Hexed

[Jules]

I think my reaction to the trailer falls somewhere in the middle of both extremes. I cannot say I was sold on it or particularly impressed, but nor did I get the feeling the film would necessarily be bad or incompetent based on what I saw. I remain pretty neutral about it.

Admittedly I am crestfallen with the film’s look. Besides Wish, I don’t know what’s taking WDAS so long to hop onto the stylised CG train. I cannot believe this is the same studio that gave us ‘Paperman’ and that should have bested Pixar, Sony, and all the other studios with Tangled’s painterly CG animation had Lasseter not interfered. (He really did not see past the end of his nose there, did he?)

Agreed with Disneynerd that the character designs have exceeded their shelf life, and why WDAS remains stubbornly stuck in this design language is beyond me. For the record, I do not think the designs are bad - far from it. I don’t think any WDAS film in recent memory has had bad designs. It’s just that they’re safe and unexciting.

I wonder what WDAS’ next original project will be in case Hexed disappoints. Let’s hope the film turns out to be a lovely work despite the unoriginal premise.

[PatchofBlue]

what i meant with clichee is that the round big eyed artstyle is soo overdone that literally AI can perfectly replicate that artstyle atp. Disney always tweaked their artstyle throughout the decades and now theyre stuck with this one for 18 years. Even when Mermaid became their first big success in decades they didnt copy and paste the artstyle, they literally experimented a bit with Aladdin (the more fluid rounder shapes), Lilo and Stitchs really striking artstyle and Pocahontas' realism etc. Imagine Pocahontas with Ariels big eyes Personally what i would love to see are character designs in the form of Sleeping Beauty and Pocahontas, they looked so much more realistic and it would be refreshing after all the big eyed Rapunzel clones. I know im repeating myself but the hybrid handpainted gc look like Rapunzel Unbraided would be a dream. Overall i would be obsessed with a wdas movie in the style of Arcane (but the artstyle should be more oil painty and not too graphic). And they should explore different styles of genre tones (like Wes Anderson or smth) I dont think im asking too much from that billion dollar company sis

I see.

To me, Billie and Rapunzel's design don't look more similar than something like Ariel and Esmeralda or Jane. I think that while variation happened across those ten years, there was still sort of a hub that they liked to return to. Projects like Pocahontas, Mulan, or Lilo & Stitch I think represented specific attempts to alter that formula in order to meet the needs of their projects specific ambitions. And those first two also emerged during a time when the company was more confident in their standing with the public. (Lilo & Stitch emerged when they had Chris Sanders who was too precious to stay in one place for long.)

If I'm trying to get into the head of Disney right now, I'm probably trying to imagine what I'd have to do to remind people of how they used to love going to the theaters for Disney movies even ten years ago (and somehow consistently circumventing any examination about whether or not the release strategy of Disney+ is doing anything to sabotage that ...) And so something broadly reminiscent of proven classics would probably seem like a solid direction, and not something I, as an audience member, feel a particular hang-up over.

What's really capturing my imagination with the visuals here is mostly in the rich color palette and shape design which, again, screams FANTASY but in a way that is scouting beyond just a traditional fairy-tale look--a perfectly valid well to draw from, but one they have exhausted aggressively over the last fifteen or so years. And also, the magical effects look really, really neat, and I'm excited to see that all play out on the big screen.

Like, one thing that I will say in defense of Disney is that ... they can't really win when it comes to these things. The internet is just always primed to default to the line of "This looks so cheap, why are these designs so ugly?" whether that style choice emulates or rejects the default style. Honestly, I can't remember the last time Disney or Pixar premiered a first look at an original film and the response wasn't "Is this really the best they could do? These designs look so cheap?" And I'd say the only film where the visuals remained a real point of concern AFTER the release was with "Strange World," and even then, that still shared space with many other points of contention. [And, I guess, "The Good Dinosaur," which had even more narrative issues. Funny how those things tend to come hand-in-hand.]

I might also afford some credit to Disney for recently launching Mirabel from Encanto, who had a decidedly different look from the usual Disney heroine. Maybe with Hoppers and its distinct aesthetic actually striking a chord with some people might give both Disney and audiences the confidence to explore more varied designs going forward. In the meantime, though, I'm actually really here for high-budget Halloweentown.

