Wish

[rodrigo_ca]

Is it me or the animation looks... choppy? I'm very bad at noticing details like this so I don't know what to think of this one.

By the way, in Brazil it also has a subtitle Wish: The Power of Wishes

[Farerb]

I honestly didn't expect this teaser to get such mixed reactions from people. I know that there have been conversations about MCU fatigue, but what if people are experiencing Disney fatigue overall?

[Farerb]

The background characters here look disastrous:

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

I honestly didn't expect this teaser to get such mixed reactions from people. I know that there have been conversations about MCU fatigue, but what if people are experiencing Disney fatigue overall?

I don’t think there’s MCU fatigue or Disney fatigue, just mediocre storytelling fatigue.

[carolinakid]

Perhaps woke fatigue??

Even if I were into this “new kind of heroine/she’s her own hero saving her community” crap, having watched the trailer several times I was thinking, “Haven’t I seen this story/type of plot before? Over and over?”

I was definitely underwhelmed.

And I loved De Bose in West Side Story.

The song was unmemorable, although I was grateful De Bose didn’t resort to that annoying melisma that the faux Little Mermaid uses. At least not during the bit that I heard.

[Farerb]

Disney fans waste no time in spotting easter egss! While some of these are obviously a stretch and it's way too soon to actually know if any of them are actual references, it's still a fun little video to see:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrjSHErM ... MyMTA2M2Y=

First shot is more Pinocchio than Cinderella.

[Disney's Divinity]

The movie will have the subtitle "Asha and the Lucky Star" in France.

I think that or simply "The Lucky Star" is a better subtitle overseas than the "Kingdom of Wishes" would be. You know, I was thinking earlier yesterday how funny it would be if the star's name is THE Stah. I think they may be trying to make it work like Tinker Bell, and how she would leave magic dust below as she flies around, deliberately as another reference. If this film is a hit, I could imagine the star becoming part of Disney's logos and intro pieces in place of Tinker Bell.

I don't think there's fatigue. I think there's simply a bull's-eye on Disney these days from outside sources, which means there will be more criticism of everything really.

I love the poster, too, btw. Something about the image reminds me of Kingdom Hearts--the final scene of the first game when all the destroyed worlds are being restored and the sky is covered with meteors (the worlds being put back in their spots in the sky). With Raya and this both having conceits that feel very KH-esque, it's hard for me to see it as a coincidence; I think it's caused by WDAS and PIXAR having been involved by Lasseter in the making of Kingdom Hearts 3 because of his micromanaging (needlessly, but whatever), I think that put the series on the animators' radar and gave them inspiration because of it. On top of the poster and the crossover aspect, King Magnifico being a wolf in sheep's clothing may be inspired by the first Kingdom Hearts as well--Ansem in that game (before being re-written later in the series anyway) was a leader who was believed to be good before being revealed to be a villain who betrayed his people by using them for experiments (in pursuit of curiosity / power) and causing an apocalypse of sorts.

[PatrickvD]

I like the way the animation looks. The star in particular.

But the plot and characters look like something that would have been shelved by WDAS 20 years ago. Also the ‘100 years in the making’ angle is kinda ridiculous.

[Woodrow Pride]

I really hope Walt Disney Animation Studios succeeds in launching an animated film w/ a new animation style that hits at the box office with #Wish. I already see people whine & bitch about “TV animation,” “filtered #Frozen,” and “AI-animated.”

I certainly don’t agree with them either. The animation is beautiful, I don’t think anybody disagrees. Animation meaning, the movement of the characters. It is just like all the other WDAS movies, and I mean, how can it not, they’re the same animators and mentors. There is absolutely no way that it could possibly be AI animated, as AI animation doesn’t have enough input to be able to use the complex controllers of a 3D rig in order to create good output. Plus, AI animation hasn't really been seen by the general public except for some shots in the live-action TLK.

I find these very insulting to the animators workin’ their life, heart, sweat, blood, tears, and asses off to make #Wish the movie that #Tangled would have been if it had not been for disgraced monster John Lassetter.

Yes, of course, the animators are working their hearts out to make Wish (because that’s all animation is: showing your emotion through the movement of a character). And as I said, they’ve done a good job. It’s just the visualization and rendering of the film that takes people off guard. And still, to be able to do those stylized looks and put that on top of the rendered image is super hard and requires a lot of hi-tech effort, but some people just don’t think it looks that good. And, um, not to be rude or anything but Lasseter is spelled with one “t”.

It’s not their fault that John Lassetter ruling over Walt Disney Animation Studios before the #MeToo movement forced him out is why it took so long for Disney to make a movie with the Hyperion software, the same software that was used on Disney’s Oscar-winning animated short that inspired #Wish’s animation style in #Paperman.

Um, Hyperion is a renderer. In case anybody doesn’t know what a renderer is, a renderer takes all the geometry of a model and inputs of surfacing and light to create an accurate simulation of how light interacts with surfaces, and places that information into a realistic looking image (assuming it’s a good renderer) using the rendering equation (however, renderers can also do non-photorealistic rendering, which can give you more stylized outputs).

WDAS was using pre-RIS (REYES) Renderman to render their movies from Tangled to Frozen, while Pixar was using RIS Renderman since Cars (this is probably because Lasseter and Ed Catmull drew a fine line between WDAS and Pixar and didn’t want them sharing software that much). John Lasseter was there when they developed Hyperion for Big Hero 6 in 2014, in order to tackle bigger technical challenges like the subsurface scattering on Baymax. And the reason Paperman was Oscar-winning is not because of the software, it’s because of the story, and the people behind the story.

All these various complaints & crap are why Disney may continue being more hesitant to take creative risks and might fire Jennifer Lee [...]

I don’t believe these complaints will cost Jennifer Lee her job, and if Wish does bad, the next logical thing to do is to not do pseudo 2D/3D anymore, and either go full 3D or full 2D. But that’s just my opinion.

Again, I don’t really think that the animation or the rendering is the problem. Because from what I’ve seen the average viewer can’t tell the difference between good animation and bad animation (animation meaning, the movement of characters). It takes an extreme attention to detail and timing in order to see animation for what it is. Ultimately what makes or breaks this movie is the story. Honestly, what you see on the screen, no matter how good or bad it looks, will never improve (and rarely impair) a story. Whether it’s badly rendered toys or stylized goats, you will forget about what you’re seeing on the screen if it's a good story. But yes, I think we should step back and give this movie more of a clean slate.

Is it me or the animation looks... choppy? I'm very bad at noticing details like this so I don't know what to think of this one.

Yes, the animation looks choppy because there isn’t any motion blur. Here’s the problem: motion blur can’t exist in hand-drawn animation, unless you smear the drawings in a certain way in the middle of movement (in order to compensate for this, hand-drawn animation usually uses huge amounts of squash and stretch). Since Wish has a hand-drawn stylized look, they can’t put motion blur.

For those of you who don’t know what motion blur is, motion blur is when a camera shutter can’t close fast enough in order to create a crisp image. This results in the picture getting blurred. A higher shutter speed will be able to close fast enough in order to capture fast movements without getting blurred (which is how high-speed cameras are made: capturing high-shutter footage and playing it back at a slower framerate).

WDAS renders all their movies in 24 fps, so 24 images flash in front of you every second. Therefore, animators can only animate 24ths of a second. This usually looks fine if you have motion blur, because during quick movements the object in motion is blurred from point A to point B. Since Wish is 24fps and has no motion blur, every single frame is as though the camera has an infinite shutter speed, but only going 24 frames per second. This makes it look as though it clips from one position to the other, because every frame is crisp, and it doesn’t blur motion together.

Take a look at this image:



These teapots are moving super fast, but you can’t see that. It looks like they’re just floating. That’s because the image is crisp; not motion blurred.

This image is motion blurred:



Here you can see that it’s the same frame, but the renderer has taken the frames before and after along with the previous image in order to blur it together and create smooth motion.

Sorry for the long technical explanations. But I do hope somebody appreciates them.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they used that style to cover the fact that they didn’t have enough time to make the movie. I mean, they started the movie in January of 2022, it’s been just a little over a year.

Remind me how we know this?

What Farerb said. And this:

Development of Wish began in January 2022 when Lee was writing the original film at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_(film)

[PatchofBlue]

Remind me how we know this?

What Farerb said. And this:

Development of Wish began in January 2022 when Lee was writing the original film at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_(film)

I still feel like I'm missing something. Has Lee specifically mentioned anywhere that this was the film she was working on? The Hollywood Reporter article doesn't mention anything about "Wish" or when that mystery film was supposed to come out. It doesn't even say specifically how long she had been working on that film before the article was published. And the Wikipedia page doesn't list any source to back up that claim.

Sidenote, I am starting to think that Disney chose a really dumb title for this film. Anytime I Google "Disney Wish," I have to scroll through a ton of links about their cruise liner ... oops.

[D82]

New image of Asha and Star from the Disney presentation at CinemaCon. Was anyone else surprised by Star's size? I didn't expect it would be so small.


Source: https://twitter.com/LePrinceKido/status ... 4057395201

I still feel like I'm missing something. Has Lee specifically mentioned anywhere that this was the film she was working on? The Hollywood Reporter article doesn't mention anything about "Wish" or when that mystery film was supposed to come out. It doesn't even say specifically how long she had been working on that film before the article was published. And the Wikipedia page doesn't list any source to back up that claim.

We still don't know if Wish is the same movie Carlos López Estrada was working on before leaving the studio or not. The fact that Lee started working on it on January 2022 doesn't necessarily mean that's when it started being developed. I hope we get more details on this when the press for the film begins.

