One year on, and I still can't find the stomach to talk about Wish.
The vitriol Wish attracted from the online community felt utterly unprecedented for a Disney animated feature...which might be as much a reflection of the times we live in as any failings on the film's part. [1] It put me in an awkward position. On the one hand, there was a TON of bad faith criticism surrounding the film, which made me automatically want to fight a little in its corner. But I do still have to weigh that against the harsh reality that the film isn't particularly strong, and that there is no shortage of legitimate criticism to be had about it either. Look, anyone who tells you that the film's central conflict amounts to Asha calling Magnifico a big meanie because he won't grant all of his kingdom's wishes is misrepresenting the plot. Asha simply wanted those wishes that Magnifico had no intention of granting to be returned to their owners, so they might have a chance to fulfil them themselves; she openly acknowledged that there might be some bad wishes that should be stopped, but felt there had to be a better solution than depriving the entire kingdom of the initiative to pursue their passions. Which is a healthy perspective. Anyone who tells you that Valentino the goat is the most embarrassingly juvenile sidekick in the entire Disney canon (a title previously assigned to those three inane gargoyles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who I guess are now off the hook) is making a truly excellent point. I can't stand him either.
Even if the vitriol feels way out of proportion, Wish is still one of Disney's lesser efforts. Not the least. I don't believe Wish to be the nadir of the Mouse's output. As
someone who lived through the mid-00s, when Disney was still reeling
from the public mockery it had received from Shrek while wringing its hands over the messy divorce with Pixar that looked, for a moment, as if it might be happening, you won't convince me that there was a more demoralizing era in the company's history than that which gave us Brother Bear (2003), Home on The Range (2004), Chicken Little (2005) and a shower of direct to video cheapquels. That really was a rough time to be a Disney fan. And besides, a lesser effort need not mean an uninteresting one. There are plenty of productions, from Disney or otherwise, that fall flat on their faces, and yet I get transfixed by them anyway because they're so fascinating as failures. Take Pixar's Lightyear (2022) as a recent example - a detailed write-up of that film is absolutely on my to-do list, because it's such an astoundingly misguided production that I frankly can't stop looking at it. I wish I were exaggerating when I say that I've now revisited it more times than I have any of the actual Toy Story sequels. Wish, though, just makes me squeamish. I feel I've been so overexposed to the all-out vitriol that there's no mileage left in attempting to warm to the film as a guilty pleasure. At this point, the most I can say is that I'll be interested to see how its legacy pans out in the long-term. Will Gen Alpha take a different perspective, once it gets old enough that Wish becomes its childhood nostalgia? Will Disney insist on pushing Asha into their Princess line-up, in spite of the film's poor showing, meaning she becomes a hotly merchandised character regardless? Or will it be one of those historic humiliations the studio forever attempts to sweep under the rug - much like some of the other unlucky Disney pictures we're going to touch on here?
See, the one thing that I really am itching to talk about regarding Wish would be its end credit sequence. As you know, Wish came out during Disney's centennial and was intended to serve as the big end-of-year celebration of the company's legacy (making its actual fate all the more depressing). To mark the occasion, the end credits featured a long, lavish roll call of familiar faces from the studio's expansive output. The outlines of various Disney heroes, sidekicks and villains from across the decades, depicted as twinkling celestial constellations, were presented in chronological order, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and ending with Wish's immediate predecessor Strange World (2022). It's a neat enough idea in theory, the kind that should have any Disney buff salivating with uncontrollable delight. Instead, I suspect it will have most buffs at best scratching their heads with confusion and at worst, pickling their piss with ire. Forget whatever criticisms could be made of the picture itself - the biggest bones I have to pick with Wish are right here in the credits.
