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alex-the-nonsensologist · 7 months ago

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Thank you for the reply. I acknowledge you have a different point of view, and what I say might not change that, which is fine. I just hope my point of view is easy to understand.

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Comparing Amaya and Asha to current-day Disney management is an interesting interpretation, but not one that I can fully support. Amaya and Asha can definitely be seen as more lax compared to Magnifico's strictness. However, Disney has always had strict rules, or at the very least, been overly bureaucratic. One infamous example is the multiple instances of censorship Alex Hirsch had to face while working on Gravity Falls. You can also find many horror stories from Cast Members who work in the theme parks about the stress they endure and the rules they follow to perform their job.

Even today, Disney is still hesitant to allow more ambitious original ideas because they don't want to risk financial loss, instead choosing to only green-light "safe and marketable" ideas, resulting in the current influx of sequels and remakes. This is where I find parallels with Magnifico being overly cautious to a paranoid degree in trying to maintain a rigid status quo he has established, by choosing to not grant wishes he views as "dangerous" despite there being little evidence to support his concerns. In this regard, I think Magnifico is the one holding on to the past, while the other characters are the ones looking to the future. I will admit, it's not a perfect correlation.

I cannot agree that the people of Rosas are "lazy", but that's because Magnifico himself literally claims, "People come here because they know they can’t make their own dreams come true. The journey’s too hard. It is too unfair." which contradicts the idea that the people never worked hard for their dreams. We don't know for a fact what their lives were like before they came to live in Rosas, or spend enough time with them to like them as characters, so it's just another example of the movie's bad writing.

I don't think the girl's wish to fly is a bad thing. It looks innocent enough. And the movie had a decent resolution, to have the girl work with someone to invent a flying machine. No more sitting around stuck simply daydreaming. At first glance, the desire to fly may not seem like something that will contribute anything to society, but not everything in life has to. People should be allowed to create for the fun and joy of it. Plus, we do know in real-life, flying machines do eventually become important to society. (In this situation, I find parallels to Walt Disney himself, who faced many doubts from others when creating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which is why the movie was mockingly referred to as "Disney's Folly" during production. As we know, Walt proved his critics wrong.)

Are you suggesting that the reason the final version of Wish has poor writing is because of a last-minute attempt to avoid being too similar to Puss in Boots 2 and Nimona? That's certainly a hypothesis, and one that will be very difficult to prove without official confirmation from the filmmakers, but I think it just goes to show that Disney management needs to give the creatives more time to perfect their craft and experiment with new innovation, instead of always forcing them to make tight deadlines.

It is true, some desires can lead to dangerous consequences, but that is not always immediately obvious. In the context of the movie, I doubt removing the memory of a "dangerous" wish is a proper solution. Forgetting is not the same as properly moving on or letting go. Challenges should be confronted head-on, so that people can learn to adapt. Forcing yourself to forget something is not healthy.

If Gaston were a well-rounded person, he would have listened to Belle's rejection and learned to respect boundaries. If he still desired a romance, he could have learned to become a person worthy of loving and capable of giving love, and eventually found a partner who was just right for him. None of that could happen if he were made to simply forget about his desire for Belle, instead of naturally maturing on his own. (Of course, the only reason this does not happen is because he is the villain of his story.)

Yes, it is unwise for a person without sailing experience to board a ship. But with honest effort and years of proper training, they could become an expert and knowledgeable sailor. I should repeat, the movie never argues that all wishes should be granted, and it never argues for instant gratification.

You may not actually be able to make your wish come true on your own, but you may learn something about yourself, or find something unexpected that you needed along the way. If it turns out your wish was never meant to come true, then it was better that you learned it on your own. In the case of mourning a deceased loved one, accepting their death and moving on cannot be accomplished by simply forgetting about your desire to still be with them. True peace can only be achieved by learning to live with your past, not by ignoring it.

Thanks for reading.

Later at the wish granting ceremony, CEO Magnifico announces he’s greenlit Ice Age 6 and five more live-action remakes.

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There are so many cancelled and unrealized projects that Disney is sitting on, that they do not benefit from in any way by keeping them locked up tight. They really ought to just let them go if they don't have any intentions of doing anything with them.

