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Wish (2023)

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  • Allegedly Optimistic Ending: It's nice that people are free to realize their wishes on their own and Magnifico is no longer a threat, but without him and his magic, Rosas may be a lot more vulnerable to the problems of the outside world. Despite the film claiming otherwise, some wishes aren't going to be obtainable without magic — and the only person capable of that now is the untrained, inept Asha, who might end up becoming as choosy as Magnifico was in trying to handle requests. That's before one considers the problems "bad" wishes will cause, or what people will do if it turns out certain wishes are no longer relevant or attainable (i.e., the person who wanted a nanny for their children).
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation: A refusal to compromise or understand other people's perspective will come back to bite you in the long term. Magnifico refused to listen to Asha's suggestion about the wishes (instead of hoarding them, he can simply give them back, explain why he won't grant them, and advise the people to work for their dreams themselves) because he wanted to keep the people dependent on him. While he did initially listen to Amaya's warnings about using Forbidden Magic, Magnifico decides to go through with it anyway because he saw the people of Rosas questioning him as an act of ingratitude rather than because they want assurance from him that everything was okay. Magnifico's refusal to compromise or listen to other people's perspectives even if he doesn't agree with them leads him to take a turn for the worst and causes him to lose his throne to an uprising from the people of Rosas, the very thing he wanted to avoid at all costs.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Was King Magnifico a Fallen Hero who once genuinely wanted to make his people happy and safe in Rosas, only to be corrupted over time by the fear of losing control his kingdom and potentially reliving his worst childhood experience? Or was he always a selfish bastard from the start who only cared about the perks of being king, and just uses his backstory as an excuse to not give up those perks? This is not helped by Queen Amaya's views on Magnifico, which swings from "a man who lost all the good inside him" to "a victim of forbidden magic" to "a psychopath who never loved her to begin with". Moreover, one has to wonder if Magnifico's backstory is true; it could be a lie to make himself more sympathetic to the people of Rosas and all those who would visit. Some believe that the supposed family and "greedy, selfish thieves" were actually innocent people that Magnifico killed to obtain his magical knowledge and artifacts (including the Forbidden Book).
    • Is Queen Amaya truly as oblivious to King Magnifico's true colors as she claims to be? She does not question nor seem surprised by his cruelty towards Asha and her family at the beginning of the film, she does little to object against his increasingly reckless actions, and only abandons him to join Asha after being directly threatened herself. She seems fully aware and even complicit in Magnifico's scheme and is only disillusioned when she no longer benefits from it, and joining Asha's cause allows her to keep her position after her husband's defeat. The fact that Amaya actually was Magnifico's willing accomplice in the film's earlier development doesn't help, nor does the implication that Magnifico becomes the Magic Mirror of this universe, as that suggests Amaya could become its Evil Queen.
    • Asha opposes King Magnifico's taking wishes from people and only granting the few he deems worthy, saying everyone deserves the right to their wish being a possibility. At the end of the film, she is gifted a magic wand which she will use to become a Fairy Godmother, thereby becoming someone like Magnifico who will have to make decisions as to whose wishes will come true thanks to her supernatural assistance rather than their own abilities. For that matter, Asha not taking the concerns of others into account when deciding what's best for them and acting accordingly (almost bringing the land to destruction in the process), and initially only trying to free her family's wishes rather than all of them, isn't that different from Magnifico's thinking and actions. (It doesn't help "At All Costs" specifically was intended to show they weren't so different at the start via how they wanted to protect the wishes in their own ways.)
  • Angst? What Angst?: One of the most common criticisms about the film's ending is that Queen Amaya seems way too cool with her husband Magnifico's fate of being trapped in a mirror even though just a day or two ago she was Happily Married to him with no outward issues.
  • Applicability:
    • After the initial wave of interpretations of Rosas' wish system as a metaphor for government assistance, a new take began circulating Tumblr in 2024 viewing the film as a metaphor for the trend of almost-finished movies getting cancelled and denied release, including by Disney itself.
