Dreamworks ever made in my opinion. While it's been quite some time since Wish came out and I am fine with people liking the movie, it's interesting to see someone discuss how Wish could've been better. :)
Yup! I updated my avatar's outfit a while ago, but people suggested I keep the old outfit until I finish My Adventures with Superman for consistency's sake. So this is the first video with the updated outfit.
I haven't seen this movie, because the trailers convinced me not to. I wouldn't call in unfinished - the style is definitely intentional - but it just looks dull, desaturated and mostly without contrast. If I wouldn't be so lazy (especially when it comes to this movie), I would check how this mess looks like in grey scale, or when the color channels are separated, because I'm almost sure there is a really good lesson here about what NOT to do in visual media. Provided by Disney of all people... Also, I can't help but think that the animators did literally everything they could to give Asha the side shave, but weren't allowed to do more than what we got in the end.
I truly think Magnifico is the most interesting character in the movie, like you said he's the only one with anything resembling an arc, I think the problem is something the Nostalgia Critic said in his video about this movie: Magnifico at the start and at the end feel like two different characters and not like a single character who went through an arc. His characterization feels very confused, he was marketed as a return to past classic disney villains but in the first half of the movie he seems very reasonable, like his reasons for only granting certain wishes feel logical, something that I think they should have leaned into more is the fact he refuses to give back the wishes he won't grant but at the same time show the people of Rosas suffering for not having their wishes. And it's so funny to see how despite Disney's best wishes Magnifico has been hit hard with the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, I saw a youtube short titled something like 'everytime magnifico was a red flag', it was showing clips of Asha's interview with him and highlighting certain lines of his during that scene as early signs he was evil, but when I went to look at the comment section of that short all the top comments were talking about how disney was trying to gaslight everyone into thinking magnifico was evil for acting that way, nobody in that comment section was buying it. This goes back to his poorly written characterization, it's like the writers couldn't decide if they wanted him to be classic disney villain who reveled in his evilness or a modern disney villain with a tragic backstory to explain their actions. As if evil people need a reason to be evil. The stakes feel so low because everyone who gave their wish, except Simon, seem completely fine, they don't seem like they need or even want their wishes back, so why should we hate Magnifico for keeping the wishes when nothing bad is happening because of that? And I have so many doubts about how this Wish system works, do people forget what their wishes were? And even if they do does nobody else tells that person what their wish was? Cause why in the world do people not try to make their wishes come true without the help of Magnifico??? The more out there stuff like flying I get why they need magnifico, but why didn't sabino try to create music on his own during the decades he's been waiting for his wish to be granted? Same thing with becoming a seamstress or a knight, you don't necessarily need magic for that. Magnifico really should have been using the wishes to power his magic from the beggining, like they should have been the source of his magic. Ditch that tragic backstory (or have it be a lie he tells people to justify why he takes wishes) and ditch the evil magic book, this is why his arc feels so disjointed to me, it's like all the evil things magnifico did after didn't came from him, they came from the book. Did they not realize that by making the magic in the book evil we would see magnifico as a victim of the book? Now I can't even believe he was evil before, I just think he was driven to drastic means by paranoia due to the tragic backstory the writers foolishly gave him.
Great video! I watched a lot of reviews for this movie, and was also confused why no one brought up Magnifico's mentioned backstory. Like, it's vague, yes, you have to leap to your own conclusion to how it clues in into the whole 'collecting wishes' thing, but... it's there! Honestly I feel like the problem in that case is not Magnifico's motivation to take wishes but the motivation of people who give him wishes. Like, unless they are handing them over in hopes of it being granted, why would they? For "protection"? They forget their wish, and I may understand the "forgetting what you want the most to make it more likely it'll come true", but not the "forgetting what you want the most just to not get sad over failure" I watched Wish without knowing anything about it (which made a lot of choices even more confusing - I did not know it was supposed to represent classical fairy tale movies so a lot of it felt just muddied with weird useless 'whimsical' stuff I assumed was just young kids pandering), and for like 2/3ds of the movie I did not think Magnifico would be the villain. He seemed a little misguided, yes, but when the story started pushing him into 'evilness' it seemed so unnatural considering what happened earlier in the movie, like him choosing not to use the book. Not to mention it would render 'At All Costs' song completely useless, and they wouldn't do it, right?? They wouldn't put in a whole song just to undo everything it tells us about the character, right??? (It's so funny that it's not even the most useless song in the movie. What even is 'I am a star') It feels like the whole 'evil book' was added in the first place just to justify Magnifico's turn into an evil guy. Because they couldn't push his personality to be as realistically evil as they wanted him to be because it went against the character they wrote him as, they added a 'he's forever evil now :)' switch just to flip it and justify such a harsh ending and the whole 'see, he's the classical evil villain now, as we promised!' while he just WASN'T Wish is a mess in such a fascinating way... Like WOW. You cant make something so purposefully confusing and empty even if you wanted to try
Another key failing that the movie had was a lack of consequences for giving up your wish. Which makes the audience sympathize with the king, since his “evil act” doesn’t seem to hurt anyone. In fact it reminds me of that trope of the prankster. Who always does small things like hide fart pillows. A mild annoyance at worst. Compare that seemingly harmless action of taking a wish with something like how Ursula had this entire cave of miserable looking worms that she turned her victims into or how Jafar kicked Aladdin. Or Big Jack Horner’s anything really. You will never feel bad for these people no matter what happens because we see how they make people miserable by just being around doing their normal thing. With a “one wish a month” thing and how desperate the people seem to be for it, it feels like a lottery that we are supposed to see as bad. Now if you want to make a point about how bad lottery and gambling can be in the real world, you show those people that throw away their entire paycheck to buy lottery tickets, while talking about what they will do with the money they will never win, ruining their lives for a statistically impossible hope in the process. We don’t get that in Wish. Rosas is too nice for that. What this film needs are a few characters that have given up their wishes that have become miserable.
Uncredited Music
2:55 Olley Oxen Free - The Neverhood
13:51 Medal of Honour - Video Games Music Gala
28:42 Star Wars no Theme - Masato Shimon
29:35 Sand Canyon 1 - Kirby Dream Land 3
42:48 Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger OP
43:57 Sea Shanty 2 - Runescape
47:25 Candy Mountain - Kirby Super Star
54:15 This is the Thanks I Get - Barbara Lynn
54:46 Buy Mode 3 - The Sims
1:06:17 The Go-Bots theme song
1:13:37 Sweetheart Of Theta Delta Chi - Will Osborne & His Orchestra
Neverhood music is instant kudos
With the failure of Wish on one of their most important milestones, Disney Animation has only 1 chance left to make this right, their 100th Fully Animated Film. That is the only chance they have to show that they still have it, however to do so, they will HAVE to disregard Wish in its entirety. No references, no recycling of characters or plot points, nothing.
However, I feel the Disney of old is too far in the past for their 100th fully animation film to be not better than Wish, but worse, and may actually bring the company to its knees, if not kill it entirely.
Animaniacs;"just the same old heroine"+"disney's Wish"=A.M.V. Gold!
Anyone bite?
Check out The Great Wish Move Rewrite on AO3 by WhatIWish, telling the story with Magnifico as the protagonist.
Amazing review! There isn't much I think I could add, apart from the fact, that some of the story could have been salvaged if instead of having him locked up in a mirror being treated as a joke, it was presented as a way to keep him from harming others, until his wife finds a way to cure him.
