No Wish is Not the Worst Film Disney Has Ever Made

[Winter]

Right context matters. No one gave a shit about Home on the Range even when it came out, and it has been mostly forgotten. Wish though is supposed to be the big 100 year anniversary event and thus is going to be judged so much more harshly when it failed.

Agreed, but that does make me wonder if Disney will ever try to rectify this down the line. I've been seriously thinking of doing a Disney Princesses Review Series in the same vain as Linkara's History of Power Rangers and while writing out these reviews I found some interesting parallels between my reviews and Linkara's HOPR, most notably between Raya and the Last Dragon and Power Rangers RPM. Both set in a apocalypse stories in a family friendly series that reexamines/deconstructs the series' tropes and while not perfect are generally considered to be solid entries in the series they are in.

And then there's Power Rangers MegaForce and Super MegaForce and Wish which were intended as major Milestone Celebrations that just aren't as good as they should have been. Now it's up in the air if Asha will actually become a Disney Princess due to the overall poor performance of the film, both critically and commercially, but my point this stands.

What's I'm curious about is what film will come out that will be the Disney Equivalent of Power Rangers Beast Morphers aka PRSMF done right. Contrary to popular belief this isn't the worst era of Disney nor the era with the most bombs. The "Dark Age" and Experimental Age both had more bombs and films that were critically panned or got mixed reception at release with only a few exceptions and were both declared as the eras that Disney would die.

Disney will bounce back sooner or later. They've been around for 100 years, they're not going anywhere.

I just wonder how they will go about it.

Nothing is too big to fail. Big just takes longer, that's all.

The main difference between Disney's run of bad luck today vs its previous runs of bad luck is that Hollywood itself is now on the ropes. Look around and count how many of the truly big draws started their careers in the 21st century. The result may surprise you. The old talent just is not being replaced anymore. Who is the modern day equivalent of Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise or Will Smith? That guy who started young and pelted out banger after banger after banger?

Disney was almost brought to ruin back when The Black Cauldron was released which remains one of the biggest box office bombs in animation history. Again, I've heard this all before during the Experimental Age. An era of bomb after bomb with most of those films being seen as average at best with only Lilo & Stitch being the one and only exception and the same old tried arguments were said back then.

"Disney is dead, it has lost the magic and will soon be gone forever." And each and every one of those said that with just as much apparent reasons and this can be seen as far back as their first few films. Apart from Snow White and Dumbo most of the films released were bombs and critically mixed at best and everyone assumed that Disney wouldn't be able to survive.

They survived 100 years ago and they'll likely survive now. Maybe they will fall but it's boring to just wait for that so I'm going to do what I've always done, check in every now and then to see if there's anything I actually want to check out and if not just go on to something else that I'm interested in.

It's more fun then just going on about how the end is neigh.

[Winter]

most notably between Raya and the Last Dragon and Power Rangers RPM. Both set in a apocalypse stories in a family friendly series that reexamines/deconstructs the series' tropes and while not perfect are generally considered to be solid entries in the series they are in.

...Raya is a standalone film in an original setting. It's not part of a series.

Disney Princess is an series. A weird one I'll admit but a series none the less.

[Deledrius]

No, it isn't.

It's a marketing product that's only twenty years old and nearly every character included in it predates its existence. They don't even all have being a princess in common, and it doesn't include all Disney princesses. It's absolutely meaningless to treat it as any kind of franchise or narrative series; it is not one, nor was it ever intended to be one. It is a sub-category at best. It's not even a genre.

[Winter]

No, it isn't.

It's a marketing product that's only twenty years old and nearly every character included in it predates its existence. They don't even all have being a princess in common, and it doesn't include all Disney princesses. It's absolutely meaningless to treat it as any kind of franchise or narrative series; it is not one, nor was it ever intended to be one. It is a sub-category at best. It's not even a genre.

Would you say the same about the Twilight Zone. Apart from being hosted and produced by the same person at end of the day it is a series the episodes that are not connected to one another with very few exceptions.

For the most part there is a formula in regards to how Disney writes a Disney Princess series that even they have called attention to and each new entry is shaped or altered to address some issue or reexamine the cliches and tropes of the series. When The Little Mermaid was being made the film makers stated that they were taking criticism of the other films with Princesses into account that Arial would save her prince instead of always needing to be rescued and other silly things.

Now again it's an odd series as, like you pointed out, it doesn't include all Princesses that are owned by Disney so it's not a series in the traditional sense it's more like a club that is only open to a few people.

