humanist + humorist

Youtube sent me down a streak of watching critiques/breakdowns of the Disney movie Wish, and when I came up for air I had a whole thesis for How To Fix This Movie that I haven’t seen anyone else talk about.

The thing is, Wish is trying to have two different morals about…well, a lot of things, but particularly about wishes. On the one hand, it tries to say “don’t rely on magic to fulfill your wishes, get out there and do it yourself.” But it can’t fully commit to that, because it also wants to celebrate the history of Disney movies with heroic magical wish-granting characters — Cinderella’s fairy godmother, Pinocchio’s blue fairy, Aladdin’s genie — to the point of revealing that our heroine Asha grows up to become one of the magical wish-granters.

The only way to make that first moral work is if the Magical Wish-Granting Process is flawed. And then your story is a cautionary tale about the flaw. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is one of Disney’s classic examples, where Mickey tries to enchant a mop to wash the floors by itself, only to have things spiral dangerously out-of-control when he can’t make it stop. That’s a story about “don’t automate a process you don’t understand and can’t control.” That works.

The Little Mermaid is another, where Ariel signs a contract with Ursula to get herself magically turned human, only to have Ursula sabotage her in a long-con to manipulate her father. That’s “don’t get into a legal arrangement you don’t understand and haven’t had reviewed by your own lawyers.” Also works.

But nobody in this movie has their wish powers run amok in a destructive way! Magnifico, the only wish-granter when the story starts, expresses concerns that a wish could potentially go bad if he granted it…but it doesn’t seem like the movie wants us to think this is a justified fear, since Magnifico is supposed to be An Unsympathetic Villain at the end.

And there’s no sign that Magnifico is an Ursula-style conman who’s offering contracts for nefarious purposes, either. At the start, the contract is simple: in exchange for getting to live in Magnifico’s city, you “give” him a wish, which manifests as a little glowing dream-bubble. He grants one wish per month (the rest float around in this lovely storage chamber in his castle), so everyone knows there’s a small chance of their specific wish getting picked — but the whole city is kept peaceful and protected with magic, and everyone is generally happy to live there, bonus wish or not.

So! The writers support their “you should work for your wishes yourself, not rely on magic” theme in the cheap cop-out way. Whenever we hear about a specific person’s wish, it’s either Some Frivolous Nonsense They Don’t Really Need, or Something They Could Have Accomplished By Themselves.

And we all know that’s not how it would work. The Wish Room would be full of incredibly deep, important, meaningful desires that people can’t just achieve by themselves.

Ariel can’t shapeshift her tail into legs without magic. Pinocchio can’t transmute his whole body without magic. Cinderella did, in fact, put a ton of work into making her own ball-ready outfit — and then her abusive family destroyed it! Honestly, the message of that movie is that she couldn't achieve her dreams without support. It’s just that her supportive godmother happened to be magic.

As for Aladdin — he famously gets three wishes. One was “make me a prince,” which he eventually learned he didn’t need…but the moral was “you can’t lie your way into the heart of this girl you like, you have to be honest with her.” It wasn’t “accomplishing literally anything with magic is bad.” His other two wishes were “save my life” and “break the Genie’s contract”, neither of which were possible without magic. (The life-saving came when he was chained up and thrown in the ocean, he barely reached the lamp, he had full-on lost consciousness by the time the Genie came out to see.)

…this is obviously not Disney, but I can’t think about fictional wish-granting without thinking about Madoka Magica, which has no cheap cop-outs, with amazing results. Most of the main characters’ wishes are some form of “heal this critically-injured person(/cat)” or “restore this actually-dead person to life.” There’s an Ursula-style message of “tread carefully with magical wish-granters, they might be hiding their true motives to exploit you,” but there are times when characters know about all the exploitation and still decide “if that’s what it takes to save this person/people, I’ll do it anyway.”

Circling back to Wish-the-movie: As long as “there is a real, non-scam chance your magic wish might get legitimately granted” is part of living in Magnifico’s city, there will be plenty of people who want to live there, no matter what else they find out about him. If your movie pussyfoots around grappling with that, it’s bad writing.

(I was trying to quickly get to the part about how to fix that, and somehow I’m still writing the buildup, why is my brain doing this.)