The message of "he's too corrupt to try to save" is such an awful message, especially after spending the first half of the runtime painting him as a victim.
Right? They didn't even TRY to get him out from the influence of the book, the queen was like "oh well. Rip."
ikr?! Simon was forgiven and allowed to have another chance despite the fact he betrayed Asha. But not a man with PTSD. He's evil and irredeemable.
calling him a villain is a red flag imo, he's right in what he does and he's doing his best as a good person but everyone goes after him for personal interests including the protagonist lol
I'm reading a story on Ao3 called "The Great Wish Movie Rewrite" by WhatIWish where Magnifico is the protag. It does a good job of showing how despite his mistakes, his side of the story was understandable. I think he is more sympathetic than Asha in my opinion.
I think it's a perfect reflection of the kind of people in Hollywood. Superficially caring, utterly destructive, extremely entitled, & makers of villainy.
Magnifico had a traumatic past, and because of that trauma he tries to hold tightly to what he has. And then when his security is threatened and he starts to lose hope, he falls back to using an abusive substance... And he's _irredeemable_ because of it. Thanks Disney, what a hopeful message. :/
Right?
"If your untreated trauma causes you to do something bad then you're an irredeemable piece of shit that deserves to suffer for all eternity'" is not exactly the kind of message one should want to send to ANYONE, much less CHILDREN.
The moral of Wish sounds like something plucked out of a religious extremist's mind imo.
The fact that he was locked in a mirror and NOTHING is said about curing him, or helping him is kinda disturbing. Especially since Disney has this habit of redeeming villains for weird reasons but then doesn't redeem the one guy actually could be redeemed?
that's why no one wants to see asha again in future disney movies, she's the type of person your therapists would advise you never interact with because they'll take everything good from you
Also gotta love just how quick and completely heartless his wife was. Like damn, she turned her back on him with absolutely no hesitation, not even the slightest inkling of a hope that maybe the husband who she previously seemed to have a perfectly good relationship could be saved. Nope, he opened big scary book and said something kind of mean... he's beyond saving... oh and hey all of a sudden I get to be the sole reigning monarch of a kingdom I had no real hand in building! Totally not suspicious.
I think everyone can agree that when Magnifico said "I lеt you live here for free and I don't even charge you rent" that made him a 10/10 villain
I'm a fan of "It's genetic! I got these genes from outer space!"
@@c-puff And that's weird itself, because I'm pretty sure this film predates gene theory.
hios villain song doesn't make sense though.
@@c-puff In alll serious, this song was the worst one...wait, the star song was worse, this song was second...
@@c-puff
Ah, it makes sense now! His parentage isn't from EARTH! He's a Skywalker!
Those guy's tend to turn evil at the drop of a hat, suddenly, this all makes sense.
magnifico is unironically set up to be the hero. “noble scientist’s selfish and power-hungry assistant gets snubbed, so they go out and find a power to surpass their former master” is literally an age old villain setup. and it would honestly have been such a refreshing idea to have the protagonist we’ve been following all along turn out to be the villain in their own story, and while magnifico still wouldn’t be a great person, angry and traumatised, he wouldn’t be evil.
but no, disney decided we’ve had enough of twist villains since they used them so badly so many times, they decided to this time screw up a traditional setup instead. bravo.
If Magnifico was the hero, it would’ve been a far more entertaining story. Maybe he slowly lost sight of his original goal for his kingdom, growing an ego because he became so loved. The lesson he would have to learn is remembering why he started the kingdom to begin with.
Maybe even lose most of his magic for a good portion of the film so he’s not top dog and is flung back to the weakness he feared.
Heck, his magic book could act as this film’s version of Aladdin’s magic carpet; being able to move on its own and having a personality through how it moves and shows its pages. That way they could have the sidekick without having an annoying voice.
@ alternatively, the book could still be evil and Asha could steal it for that added leg up against the perceived evil of Magnifico. she would have had ample opportunity to hear about it from him.
We can't even get a villain couple so you bet we can't get a villain protagonist. I swear they better utilize the villain couple idea in the near future, I DEMAND MY POUND OF FLESH!
Y'know what would have been a great option? Twist hero. I adore the villain couple idea, but what if Magnifico actually realized his mistakes? Or what if it was revealed that he was genuinely protecting them and Asha's actions put them in danger?
@ EXACTLY
If they removed the entire "book that makes you evil if you touch it" shit and opened the movie with an actual flashback of kid Magnifico losing his village to magic invaders instead of a vague opening narration, they could have made something intersting. Magnifico sensing Starboy's presence and being afraid of it, starting to become paranoic and wanting to prevent, in his mind, the potential downfall of Rosas and its people, to the point of consuming wishes for power eventually becoming not too different from the very people he was afraid of.
That would've been much more interesting.
Agreed.
Maybe even make Magnifico have a PTSD sort of scene. As It would further help in showing why he's so desperate in finding the "Magic User".
After all, If you're traumatized enough to have a panic attack the moment someone with magic, who isn't you, arrives on the Island. Then It would make sense for someone like this to start to make bad decisions out of fear.
What if Starboy was the magic invader in a sense. He got bored and went down to a little village and started granting everyone's wishes. Starboy knows nothing of humans or how they work. He just wants to help and have fun. When he leaves the village, everything is in chaos. This traumatized Magnifico and has him paranoid about granting wishes and stars. Asha is now needed to ground Starboy somewhat and teach him how people work and how granting every wish might not be the best idea, but also teach him how he can still help people.
@@marybrunsman4742This would have been a very interesting setup for Starboy's backstory, that at some point he was so out of touch with humanity he didn't see how his power caused harm, even if he had the best of intentions.
Even in the case of Disney deciding not to do that as to not paint one of their protagonists as "evil", they could still do something along the likes of Starboy having been manipulated or forced into granting wishes for the invaders.
There was so much potential in this movie, and it all went unused.
15:30 "A twist villain only works the first time you watch a movie."
Counterpoint, while the initial jaw dropping moment of any twist can only be felt on the first watch, twists can still be enjoyable upon multiple watches if they are set up properly and have engaging lead ins. If that happens then rewatches allow one to enjoyably notice all the signs that foreshadow the twist that they might've missed beforehand. Twist villains, specifically, can also still work if their pre-twist personalities are just another side of them or enjoyable in their own right. King Candy is enjoyable on multiple watches.
True true. I could have expanded on that point a little.
It's so great to look back and just see all the hints dropped. He looks the same, is shady af but you kinda didn't register that at first and when he goes into the code you can even see his name being all weird while Vanellope's code looks like its been ripped out.
Facts. A twist villain is good forever if well done. And in a world where twist villains became common, the good ones are arguably better over time since in the moment, you might roll your eyes at yet another trope
My son's only thought while watching Magnifico was that he needed to be hugged. Everything else about the movie was not important to him. He's 9 years old. To me, it feels like Asha was not supposed to be in this movie if not to cause the king to lose his mind. She doesn't have an arc, she doesn't have a reason to do anything because her kingdom is rich other than safe. They should have let the king be the protagonist. It feels like the movie was made for an activist niche who wants to see overthrown kingdoms, riots, and powerful people punished just for being in power. There is nothing Disney about it.
