So, the Annie Awards have been announced... you may have heard about that. I only did a blog post about it recently. Anyway, there has been one thing about it that most people have found amusing, and honestly I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it partly amusing myself, and that is that Wish, Disney's big 100 year celebration movie, has not been nominated for one Annie Award, in fact I think the only "major" awards it's been nominated for is a Golden Globe and two Critics' Choice Awards. Honestly, it is a shame because... I didn't think Wish was a bad movie, I thought it was fine. You know, not one of Disney's A-List movies, but it was definitely better than Strange World or The Black Cauldron. Honestly, I didn't even want to put it on my Worst Animated Movies of 2023 list, because I like to be nicer to movies that could have been good or great, but just weren't there. Hmm... I think that explains my feelings towards Ruby Gillman.
All of this, and audience reception towards the movie leads me to wonder, am I wrong? Is Wish actually a bad movie? I'll admit, this is a difficult question, not because the whole idea of "Good" and "Bad" can be very subjective to the point where it hardly even matters, but mostly because it really makes me look at what I consider a good or bad movie, and ultimately, it comes down to my usual standard, a good movie is a movie I enjoy, and bad movie is one I don't. Of course, there are some exceptions, I wouldn't call the Rescue Rangers movie from 2022 a "Bad" movie on the same level as The Cat in the Hat from 2003, but I didn't find Rescue Rangers to be a very funny movie while The Cat in the Hat I found hilarious because of just how awful it was. Ultimately, I use this metric because, it is my belief that entertainment should, you know, entertaining. This leads to me saying things like Jackass Forever is my favourite live-Action movie of 2022, or Mummies is the worst animated movie of 2023. So, I guess the real question is "Do I think Wish is an enjoyable movie"?
Yes, yeah I think it is something that can be enjoyed. That doesn't say a lot though, does it? I mean, what does it even mean to say "It can be enjoyed"? You can say that about anything; "Homestar Runner! It can be enjoyed!", "Dark Souls, it can be enjoyed!", "Horrible Fascist Propaganda, it can be enjoyed. It shouldn't be, but it can.". I think what I ultimately mean is, it's the kind of movie that knowing what you're going to get is gonna be more beneficial than going in blind. It's not something I can morally object to, it's not something I can get angry at, it's a musical fairy-tale fantasy movie, that is kind of what I expected, that is what I got. In my worst of 2023 list I said this; "Encanto was a movie I wasn't expecting to be as good as it was, Strange World is a movie I was expecting to be better than it was, Wish is a movie I expected it to be exactly as good as it was... It reached for good, but it could have been great."
I'd like to say a lot of it has been because Disney has been doing poorly in 2023 and my expectations were lowered because of that, but mostly it's just because I didn't really have any faith that Disney could do a Fairy-Tale Fantasy again. I mean, the last one they did was... I guess Frozen 2? Beyond that, most of the Disney Animated Canon is... despite what Disney would want you to believe, not even Fairy-Tale movies. At sixty-two movies, I'd count only about eleven as Fairy Tale Fantasies, including Wish. Some I don't know how to count, like Alice in Wonderland, The Emperor's New Groove or some of the package films that have fairy-tale stories as one story told within them, removing any movies I am not sure about leaves about thirty-nine movies that I would not classify as Fairy-Tale Fantasies. So, despite the fact they're literally the Fairy Tale company, they haven't actually made that much, and it's been ages since their classic movies.
I'm not one of those movie goers who says that "Modern Disney sucks and everything was better when I was a kid", because that is very much not true, there have been some excellent movies and TV shows made under the Disney branding from the late 2010s onward, but Disney animated movies are definitely different, and this is especially apparent in their modern fantasy films. If Raya and the Last Dragon was modern Disney to a tee, Wish is Modern Disney trying to evoke Classic Disney, and they have undeniably failed at that attempt. Wish failed to evoke anything about Classic Disney, outside of references that made me want to watch Classic Disney movies, and I should set an aside here, when I say "Classic" and "Modern", I really mean, Pre-renaissance and Renaissance onward. Most of the tropes that are common in modern Disney movies were mostly popularized by movies in the renaissance, for example Sisu from Raya and the Last Dragon probably would not have existed as she did without Genie from Aladdin. When I say "Modern Disney", I really mean 1989 onward.
Those references do seem to be a point of contention for a lot of people. I've heard the argument that, it should have just been the Seven Dwarfs and the Fairy Godmother and Peter Pan in the movie, and I have to say that I don't agree. I mean, if Disney Dreamlight Valley, Disney Heroes: Battle Mode, even Rescue Rangers 2022 have proved anything, it's that you can't just have your crossover just be a crossover, like yes the hook of Kingdom Hearts and Who Framed Roger Rabbit is that they are crossovers, but there is more to those than just that, because surprisingly "Crossover" is a weak hook. Beyond Disney, look at Jump Force, look at PlayStation All-Stars, look at a lot of the Nicktoons crossovers, Spyro Orange and Crash Purple, you get my point right? If Wish was not a strong movie on its own, it would not be made any stronger by being a crossover.
So... what is the verdict? I think ultimately, Wish is not a bad movie, I mean, compared to Mummies, Luck, Scoob!, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Duck Duck Goose, those are bad movies. Wish does not compare to any of them, it's not horribly bland to an insulting degree, it's not a representation of anything wrong in media, it's not an insultingly made movie, it's just not a really great movie. I don't want this to come off as "Everyone who dislikes Wish is wrong", because I don't think they are. I think a lot of it is being blown out of proportion, like how does Wish compare to Disney's other worst movies? The Black Cauldron, Chicken Little, Dinosaur, The Three Caballeros. I keep hearing people say that "bad movies are better than boring ones", I disagree because that implies that all kinds of "bad" are the same. I just can't muster that much disdain for Wish, compared to The Black Cauldron's sack of crap being dropped on your head, Wish is like a drop of water on your head. I mean, am I really going to get upset at Wish? Sure, it doesn't reach for greatness, but it's not a total disaster either, I'm perfectly fine with that.
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