THB #435: Wish

Wish it was better.

Worse… wish it was good.

as many stories as there are stars in the sky

I have been saying for months that Disney’s Wish has not made the argument for its story in the marketing. And seeing the movie, I have a much better understanding of why. (Not that it excuses the marketing problem… since selling messes is part of that job, not just selling Avatar 2.)

I have been seeing media hum about the right-wingers thinking it is too “woke” and left-wingers thinking it was not “woke” enough. Nah. I was aware that The King who becomes The Villain is a white male and most of the kingdom are people of all kinds of races and ethnicities. But who cares? Time to stop obsessing on this… so long as we don’t return to all-white movies most of the time. Inclusion in the film industry matters a lot… America is evolving naturally and all the fear in the world from those who fear losing advantage cannot change it or stop it.

But the problem with Wish is much deeper than skin color or inclusion or empowerment. The problem with Wish is that the team behind it absolutely failed to crack the basic storytelling in this film.

Lots of pretty pictures and big singing and positive (at least on the surface) ideas. So if that is enough to entertain you, have at it.

Unfortunately, there is no way to explain the story problem without doing some 1st act spoiling… so be warned.

The movie starts with the Encanto opening rip-off of a “Welcome to our town” song, which explains that The King, who is beautiful and benevolent, founded the island as a place to welcome every kind of person and kind of explains that The King is the keeper of dreams and chooses some wishes to be granted in wonderful ceremonies of unknown quantities. This is all positive.

Next we find out that Asha, our hero, is up for a highly-coveted job as The King’s apprentice and that her grandfather, about to turn 100, has never had his wish granted and that The King’s Apprentice usually gets a wish of their choosing approved by The King. So get the job… double win.

So Asha goes to the castle, gets a sweet greeting from The Queen, and meets with The King. They duet. Things seem to be going well.

And then Asha does what I would consider the equivalent of thinking you have the job and deciding your new boss and you are already buddies and letting a big fart rip or talking about that time you and your buddies went to the whore house in Nevada.

Asha asks to have her grandfather’s wish granted that night… for his birthday.

And instantly, whatever promise this movie had is over. The King doesn’t just disqualify her from the job for asking for the one thing he hates being asked for by someone he works with every day - grant THIS wish - but he becomes a flaming, raging prick. He not only gets nasty - which the movie has told us is not his way - but he literally goes out of his way to abuse Asha by setting her up to not only lose Grandad his wish-ortunity, but to mock her for it in public.

Worse, Asha decides not only that The King is not what she thought he was… but that the entire wish system of this previously idyllic island is a wrong-headed fraud.

But the movie can’t make up its mind.

The Queen calms The King down for a moment. He seems to be a nice guy again.

Meanwhile, Asha sings Star out of the sky and onto the island. (It never makes a noise… doesn’t have an official name that I have seen… but for the purposes of this exercise, I will call it “Star”) Adorable. Powerful. But completely undefined in its intentions.

Asha and her friends decide to make an assault on the castle and more importantly, the stars that The King controls. The film never allows for the idea that Asha is being driven, at this point, by selfish anger and rationalizing that the system she loved until just a couple days before is a complete fraud. She never furrows a brow. She is still pure love… so does that make all of this passive aggression?

So look… let me stop telling the story and think about this for a moment.