This movie is like an activist fantasy: they get together and win by shouting loudly at the guy they don't like.
@@WalkingJellyfishOr rather, merely singing. Which is 2x worse.
Rameses being a tragic character is so on point. Like, we want to see him fail, but it HURTS to see him mourn his son. You hate seeing him furiously chase down the Israelites. And the moment when he screams out his brother's name at the end is heartbreaking. He's a phenomenal character and villain.
My favourite thing about writing these videos is applying the same lens to good animated projects and realising even more just how good they are. The prince of Egypt is a masterpiece of a film for so many reasons. It's visual storytelling is insanely good as well.
@c-puff Yeah, almost every single frame is gorgeous. And the sound track is my personal favorite in animation. Only barely beating Hunchback (just because I hate that gargoyle song, lol).
@ Oh the Hunchback soundtrack is literally insane! (apart from the gargoyle song lol) Even not considering Hellfire, Hunchback might legit have the best music of the renaissance period. Which sounds like blasphemy against Howard Ashman but it's true. "The Bells of Notre Dame" is ridiculous. As is "Out there" which has to be tied with "Part of your world" for best "I want" song
@@c-puff
People sleep on my main man Clopin who gets more songs than the main characters and shows up at the end to punk them, then save them, then leaves without a word.
Prince of Egypt is kinda weird cause we know how it will end, but they made the brothers both likable that you kinda dont wanna reach the plague part.
Disney: We didn't use AI.
Journalists: How did you get the visual effects?
Disney: We used
This was so funny that it had me go through the five stages of grief backwards.
3:38 Finding out that Wish was made with the help of an IN HOUSE AI simultaneously makes so much sense on why it looks so bad and yet I still can’t wrap my brain around what an absolute lie that Disney stooped to in order to make this film look the way it did.
Also if we try our best to ignore how shitty this is artistically.... just IMAGINE the absolute waste of money it took DEVELOPING their in house AI.... and for what....
AI seriously only belongs in assisting SFX artists. Spiderverse used in-house AI for that very purpose and you won’t even notice, which is the highest praise AI could receive. It’s best used as a niche tool to help speed up small but tedious tasks. The only big use of AI that I find isn’t absolutely tasteless is for things like test renders, though the AI art theft issue still rears its ugly head from that since you can’t properly source your inspirations unless it’s a closed system with only in-house training data.
@ Not to mention other models getting thrown under the name of "AI" due to technicalities in how they work, when in reality they are not exactly the same as Gen AI that techbros are using to scrape fanfics with.
The worst part...the absolute WORST part...is that the premise was legitimately great and Magnifico as a character is part of that strong premise. Too bad no effort was made to actually follow up or build off that premise, effectively wasting it in the most bafflingly self-inflicted sabotage imaginable.
@@jemm113 A while back i wrote a essay about AI bring used in this sort of way. I 100% agree with you.
26:54 rule 1. You can't make someone fall in love with you.
Rule 2. You can't kill anyone.
Rule 3. You can't bring anyone back from the dead. It's not a pretty picture. AND I DON'T LIKE DOING IT!!
Apparently, people of Rosa and Asha did not know that.
@Muna-Jlore0997 nor did the creators and Disney forgot even after the Aladdin live action remake.
@@Demolitiondude them too.
@@Demolitiondude them too
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Stuff like Wish makes me wish that Walt Disney actually was cryogenically frozen and that one day he will break from his icy tomb, avenge himself upon his decrepit company and arise as The Lich King of Anaheim.
I'm busy reading his biography and despite not being far into yet, he would NOT have stood for this slipshod production AT ALL. Which makes it all the more annoying that the company keeps parading him around as a marketing tool.
"I left you a glorious cultural legacy, and this is the thanks I get?!" (do-do-do-do-do-do-do)
@ I haven’t read his biography but I do know a little about him and even from what little I know, he sounds like a fascinating man.
We should write fanfics about that, instead of just fix- it fics for the movie itself it's a fix-it fic for the Disney company.
@@Prototype-357 I certainly would like to see this become a fan animation.
All this is just making me imagine how beautiful this could've ended, with Star Boy helping Magnifico grant his wish and help him through his unresolved fear and paranoia.
But not with a wave of a hand, to show the audience it's not that simple. Like the Queen, Star Boy helps him see the alternative, see the path to make the right choice. And give Magnifico the ability to take that path instead of just being defeated like any other villain.
I disagree on the matter of twist villains. If they're foreshadowed well and their actions before the twist make sense, I.E. they are done well, they can really work and make repeat viewings even more worthwhile.
That's true, yeah. I could have elaborated on twist villains as a concept in a broader sense, but I was hyperfocusing a little on the way Disney has been using them. Which is that Hans in Frozen being a villain happened when they decided Elsa shouldn't be the villain any more. And since that switch worked, they followed this pattern or writing for other villains like Bellwether
@@c-puff There is also King candy/turbo from the first Wreck-it-Ralph, he was also a bit of a twist villain before Frozen.
@@brandonlyon730 King Candy is really great, not only he has great foreshadowing (his race goggles painting his eyes yellow, his helmet having a stripe down the middle like Turbo's etc) but he acts like an actual villain even before the twist, he sets his guards on vanelope and ralph, he manipulates ralph into betraying vanelope and of course he imprisons vanelope after saying he was only trying to protect her. The problem with twist villains is that before the twist the story has nobody fulfilling that role, but King candy acts very shady and very charismatic, honestly he's what magnifico should have been, disney was great at making manipulative villains as both king candy and mother gothel proved, i have no idea what happened in that writer's room that caused magnifico to come out.
Which is the problem. A proper twist villain is like king candy. There's hints, things you may miss the first time like Hans looking up at the chandelier over Elsa before dashing over and yanking the crossbow up hitting its support and dropping it on her. Modern writing is hero, hero, 3rd act "Aha I was evil all along." When they haven't been doing anything to even hint at that.
@Senkoau Hans has a problem as a twist villain because he only has that scene as a hint of his evilness, Elsa being planned as the OG villain hurt his development as one, and that's why the "The trolls make him evil" theory is very popular among fans. However, at least he has some charisma that compensates for the lack of development in his twist.
I think Tiberius Rourke from Atlantis is another good example of a twist villain, there are multiple hints of his future villainy during the movie along with Helga's, and then there's a plus in his revelation with the rest of the crew also being on it before having a change of heart
Considering personal wishes I've asked for that teetered on selfish and somewhat rude, Im with Magnefico that some people do not deserve their wishes granted.
Deserving is a whole can of worms anyway, when it's much simpler to address the fact that some, even many, people's wishes are downright cruel, evil, or harmful and would actively make the world a worse place.
Like the C-suites, etc. who want to replace everyone but the uber-rich with AI slaves that don't require money and only generate wealth for their masters.
Seriously like…what if someone dreamed of marrying someone who’s already happily married with a family? Or someone like maleficent? Not all wishes can be granted without thinking about the ramifications
I wish to be the hero of a monster attack, I wish so and so love me not Gunther, I wish all X were kicked out of the kingdom, I wish I were the king of my own kingdom. Most wishes should be vetted carefully and he's granting one a month and if you want you can just leave instead of giving it up and try to make it happen yourself.
It's an absolute crime they referenced the Cinderella transformation sequence and NOT transform her dress. Was so mad.
