Disney’s Wish: A Story Apparently a Century in the Making

It’s a story as old as…at least a hundred years: a megalomaniac establishes a magic kingdom where dreams come true—a ‘Happiest Place on Earth™’ if you will.  A century ago, he went by Walt Disney.  In Wish, Disney Feature Animation’s latest offering, he goes by Magnifico.  Wish opens with Magnifico’s rise to power briefly laid out in the kind of tidy table-setting Disney audiences are all too familiar with (the device this time comes in the veneer of an illuminated manuscript) and the connection between Walt and Magnifico is immediately apparent. Both men magicians—one wielding the relatively new medium of animation and the other wielding some kind of omnipotent magic—who used their respective magics to build insular communities, who were obsessed with protecting their communities, and who were (at least in the beginning) worshiped as the god-kings they were.  Thus begins “a Story a Century in the Making”, a groan-worthy tagline and an obvious marketing ploy to be sure, but one that does undeniably hold a certain amount of truth.

King Magnifico is searching for an apprentice, an allusion to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment from Fantasia where Mickey Mouse serves as apprentice to the sorcerer Yen Sid (‘Disney’ backwards because of course…). Be prepared, many more allusions to previous Disney films are peppered throughout Wish’s runtime, some hacky, some inspired—this one definitely falls in the latter camp. After all, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment is arguably Walt’s most personal animated work: an expression of his newly-attained ability to captivate the world in ways never before seen (after having just invented the animated feature with the release of Snow White) and his inability to keep his new powers under his control. To pattern Magnifico’s story after said work is sort of ingenious.

The candidate for apprenticeship we’re meant to root for is Asha, a teenage citizen of Magnifico’s kingdom, Rosas, and a stalwart apostle of Magnifico’s ideals. She is plucky, determined, cheerful, and all the other non-specific adjectives used to describe non-specific characters. Which ironically makes her kind of the perfect choice to fill Mickey Mouse’s shoes. As much as Wish would have you believe Asha is the main protagonist, she’s more of a propellant and a guide—like one of those animatronics on a Disneyland attraction that lead you through something of a narrative as you roll down the tracks.  Unfortunately, she can’t hold a candle to Magnifico who just so happens to be the subject of what (even the studio has publicly admitted) is a monument to Walt Disney’s legacy.  And it’s quickly established, as if Walt Disney had authored it himself, that this story is all about him. 

More accurately, Wish is less about who Disney the man was, and more about what Disney the idea has become.  What gives it away is a key omission when rendering Disney’s likeness: Walt’s desire to pursue greatness and innovation at any cost. Walt wasn’t just a king, he was a pioneer. This was a guy who, immediately after inventing the narrative animated feature, set his sights on new horizons—on the experimental and non-narrative. This was a guy who would boast about how his company never had to answer to banks like the other guys. This was a guy who, when his own brother and business partner Roy protested rising costs on one occasion, cut Roy down to size by snapping, “…we’ll make the pictures, you get the money.” This wasn’t a guy who would be caught dead singing about “percentages” and how hitting them should be good enough (as Magnifico does). That all would change and Disney would be singing a different tune as early as 1940 when the studio would for the first time issue stock to the public. Due to economic pressures both external (WWII) and internal (Walt’s outsized ambition), Walt was forced to compromise himself.  Walt ceded control and in doing so lost his own identity; he told one associate, “I’m not Walt Disney anymore. Walt Disney is a thing. It’s grown to become a whole different meaning than just one man.”  He would be subsumed by his own machine.  

This detail of Walt’s story is integral to understanding the entirety of Disney’s legacy. So why omit it in Magnifico’s story? In the same way that Magnifico picks and chooses which wishes to fulfill for fear of how they may upend his kingdom, could Walt Disney Studios find this aspect of its own legacy too uncomfortable and maybe even dangerous to contend with? It’s easier to place the blame squarely on a caricature of Walt—on a caricature of patriarchy and its innate megalomania—because it’s an easy truth. Admitting that corporations, shareholders, and the ones currently running ‘Disney the machine’ are the other side to that same villain might not be so easy.

But Wish wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to play it safe, but also be commended for just how self-reflective it’s being.  Asha is supposed to represent new blood in the kingdom: a generation discontent with how things have been running and who want to bring unfulfilled wishes to life, even the potentially disruptive ones.  How are we as an audience supposed to buy her inevitable triumph when it’s delivered in a movie that has had all of its interesting pointiness rounded off?  How are we supposed to buy the overarching message that people should have ownership and control over their own dreams when it comes from a studio that is more than eager to utilize AI to cut costs at the expense of its workers?  There’s a telling moment in the film’s resolution when the Queen introduces someone whose wish is to be able to fly to someone whose wish is to build a flying machine, the implication being that innovation can only come after the ruling party is overthrown and power of will is returned to the hands of the people—a nice sentiment, though hugely ironic considering it’s delivered in the form of another cookie cutter princess movie brought to you by the machine Walt built.  Still, for an effigy, dedicated to Disney from Disney, to even dare to examine itself is not nothing.  And there are one too many inspired choices that point to a much more exciting movie trapped inside. If nothing else, Wish is a sign there are Ashas within the machine striving to make interesting work. However, Walt’s machine reigns on and, without any meaningful revolution behind the scenes, Wish will always be just that: a wish unfulfilled.

words and pictures by Bayson Chang

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