    • Multiple professional reviews saw Magnifico's imprisonment of the wishes as an interesting - and wholly unintentional - metaphor for The Walt Disney Company itself. As the AV Club put it:
      Nobody on this project seems to realize how Magnifico, in his mad quest to harvest, draw power from, and selectively regurgitate the dreams of his followers, stands in for The Walt Disney Company more ably than heroine Asha ever could. Disney's entire growth strategy over the last 20 years has been to absorb fantasies made by others—the Muppets, Pixar Animation, Marvel Entertainment, The Simpsons, Lucasfilm. While there's no doubt the makers of Wish see themselves as dream liberators and not dream takers, Disney is like Magnifico—a monopolist, besieged by an audience increasingly empowered to seek its pleasures in a world of unlimited choice.
  • Awesome Art: While not universal, the painterly watercolor-like style quickly received praise from certain people, with many quickly comparing it to the Disney short Paperman for how it blends Disney's classic 2D animation style and their modern CGI style together.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • King Magnifico before he uses the forbidden book. Depending on the viewer, he's seen as pure evil, given the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, or seen as something of a Fallen Hero or Tragic Villain with an understandable viewpoint but enough flaws and questionable decisions to serve as an effective antagonist. The divisions tend to stem from how the viewer regards his thinking behind which wishes he will and won't grant and his choice to keep ungranted ones in his tower rather than just destroying them outright or returning them to their makers and weighing that against the fact he has given the people of his kingdom a self-sustaining utopia to live in at no cost beyond giving up a single wish per person. One side thinks that he keeps them is a sign that he is indeed selfish, while the other argues that he has a point and that the benefits far outrank the cons, especially based on what the audience is shown. Some think he was right all along, and the filmmakers have him suddenly reacting irrationally and cruelly to Asha's questioning of his methods only to justify her turning against him. Meanwhile, others argue that he doesn't have a point and is self-centered from the start, so his later actions are consistent with how he's first presented.
    • The Seven Teens are very divisive among the fandom. Either they are funny, well-characterized nods to the Seven Dwarfs, or they are an annoying, poorly-implemented Mythology Gag that bloats the runtime when three or fewer characters could have handled their plot functions more effectively. Gabo is probably the most divisive; either he's one of the better and funnier characters due to his snarky attitude or one of the most unlikable due to how rude and condescending he can be — particularly to Simon, the only one of the seven who has any Character Development and along with Dahlia the most popular of the group. As for the other four, Bazeema is either adorable or obnoxious (largely due to her voice), Hal's either likeable or a complete cipher, and Dario and Safi are either amusing fools or unfunny morons.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • The very start of Magnifico's Villain Song comes from seemingly nowhere, with a nonsequitur ("I can't help it if mirrors love my face") and then Magnifico claiming that his genes come from outer space. It comes off as a particularly bizarre boast that doesn't mesh with the tone and era well, though the first line may be foreshadowing for his ultimate fate of being trapped in a mirror.
    • The "Happy Chicken Song" has Valentino conduct an orchestra and ballet of chickens for a little over a minute with Star's assistance, completely out of the blue.
  • Broken Aesop: The movie tries to push the aesop of "You have to make your dreams come true on your own, though help is okay as needed," but it doesn't land for some. Firstly, it's not clear how some of the wishes depicted/mentioned could be realized without magic. (One is done by bringing together two people who want to fly so they can build a flying machine, but others like the "fantasy land in the sky"...) Secondly, Asha doesn't even try anything to undercut Magnifico's rule until Star arrives in direct response to her wishing for a better life for her people; in the end he is stopped only when she and the townspeople wish for him to be stopped. Finally, in the denouement, Star leaves Asha with a wand and the others encourage her to become a Fairy Godmother, someone who grants wishes for others, without addressing how this would avoid the problems of Magnifico's system it portrayed as wrong.
  • Broken Base:
    • The finale where Asha leads the citizens of Rosas in song in order to defeat Magnifico. One side thought it was a satisfying climax that wrapped up the film and Asha's arc well. The other side found it a cheap Deus ex Machina that could have been set up better; in particular many feel Sabino should have led the song, given it would have tied into his wish that started the whole mess.
    • The film's animation and art style, which were supposed to emulate traditional animation, has been a divisive topic from the beginning. Some people feel it perfectly emulates the hand-drawn animation of the earlier Disney classics, while others think it's flat and cheap-looking and wouldn't look out of place in a TV show — especially a Disney Junior one.
    • The film was at one point supposed to be traditionally animated, but instead used Painted CGI because of the former medium's supposed "limitations". One side feels it would have been more appropriate to produce the film in 2D, not least because it was their centennial marker and it primarily calls back to the 2D films in its Company Cross-References anyway. The other sides either like the Painted CGI enough or feel that producing the film in 2D wouldn't have overcome its myriad other issues. Some are even thankful it wasn't hand-drawn as, given the movie's box office failure, it would discourage Disney from ever using the technique again, as happened when they attempted to revive the style with The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh (2011). (There is another camp that will point out that Disney likely didn't have enough properly-trained staff for a hand-drawn film, given they have outsourced 2D scenes in such films as Mary Poppins Returns and Disenchanted (2022).)
  • Catharsis Factor: It's fairly satisfying when the united power of everyone in Rosas about to be permanently oppressed by Magnifico stands together and overpowers his spell, resulting in Star being freed from the staff while the power then turns on Magnifico himself and traps him inside for what will likely be forever too.
  • Cliché Storm: This was deliberately invoked with the film's plot, as it uses a number of tropes found in classic Disney films as part of the studio's Milestone Celebration. However, a number of critics consider this to be to its detriment; that it spends so much time paying homage to the Disney films of the past that it doesn't do much to forge its own identity.
  • Common Knowledge:
    • A very common misconception about the "Starboy" concept was that he was meant to be Asha's love interest and a subject of the song "At All Costs". The art book revealed that at least at one point in development, just before the final form was decided upon, he was meant to be a younger version of Asha's grandfather Sabino, who passed away in an early story draft (the closest that it had was the statement from the art book about Asha and the Star being "soulmates"), while "At All Costs" was written to sound like a love song out of context but was always meant to be about the wishes.
    • Due to how poorly the first full-length trailer presented the situation, a lot of casual observers and even people who make actual critiques of the movie think Asha wanted everyone's wish granted no matter what they were, and was incensed that King Magnifico would keep most of them ungranted due to risk factors rather than grant them all to everyone in his kingdom, all because he deemed her grandfather's wish as one of the "too risky" ones. It is more nuanced than that: Asha poses the question of why Magnifico doesn't return any wishes he decides he doesn't want to magically grant back to their original owners so that they can remember what those wishes were and try to fulfill them through other means, and she initially suggests to Magnifico that if any of the wishes were to go badly upon return when the wishers attempted to realize them, he could just fix that situation along with her as his apprentice. This escalates to her wanting everyone's wishes freed so they can try to realize them on their own because Magnifico shuts down discussion of the matter and makes it clear to her that he'll hold onto all those wishes forever. (Part of the issue might be that her justification seems naive and half-hearted, that she's putting the responsibility of fixing things on him since he's the one with the power to do so, and that some of the wishes need magic and/or other, consenting people to be realized safely.)
  • Complete Monster: King Magnifico, the egotistical ruler of Rosas, starts off as a universally beloved ruler who has the power to make the wishes of his subjects come true. In reality, Magnifico abuses this power for his own satisfaction, leaving the vast majority of these wishes unfulfilled as he exploits the people's love for him to stay in power. When Asha calls him out on this, Magnifico spites her in a public ceremony by making it appear as though he'll grant the wish of her grandfather — who has waited almost a century for his wish to come true — only to double around and grant someone else's wish instead. Magnifico goes from hoarding wishes to outright stealing them, absorbing them from innocent citizens who are left in despair and agony as Magnifico essentially steals a part of their souls. Growing increasingly unhinged the more he's challenged, Magnifico brainwashes one of Asha's teenage allies by turning his own wish against him, blasts his own wife for rebelling against him, and tortures Asha in front of the whole kingdom. Finally, using Star as a Living Battery, Magnifico decides to magically plunge all of Rosas into eternal, soul-crushing despair, reasoning that if he can't win the love of his citizens, then he'll just grind them all beneath his heel instead.
  • Cry for the Devil: Magnifico may be irredeemably evil, but there are those who sympathize with his backstory at the very least and believe his obsession with power and control really did come from paranoia due to thieves ravaging his childhood home. But that isn't what's actually the most sympathetic part about him. That goes to when he gets trapped in a magic mirror presumably forever with zero chance of escaping. Even as vile as he acted, a fate like that is just horrifying. Worse, nobody cares about that In-Universe.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: A number of King Magnifico's fans believe he has C-PTSD from losing his home and family as a child, and it manifested itself in the form of being controlling over his subjects.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Even before the film's release, King Magnifico had fans regarding him as a Designated Villain since his decision to limit the wishes he grants didn't seem completely unreasonable or baseless, a view bolstered by both his natural charm and the fact that it took a bit for the full depths of his malevolence to be shown in previews. These same fans usually downplay or outright ignore his narcissistic, unsavory character and his selfish reasoning for hoarding the wishes in the first place, and also believe that because it's his right to use them however he wants to, since it's his magic, he also has a right to hoard them all in his lair. There's also the rare case of some audience members outright denying that he's a narcissist in the first place. Some even go so far as to make him out to be an innocent victim possessed by the book of forbidden magic who didn't deserve his fate in the end. This is despite the fact that there is little indication that he was being possessed by the book and thus not in full control of the terrible things he did afterward, as the film only states that the magic compells him to keep using it and is like an unbreakable addiction, not that it dictates what he'd have to use it for. Even if he was possessed, he only resorted to using the book in the first place because of something he perceived as a threat to him (and only him) and his authority as well as to forcefully make the people of Rosas fall back into line once they began questioning what he was doing with their wishes, hardly heroic or noble reasons, making him already a terrible person from the start. And that's without getting into the Fridge Logic on why he even had the forbidden book stored in such an easily accessible location in his castle to begin with if he supposedly knew from the start how dangerous it was to use.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Of the Seven Teens, Simon is the most widely explored in the fandom due to already having gone through his wishing ceremony before the movie begins, his implied Death of Personality that followed it, and his character arc involving betrayal and brainwashing, all of which are prime fanfic fodder.
    • Dahlia is also very popular among the Seven Teens due to her kind personality, being a very positive depiction of a disabled person in an animated movie, and, thanks in part to expanded material like the tie-in book A Recipe for Adventure that explores her personality, history with Asha, and overall backstory, being one of the most developed of the Teens next to the aforementioned Simon.
  • Evil Is Cool: Before the release of the film, King Magnifico was popular due to his cool design and sinister, power-hungry character, with many saying he gives off the vibes of the traditional villains of Disney's past movies. His Villain Song being seen as pretty cool sounding also helps. When people give reviews or general thoughts on the movie, it's not uncommon for Magnifico to be cited as one of the strongest elements, if not the highlight of the whole film.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Star's humanoid form as seen in concept art is universally called Starboy by fans.
    • Rosalina and Luma, the names respectively given to the Blue Fairy, Disney's previous incarnation of the Wishing Star and the Wishing Star from this movie.
  • Fandom-Specific Plot:
    • There is a lot of fanfiction that feature Amaya as evil, like her husband allowing Magnifico to still be evil but happily married. It helps that she was originally meant to be a villain.
    • Post-canon stories where Magnifico has a redemption arc are very common amongst the fandom, along with plots where Asha learns the downsides of wish-granting and concedes that she better understands what Magnifico was dealing with and he may have had a point about the overlooked dangers that magically granted wishes can bring.
    • Canon rewrites to follow the scrapped concept art, such as Star's humanoid form or Amaya being evil alongside her husband, are also very common. Less common, but still prevalent, are fanfics where Asha is Amaya and Magnifico's daughter as well as a prospective apprentice.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
    • It is widely agreed by Disney fans that the original Peter Pan/Genie inspired humanoid concept for Star seen in the film's artbook would have been more interesting than the anthropomorphic star in the final film. To a slightly lesser extent, the concept of the above-mentioned humanoid version of Star being Asha's love interest is another concept that many fans wish was kept, both due to romance plots involving the main character being a staple element of the particular classic Disney movies that Wish was trying to evoke the feel of and due to romance in general having become far less common in post-Tangled Disney animated features.
    • In the film's art book, it is revealed that Queen Amaya was originally a villain in an Unholy Matrimony with King Magnifico. Many fans wish this had been kept for the final film, especially since Disney has never had such a couple before. It probably doesn't help that Amaya's actions in the third act seem to reflect elements of this original approach.
    • When the storyboarded original version of the climax — in which Valentino led a stampede of talking animals against Magnifico, who ate the wishes and took on a One-Winged Angel form in response — was revealed, some fans commented that they preferred it to the actual climax and, contrary to what the filmmakers believed, saw Magnifico as more threatening than in the finished film.
  • Fanwork-Only Fans: Due in part to numerous examples of Fan-Preferred Cut Content, there's a definite trend towards stuff exploring those rather than canon material/characterizations in the film's fanbase, leading to comments that the movie really has a "spite fandom" that is trying to create a superior version.
  • Foe Yay Shipping: There are some fans who ship the heroine Asha and Big Bad King Magnifico online, due to Magnifico often getting the Draco in Leather Pants treatment and the fans feeling that the pair had good chemistry. This may have something to do with "At All Costs", which is sung by both Magnifico and Asha, sounding like a love song when heard out of context.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • To an extent − the film flopped spectacularly on the domestic market (62M$) but had a more respectable run in Western Europe (especially France) and Japan, where its performance was more in line with what you'd expect from a big Disney release. Japan even had a poster for SPY×FAMILY CODE: White made to mimic the poster for Wish.
    • In particular, the Japanese internet adores Magnifico, and the Draco in Leather Pants sentiment towards him is taken much further. The lyrics to "This is the Thanks I Get?" were translated to something along the lines of "How rude, how ungrateful." Due to Japanese society putting a huge emphasis on politeness and gratitude, the Japanese feel as though Magnifico was the true hero of the story because he just wanted some gratitude.

    I-W 
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
    • One of the most common criticisms of the film is that it largely follows the basic Disney animated film formula without much variation and comes off as very bland and safe. While the film is deliberately made to be a throwback to the classic Disney films to commemorate the company's 100th anniversary, many fans and critics were hoping for something more original and ambitious, and that the constant references to previous movies come at the expense of establishing anything unique.
    • Many fans and critics rolled their eyes once it was clear Asha was another upbeat and Adorkable female protagonist in the vein of Rapunzel, Anna, Moana, and Mirabel. While they were already becoming tired of the "quirky and dorky female protagonist" archetype due to its prevalence in Disney animated films since The New '10s, Asha was the breaking point for their tolerance since she lacked the Hidden Depths and Character Development that made her predecessors loved - nothing about her nature or wants changes over the course of the story, and the latter are vague to begin with - with them calling on Disney to break away from the archetype and create more varied female protagonists.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Many Disney fans were excited by the promise of King Magnifico being an "actual", straightforward villain. This was the first time in nearly a decade a Disney film had a straightforward antagonist as opposed to twist villains, posthumous villains, minor obstacles, generic natural forces with no character, or no central villains.
  • Karmic Overkill: Even assuming King Magnifico really was a wholly evil bastard despite the discourse on the matter, many saw being trapped in a mirror presumably for eternity, with the implication that he becomes the Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with no one, even his wife, caring, as excessive for someone seen as the most tragic and nuanced character in the movie. This video analysis argues that, while he is definitely a villain, the film is so poorly written (as an example he isn't actually depicted as a narcissist until his Villain Song, well past the halfway point, and at a time when he has legit reasons to be upset with how he's being treated) that he ends up the most sympathetic character by accident. Not to mention what supposedly made him Beyond Redemption, using the book of forbidden magic, came off as arbitrary.
  • Love to Hate: King Magnifico is greatly loved for being a well written and vibrantly animated villain in the style of classic Disney staple films, Chris Pine's excellent voice acting, his fantastic design and the effects of his powers.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "The Villain Is The Main Girl's Depression Or Something". Explanation
    • wish.com The Movie Explanation
    • "This is the thanks I get?!" Explanation
    • "I let you live here for free and I don't even charge you rent." Explanation
    • Thirty-Something Millennial Parent/Pet Owner Anthem Explanation
    • "Watch out, world, here I are." Explanation
    • The Magic Mirror is now a Tumblr sexyman. Explanation (spoilers)
    • "So I make this Wish to have something more for us than this!" Explanation
    • "I would also like to give a shout out to my fellow nominees, who will henceforth be known as the guys who lost to fucking Adam Sandler!" Explanation
  • Misaimed Fandom: The reasoning behind Draco in Leather Pants and Ron the Death Eater treatment for Magnifico and Asha respectively is often stated to be based in Be Careful What You Wish For and that "not every wish should be granted", similarly to Bruce Almighty. The actual dilemma is not only that the king arrogantly believes he alone should decide, via self-serving and very sketchy logic, which wishes are worth granting or "safe" to grant, but also that he is keeping all the ungranted wishes rather than simply returning them to the people who gave them to him and who as a result can no longer remember what they were but are hoping that their king grants them eventually. Were a wish deemed unsuitable to be granted by his magic due to being potentially disastrous, there is nothing stopping Magnifico from returning the wish and the memory of it to its owner, explaining his reasoning, and assuring them that they can work towards it themselves, but he doesn't do this because he's developed a god complex and wants to keep the masses dependent on him. A repeated criticism levied at Asha is that she thinks all of the wishes should be granted, but this isn't true and is addressed explicitly by the script: when first starting to disagree with Magnifico she says any wishes that are dangerous should be stopped if the person with the wish tries to fulfill it - however Magnifico's definition of what is safe to grant is so broad that most wishes will not be granted or returned (and on top of this he's desperate enough to throw his principles about not granting anything that could be a dangerous wish out of the window when he promises whoever finds the traitor in the kingdom can have their wish granted, no questions asked).
  • Moe: Star is irresistibly adorable to look at; even a few detractors admit as much.
  • Moral Event Horizon: King Magnifico crosses it big time when he uses Star as a Living Battery to absorb the power of all the wishes in Rosas, planning to reduce his people to abject, miserable slaves with no hope of ever escaping his rule, while also magically torturing Asha and furiously blasting the masses of his own subjects when they begin to unite against him with star-powered wishes.
  • More Interesting as a Villain: The consensus is that Queen Amaya lacks proper development for her choice to join Asha's rebellion nor enough sufficient motivation for her complicity in her husband's reign despite her sincerely caring for the people of Rosas and knowing what he does in regards to the wishes isn't right, and so she ends up feeling like a wasted presence in the actual movie. Most fans prefer the original concept where she was a villain along with her husband, finding the Unholy Matrimony approach significantly more interesting.
  • Older Than They Think: A lot of people unsatisfied with the songs blamed them on the hired songwriters coming from the world of Pop music rather than musical theatre, but at least as far back as Peggy Lee's work for Lady and the Tramp in 1955, pop songwriters have handled Disney Animated Canon song scores.
  • Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: The film writes Dahlia and Asha as very close friends that share just about everything together, with Asha often relying on Dahlia for advice and encouragement. On her end, Dahlia hates to see Asha upset and is the first to risk everything to help Asha retrieve the wishes, helping her sneak into the castle and personally distracting King Magnifico herself. Asha also speaks her last words in the climax to Dahlia, and she's the first one besides Asha to stand and start singing. Merchandise like a nightgown with the two of them staring at each other and a doll pack of the two of them only fanned the romantic reading.
  • Ron the Death Eater: As a counterpart to giving Magnifico the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, some viewers point Asha as in the wrong for opposing him. Some claim falsely that she does so only because he won't grant every single wish of every single person in Rosas when what she actually wants is for them to have them back if he won't grant them, so they they could at least try to fulfill them themselves. Some take advantage of the vagueness regarding which wishes are good and bad to argue that the end result of her actions could be an Inferred Holocaust. A common example of her perceived selfishness is her asking him to grant Sabino's wish right after they sang a heartwarming duet together and all but passed the interview, claiming that she's abusing nepotism (and Magnifico was seemingly genuinely hurt by this). It doesn't help that the Teens assume she's vying for the position just to get her family's wishes granted, which is easy to take at face value given she never states any other reason to want it, and/or that she doesn't see anything wrong with Magnifico's system despite it being obvious he'd never grant all wishes given the population size of Rosas and the amount of wish granting ceremonies typically held in a year — until he won't grant the wish of her relative. Still, Magnifico's selfish reasons for hoarding the wishes and his pettiness during the wish ceremony after she merely questions him, far outweighing the "crime", need to be taken into account.
  • Rooting for the Empire: There is no shortage of viewers who, whether they admit to his faults or not, believe Magnifico's rule (before he uses the book anyway) is what is best for the kingdom of Rosas and that Asha should have left well enough alone. The people are safe from the dangers of the outside world under his watch, and clearly happy with the state of things given how prosperous the kingdom is - and despite his selfish reasons for picking some of them, Magnifico grants the heart's desire of as many as fourteen people per year. As well, the only character clearly depicted as "less than" without their wish is Simon (itself muddled by his being the analogue to Sleepy the dwarf and the fact we don't get a clear sense of what he was like before losing his wish.); it isn't until Star arrives and Magnifico is trying to investigate the possible threat that anyone but Asha questions things. With things going so well and the possibility that it could go all downhill without him, many root for Magnifico to maintain the status quo he worked hard to build.
  • The Scrappy: Valentino is by far the least popular of the major characters and seems to only exist for the common Disney trope of the main character having a talking non-human sidekick. Unlike Olaf, who represented the bond between Anna and Elsa, and Mushu, who raised Mulan's spirits when she was down, he's a one-joke character (a baby goat who speaks like a deep-voiced middle-aged man!) who does little more than spout lame one-liners and Puns, verging on The Load, and the few useful things he does could have been reassigned to Star or the Teens. His big song "I'm a Star" is subpar at best and irritating at worst, and he takes up time that could have better established Asha's relationships with Star, her family, and/or the Teens. The general consensus is that the decision to make him talk was a mistake, with some fans opining that they liked him better before Star's magic gave him speech. The other talking animals such as John the bear are actually more helpful and charming than he is, and even keeping The Merch in mind it's not like the movie would have been lacking for toys, etc. without Valentino. Trailer Joke Decay didn't help, as he was prominently featured in the advertising, spoiling a goodly deal of his one-liners.
  • So Okay, It's Average: While the movie's not terribly made, the consensus is that the movie focuses too hard on just referencing Disney's past works and paying homage to them with no original ideas at hand, like how Asha is yet again another Adorkable girl protagonist who speaks in quips. At best it's seen as a "serviceable," simple movie, and not much more.
  • Squick: Dario eating a snot-dripping cookie that Safi just sneezed on.
  • Strawman Has a Point: King Magnifico was meant to be a narcissistic tyrant whose reasons for selectively granting wishes were excuses to prevent any threats to his power and responding to his citizens objecting by descending to such evildoing it subverted any legitimacy or nuance he had. While it doesn't excuse his later actions, many viewers agreed with his argument that some wishes shouldn't be granted as potentially harmful, and despite his selfish ulterior motives agreed he was doing his job as king by bringing peace and prosperity to his kingdom by granting the wishes he did and not granting those that threatened his reign and ability to do so. This, along with his previous apprentices and applicants for the position often using it just to get him to grant their and loved ones wishes, and when he asks his citizen help in figuring out the new magical force they're more concerned what it meant for their wishes, many agreed Magnifico's belief they were ungrateful and their love of him conditional was valid even if he badly overreacted.
  • Tainted by the Preview: Being Disney's Milestone Celebration film, it was the most extensively promoted Disney Animated Canon film since Frozen II; unfortunately potential audiences' response to footage proved too negative to overcome once the mixed-at-best reviews dropped, contributing to the film's disastrous American box-office.
    • Once the first American full-length trailer dropped, King Magnifico came across to many viewers as less the classical Disney Big Bad promised by the filmmakers and more an Anti-Villain who has a point, with nothing to indicate that his trying to stop Asha is motivated by evil intentions. Combined with the already-apparent Disney Cliché Storm of the storyline and characters and skepticism over how well the hybrid 2D/3D animation came off (with a lot of comparisons made to Sofia the First, a Disney Junior show, or Direct-to-Video movies)note , enthusiasm for those not heavily invested in Disney media was deeply mixed.
    • In the final weeks leading up to release, Disney promoted the film on platforms like YouTube and TikTok by extensively previewing the musical numbers, focusing on "Welcome to Rosas", "This Wish", "This Is the Thanks I Get?!", "I'm a Star", and "Knowing What I Know Now". Rather than launching the next "Let It Go" or "We Don't Talk About Bruno" viral hit, they spawned the memes mocking the lyrics listed above, which only got worse when some fans went as far as spreading conspiracy theories accusing Disney of using AI to write said lyrics, if not the movie's entire script.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Queen Amaya had the potential to be a good supporting character if she were given more screentime. It's actually a nice touch that she lied enough to throw off King Magnifico's suspicions, then immediately went looking for a way to stop him and save her kingdom. The movie would've benefited from spending a quiet moment alone with the queen and with Asha talking about how hard it will be for her to take action against her own husband, but instead, she just quickly flips to the side of the good guys. Her Angst? What Angst? also doesn't make as much sense as it otherwise might with this lack of development. Deleted material reveals that when the original concept for her as a co-villain was scrapped, she had the plot/emotional arc functions of two other characters (Dahlia, who became disillusioned with Magnifico after a confrontation with him, and Flazino, a Deleted Role who served as Magnifico's apprentice before being imprisoned and thus had inside information on him and his powers) grafted onto her, which could explain some of these problems.
    • Sabino's wish going ungranted by Magnifico is the lynchpin of the whole conflict because Asha loves him so much, so some viewers were frustrated that he did and mattered so little — he (and Sakina) are blatantly put on the sidelines by Asha midway through the second act and the payoff of his story turns out to be a post-credits gag. Online commenters have asked why he wasn't the one who led the crowd in the "This Wish" reprise to banish Magnifico, which would have been a far more dramatically satisfying development given why his wish wasn't going to be granted. As it stands, he came off to some viewers as lazy for giving up a wish that was so easy to realize under his own power (as most of the wishes turned out to be). Again, he was supposed to be a much more significant character. In early development that made it as far as storyboards, he inspired Asha to fight Magnifico and reclaim wishes while they were hiding out, and died soon after - with Star's humanoid form actually resembling his younger self. In later drafts, he was captured and imprisoned in the dungeon alongside Sakina, though it's not clear if he survived to the end. Even in the finished film he performed "A Wish Worth Making" after Asha retrieved his wish for him. That was cut at the 11th hour because, according to Chris Buck, "the film tells you what it needs" - which implies that the filmmakers didn't think the resolution of his character arc was important (although the fact that he composed and performed it immediately might have had audiences questioning why he never tried to do that before he gave up the wish).
  • Unexpected Character: The closing credits include illustrations of characters from almost every film in the Disney Animated Canon. Almost all of the 1940s package films were excluded except for The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which is where the "unexpected" part comes in. It was also very out-of-left-field for Big Hero 6 to be represented by Yokai/Professor Callaghan, when Baymax is more popular (Rachel Bibb, an artist who worked on this credit sequence, explained on Instagram that they didn't have the rights to use Baymax's design). Fantasia 2000 was represented by "Our Hero" the flamingo from The Carnival of the Animals, Finale, even though Disney usually goes with the Sprite from The Firebird Suite.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: The audience is supposed to see Simon's betrayal of Asha and Star to King Magnifico as a horrible thing and it disgusts the former's friends In-Universe - but at the point in the narrative when Magnifico promises to grant the wish of whoever reveals where the unknown magic has come from, he has not gone Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and as far as all the characters aside from Asha and her nonhuman friends know, he is a trustworthy man who is trying to keep peace in the kingdom. On the other hand, Asha is demanding her friends keep secret both Star's existence and that she's stealing from Magnifico, rather than being upfront with everyone about what's happened. Combined with Star not being totally predictable in how it uses its magic, his friends made him feel self-conscious about being "less" ever since he gave up his wish, and the reveal that said wish was to serve the king as a knight, suggesting deep loyalty, it's more than understandable that he would decide to betray Asha not just for his own good but for that of the kingdom, but only the "selfish" motivation is cited (though at least he is forgiven in the denouement and it's pointed out that his trust in Magnifico was shared by virtually everyone else).
  • Wangst: "This Wish" and Asha's motivations in general shades into this for some viewers, given that she is asking for more than a peaceful, protected kingdom where racial, ethnic, and religious divides are unknown, and no one is shown wanting for food, shelter, etc. Even if Magnifico's system of choosing which wishes to grant is self-serving, and people are slightly "less" without their single wishes, they're all living near-utopian lives, which makes her come across as petty and entitled (especially compared to previous Disney protagonists who personally endured familial abuse, social ostracization, extreme isolation, poverty, etc.).
  • Woolseyism: Several dubs alter the "I let you live here for free and I don't even charge you rent" line in "This Is the Thanks I Get?" with the dubbing scriptwriters knowing how redundant it was. For example, "With me they live free and I don't charge rent" (in the Latin American Spanish dub), thus removing redundancy.


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