Also nitpick but for a town called "Roses" there's barely any rose motifs. They use a lot of blue too, which isn't associated with roses. But there's a lot of star imagery so maybe it should've been called Estrellas(Stars) instead. Kinda wish they did lean into the rose aspect though since they could have emphasized the thorns.
Thirdly, I saw someone mention that they could've had the queen break the spell with "True Love's Kiss" and it makes sense, especially since it's supposed to be a tribute to other Disney classics
I really recommend "The Great Wish Move Rewrite" on AO3 by WhatIWish, it makes you understand Magnifico much more and shows his side of the story. The author changed the star to Star Boy with Asha as the antagonist, and fleshed things out a lot more.
cant find the fic
@@sebastiancastaneda2939 Hmm, they go by the same name on Tumblr, WhatIWish, maybe get the link there?
I found the fic by WhatIwish on tumb lr.
48:30 when you said he'd seemingly lost all sense of his primary motivation, it made me realize there's an interesting idea there that wasn't used. His one wish is to protect people. After the evil magic, he doesn't care, doesn't know about that anymore. His wish was taken away.
(and replaced by an evil entity, but that could have been changed to be the person he could have become with the same power he earned, but without his character-defining goal that motivated him to seek that power and be a good person. Alternatively, the great evil he founded his kingdom against was connected to the corruption of wishes, which is why he was dedicated to protecting them).
Having his own wish and working for it led to him being a powerful sorcerer and respected king. But his wish was taken away. There's a difference, in that his subjects don't have something evil placed in them after he takes their wish, but there are parallels as well. His wish ceremony, deliberately or not, prevents the motivating goal that would lead to more like him coming into existence. But it also keeps more like evil him from coming into existence.
That conflict is something Disney could have explored but didn't.
Honestly, Magnifico should been the hero of the movie, stopping a wild teen from making all dreams come true, even the terrible ones and plunging the world into utter chaos XD
While watching this, I came up with a concept.
What if Magnifico is hailed as this gracious king that offers protection from an unknown evil and grants people’s wishes out of love. One of the stories that’s used to show his kindness is that the queen was a castaway that arrived on the island alone and scared, and he took her in and they fell in love.
Over the course of the story, the queen whispers to the king and sows seeds of doubt in him which makes him paranoid that Asha is using him to hurt his kingdom. Filled with paranoia, he goes to hunt Asha, and the queen is left to run the nation.
Now that the queen is in power, her mask falls, and is shown to be a true evil. This is what makes Asha stop running, and she confronts the king directly. She shows him that the queen is manipulating him, and they join forces to stop her.
When foiled, the queen manages to escape and takes the king’s magic book. In doing so, she reveals that she was actually sent by the unknown evil outside of the kingdom, and she had a plot to take the kingdom over that the king fell right into.
Depending on what they do next, they could make a good setup for a sequel or have clean ending where the threat from outside is vanquished.
So basically animated version of Dark Souls 2, and I’m all for it.
DS2 aside, imo it would make a better setup for an homage to Snow White: Asha can go into hiding with the help of her 7 friends which would give opportunity to show off their individual traits and abolish the need in having a talking goat.
@@lawresk I have never played Dark Souls, but I think that's a good addition.
Don’t you hate it when the writers realize too late that they’ve written their villain to be too sympathetic and reasonable, so they tack on a last-minute plot-point to justify treating him as an irredeemable force of evil? “Oh no, the corruption is permanent! So just forget about the motivations and goals we set up before.”
I agree it really felt like the irredeemable part was slapped on hastily. Correct me if im wrong, but development of wish was within the year it released. So for some reason the big anniversary movie...gets hella rushed....
20:45 technically Dinosaur is the earliest Disney movie since that takes place in the Mesozoic Era millions of years ago.
Honestly I was thinking of mentioning both Dinosaur as well as Hercules but it made the sentence clunky.
Aladar is my favorite Disney princess.
I haven't seen the movie myself, just reviews, so you pointing out that Magnifico displays obvious signs of PTSD really blew my mind. And you know, if they actually went with that idea that is a really good way to have a complex yet genuinely bad villain like these people wanted. Because not everyone, but some people with PTSD DO become really awful people as a result of their trauma, but if an audience learns that there's a reason for the anger and violence, it doesn't make how they lash out okay, but it does add layers to them. It would be pretty sad to keep the current ending where he gets trapped forever instead of helped though.
Too bad I'm pretty sure they had no idea what they were so close to hitting on. Any potentially interesting plot points in this movie feel like they are there DESPITE the writers, instead of because of them
I really recommend The Great Wish Movie Rewrite on AO3 by WhatIWish that explores that idea with Magnifico as the protag.
I like the concept of Wish being something like a Disney proto-myth: That it's some long lost history that over thousands of years all got adjusted and re-written into their versions of fantasy stories like Cinderella, Snow White, Frozen, Tangled, etc. Shame I they clearly had a different, dumber idea by the end of it.
My understanding is that Wish cost something like $200 million to make. I would think it would be a matter of common sense to use a small fraction of all that money to hire some first-rate writers to do the script work. I don't understand why an outfit like Disney Studios is willing to settle for second-rate (or worse) writing. Why don't they insist on the best? I just don't get it.
@@MrSatampra it wasn't relevant to the video but it's reported Wish lost Disney $130 million. Disney as a whole will pour money into every ounce of a product except the writing.
because they're capitalists. their main interest in doing what they can to heighten profit, and since capitalists are scared of SPENDING money they go out of their way to do the bare minimum to keep their coffers full.
its why so much of their recent releases have been so...similar seeming, they want to chase what they think will be the easiest way to make the msot profit, whcih is basically nsotalgia bait.
(its also why they're cutting out trans character stories in their upcoming stuff, to avoid scaring off anti-wokes and upseting people in light of the rise of transphobia, for fear of alienating too many people and losing money)
Just guessing here but this feels like a lack of definite vision to guide the narrative.
Likely they had a bunch of different executives with different agendas and preferences being reported to at once, so everyone wanted and insisted on different things and no one was truly in charge or the project. Leading to it just being a mess.
Like one exec that wasn’t writing the script wanted a “pure evil bad guy” and another wanted a “sympathetic one” and the writers couldn’t say no to either one and as such had to please both rather than choosing a direction and going there.
They likely also had issues with how they produce scenes of the film.
In a normal production you have a team write the script and hand those out to those that make the one screen scenes. But to make the film production more efficient, Disney likes to do both. Leading to them spending a ton of time and money into scenes that they have no use for but can’t wait and pay for new ones, so they rewrite the script around those scenes. This has famously happened in the black widow movie, where the sky diving through debris big action scene at the end, was shot, filmed and edited before it had fully realized basics of the films plot. But it cost so much and they have such strict deadlines, that they used it anyways
@@MrSatampra And that's just the creation budget. That's not counting the marketing budget. But yeah money is only good when allocated to the right areas.
Bob Iger never considered himself an artist. Even when he first got hired he was quoted saying something like, "I'm a business man. If the movie is good, it will be called art eventually." He never respected movies as an artform. Walter's rolling right now.
Long ago the Kingdom of Rosas lived in harmony under the benevolent rule of King Magnifico. Then everything changed when the Asha nation attacked.
