Wish - Nov 22

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Wish’ movie instead.

Where to begin here? Good question, for the ‘Wish’ feels all over the place. One spot is the ‘star-stuff’ angle: it looks as if Disney took it from Pamela Travers’ ‘Mary Poppins’ novels. See, in one of the storylines, the children that Mary Poppins nurses/raises/takes care off, learn that everyone and everything – birds, beasts, people, flowers, stars themselves, and et cetera – are made from ‘the same stuff’, i.e. everyone is connected. In another storyline – or maybe the same one, I am not the biggest expert on MP – the children and Mary Poppins meet two sisters and their elderly mother, who run a store during the day, and stick the stars to the sky at night. Pause.

No, the ‘Wish’ has quite different takes on both of those concepts, but the idea might have been lifted from Pamela Travers’ books. What next?

Um, the female lead looks like a variant of Isabel Madrigal from ‘Encanto’? Perhaps, but the overall feel of the films is quite different. See, ‘Encanto’ runs most of its’ time in isolation, but at the end of the movie that isolation ends, the titular place is ready to be re-connected with the rest of the world… something that also raises a premise of a sequel, (and how it will go, at least at the start). ‘Frozen’ has already done something similar: Arendelle is not isolated, not exactly, and both movies have done some world building, albeit to varied extent and so on. ‘Wish’, on the other hand, does not do that: it begins on an isolated setting and ends in the same manner, but, hey, the villain is defeated, that is good, right?

Hard to say. On one hand, the people of the island learn that by mastering their power, they can defeat any single individual, no matter how powerful the latter is, individually. That is very democratic… but the endgame in the ‘Wish’ is that while the king got captured in a magical mirror and looked in the dungeon, his wife, (or ex-wife), continues to rein as the island’s queen, making this development less of a revolution and more of a palace coup. European society and history knew plenty of both, so they should not have problems differentiating between the two. The U.S. society and history, conversely, do not have too much experience… but still. After the Donald’s mess during 2020, you would think that they began to learn the differences and all. Anything else?

The ‘girl power’ angle. Regretfully, this was done in the ‘Wish’ so clumsily, that all the ‘witty’ critics, who make puns such as ‘M-She-U’ regarding MCU, will have a field day here, since this is the late 2023, and making all the movie’s villains male doesn’t really fly anymore; it is less progressive and more retrograde these days.

In addition, speaking of MCU… my apologies in telling that CD the captain Marvel perished at the end of ‘The Marvels’. She has not. She has merely retired, it seems, leaving MR stranded in a parallel universe on one hand, and KK jump-starting the next Avengers on the next. Again, the entire ‘Miss Marvel’ mini-series got ignored, and it’s anyone’s guess where ‘The Marvels’ will take MCU next, but still, it is a more inspiring and upbeat movie than the ‘Wish’ is, which feels rather flat and uninspired instead. The ‘Wish’ just does not look right, it does not feel right, and its’ message does not really come out right either. Overall, it feels inferior to both ‘Encanto’ and ‘Frozen’. C’est la vie.

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon.