The Four Color Media Monitor

Breitbart recently reported the latest Disney cartoon in film theaters, Wish, is tanking more than expected:

...“Wish” wobbled, coming in with $31.7 million over five days and $19.5 million Friday through Sunday. It added $17.3 million internationally. It had been forecast to debut closer to $50 million.

“Wish,” at least, is faring better than Disney’s Thanksgiving release last year: 2022’s “Strange World” bombed with a five-day $18.9 million opening. But hopes had been higher for “Wish,” co-written and co-directed by the “Frozen” team of Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and featuring the voices of Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine. “Wish,” a fairy tale centered around a wished-upon star, is also a celebration of Disney, itself, timed to the studio’s 100th anniversary and rife with callbacks to Disney favorites.

Critics weren’t impressed, saying “Wish” felt more like a marketing than movie magic. So instead of righting an up-and-down year for Disney, “Wish” is, for now, adding to some of the studio’s recent headaches, including the underperforming “The Marvels.” The Marvel sequel has limped to $76.9 million domestically and $110.2 million overseas in three weeks.

But the real problem with the movie, explaining why it's for the best it's failing, is that, as The San Diego Reader says, the film appears to attack God:

Well, it’s a big swing, anyway, even if it’s a miss: Disney’s latest animated effort goes full Carl “We Are Star Stuff” Sagan and takes aim at the Judeo-Christian God. [...]

It's one of the few mainstream reviews I've been able to find so far that gives mention of this troubling direction, but good they brought this up, ditto any appalling use of such a divisive figure as Sagan. The Daily Wire says Ben Shapiro's also commented on this aspect of the movie:

Daily Wire co-founder and Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, for example, said the film’s central idea is a metaphor for God being “bad,” until an “empowered female character” steps in to save everyone.

“It seems that the plot is, essentially, about how God is bad. So, what it is is a king [who] grants people’s wishes, but he has an apprentice … and this apprentice finds out that the king is only selectively granting people’s wishes, and is picking and choosing,” Shapiro recapped the movie’s preview.

“This is a terrible, terrible thing — she will grant everyone’s wishes!” he added sarcastically. “Which, you don’t have to go far afield to understand that what that kind of is is, ‘God is bad because he said no to you sometimes.’ So it would be better if there were an empowered female character to get up and make sure that all wishes be granted across the board.”

So they push all this absurdity at God's expense. That's not a way to win the audience's confidence.

Anyway, as has been noted before, the cartoon's already tanking at the box office, making it yet another modern nose dive for the once worthwhile Disney. If they close their animation doors in the forseeable future, it'll be for the best.

Labels: animation, marvel comics, politics, sales