I honestly think that the biggest factor on why people say that “Magnífico is good and Asha is bad” is because the fact that Disney wanted the audience to be on Asha’s side, but not giving us an actual reason to do so and people decided to be on Magnífico’s side just to spite them, and also the scene of the people demanding the wish ceremony was another big factor
"I care too much" girl what 💀 no you don't, you care about yourself
Asha is just really bland. Like, why should we even root for her? She's really selfish(she wants somebody else's wish to come true but this is also quite self-serving), kinda arrogant(assumes she knows better than the wizard who has been doing this for years) and acts like a moron(really Disney, stop it with the cooky, so quirky characters already).
So true. I read a fanfiction called The Great Wish Movie Rewrite on AO3 by WhatIWish that explores Magnifico as the protag and Asha as the antagonist. It makes a lot more sense without changing too much, just a change in POV.
@@eriktheos6022 Watch out or the shills will call you a bigot for not rooting for their girlboss protag. Don't you know that the entertainment industry makes movies their staff wants instead of the audience and we're all just supposed to clap for them for it 😂
Magnifico was basically being used by the people of his kingdom. Before he arrived, it was more or less a wasteland and they only got together because he granted wishes and only then were they willing to do much of anything. They didn't give a shit about him, they just wanted the wishes.
Also: he was a guy from a quite humble beginning who build up a kingdom to make people happy...
did they just make Walt Disney the villain?
I like how they went on and on about how Namaari wasn’t really a villain and how everyone she totally trust her, when she did basically everything to prevent Raya and her friends from saving the world and would even blame the former for things that she did. Meanwhile, Magnifico created a perfect utopia where people aren’t even forced to give up their wishes but he’s irredeemable.
Thank you thank you thank you!
One thing i swear i remember is him being marketed as an irredeemable "classic" didney villain. But im pretty sure they wrote him as somewhat sympathetic and then realized they didnt have enough time to figure it out. So low and behold he becomes "irredeemable" by being possesed by a book...
Magnifico is a kind, generous, king with PTSD. And we're supposed to believe he's evil because a spoiled teenager didn't like being told "no".
7:24 Damn I the queens evil design is fire though.
@@Balevolt it really is. I'm kind of mad at how good it is
@c-puff It's such a waste, the storyboards look good too
@@c-puff We were really dang robbed of an evil power couple, I feel so many would have had a field day of doing awesome arts of them and more... ;;;
@ There is actually some pretty good art of her and Magnifico anyway. Some people drawing what could have been with them being an evil couple. Or just enjoying the angst potential.
@@c-puff Ah, shouldn't have underestimated this fandom on what they could do with all the scrapped concepts that's been found. Bless them, they're so powerful~
"Self-aggrandising has been wrapped in a smokescreen of self-acceptance."
You know, I have been searching for a good way to describe the mess that is social media right now and I finally found it! Thanks a ton.
About the topic at hand, yeah, sounds like the problem Disney has been having for years now. They just don't know where they are going, are too terrified to lose money by insulting anyone, so focus too much on what they don't want to be without actually creating an identity.
The thing that really gets me about Magnifico's fate is how the rest of the cast and the film's narrative treats it as an unambiguous good thing. It could have still worked if at least his wife if not everybody else viewed it as a horrific tragedy that they were forced to imprison this person who used to be a decent if flawed person for eternity for the sake of the good of the kingdom. But nope. Giving him a fate worse than death is portrayed as obviously a great thing. What were the writers thinking?
And he then went on to become lord farquad's girl spying tv and honestly that is a fate worse than death
honestly having the queen cry as she picks him up or show regret or SOMETHING other than that smug smile like... damn woman. you "loved" him for decades but three days with this random citizen and all that's gone?
On top of being such a lame movie, they had the gall to mimic Jafar's defeat, as the being sucked into the gem or staff or whatever looks like they traced over Jafar being pulled into the lamp with Iago, and to further sell it, they had to have someone handle it with a satisfied smirk, but with no valid character to do that, they rolled dice and landed on the queen.
7:14 OMG THE GOAT SPEAKS WITH A DEEP VOICE OMG SO FUNNY OMG SO RANDOM LOL!!!!!!!!11111one
Your breakdown of Magnifico made me realise something very important.
Magnifico is Disney's Batman
(Both went through something traumatic and then dedicated the rest of their lives to ensure no one else went through what they did)
You learn why this movie is ugly in the first 6 minutes and even worse, it was intentional. Honestly, it looks like a typical, WAY cheaper 2010s CGI show for toddlers, where they couldn't put much effort into lightning and depth. And additionally, the animation is too good for its look, clashing even harder. They should have made it look like Paperman, or Puss in Boots.
In some ways, it almost looks like a DTV sequel
yeah and i perfer spider-man into the spider verse than this.
The Sims buy mode music under all the contradictory interviews just gave SO much sass for reasons I don't quite understand, but I love it.
They need to realize what they wrote him as, he's got pretty strong hero material, they just went at it the wrong way. Nothing that can't be fixed with a sequel tho.
omg your avatar 😂
@@c-puff It's silly, right? Hahah I love this character deeply, he means a lot to me as someone who has lost so many loved ones. I hope they fix what they did, it would be one of the nicest things in recent fiction, they just need a really, really good writer who understands grief properly
If you're interested, there is a novelization where the story is a tragedy and it's underlined how the book is a spell he needs to be saved from. There's no indication of him being the villain. He asks the star "where were you when I needed you, why did it take her for us to meet?", and his wife reminds him his kingdom does a lot of good, referring to wishes as "his wishes" to maintain his sense of security. He treats them like children, sings to them, reassures them when Asha is invited in his study by saying "it's okay, you know I would never let anyone hurt you". They ruined it by reducing him to a "villain", and I don't understand why.
One can only hope Disney goes back to memorable storytelling and gives this character some justice.
Damn even the movie is confused about itself
Changing the movie's ending over a crying 7yo hurts. I've said it before, Magnifico should have been Disney's version of Mustapha Mond from Huxley's Brave New World. But now it turns out the real Disney Mustapha Mond was... Disney themselves.
I will say, I don't believe it's facsistic for him to threaten anyone who supports the unknown magic user? To his knowledge, it's a threat to Rosas
Magnifico had to be locked away in a mirror forever and put out of sight. Too bad he didn't have someone there to give him a good old true love's kiss and break the curse. Like, someone who loved him, like a wife or something. Oh well.
They literally could've made one the wishes stolen be to get rid the king because they loved his wife causing an evil curse to fall on him. Then Asha has to figure out how to break the curse by adventuring a bit and then runs in telling his wife love breaks the curse. Include a fighting the crowd moment to get to him in time before the kiss and it's already better may not be great.
Wish has so much potential that it absolutely failed to capitalize on that it turned into a bit of a Rorschach test; different people will look at the film and come up with very different solutions about how they would fix it, especially with regards to Magnifico. Do you take him back to the proper villain he was in the earlier drafts? Do you take his villainy in a different direction? Do you keep him as he is, a good man having a bad day during his mid-life crisis? Or are you someone like me, who would make Magnifico a clear good guy while also introducing a new character to be an actual classic Disney villain?
If you're curious, my idea for an actual villain is an evil wishing star with the working name "Monkeypaw". He sees wishes as proof that humans are selfish, and sees the act of wishing as incredibly arrogant as it's basically asking fate to bend over backwards for them. He has decided to punish humanity for the sin of wishing by granting wishes in the worst possible way, a la the infamous Monkey's Paw. This changes the context of Magnifico "hoarding" ungranted wishes, as he's protecting them from Monkeypaw.
