ENG-2005: Wish Podcast

The speaker discusses their experience watching the Disney movie Wish, which was released in 2023. They chose to watch it with fresh eyes and did some research on the movie's inspiration, which was Disney's centennial anniversary. The movie incorporates elements from older Disney films like Snow White, Pinocchio, and Sleeping Beauty. It emphasizes the importance of exploring, following dreams, and diversity. The movie also highlights the power of friendship and defeating evil together. The speaker enjoyed the visuals, engaging storyline, and connection to other Disney movies. They recommend watching Wish and emphasize the message of following dreams and surrounding oneself with good people. Hello, so this is Kimberly Stallworth with my podcast. So I decided to watch the Disney movie Wish, which is a newer movie. I'm pretty sure it came out in 2023, I want to say. Yeah, the reason that I chose this movie is because I've never seen it before, or I think I've only heard about it maybe when it first came out, so not really ever since then. But I wanted to go in with fresh eyes, like a clean slate, no feelings towards the movie because I've never really heard a lot about it. So what I did first was I did some research about Wish and why anyone even thought to create the movie in the first place. And it was in celebration of Disney's centennial anniversary, which is also known as their 100th anniversary, which is a big deal, obviously, it's been going on forever. And I feel as if they did a really good job, like the producers and everyone like that, to connect, to tie this movie with Disney's continuous theme of wishes coming true. Then I did more research on the WaltDisneyCompany.com and a direct quote from the website is, Wish is inspired by many of Disney's Animation 61 feature films over its history, but three films in particular stand out, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1940's Pinocchio, and 1959's Sleeping Beauty. A few of those reasons why those connect to this movie is the different color choices that were decided to use in this movie, like they said watercolors were a big choice to me, which were incorporated into those other movies also. The reason for this movie is to remind people that they should constantly be exploring, which is also a direct quote from the director. The main goal was to try to show the importance of exploring and following your dreams and just going out and experiencing new things. To start with the arguments, I think they apply but also don't because I feel like this movie was kind of in its own way. Producers and directors and everything threw different ties to older movies into this one, which I talk about later, but I feel like I can't really connect it. I feel like there's no movie like really like it that I can think of off the top of my head or that I thought of while watching it. Newer Disney movies have included more diversity, which I think is really important to open children's eyes at a young age so that they can understand that people are different. People may have different skin colors, people may have grown up in a different place or with different things and that's okay. Not everyone has to be just like them. This movie also, one of the big things that I took out of was that it shows that women can be in big important positions as well as men because closer to the end of the movie, the queen, like after they do their stuff with the king, the queen, she's solo queening and leads the, I don't know if I want to call it like a city, a town, a country, something similar like that. It's called Rosas and she leads it all by herself, which is also something important to instill in anyone watching or even younger people. When watching this movie, they bring up the importance of wishing, which I feel like connects similarly to other, like the way that Zipper talked about it, Zyper, I'm not really sure how to pronounce his name, but he talked about how Disney movie takes things and makes them more commercial, which I feel like in this movie, it kind of did because I watched it on Disney plus and there's like a shop option, like it says, wish, enjoy access to merchandise. So you can look at it that way, like it didn't used to be that way. So I do agree with what Zyper's saying when it comes to that aspect of his argument. So they, like I said, they bring up the importance of wishing and it shows like physically how much pain people are in if their wishes get crushed, which they physically do, and how much happier people will be if they get their wish granted. But the main twist of the movie is most people will never get their wish granted, even though they stay loyal to the king and do everything they're supposed to do because some wishes are too vague, but the people themselves don't know and will just have the hope, like always have the continuous hope that their wish will be granted, but never know that it probably won't. Similar to the approach that Tiffin's article took with the exploration of visuals and different narrative techniques, Wish uses different elements to create like what I thought was extremely engaging and just like a fascinating story and film. Like I love the storyline, the film, the colors were bright and just like just made me happy to watch it. The film did keep my attention the whole time, which is a hard thing for me because I just, I'm not good with sitting still and watching movies without picking up my phone or getting distracted, which didn't happen this whole time. And it also touched on Disney's classic history when it comes to fairy tales with their dynamic upbeat music and the unforgettable and classic evil versus good. This next part I kind of talk about something personal, not really, I kind of just touch on it, nothing too deep, but my dad has always instilled in me the importance of making connections with good people, surrounding yourself with good people, and in the movie closer to the end, all the people come together and like rebel against the king. And it shows the importance of friendship and connections. And then when everyone bands together, they defeat evil together, which wouldn't be possible like it just the main character Asha did it by herself or if two people did it or if five people did it, but it shows that everyone comes together to defeat evil and good becomes more powerful than it ever was in the first place. So the next thing I talk about is how, sorry, I just lost my place, the different parts of other movies and storylines, but this one includes specifically, first we have Moana, because in Moana, I'm not sure if you're familiar, but Moana sets out to save her family and like restore her town and save everyone, be the hero basically. And Asha does the same thing and is determined to save her family, despite knowing how dangerous it's going to be. There is Talking Animals, which goes with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. The castle is similar to Rapunzel's castle that she's locked in and Sleeping Beauty's castle that she's asleep in. This is one that I actually didn't catch, but I did find it on the Walt Disney website that as Asha sings one of the songs, it's called The Wish, which to me is a turning point in the movie that song, her hair, like just the angle of the camera, her hair flows like Pocahontas did when she sang Colors of the Wind in that movie. Closer to the end also, there's Peter Pan. He talks about building a flying machine, connects with a lady who dreams to fly. One of Asha's friends is always Grumpy, like Grumpy the Dwarf, one of the seven dwarves. That includes Cinderella and how her godmothers have a magic wand. Asha in the end receives a magic wand from the star and she asks her friends, like, oh what am I supposed to do with this? And her friends are like, become our fairy godmother of course, so there was a little time to that. They zoom in, I'm sorry, when they zoom out of the castle in the end, they kind of have fireworks around, which, you know, if you've been to Disney you would know, like I wouldn't just know that if I've never seen it, but yeah. And then one of the quotes that the king says when he turns evil is Mirror Mirror on the wall who's the handsomest of them all, which is just like the quote from Snow White. And then to close, I may be a little biased obviously because if you couldn't tell I really like this movie, but I love it even more than just like the visuals and everything because it shows that even at a young age, like Asha was only 17 in this movie, and it shows that she, like you can achieve big things if you just follow your dreams and just do what you know is right, not what everyone else is doing, which to me is really important to instill in someone younger and just for people to see the importance of building connections and surrounding yourself with the right people and the benefit that it can have on you and your power together. I love this movie, I would definitely recommend it, and I honestly can't think that there was like a part that I didn't like about it. And I was surprised how much it connected to Tiff, sorry, excuse me, to Tiff and Zyper, Zyper, sorry, I don't know how to pronounce it, but I was so surprised how much it connected to their articles. Like I was like in shock how broad those, how broad yet so specific those articles were because it seems like Disney follows a similar storyline every time and Zyper's the first one that picked up on it because like I said in my analysis, I had no idea that like the two were even related to each other until I read it and then put two and two together in my brain, which I thought was absolutely insane, but I hope you enjoyed, I hope you'll watch the movie and love it as much as I did, so thank you.