But at this point I'm mildly drunk (don't worry I won't be drinking again until next year when New Years roles around) so I'm just going to assume that I'm right and continue to love my favorite animated film series. What can I say I'm weird and think weird things, you'll just have to role with it. Don't have to agree but I think we can agree to disagree.

[stryke]

I agree with Winter on this one. 20 years is a long ass time, and that's been more enough years to establish that the princesses are a THING. Is it forced, absolutely yes, but at this point you're basically railing against the tide trying to deny it.

As a positive it did led to the one bit I genuinely enjoyed in the mess that was Wreck It Ralph 2. Not the trailer bait bit, though that I didn't mind as much as some, but the bit where they all work together as a team later in the film was decently fun.

[clearspira]

No, it isn't.

It's a marketing product that's only twenty years old and nearly every character included in it predates its existence. They don't even all have being a princess in common, and it doesn't include all Disney princesses. It's absolutely meaningless to treat it as any kind of franchise or narrative series; it is not one, nor was it ever intended to be one. It is a sub-category at best. It's not even a genre.

Would you say the same about the Twilight Zone. Apart from being hosted and produced by the same person at end of the day it is a series the episodes that are not connected to one another with very few exceptions.

For the most part there is a formula in regards to how Disney writes a Disney Princess series that even they have called attention to and each new entry is shaped or altered to address some issue or reexamine the cliches and tropes of the series. When The Little Mermaid was being made the film makers stated that they were taking criticism of the other films with Princesses into account that Arial would save her prince instead of always needing to be rescued and other silly things.

Now again it's an odd series as, like you pointed out, it doesn't include all Princesses that are owned by Disney so it's not a series in the traditional sense it's more like a club that is only open to a few people.

But at this point I'm mildly drunk (don't worry I won't be drinking again until next year when New Years roles around) so I'm just going to assume that I'm right and continue to love my favorite animated film series. What can I say I'm weird and think weird things, you'll just have to role with it. Don't have to agree but I think we can agree to disagree.

I've always found this criticism very weird given how Arial already saves the life of Prince Eric in the original film. And in fact, Eric isn't even really saving Arial from Ursula at the end of the film either, he's just as much saving himself and everyone else. It's almost as if the people trying to score these political points in interviews have never actually seen the film they are complaining about.

As an aside, my favourite one has to be Sleeping Beauty. People honestly argue that being kissed without consent is worse than being cursed to sleep forever. I would argue that he is basically performing CPR on her.

[hammerofglass]

Maleficent did the scene exactly that way, the prince refused to kiss a sleeping woman and had to be convinced it was saving her life. When I saw it in the theater there were cheers.

[Deledrius]

I've always found this criticism very weird given how Ariel already saves the life of Prince Eric in the original film. And in fact, Eric isn't even really saving Ariel from Ursula at the end of the film either, he's just as much saving himself and everyone else. It's almost as if the people trying to score these political points in interviews have never actually seen the film they are complaining about.

This has been a problem for some time, similar to Kirk Drift. The large bulk of criticisms against most of the Princess tropes rely on a misreading or outright ignorance of the film's text, or at best a misunderstanding of the cultural context it was made in (much like the TOS miniskirt complexity). Too often people are responding not to the work itself, but the cultural-osmosis mis-remembered telephone version of the tale (which has been modified through comedy shows like Family Guy or Robot Chicken, where the inaccuracy was originally a joke).

Nuance is hard. Engagement is driven by oversimplification, maliciously or through negligence.

As an aside, my favourite one has to be Sleeping Beauty. People honestly argue that being kissed without consent is worse than being cursed to sleep forever. I would argue that he is basically performing CPR on her.

Another nuance problem. In real life, of course non-consensual kissing a sleeping person is wrong. In a magical world where kisses have magical capabilities, not only to break curses but to indicate True Love through the virtue of it working, those metrics are very different. Your CPR comparison feels very apt.

No one wants to engage with that question, even though that would be an interesting deconstruction (rather than the lazy one we typically see). Instead the focus is solely on what sort of message it conveys to the audience who lives in a more mundane world; while that's a fair concern, it misses the point by ignoring the places where the analogy fails, and by not addressing them weakens the argument.

It's the same problem we see constantly in stories that contain both superficial elements and straw skeptics, even though contextually the same analogy is being made (and the same bad IRL lessons are being taught). Unfortunately, I almost never see this railed against with the same fervor despite it being arguably just as important in our modern society (though in a very different realm of discourse).