Man, Magnifico was wasted on this movie. His backstory really set him up to be a perfect, sympathetic character and his behavior through the movie could have been him acting out of desperation and paranoia (even if rather extreme in character ). And where they REALLY dropped the ball was making his use of the Forbidden Book irreversible. All the while, I was thinking "why not burn the thing"? I mean isn't that the usual way of breaking the curse of a magical artifact? Destroying it? Sure, make him lust for power while under the book's spell, have him behave like a villain, but you CANNOT tell me there was no way they couldn't have brought him back by destroying the freaking book and have him redeemed, albeit remorseful, in the end!
"Wish" is a Disney movie where the writers thought about what Walt himself would have done, and then did the complete opposite of that.
The mention that Disney doesn’t want to make characters unlikable out of fear of hurting marketability hits hard. Consider things like the Cruella movie, or the Boba Fett show, which star beloved characters who were once incredibly evil, but sands off everything even remotely unsavory about them, leaving them bland and unrecognizable. And both those projects failed.
Honestly, the Disney movie I think of most when it comes to unlikable characters is the Emperor’s New Groove. Kusco is a very entertaining protagonist, but also the biggest sack of shit imaginable. And the whole movie wouldn’t have worked had he been secretly a sweet guy or misunderstood from the start. He was a complete shitheel from the start of the film and had no desire to be better, which makes his growth into a decent person even better.
The video is out! (throws confetti)
Thank you for your sacrifice in actually watching the official behind the scenes and trying to make sense of the movie.
Wish really feels like the death keel for Disney. It's kind of depressing, but it feels like Disney just isn't the same. I hope they turn it around, but Wish doesn't give me the confidence they'll even try with animated movies :/
*me working in culinary job about to do dishes*
*Sees new hour long vid from C-Puff*
"Oh yea... its time for a brain stimulating zoning out hour"😎
@stephenbaines905 lmfao so many shifts have they defeated for me
32:54
That's another thing I saw pointed out. After she turns on her husband, there's no sense of loss from either of them.
That Mindy Kaling jumpscare at 1:10:57 had me laughing more than I should’ve
11:03 Well, at least the writers did a good job of showing she's an activist.
Honestly them saying "activist" is a personality reminded me of Hasbro saying "Cowgirl" is a personality.
@@c-puff Not too much on AJ.
17:30 This explains a lot. God damnit, kids NEED to be scared sometimes! Disney just had to file down anything resembling an edge, didn't they?
the more i see of this movie the more pissed i get at all the missed potential and all the really interesting ideas people come up with. someone mentioned queen amaya breaking the evil spell on magnifico with true love's kiss and i agree, like... with all the other classic disney reference's in there, you couldn't go with THE most iconic one?
I believe that one of the reasons why the writing in Disney movies has gone down hill, is because the people in charge listened to too many hacks that run around the movie industry and say: "Writing is easy, if you can't write you suck. Here look at my perfect little gremlin Charaktere I wrote! He is perfect with no flaws."
Magnifico is a GOOD person. The story just does everything it can to make him evil. Dumb.
P.S. What do you mean Magnifico isn't the good guy? Tell me, what does he have to do to be the "good" guy then if he isn't already? Does giving everyone a safe land, protected from all evil, which he doesn't charge anyone for, and as an added bonus, he even grants wishes, what? That's not GOOD enough? What else he needs to do? Sell his kidneys? Livers? His heart? Give everyone unlimited money?
Man, you are just as bad as Asha.
I agree that Magnifico is the good guy. Maybe a little vain, but he went out of his way to build a prosperous, wealthy kingdom with no hint of scarcity or need, and all he asks for in return is one wish.
Why does this masterpiece only have 603 views?!
It just went public a few hours ago 😭 I honestly don't look at my views because I just know I'll get obsessive about them otherwise.
But thank you! 💖 I work hard on these!
from what i can gather (since i haven't watched the movie and going only by what was said in the video) it seems like they wanted both a full on over the top hate-able villain and at the same time they wanted him to be sympathetic. which does make me wonder if its possible to pull off, but it is very clear it didn't work in this case. if they really wanted a villain that was more "morally gray" (for lack of better words) so the audience would feel mixed about it, they should not have given him this ending. instead of a more tragic and ambiguous ending to his character, he is treated as just an irredeemable monster, so if the story itself treats it's villain as irredeemable, if the ending of his story is that, how is the audience suppose to have these mixed feelings on him? intentional mixed feelings that is. because as is now everyone is confused in a bad way, since the story itself feels confused.
they probably tried to please both audiences: people who love over the top classic disney villains and the people who prefer more sympathetic type of villain. as a result they failed, that is my theory at least. although i really do wonder if its possible to make a villain hate-able and sympathetic, there may be examples out there. lke certain iterations of the joker. maybe some game of thrones characters?
Part of me wonders how much audience testing messed up this movie as well. Going by the "Into the Unknown" documentary, Frozen 2 was MASSIVELY changed due to confused audience tests 8 months before the movie was suppose to release. And with this being their big 100 year milestone, I imagine it was over-tested like CRAZY and they kept getting conflicting feedback. But we have no way to know that at the moment. And this was such a disaster I don't think they'll let many of the details reach the public to try and save face.
@@c-puff yeah, it feels like a movie that was changed a lot after conflicting feedback. it sounds especially true after hearing that they changed the ending over a 7 year old crying. what happened to the disney that wanted to make kids cry.
@ If nothing else, doing this video got me to get my hands on a copy of Walt's Biography which is considered the most trusted and accurate because I need better info on how Walt responded to things specifically because of things like this.
These filmmakers kept waving him around to prop up their movie and it made me really angry, Especially since it didn't take much research to find clips of him often saying the exact opposite like what I included in the video.
I'm sure I can find some clearer indication on how he felt about making children cry 😂
@@c-puff yeah, its sad that children's entertainment doesn't seem to be the same anymore. i know i sound like an old man, but fuck, back in my day children movies made people of all ages cry in fear sadness and joy. now its mostly safe slop to make money. also, quick question you mentioned two animated movies around the middle part about war, something about kelts, what are they called again? i've never seen them before and they look neat.
@ "The Secret of Kells" by Cartoon Salloon and "The Thief and the Cobbler Mark 5" which can be found here on youtube. (The Thief and the Cobbler is an entire rabbit hole of its own)
It's interesting how Aisha goes straight to "totally not stealing the wishes" rather than asking for them back as they wish to leave and try to achieve them or better getting her grandfather to ask for his wish back. If he actually wants it.
This is why current hollywood makes their villains all dumb as rocks relying on current social commentary. They don't know why they are evil or have any counter arguments to authoritarianism. So the average audience will come out thinking the villain is reasonable.
It would be cool if someone did a rewrite of the king being the hero and 'princess' of the story, trying to stop a spoiled teenager and his secretly evil wife. Can you imagine the betrayal? The angst? Or have him see how selfish people really are and run away with said wishes. Only the truly good and worthy have them granted. Honestly, he's a better God mother, maybe not perfect but who is?