As of Wish, the Disney Animated Canon consists of 62 films, meaning that its end credit sequence had 61 titles to which it could potentially have paid homage. Naturally, it didn't quite rise to that challenge. Most of the canon was covered, sure, but there were some glaring omissions, and watching this sequence proved an invaluable exercise in illuminating which films in the canon Disney is happy to flaunt and which it currently regards as the unwanted stepchildren. Some were all-too predictable, others left me truly gobsmacked. If there was one omission in particular that put a sour taste in my mouth for the remainder of the experience, it was when we got to the late 1970s, and skipped directly from Winnie The Pooh to Tod and Copper. Huh? Where were the Rescuers? Not to worry, I assured myself, they're probably just holding the characters over for The Rescuers Down Under (which, in all fairness, is probably the more popular Rescuers film among modern audiences - I've met more than enough people who don't even know that it's a sequel to a film from the 70s). But no. We reached the Renaissance era, and went straight from Ariel to Belle and Beast. It was official. Bernard and Bianca weren't invited to this celebration.
And that bites. Bernard and Bianca are two of Disney's most endearing heroes, and they deserved better.
It's odd, because when The Rescuers was released in 1977, it was a pretty big commercial smash, and it fared well with the critics at a time when the future of Disney animation had appeared to be in question. The company had never figured out where to take itself after Walt's death, and their surrounding output seemed hopelessly conservative next to the radical innovations happening elsewhere in Hollywood; the success of The Rescuers was a beacon of hope in an era of darkness. It was also a significant film from a historical perspective, having functioned as the handover piece between the remaining members of Disney's veteran directors (the Nine Old Men) and an incoming generation of younger blood (including Don Bluth, who served as a directing animator). And I seem to recall that Bernard and Bianca were still very popular and well-known Disney characters by the end of the succeeding decade. It's true that The Rescuers Down Under flopped in 1990 (although it ushered in a major technical breakthrough, with the implementation of CAPS), and once the Renaissance was in full swing the characters' prominence, both in Disney marketing and the public consciousness, was drastically decreased (along with most Disney characters introduced throughout the 70s and 80s). But Bernard and Bianca absolutely have their place in Disney history. Why wouldn't you include them?
I did wonder if it maybe had something to do with that topless woman who was found lurking in a couple of frames on the print used for the film's 1999 VHS release. [2] That's literally all I've got. I'm not convinced it flies as an explanation, as I don't think the matter with the topless woman had that much lingering notoriety among the general public. If it ever was regarded as a hot button scandal then things have long since moved on. Disney responded appropriately by recalling the tapes with the offending print; it may not be the kind of footnote they want attached to one of their features, but a footnote is all that it is at this stage. Maybe some higher-ups were afraid that, in the digital age, calling attention to The Rescuers meant that people could easily look up the film and read about the incident for the first time, but if so, then are they really planning on keeping it hidden forever? Heaven knows, there have been some far uglier skeletons in Disney's closet that they've managed to bury over time - clearly, they're not afraid of people googling Fantasia (1940) and discovering that film's shameful little secret.
Let's look at who else wasn't on the guest list:
- Most of the package features: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949) is the only one directly referenced, with a showing from Ichabod Crane...although I think the idea is that he is meant to represent ALL of the package films, allowing us to skip through this weird and somewhat awkward era of Disney history in one tidy leap. I'm in two minds about that. There's no denying that the package films are the ones that only the hardcore Disney buffs are going to care or even know about, and referencing all six films individually would have meant bombarding general audiences with characters they were unlikely to recognise. So in a way, it was nice that they threw this era a bone by including just one. And yet I would argue that if there was any arena in which Disney should absolutely have catered to the hardcore buffs and celebrated ALL of its canon on an equal footing, this was it. Jose, Panchito, Willie, Bongo and Jenny & Joe should have each had their turn. If the general public was confused by who these characters were, they could've always looked them up. It's the digital age, remember?