Incidentally, I could never agree with the mentality of “Magnifico is actually the hero, and Asha is the TRUE villain” that a lot of people seem to have. I drew my comic based on this post. I feel like if more people had been aware of this possible interpretation, they wouldn’t have sympathized with Magnifico.

Does Wish have bad writing? Yes, it does. And it’s because of that bad writing that every single character suffers. What I think happened is that, as a result of said bad writing, Asha became a character that’s so uncompelling and lacks uniqueness that she ends up a blank slate for audiences to project their frustrations with the movie onto. King Magnifico on the other hand, is probably the most interesting and entertaining character, due in no small part to Chris Pine’s performance, and so the audience is much more sympathetic towards him and willing to ignore his flaws.

One of Asha’s problems as a character is that she doesn’t really contribute much to the story. By contrast, Magnifico’s downfall is brought about entirely as a result of his own actions. Magnifico is in fact not a good leader, because he gives in to paranoia and temptation, acts in a very unprofessional manner, and escalates the conflict to an absurd degree.

Please note, Asha does not get upset that Magnifico refuses to grant her grandfather’s wish, nor does she ever demand that Magnifico needs to grant every wish. She gets upset that he insinuates that her grandfather might have dangerous intentions, and because he does not have a convincing reason why he doesn’t return wishes that he won’t grant. Rather than calmly explaining his reasoning to her, Magnifico rudely dismisses Asha and then blows up at her.

If Magnifico were a good leader, he would have explained to each person WHY he won’t grant their wish, and given them advice on alternatives. As it stands, he knows full well that everyone expects their wish to be granted. It’s why they even came to Rosas in the first place, it is the literal reason he even built his kingdom. He clearly makes a big spectacle out of the wish granting ceremonies, which every citizen visibly goes wild for. Not to mention, he literally tells Asha, "People think wishes are just ideas. But no, no, they are a part of your heart. The very best part." He knows, for a fact, how important wishes are to everyone. But the movie's awful writing makes him think the best solution to dealing with wishes that MIGHT have dangerous consequences, is to just hoard them. All that returning the ungranted wishes will accomplish is returning the memory of what the wish even is, that's literally it, and the people will be no better off than they were before they gave Magnifico their wish.

I dunno about you guys, but whenever I watched stories that preached “be careful what you wish for”, my takeaway was never “your desires could be dangerous and you should never pursue them for fear of disaster”, I always thought the stories were telling us, “beware of anything that promises instant gratification, because it’s usually too good to be true, and will cost you more than you will gain”. While the things you want in life may have disastrous consequences, you won’t really know until you try to pursue them through your own honest efforts, and not through “magical” shortcuts. That’s how we learn and grow, through trial and error.

As it currently stands from my point of view, when people say "Magnifico has every right to keep ungranted wishes" it looks like they're unintentionally saying, “The Disney Corporation has every right to keep your work and ideas, because you willingly and legally handed them over. Tough luck if you regret the deal you were given. No takesies backsies!”

While I have found no evidence to confirm that the filmmakers intended for Magnifico to be a criticism of Corporate Disney, considering the inclusion of the animation sweatshop scene in Pixar's Inside Out 2, I think the probability is likely. (Not to mention, when Asha shows Magnifico her little flipbook animation, he remarks “Do we consider that a talent?”)

Please note, everyone is free to rewrite and reinterpret Magnifico however they want. He's just a fictional character after all, and fan content is supposed to be for fun. I just think it's funny how defensive people get over him. They say he deserved better, and I agree, but we have very different ideas of what "better" means. In fact, I think every character in Wish deserved better, because again, they were all victims of bad writing. My problem isn't that they took a good man and made him arbitrarily "evil", it's that they didn't make him evil enough from the very beginning. Remember those deleted scenes featuring a villainous Magnifico with better writing, along with an evil Amaya that he can play off of? I'm fairly certain that everyone unanimously agreed these deleted scenes were much better than the final movie, and yet some still insist that Magnifico should have been a hero all along. I dunno, it's a funny dichotomy.

#wish critical #disney wish #king magnifico #disney critical #my art #and also someone else's art

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