I can see him see future characters like cinderella, or Snow White and granting their wishes because he runs into genuinely good people. I don't care magnifico is the hero of the story, and Asha is the villain. If the movie don't want me to feel that way they shouldn't have written it that way
I'm of the opinion that Magnifico is the hero of the movie and gets pushed into villainy by being antagonized without good reason.
"With great power, comes great responsibility" - Benjamin Parker. The sentence that shaped Peter Parker into the Hero he became.
Words that Magnifico lived by until a threat presented itself.
Thank you exactly not to mention he was having a trauma response to his own home being destroyed so he took drastic measures to try and stop that from happening which in turn made him become a villain there are ways that they could have written him in the movie to make him tragic but instead they try to act like he's even from the beginning when he's not !!
i feel the "greedy thieves" thing could be twisted in an interesting way to make Magnifico more villainious, not jsut to show him as reasonable.
Like it depends on perspective. Like what if he saw ANYONE trying to get him to help with his magic as "thieves", as in he is so entitled he sees literally anyone asking him for help as a 'thief' trying to 'steal' what they don't deserve. He becomes so paranoid, entitled and protective of his powers he keeps everyone down so noone can take his magic for themeselves, and takes away their wishes so they can never want more and thus 'steal' from him with their wishes, and he gets their adoration and trust.
just one i idea i got from that line.
Classic narrative gaslighting
being the best character in a movie like wish is such a low bar lol!
The use of NST makes so much sense. The uncanniness of the movie's style makes so much sense now. I don't even want to get started on the music or the lyrics. Disney should be embarrassed to produce such slop especially on their 100 years anniversary
50:22 I just realized how bad this sounds. Remove all the magic from the equation and it just sounds like "if you did one bad thing in the past, you'll always be bad going foward"
honestly, wouldn't it be better to make magnifico be a hero along side the main character against a wishing star that turned the wishes into horrible things, or a invading power. something dark and show that he tries to protect his kingdom, but fails and the people and the main character have to help to keep the kingdom safe.
It always amuses me when narrative falls apart if you look at it too long. Like how in Star Wars 9 Palpatine takes over Rey's body and retires to have the First Order keep ruling the galaxy.
I'm still so amazed at how hard Disney fumbled Wish ("You had it all and you blew it!").
I’m glad you referenced Transformers One. It was such a good movie and to do the objective so much better than Wish it’s not even funny. (Not that that is hard to do)
I feel that the problem with twist villains is twofold 1) a good one should be a surprise on the first watch but on a second watch you should be able to spot some hints to their true nature, but Disney/Pixar tent to not put any hints(like with Yokai(BH6) and Bellweather(Zootopia)) or cheat like with Hans(That stupid smile scene), the only good twist villain that i remember is king Candy/Turbo. 2) Like you said overexposure variety is the spice of life I don't think we would be tired of twist villains(and misunderstood villains or non-villains recently) if they weren't like "Oh people thought redeeming this villain was cool lets make the next 20 villains redeemable". That's why twist villains don't work at least in my opinion.
There are other ones with Hans e.g he looks up at the chandelier over Elsa before dashing over to pull the crossbow up to hit it.
He’s the best character solely because he’s the only one in this film who’s an actual character at all.
i miss it when a villain is just a villain not hiding his bad guy stuff no fake "oh look im a good guy" bs.
it has become such a rarity that it becomes very refreshing when you see one.
you can have an absolutely evil person and viewers still enjoy them.
to be fair, the deleted scenes are better than the final film and asha is supposed to be mature, amaya and magnifico are supposed to be evil and we're supposed to have a wish tree and star being able to talk.
i hate how twist villains done wrong show up.
So he has a good logical reason for his actions. But her feelings disagree, and chaos ensures. Because she can't communicate and he doesn't want to.
The fact that 14 year old me made a character like magnífico but made clear that he was broken and grieving man trying to make (what he thought) the best thing possible trough extreme means is kind of mind boggling tbh
Honesty, Magnifico was more vain than narcissistic. The difference is that he cared about the people and not just about himself.
He is a lot like Snapdragon in High Guardian Spice: they both were too good for the movie/show they were stuck in.
If I were in charge in the 100th anniversary film for for Disney this movie should have been 2d animated and should have been some epic adventure like Lord of the Rings but with the 90s Disney renaissance vibe and maybe make chernaobg the villain.
Apparently there were talks for possibly doing it in 2D, but it was decided against. Disney gave a really lame reason about "pushing technology forward" or some such garbage but we don't have a clear answer as to why.
My guess is they didn't want to put in the financial effort of building a 2D animation team. And also Iger especially is so obsessed with Disney being a tech company like Apple, he probably had a stroke at the very suggestion of not using whatever fancy new tech he was trying to sell to investors. (he loves doing that)
@@c-puff makes sense, fuck Iger. hes the reason Disney is currently only doing CGI animated sequels or live action remakes. It was under him that the 2d animation division actually was canned completely in 2011 I think. glad hell finally be gone in 2026. even tho i dont trust his successor will be better
@@c-puff yah. screw iger. i hope his successor is better tho i dont trust that. doesnt help hes the reason the endless sequels, remakes, and killing the 2d division
22:02
You know this is reminding me of Encanto
With the protection and new home and such
Not entirely but considering that it popped into my head when talking about the villain of this story says something
This video has been great so far
Just wanted to get this thought out first
Watching this video, there was so many little things I wanted to say. But none of it was connecting together and that felt like a consequence of this movie. There's so many contradictions, half-baked ideas and discarded good ideas yet there's always another problem with this film that you would point out. I felt like I was fighting Kenshiro, Jotaro and Luffy and I could see Sailor Jupiter rolling up. The film clearly couldn't agree on anything other than women are queens and deserve more power and this is the end result.
This is why I had to very early on focus in on ONLY Magnifico. Because as you can see in my opening paragraph, there is SO MUCH going wrong if I focused on everything I'd get overwhelmed very quickly.
I would like to see a follow up to this movie where asha has to come to the reality that some wishes shouldn't be granted no matter what a wish from someone who wants to take over the whole world or some that wants to see a who group of people wiped out
I was thinking about that, too. That ethey have to free Magnifico to revert the chaos back she accidentally creates. Maybe also finding a cure for his addiction. The whole "he can't be saved" is so lazy.
But then I would have loved that plot, pampered girl creates chaos and king has to fix it, more in the first place. Second the original idea of villain couple and the daughter stopping them with her star boyfriend.
For the past few years I've been steadily growing more and more convinced that something about badly written villains makes them some of the most compelling morally ambiguous heroes.
Alan Tudik was wasted so badly as the stupid goat. Him, & gd Asmodeous from Helluva Boss as the Little John reference bear. 💀
Same thing in Peter Pan & Wendy, he played Mr. Darling but not Captain Hook like its traditionally done with the two roles, including the original Disney film. And he would’ve been more entertaining as Hook then Jude Law.
An easy fix would have been to add a scene where a guard tells magnifico that the enemies are attacking more and more, maybe his power is getting weaker as he ages and the invaders are starting to gain territory, or they are also studying magic, then you have him use the book out of fear, maybe having his wife confort him at the beginning but when she's not there he starts panicking, maybe have the book be a character and be the actual villain, maybe the book was the one who caused his parents to die
Hey I'd just like to point out that magnifico is basically working off of 0 hours of sleep, the movie takes place over what two days? when exactly does he sleep in that time?
