Headscratchers / Wish (2023)

• How old is King Magnifico? Sabino is 100 years old, yet it's stated people give away their wishes after they turn eighteen. Either Magnifico is somehow >90 (which is *ew* in that case, considering Amaya's probably not also that old), or Asha's just simplifying the process. Did Sabino move over to Rosas and simply give up his wish after he moved?
  • Maybe he's using magic to make himself look younger, or he's not quite human.
    • Perhaps to significantly slow his aging.
    • He did say he got his genes from outer space.
  • It's likely Sabino simply moved there, as we see another couple in the movie moving in from the outside and immediately giving up their wishes.
• If there's an oil to protect from the evil book's taint, why didn't Magnifico use it? Or better yet, why didn't his wife remind him of it earlier?
  • Magnifico was going to practice that forbidden magic, not simply read it. And practicing that forbidden magic, even if you're not physically touching the evil book, would pretty much override any protection to begin with.
• Why doesn't Asha or the queen wish for King Magnifico to be good or lift the corrupted magic on him?
  • It's evident that neither Magnifico nor the Star have Genie-like powers or the movie would be far different. Magnifico only grants wishes that his magic is able to do, which is why the wishes he grants are more mundane compared to other, more fantastical wishes in his room. The Star's magic is powerful, but it makes it clear that it cannot grant wishes, only help people achieve wishes. And forbidden magic is explicitly stated to take hold of a person who dabbles into it for all eternity. This all but spells out that Magnifico is Beyond Redemption for there is no known means to break the corrupt magic's hold on him.
    • Given the whole populace of the city was able to break the power of the dark magic in the end with their wishes, nothing is saying that he couldn't have been purified that way. Perhaps he was actually purified, if still retaining his obnoxious ego; it's just that nobody wants to free him.
    • Breaking the effects of the dark magic isn’t necessarily the same as breaking its corrupting effect on Magnifico. Alternatively, there’s always the possibility that Amaya will look into methods of bringing him back from the dark side, and this just wasn’t spelled out to us in the movie. After all, why hang the mirror in the dungeon instead of just smashing it if she really believes the man she loves is gone for good?
    • The Doylist version: Disney wanted Magnifico to be a "classic" Disney villain; ergo, he can't be redeemed because the plot says so, so the characters can't be intelligent enough to consider using wishes as an option.
• The credits feature almost every film from the Animated Canon. While excluding most of the Package Era films and not specifically highlighting the sequels (Winnie the Pooh (2011), Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II) makes some sense, The Rescuers (and by extension, The Rescuers Down Under), The Black Cauldron, and Meet the Robinsons are completely absent. Why those specifically?
  • The Black Cauldron was likely excluded because Disney doesn't like it. It was a huge failure for them and almost killed their animation department. As such, they hardly acknowledge it. The Rescuers and Meet the Robinsons reasons for being excluded are unknown.
  • That said, the credits include Home on the Range, which similarly bombed and did much more damage to traditional animation as a whole, so it's unlikely that's the reason. Plus, Disney hardly acknowledges Atlantis or Treasure Planet despite their Cult Classic status, and they're still there.
    • Even if Home on the Range bombed, Disney animation was still in a much better place than it was when Black Cauldron bombed. In the mid-80s, Disney had a relatively small animation department that could only have one animated film in production at a time, which is why they only released a new film every three to four years. In the early 2000s, they were able to release two or three films a year, thanks to a much larger crew of artists and animators, and facilities in Orlando and Paris. Granted Michael Eisener was shutting down those facilities to save money by the time Home on the Range came out, but Disney animation wasn't entirely on thin ice like after the failure of the Black Cauldron. As for Atlantis and Treasure Planet being represented in the credits, Disney DOES know they have a cult status and is willing to appease that limited demographic.
  • Each film is also showcased in chronological order, making the omissions blatantly obvious to anyone familiar with the canon list. Perhaps the credits were too long and they needed to get rid of a few? At worst, it's an error and they just didn't care...
  • It's likely they had a time limit since it was for credits, and they had to sacrifice some films so the package films and sequels had to go, and Rescuers, Black Cauldron, and Meet The Robinsons got lost in that shuffle.
    • There were definitely enough stretches of "dead air" in the credits to include the few that weren't included if they simply rearranged the placement of the credits like they would for any of the others.
  • Why would they omit Black Cauldron here after making sure to include it in Once Upon a Studio?
  • Some of the characters they chose to represent each movie are really odd. Like, of all the characters they could've got to represent Big Hero 6, they chose Professor Callaghan in his Yokai outfit? What?
    • Artist Rachel Bibb, who worked on this sequence, explained on Instagram that due to rights issues, they couldn't use any Big Hero 6 characters aside from Yokai.
  • A major question here is just how inconsistent the representation is. Black Cauldron could conceivably have been omitted as "financial failure," "critical failure," or "very un-Disney," but then there are examples of all three of those which are represented with Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Chicken Little, respectively. (Ironically, Wish itself ended up qualifying as the first two.)
  • The Rescuers, The Black Cauldron, and Meet the Robinsons are based on copyrighted books, so it's possible Disney wasn't able to work out the rights issues to include cameos from their characters in time.
• How does a sorcerer as powerful as Magnifico not have some sort of memory-erasing spell? Why would he let Asha walk out with the knowledge that most of these wishes won't be granted?
  • Memory erasure may be part of the Forbidden Magic, as it involves more blatantly manipulating another person. Considering that Magnifico has spent so long as king, he may have simply assumed that Asha either wouldn't dare to openly speak against him or he could easily dismiss her as a liar and rely on his public reputation if she did try and speak up; Star just added a Spanner in the Works he wasn't anticipating.
  • Memory erasure is specifically shown to be a power Magnifico uses without the Forbidden Magic. In fact, it's kind of the crux of Asha's entire issue with what he's doing.
    • He is only shown erasing memories when he takes a person's wish, which may be essentially an automatic part of the process of taking a wish to grant it in the future; there is nothing to indicate that he can do the equivalent of a Memory Charm (Harry Potter) whenever he feels like it.
• Magnifico has a system where everyone gives up their wish at 18, the wish giver forgets what it was, and once a month he grants one wish. The kingdom has got to have at least hundreds of people, so simple math should make it clear not everyone will get their wish. Why do so many people praise a system that involves brainwashing themselves for a less than 1 percent chance that their wish might be granted? And why then is it a big surprise to Asha that the king will never grant most wishes?
  • Maybe most people accept on some level, that they may never be one of the lucky ones who get their wish. But the possibility that it could still happen for any of them keeps them content. Kind of like how people still play the lottery, hoping to win a life-changing amount of money, even if they know the odds are astronomically small. And it was Magnifico basically admitting to Asha that he just flat out refuses to grant certain wishes, but still keeps them and leaves the rejected with a false hope that they can still be granted one day, along with making it clear the wishes he does grant are the ones he sees benefit in that leads to Asha being disillusioned with him and his wish granting system. Not just that some people will never have the fortune of their wishes being granted.
  • Perhaps, but with the lottery people keep up hope for winning because they can enter over and over. Magnifico's system is like a lottery that you can only enter once, appears to be mandatory, takes part of your memory, and if you don't win a million dollars then you're forbidden from ever making a million dollars. So there are plenty of known reasons for the public to be skeptical of it already.
    • People in Rosas believe they can't do things like learn to sew or to compose/play music on their own, so they're not the brightest stars in the sky.
    • It may be that the people of Rosas accept that they have the potential for those skills but they want Magnifico to make them better by granting their wishes; it's the equivalent of a published author wishing to become the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King after just releasing a few low-key books.
  • The thing is that the lottery chance isn't temporary, it'll last for a lifetime. Therefore, there is a chance that Magnifico would grant your wish even if you are a hundred years old. It's not like a lottery where you have to enter again and again, often by paying. As long as your wish is in the system, you can always hope. It's only when Magnifico makes it clear he picks and chooses wishes based on their benefit to Rosas (or rather, benefit to himself), essentially all but spelling out a rigged system as opposed to a random draw, that Asha begins actively rebelling against her king.
  • The premise is ultimately similar to The Hunger Games or the "Luthor Lottery" in Superman: Secret Origin (once a week Lex Luthor invites people to gather outside his company so that he can grant the "wish" of one citizen in Metropolis). While the Games are more potentially lethal, ultimately all three situations see people essentially choose not to fight to change a system that leaves them dependent on others because they've been convinced to accept the chance that the system will benefit them someday, rather than rebel and lose the opportunity to get their wish their own way until someone else steps up.