So, okay, for those of you who did yourselves the favor of not watching the movie, here’s a breakdown of some things that happen:

• Asha is in the running to be hired as Magnifico’s…okay, Wikipedia says “apprentice”, but I swear it was just “assistant.” I remember zero indication that she was going to become a Sorcerer’s Apprentice reference with him
• She visits the castle, has an interview with Magnifico, sees the Wish Room, they bond over how beautiful it is
• Asha spots her grandfather’s wish-bubble (he’s about to turn 100! just like Disney, get it??), gets excited, asks if Magnifico can grant that one next
• Well, Magnifico thought they were bonding. He deflates. “Oh. Usually new hires wait a month or so before they start asking me for things.”
• honestly, valid
• He looks at the wish-bubble anyway, derives the exact wording of the wish, decides it’s too vague and could go bad, tells Asha he’s never granting that one
• Hard to tell how valid this part is — Magnifico has an un-explored tragic backstory, his caution could be justified by a bad-wish-experience we never hear about, or it could be PTSD paranoia
• Asha asks if he can just return the wishes he’s not going to grant, so people can work on Accomplishing Them On Their Own Without Magic; Magnifico says no, and also, she’s def not hired
• Even though all of this is 100% in line with the wish deal Asha already knew about, for some reason she acts like this was a reveal that Magnifico is a secret supervillain and the city deserves better
• She sings a song about it, which prompts a marketable plushie-shaped, I mean star-shaped, mascot character to fall from the sky and become her new sidekick
• When Magnifico sees the light of the star falling, for some reason he immediately decides this is a magical threat to the whole city, and he needs to become a supervillain in order to defend it
• (This involves popping wish-bubbles and absorbing their power to make himself stronger, which would have been a great “oh, he’s a supervillain” reveal if he was doing this from the start and that’s what Asha found out about! But it’s not!)

And here are some thoughts about fixing it. The new setup:

• We open with Asha having a little bit of magic, as many people in the city do, which she uses for simple day-to-day tasks. (Most shameless idea for a reference: have her enchant a mop to clean up around the house)
• She gets an interview with Magnifico because he’s looking for a magic apprentice. They talk, he takes her to the Wish Room, they bond, etc
• Asha finds her grandfather’s wish, and it’s explicitly an Important Thing He Couldn’t Do Without Magic. (Shameless reference: he carved this wooden puppet in the shape of a boy, and…)
• Magnifico still has the “oh, oof, I thought we were connecting, but you just want me to do things for you” moment, but he gives it a look
• He says no. It’s sweet, but there are more-important wishes — see, Asha, this is the one he has lined up next, it’s a “please heal my sick loved one” wish (there are so many characters you could reference with this one)
• And wish-granting takes work, Magnifico will probably need a couple days in bed to recover after this month’s ceremony, he used to try to grant a wish every week until Amaya begged him to slow it down and take care of himself a little more…
• Asha feels terrible, she’s been thinking of the king as this untouchable idol but he’s just a guy, he has needs too, she only wishes she could do something to help…
• A sudden surge of magic! The wish-bubble disappears! Asha full-on panics, thinking she destroyed it or something??
• Magnifico checks his magic mirror…and it shows him the sick loved one, being healed. Asha granted the wish. Fully and perfectly
• And she’s not even dizzy!

How this continues, in the “Magnifico was evil from the start” version:

• Asha is so excited. She has wish powers! She can take some of the work off Magnifico’s shoulders, she can do so much to help the city, she can–
• Magnifico drops the masquerade, his eyes glow Disney Villain Green(TM), he locks her up in magic chains and throws her in a dungeon
• Cut to: Magnifico explaining the disaster to Queen Amaya, who is also evil. He was collecting those for evil reasons, dammit! As long as he grants 1% of them, he can use the other 99% for his own nefarious purposes, having a non-evil wish-granter in the city will screw up his whole plan!
• For handy exposition, Amaya asks why they don’t just kill Asha, and Magnifico says (a) too much risk she’ll magically save herself, (b) he can make himself even stronger if he siphons her power, he just has to figure out how
• Bonus: this interaction is done via Sexy Villain Duet
• Cut to: the dungeon. Asha can’t seem to magically grant her own wishes, like “I wish to be safely back home” or “I wish Magnifico would have a change of heart and let me go.” She looks out the barred window at the night sky, and wishes on a star instead
• Enter the mascot character
• Sidenote: A lot of “how to fix Wish” breakdowns seem really into “what if, instead of Star being a Marketable Plush, we used this design from some of the concept art, where Star is a Shippable Boy?” I…don’t care what form Star is in. The plot works the same either way. If you prefer the Shippable Boy design, feel free to imagine it here
• Star mentors Asha on using her powers to break out of jail. Say, by mentally scanning for her grandfather, who's thinking “I wish Asha would hurry up and get home,” and granting that wish
• Her first effort is a misfire and hits the goat instead, that's how we get the talking-goat sidekick
• The rest of the movie follows similar “Asha sneaks around gathering her friends and spreading the word about how evil Magnifico is” vs. “Magnifico rallies the city against the dangerous rabble-rousing rebel” beats as the original, except now they make sense
• After the final battle, Magnifico and Amaya both end up magically locked in the same mirror. Now they can’t hurt anyone else, and hey, they do actually love each other, so they’ll probably be okay
• Denouement: Asha is granting wishes at a much faster rate than Magnifico did, but her power isn’t infinite, she realizes she can’t grant them all. Setting up a system where she goes through and offers to return the ones she probably won’t have time for (again, pack in the previous-Disney references of your choice here)
• Some people decide, yeah, they don’t need their wishes granted (maybe Asha's grandfather goes “I’m too old to raise a new kid by now, and I’m more than happy with my wonderful granddaughter”). Others decide they don’t trust the government to keep custody of their wishes anymore. But some do trust the current government, because:
• One of the already-granted wishes is for some kind of reform. Asha didn’t inherit the whole kingdom, she just took over the wish-granting job, she has supervision! Heartwarming ending about the healing power of oversight and transparency and responsible non-evil government officials, talk about wish fulfillment amirite

Alternately, how it continues in the “Magnifico is just Very Tired” version:

• Magnifico is panicking — that must have been exhausting, she needs to sit down, take deep breaths, drink some water, is she okay? (Shameless reference: the dishes from Be Our Guest show up to feed her)
• Asha swears she’s fine, feels great, could probably do another one
• After a lot of internal stressing, Magnifico lets her do one more. The mirror says it works. He says, look, Asha is absolutely hired, but also Magnifico is afraid she’s going to crash hard once this catches up with her, she needs to go home and lie down and promise not to grant any more wishes today
• Asha tries, she really does…okay, she restrains herself to granting one wish for her friends, after she swears them to secrecy. If we want to keep the talking goat, maybe she grants the talking wish too. And then she is tired, so her friends get to reinforce her it’s fine, of course they respect her and they don’t want to ask too much of her
• Enter the mascot, for now he just shows up to hang around and be cute (again, pick your favorite version, Marketable Plushie or Shippable Boy)
• Apprenticeship arc begins. Under Magnifico’s mentorship, Asha works through the backlog of wish-bubbles. He walks her through a lot of double-checking and follow-up, and sometimes steers her away from granting certain wishes
• (This one, longing to be thinner: they're already at a healthy weight, taking more away could make them sick. This one wants to get the girl: they don't need magic, they just need to ask the girl out, and whether she says "yes" has to be up to her)
• Asha gets a little too enthusiastic, though, and starts granting some of Magnifico's reject wishes behind his back
• Steady increase of conflict/chaos. Sometimes they work out, but other times the result is “now that I have this, I don’t really want it” or “I only got this because it was taken from someone else, and now they’re sad” or “this came with unintended consequences that aren’t worth it” (take your pick of Disney plots to reference)
• Not sure what specific details to make the Grand Finale of this one, but it’s some kind of cascade of “I granted a wish for X, it caused problem Y, I hastily granted several wishes to fix Y, went too fast to realize it would cause problem Z, I’m trying to grant wishes to fix Z but I’m running out of strength at this point…”
• Magnifico clues in at some point and tries to help, but he definitely can’t grant wishes this fast, he passes out partway through
• Bonus: it's not that he finds out because the problem got too bad for Asha to hide. He finds out when Asha goes  to him early, confesses she's in over her head, and asks for help! Model for the kids in the audience that this is a thing you're allowed to do when you screw up!
• But now he's out, and Asha’s wish-magic is almost run dry. With the support and sound-boarding of her friends, she slows down, thinks through a Sensible Plan that would stop the Chaos Cascade without causing too many new problems. Star gives her a one-time power-refill, and each friend wishes for part of the Sensible Plan to happen
• Alternately: each of the friends is thinking “I wish I could do more to help Asha”…Star provides the one-time power-refill, and next thing Asha knows, her friends all have the power to grant each other’s wishes for the Sensible Plan to happen
• Denouement: Star is back in the sky. Magnifico lives, but his wish-magic is fully burned-out. Heartwarming chat where Asha promises she’ll be more careful and plan better from now on, and Magnifico admits maybe sometimes he’s been too avoidant about which wishes to grant, so he feels good about retiring from the role and giving it full-time to her (with the help of her Seven Advisers)
• Final scene, final shameless reference: a young woman is wishing she had the perfect dress for the ball next week…and she’s in the middle of sewing one. Asha evaluates the wish, figures out this woman is not in a Cinderella-style crisis and will be able to do the work herself in time, and decides not to grant it: “I’ll save that wish for someone who really needs it.” (Soundtrack sneaks in a few bars of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, audience groans/laughs/cheers)

Roll credits!

My favorite here is the “Magnifico is Tired” timeline. There’s an under-served market for stories about “there are no mustache-twirling villains (except possibly in the tragic backstories), everyone is basically-good and trying their best, but life is complicated and we all have different perspectives, so cooperation takes work.” (Encanto comes to mind as a recent Disney example, and hey, look, that was a smash hit.)

But the “Magnifico is Just Evil” timeline could work! You just have to commit to that, and make it make sense.

Okay. Post over. Don’t ask how long I spent writing this, it’s ridiculous. Tell me about your own preferred Fixing Wish plans, if you have any! Or just help yourself to this one. I put way too much effort into getting it all down, might as well spread it around.