Quick answer he doesn'
sad tired wizard King is trying his best
also why are we trusting the *evil* book to tell us what is an isn't possibl?!
Perhaps the single worst part of this movie is not so much the self-serving moral, but rather, the implication that the only thing wrong with the "oppressive and corrupt" system to manage wishes is simply that it's a straight white man who was in charge.
yesss I’m so excited for this video!! I’ve seen a lot of different opinions on whether he was evil, misunderstood or badly written (we all had a phase of that magnifico lover account right?), so I can’t wait to hear your thoughts :)
When people ask "What is Magnifico's motivation," I feel like it's more of a "Where did his motivation go" instead, because it does feel like the trauma motivation is forgotten later in the movie when they try to gaslight us into believing he was just a villain from the start
And the fact that the only use of AI in the movie was for his magic flame effects almost makes it sadder, it feels lazier than using AI for the writing
That Disney quote at the very end of the video reminds me of the Scrooge McDuck cartoon where he teaches the triplets about economics and how to invest their money smartly
WE MISSED YOUUUU
Hahaha I'm sorryyyyy~! I was off working on cartoons 😔
I appreciate the idea of what Prince of Egypt did as a movie. That movie is PIQUE cinema; best movie Dreamworks ever made in my opinion. While it's been quite some time since Wish came out and I am fine with people liking the movie, it's interesting to see someone discuss how Wish could've been better. :)
Wish is what you get when you try to imitate Disney without understanding what made Disney great.
Did you redraw your stills? They look more colorful than what I remember.
Yup! I updated my avatar's outfit a while ago, but people suggested I keep the old outfit until I finish My Adventures with Superman for consistency's sake. So this is the first video with the updated outfit.
I haven't seen this movie, because the trailers convinced me not to. I wouldn't call in unfinished - the style is definitely intentional - but it just looks dull, desaturated and mostly without contrast. If I wouldn't be so lazy (especially when it comes to this movie), I would check how this mess looks like in grey scale, or when the color channels are separated, because I'm almost sure there is a really good lesson here about what NOT to do in visual media. Provided by Disney of all people...
Also, I can't help but think that the animators did literally everything they could to give Asha the side shave, but weren't allowed to do more than what we got in the end.
The Road to El Dorado makes me feral as well, though granted, in my case that is entirely due to Chel and nothing else...
I truly think Magnifico is the most interesting character in the movie, like you said he's the only one with anything resembling an arc, I think the problem is something the Nostalgia Critic said in his video about this movie: Magnifico at the start and at the end feel like two different characters and not like a single character who went through an arc. His characterization feels very confused, he was marketed as a return to past classic disney villains but in the first half of the movie he seems very reasonable, like his reasons for only granting certain wishes feel logical, something that I think they should have leaned into more is the fact he refuses to give back the wishes he won't grant but at the same time show the people of Rosas suffering for not having their wishes.
And it's so funny to see how despite Disney's best wishes Magnifico has been hit hard with the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, I saw a youtube short titled something like 'everytime magnifico was a red flag', it was showing clips of Asha's interview with him and highlighting certain lines of his during that scene as early signs he was evil, but when I went to look at the comment section of that short all the top comments were talking about how disney was trying to gaslight everyone into thinking magnifico was evil for acting that way, nobody in that comment section was buying it. This goes back to his poorly written characterization, it's like the writers couldn't decide if they wanted him to be classic disney villain who reveled in his evilness or a modern disney villain with a tragic backstory to explain their actions. As if evil people need a reason to be evil.
The stakes feel so low because everyone who gave their wish, except Simon, seem completely fine, they don't seem like they need or even want their wishes back, so why should we hate Magnifico for keeping the wishes when nothing bad is happening because of that? And I have so many doubts about how this Wish system works, do people forget what their wishes were? And even if they do does nobody else tells that person what their wish was? Cause why in the world do people not try to make their wishes come true without the help of Magnifico??? The more out there stuff like flying I get why they need magnifico, but why didn't sabino try to create music on his own during the decades he's been waiting for his wish to be granted? Same thing with becoming a seamstress or a knight, you don't necessarily need magic for that.
Magnifico really should have been using the wishes to power his magic from the beggining, like they should have been the source of his magic. Ditch that tragic backstory (or have it be a lie he tells people to justify why he takes wishes) and ditch the evil magic book, this is why his arc feels so disjointed to me, it's like all the evil things magnifico did after didn't came from him, they came from the book. Did they not realize that by making the magic in the book evil we would see magnifico as a victim of the book? Now I can't even believe he was evil before, I just think he was driven to drastic means by paranoia due to the tragic backstory the writers foolishly gave him.
Great video! I watched a lot of reviews for this movie, and was also confused why no one brought up Magnifico's mentioned backstory. Like, it's vague, yes, you have to leap to your own conclusion to how it clues in into the whole 'collecting wishes' thing, but... it's there! Honestly I feel like the problem in that case is not Magnifico's motivation to take wishes but the motivation of people who give him wishes. Like, unless they are handing them over in hopes of it being granted, why would they? For "protection"? They forget their wish, and I may understand the "forgetting what you want the most to make it more likely it'll come true", but not the "forgetting what you want the most just to not get sad over failure"
I watched Wish without knowing anything about it (which made a lot of choices even more confusing - I did not know it was supposed to represent classical fairy tale movies so a lot of it felt just muddied with weird useless 'whimsical' stuff I assumed was just young kids pandering), and for like 2/3ds of the movie I did not think Magnifico would be the villain. He seemed a little misguided, yes, but when the story started pushing him into 'evilness' it seemed so unnatural considering what happened earlier in the movie, like him choosing not to use the book. Not to mention it would render 'At All Costs' song completely useless, and they wouldn't do it, right?? They wouldn't put in a whole song just to undo everything it tells us about the character, right???
(It's so funny that it's not even the most useless song in the movie. What even is 'I am a star')
It feels like the whole 'evil book' was added in the first place just to justify Magnifico's turn into an evil guy. Because they couldn't push his personality to be as realistically evil as they wanted him to be because it went against the character they wrote him as, they added a 'he's forever evil now :)' switch just to flip it and justify such a harsh ending and the whole 'see, he's the classical evil villain now, as we promised!' while he just WASN'T
Wish is a mess in such a fascinating way... Like WOW. You cant make something so purposefully confusing and empty even if you wanted to try
Another key failing that the movie had was a lack of consequences for giving up your wish. Which makes the audience sympathize with the king, since his “evil act” doesn’t seem to hurt anyone.
In fact it reminds me of that trope of the prankster. Who always does small things like hide fart pillows. A mild annoyance at worst.
Compare that seemingly harmless action of taking a wish with something like how Ursula had this entire cave of miserable looking worms that she turned her victims into or how Jafar kicked Aladdin. Or Big Jack Horner’s anything really. You will never feel bad for these people no matter what happens because we see how they make people miserable by just being around doing their normal thing.
With a “one wish a month” thing and how desperate the people seem to be for it, it feels like a lottery that we are supposed to see as bad.
Now if you want to make a point about how bad lottery and gambling can be in the real world, you show those people that throw away their entire paycheck to buy lottery tickets, while talking about what they will do with the money they will never win, ruining their lives for a statistically impossible hope in the process.
We don’t get that in Wish. Rosas is too nice for that. What this film needs are a few characters that have given up their wishes that have become miserable.