- The Black Cauldron (1985): Now this one I totally saw coming. It didn't perplex me as did The Rescuers' omission, but it did strike me as incredibly petty. Yes, we all know what a huge flop The Black Cauldron was back in the day, but that was nearly 40 years ago. Maybe it's time Disney moved on from that historic embarrassment and stopped trying to downplay the fact that they made this film at all? I mean, it didn't do much damage in the long-term, did it? Disney were able to recover and get their Renaissance started just four years after, so why should this one misstep be such an enduring source of shame? Actually, I'm not sure if flopping is really enough to justify its pariah status alone, as several other films that were represented here were also spectacular money losers in their time. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and Treasure Planet (2002) are noted for doing phenomenally badly with audiences - and, in their case, the twin failure had a significant hand in convincing Disney to abandon traditional animation altogether - yet they're both present and correct. No, in the case of The Black Cauldron, I think that film has a reputation for being very unDisney and unkid-friendly, and Disney isn't too comfortable with having to accommodate that in its brand. It isn't just that the Horned King meets a visually gnarly end, and that his skeleton army might be a tad unsettling to the toddler set - the tone of the film is uncharacteristically dark and sombre, and there aren't any upbeat songs to offset that. As someone who unapologetically loves The Black Cauldron, I wish Disney would come to terms with that already, but it just isn't happening.
- Meet The Robinsons (2007): I've indicated above that I regard the 2000s as a bleak time for Disney, particularly around the middle when the Renaissance years were well behind them and they were struggling to adapt to the changing animation marketplace. There aren't many films from this decade that caught on with the public in any big way, with Lilo & Stitch (2002), The Princess & The Frog (2009) and The Emperor's New Groove (2000) being the only notable exceptions (in that order) - the rest of the decade was a washout so far as modern Disney is concerned. As such, it was impressive to note just how thoroughly the 2000s were represented here - the sparse hits, the overlooked gems and the missteps alike. For better or for worse, Home on The Range and Chicken Little also have their place in Disney history, and it seemed only right that they be acknowledged in this kind of retrospective. Then I realised they'd skipped Meet The Robinsons, and my heart completely sank. This is the omission that confounds me the most after The Rescuers, because I can't begin to fathom why this, of all the 00s films, should be singled out for exclusion. Sure, Meet The Robinsons didn't exactly break out on release and isn't well-remembered by the public today, but you could say the same for dang near every film from this decade. It's a shame, because in my opinion Meet The Robinsons holds up as one of the better Disney films of the 00s, and this feels like a missed opportunity for it to pick up a few extra fans.
- Most of the sequels: Fantasia 2000 (1999) is the only canon sequel given recognition here, with our yo-yoing flamingo - and, unlike the example cited with Ichabod above, I DON'T think he was intended to be a stand-in for them all. The Rescuers Down Under aside, this is the omission that bothers me the least. I can see why they might not have felt obligated to cover Winnie The Pooh (2011), Wreck-It-Ralph 2 (2018) or Frozen II (2019). Those characters were already represented, with the latter two just a few spaces prior; you risk making the list confusing and repetitive.
In the end, the galling revisionism of the Wish credits just made me all the more thankful for the the Trent Correy and Dan Abraham-directed short Once Upon A Studio, which served as much more fitting centennial celebration. Unlike the corresponding sequence from Wish, this short seemed to be made with love and reverence for the full canon, going all-out to encompass as many characters as possible. Bernard and Bianca were included. Several characters from Meet The Robinsons were included. Heck, it wasn't afraid to extend its arms to the most unwanted stepchild of them all, and invite The Black Cauldron back into the fold. None of its characters had any speaking roles, but Gurgi was featured prominently in one scene - he was in the foreground, getting petted by Pocahontas, and not squirrelled away at the back of the crowd - which is the most attention Disney has lavished on that character or his movie since the VHS release of the late 1990s. [3]
Of course, Once Upon A Studio didn't just restrict itself to the Animated Canon - it also included characters from the Mickey Mouse shorts, and a few from those aforementioned live action/animated hybrids. So if you wanted to nitpick about Song of The South being absent here, the observation would be a valid one. That film knows what it did, however.
[1] The vitriol of the online community doesn't necessarily represent the broader view of the general public, of course. But in the case of Wish, the public seemed mostly indifferent. It was a matter of total disdain or total disinterest, a depressing situation whichever way you approach it.
[2] I'm linking to the Snopes article here, although I'm not keen on how tin hatty it gets toward the end. For a better coverage of this incident, check out the relevant chapter in Richard Roeper's 1999 book Urban Legends.
[3] Well, I think there might also have been an episode of House of Mouse in which the titular cauldron was used as a major plot point. I am not much into House of Mouse, however.
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