Sidenote, I am starting to think that Disney chose a really dumb title for this film. Anytime I Google "Disney Wish," I have to scroll through a ton of links about their cruise liner ... oops.

Tell me about it. Just for that I wish they had picked another title.

[carolinakid]

I saw an ad for Prilosec during Outnumbered today and the little animated ball of fire representing acid reflux looked so familiar to me. Then I realized it looked just like the wishing star from Wish.

Check out the ad and let me know what you think.

[Disney's Divinity]

Personally, I love the star's design. The star was probably the thing where I was most worried it could turn out bad, but it's adorable. Not quite as cute as Pua and Figaro (the cutest), but right there. The makings of millions of plushies right there. It vaguely reminds me of Kirby (the video games) for some reason--or maybe it's Mario I'm thinking of? So random here, but for some reason I'm imagining Harvey Fierstein voicing the star. I mostly hope the star is an unvoiced character--I think it would be cuter that way--so I don't know why that thought is stuck in my head, just a funny image, I guess.

I also would have preferred a different title. But that song lyric in the trailer "I make this wish...." with the logo appearing simultaneously does sell the concept of the movie really well, imo.

[Farerb]

This is very disappointing:

https://twitter.com/ScottMendelson/stat ... 3szxQ&s=19

[Farerb]

The background characters here look disastrous:

By the way I think the man next to Asha's mother is Asha's father and Asha is probably biracial, which makes sense because Ariana DeBose is also biracial.

[D82]

There'll be a presentation about Wish at Annecy. A new animated short from WDAS will also be screened at the festival. I guess it'll most likely play in front of Wish in theaters:

In celebration of 100 years of Walt Disney Animation Studios, the event will enjoy several delights including:

• An all-new short from Walt Disney Animation Studio directed by Trent Correy and Dan Abraham screened during the Opening Ceremony.
• Walt Disney Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Lee returns to Annecy to share details about the all-new original feature film Wish, for which she is both Executive Producer and a writer on the project.
• Fantasia 2000, directed by Eric Goldberg, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy
• Jennifer Lee and Eric Goldberg will present a special screening of “Fantasia 2000”

Source: https://whatsondisneyplus.com/annecy-fi ... tion-fire/

By the way I think the man next to Asha's mother is Asha's father and Asha is probably biracial, which makes sense because Ariana DeBose is also biracial.

I think Asha will indeed be biracial, but that man looks more like her grandfather than her father to me. Asha's mother looks like she's in her forties or so, while he seems at least in his sixties to me and normally there isn't a big age gap between couples in Disney movies. I may be wrong, though.

Regarding the song showed at CinemaCon, I believe all the shots from the trailer below are probably from that musical number. And right after the song, most likely it's when she makes the actual wish and the star appears.

Personally, I love the star's design. The star was probably the thing where I was most worried it could turn out bad, but it's adorable. Not quite as cute as Pua and Figaro (the cutest), but right there. The makings of millions of plushies right there. It vaguely reminds me of Kirby (the video games) for some reason--or maybe it's Mario I'm thinking of? So random here, but for some reason I'm imagining Harvey Fierstein voicing the star. I mostly hope the star is an unvoiced character--I think it would be cuter that way--so I don't know why that thought is stuck in my head, just a funny image, I guess.

I like Star's design too. I believe it was already revealed at D23 the character wouldn't talk.

[carolinakid]

Re: Asha’s father. I thought you guys were referring to the tall guy behind the supposed mother. He’s good looking in a big lug kind of way. Does he look much younger to you than the woman in front of him?

To me it makes sense that the Star is mute as it’s been stated it’s “non-binary”, right?
If the Star had a voice one could make the assumption it were male or female.

[D82]

Re: Asha’s father. I thought you guys were referring to the tall guy behind the supposed mother. He’s good looking in a big lug kind of way. Does he look much younger to you than the woman in front of him?

Oh, I didn't think of that one since I assumed he was one of Asha's friends. He does look younger than the mother to me, but who knows. We you referring to that one instead, Farerb?

To me it makes sense that the Star is mute as it’s been stated it’s “non-binary”, right?
If the Star had a voice one could make the assumption it were male or female.

It's not confirmed the Star is "non-binary", but yes, I imagine that might be one of the reasons they decided not to give it a voice.

[Farerb]

Oh, I didn't think of that one since I assumed he was one of Asha's friends. He does look younger than the mother to me, but who knows. We you referring to that one instead, Farerb?

No. I referred to the one who's too old. I also think that the younger one, "Sleepy", is one of Asha's friends.

It's not confirmed the Star is "non-binary", but yes, I imagine that might be one of the reasons they decided not to give it a voice.

I don't think the Star is the non binary character, I think it'll be a cop out on Disney's part and they'll be called out on it and I believe that Disney knows it. In my opinion, one of Asha's friends is non binary, perhaps "Grumpy"?

[UmbrellaFish]

But why wouldn’t the star be non-binary?? Stars are non-binary in real life.