  • Both the Hunger Games and the Luthor Lottery had plenty of dissenters before Katniss and Clark began tearing down the defenses since the Capitol and Luthor had to keep up vast propaganda programs to keep most of the public thinking positively of them or too afraid to protest. Magnifico doesn't seem to have much of a propaganda apparatus for most to swallow "losing your memory is good" besides Asha giving tours.
    • However, Magnifico also has the advantage of living in a more primitive culture than Snow and Luthor; he doesn't really have any competition before Asha learns the truth, so he doesn't need to do more than focus on the positives and stop anyone considering the negatives.
  • I mean, Magnifico isn’t forcing people to come live in Rosas, nor is he being dishonest about the benefits and downsides of the wish-granting system. (Apart from his method of choosing which wishes to grant, but your mileage may vary on whether that’s such a bad thing.) There are probably a ton of people whose wishes aren’t likely to come true anyway, who could decide to move to Rosas purely because it’s a nice place to live — the possibility that their wish could be granted is just a bonus for living there. It’s nothing like the Hunger Games, which are used to appease and subjugate the oppressed members of a dystopian society who don’t have any choice but to put up with it.
• If everybody's wishing was able to banish King Magnifico at the end, shouldn't they individually be powerful enough to instantly see their own individual wishes granted as soon as they're returned to them? That lady who wanted to fly should be soaring over the castle, not settling for a flying machine that was NOT what she wished for.
  • The group effort required to stop Magnifico and the individual effort to achieve their own wishes require different levels of power; everyone agreed that they wanted rid of the king who lied to them at that point, but it's doubtful that enough people would be able to invest the same effort in working as a group to grant more individual wishes, requiring everyone to work at their dreams on a case-by-case basis.
    • But since they are all stars, logically each person can wish upon themselves and instantly grant their own desire, which likely takes less magic than the combined effort to stop Magnifico.
    • Stars do not instantly grant wishes. This was mentioned in the movie.
• How did Magnifico know about Asha's Plan to lure him away from his castle at the end of the movie? There was no way for him to know. He had to have been guessing.
  • It's not out of the realm of possibility that the forbidden magic included some flavor of scrying or clairvoyance spell. Barring that, it's not that random of a guess—he knows that Asha wants to get at the wishes, so for her to be so far away from them while also being careless enough to be caught might have been enough for him to suspect it was a trap.
    • It can't be scrying/clairvoyance involved since if he had that power, he wouldn't have had to wait for Simon to tell him that Asha was responsible for Star appearing. For that matter, Magnifico wasn't clever enough to figure out from the beginning that it had to be Asha because nobody else knew his true nature at that point and thus had no reason to challenge his rule.
  • Distracting Magnifico in order to sneak into his tower is the same plan Asha used the first time, and Magnifico knows she is working with Dahlia and the others. When Amaya comes in and makes a big deal about him rounding up all the villagers to chase Asha, he realizes it was a ruse.
• How is forgetting your wish after Magnifico takes it away permanent? If someone wishes for something like healing a sick family member, wouldn't they remember it as soon as they see their family again after the ceremony? Or if they have an interest in becoming an artist, couldn't their daily life cause them to reexperience the spark of inspiration that led to them wanting to become an artist? In addition to that, how come no one appears to take preemptive measures to remember their wish, like writing it down or telling a friend before the ceremony?
  • Without having seen the movie, the meaning behind forgetting a wish is probably that you lose the passion and ambition inherent to the wish. For example, Asha could just tell her grandfather that his wish was to become an inspiring musician, but he can’t strive to fulfill that wish because the inspiration to do so is part of the wish itself.
• Why does Star leave Asha with a wand at the end when the people of Rosas do not need a Fairy Godmother, since they will actualize their wishes themselves? And why should someone as inexperienced and inept with magic as Asha have the same kind of power to decide which wishes to get granted (because inevitably she will have to make those kinds of choices) as the well-trained King Magnifico had when the whole point of confronting him was to take that power from him?
  • The wand seems to grant small-scale magic and it's implied Asha will be doing similar to what Star does - helping people see their wishes granted, not granting them directly. It's kind of an extension of what she was already doing in the movie in trying to get the wishes back so citizens could pursue them themselves.
• What exactly was the point of Magnifico seeking an apprentice?
  • Presumably he just uses them as a dogsbody, given what Amaya mentions on the way up the stairs (keep the fire warm for his tea, acquire items for him, no asking questions or to see the wishes). Given the Teens imply apprentices are more likely to get their wishes granted Magnifico may have dismissed them before because they weren't as interested in the job itself as he hoped. On a Doylist level, it's a device for Asha to see the wishes and be able to ask Magnifico questions that get the plot moving.
• What exactly was Magnifico going to do once everyone in Rosas was all magically under his heel and unable to oppose him? What was his ulterior motive in enslaving everyone and ensuring they'd all hate him whether they could do anything about it or not when before Asha caused trouble people were happy under his rule and he loved it? It's hard to imagine he'd be happier with brainwashed slaves.
• If the message of the movie is supposed to be "You have to make your own dreams come true", why is it reliant on Asha getting supernatural help because she just wanted it really badly? If the story were about her earning magical aid to stop Magnifico by proving herself worthy of Star's help, it would make a lot more sense. (For that matter, Star doesn't actually do all that much in the story that Asha and her friends couldn't have done on their own.)
  • Disney usually strikes a balance between wishes being granted by magic (or more mundanely luck, happenstance, or outside help) and having to work to achieve them yourself. See Pinocchio and The Princess and the Frog for other instances of this. It usually isn’t just one way or the other, and with Magnifico holding everyone’s wishes hostage so they can’t make them happen on their own, it makes some sense to have some supernatural help in order to level the playing field, so to speak.
• In the alternate perspective novelization A Recipe for Adventure, why is Dahlia's wish revealed to be being a great baker like her grandmother was when she could be wishing for her lame leg to be healed? The latter is something that needs magic to fix.
  • Some people may view their disability as part of their identity, or they’ve learned to live with it for so long that they don’t mind it or value other things more than having it fixed.
• What is up with the line "Watch out world, here I are"? This is grammatically incorrect, and, surprisingly, it appeared in a major Disney movie. Isn't it supposed to be "Here we are" or "Here I am"? Was this error made on purpose or was it a mistake that was never fixed?
  • It was probably done on purpose, in an attempt to convey the themes of quirkiness and individuality. A lot of the movie’s lyrics are written to try and seem hip and trendy, a result of the soundtrack being composed by writers more experienced in pop songs than musical theatre.
    • Then what about the lyric "I'll throw caution to every warning sign"? Were they unable to decide between "throw caution to the wind" and "ignore every warning sign"?
  • I mean, it's hardly unheard of to have questionable grammar for the sake of a rhyme. For example, Elphaba sings "With you and I defying gravity" in Defying Gravity. That said, it looks more like the trend of varying the pronouns in a line based on who's singing, like how the Phantom of Opera includes the line "[My/your] spirit and [your/my] voice", with Christine and the Phantom singing in unison, but with different pronouns. And, well, it definitely stands out here, because they used the one verb in the English language with different conjugated forms for "I" and "you" for the sake of a rhyme.
  • It could be to show that the forest animals/plants are uneducated and thus use incorrect grammar. One of the trees says "little fun allegory" when it should be worded as "fun little allegory".
• Why does Magnifico’s tower have a ceiling that can be opened up using pulleys, anyway?
  • Magnifico lives for praise. Maybe he used it for giant light shows or something so he could enjoy everyone cheering his displays of magic. Everyone initially assumes the star falling was Magnifico putting on some magic show.
• How did Magnifico not initially know that Asha was the traitor? He had a suspect list of 1. For that matter, why did he think a human was responsible for the phenomenon anyway? And why did he think it was a threat? Just because he didn't do it? He must know he's not the only one on the planet with magic — he didn't write all those books.
  • This probably isn’t the kind of universe where magical phenomena happen without some kind of deliberate reason. Either a human practicing magic caused the mysterious light or it was some unexplained event — in either case, as someone who’s already lost his homeland, Magnifico is going to want to understand this person/event so he knows whether they’re a threat to Rosas. As for why he didn’t suspect Asha, she’s probably not the first person who’s ever managed to get on his bad side, and he likely didn’t figure a teenager would be able to call upon such an unheard-of kind of magic.

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