[Disney Duster]

The trailer didn’t grab me but I love Disney and witches so I am interested for that and I will keep hoping it may be good till I see something that says it will be bad.

[Jules]

PatchofBlue - something I reject wholeheartedly is the claim that WDAS has used generative AI in Hexed. There are whiners already making that claim. Admittedly I have no proof - I am not a fly on the wall in WDAS' offices - but I find it very hard to believe.

Regardless of the quality, or lack thereof, of the studio's latest films, I do not think the talent that roams those halls is in question.

[PatchofBlue]

I think AI poses a legitimate risk to the artistic culture, among other things, but I'll also agree that it has kind of become a buzzword online and is often divorced from observable reality just to make noise. That hasn't been a point I've noticed in this forum's reaction to this movie. Even as I'm reaching different conclusions compared to everyone else, I believe everyone is giving their honest reactions.

My interview process for the film is far from over, but its initial returns have been promising. I'm looking forward to the next five months of anticipation.

[Patricier21]

I think AI poses a legitimate risk to the artistic culture, among other things, but I'll also agree that it has kind of become a buzzword online and is often divorced from observable reality just to make noise. That hasn't been a point I've noticed in this forum's reaction to this movie. Even as I'm reaching different conclusions compared to everyone else, I believe everyone is giving their honest reactions.

My interview process for the film is far from over, but its initial returns have been promising. I'm looking forward to the next five months of anticipation.

If I may ask, what do you mean by your interview process?

[PatchofBlue]

I work for Disney. I'm actually the guy who decides whether there will ever be another Diamond Edition line ...

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Lol jk. Just that I'm still gauging based on the promotional material whether or not it'll be a movie that I like.

[Kyle]

I think AI poses a legitimate risk to the artistic culture, among other things, but I'll also agree that it has kind of become a buzzword online and is often divorced from observable reality just to make noise. That hasn't been a point I've noticed in this forum's reaction to this movie. Even as I'm reaching different conclusions compared to everyone else, I believe everyone is giving their honest reactions.

My interview process for the film is far from over, but its initial returns have been promising. I'm looking forward to the next five months of anticipation.

The whole ai thing has caused a certain amount of hysteria, some of it earned, some of it not. Its not helpful at all that Disney's higher ups have been publicly open to in-cooperating it into their workflow, leaving us to speculate about the extent they are willing to go, while ai has been shoved down our throats everywhere, with little sure fire ways to even detect it often times.

[Disney Duster]

Absolutely right, Patches and Kyle. I sigh for art.

[Thumper_93]

Everybody is mad in X saying that they used AI because the earring and the hair clips disappear in some scenes or change their positions. I don't know what to think about it but honestly I wouldn't be surprised about them using it because almost everybody do it right now. I'll try to find the pics that I saw because it's true that the hair clips change.

[PatchofBlue]

Haven't continuity gaffes existed for a while, though? Well before we thought AI was going to eat everything? Like, didn't Anna accidentally absorb Kristoff's thumb while he picked her up or something?

[Thumper_93]

Haven't continuity gaffes existed for a while, though? Well before we thought AI was going to eat everything? Like, didn't Anna accidentally absorb Kristoff's thumb while he picked her up or something?

Of course they are but in 3D is more unusual to find them because the models are already made, not drawn one by one. There can be glitches of course like thins trespassing other things but I never saw something changing positions on a trailer. There must be an explanation about but I was just saying that I wouldn't be surprised if they would have used AI because all the companies seems to be using it right now.
However I find everything about this movie lazy and without any kind of spirit and imagination. You have to remember the first picture released about the protagonist and how she looked like other characters. Let's see if they release more elaborated stuff to attract audience. For me it's not attractive at all.

[PatchofBlue]

My distrust of corporate recklessness is only matched by my distrust of Tik-Tokers/YouTubers hungry for clicks . At this point, I'm not ready to declare that they're using AI for this movie.

[Sotiris]

The all-new magical coming-of-age saga follows an impulsive and unconventional teenage girl named Billie (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) who discovers secret magical abilities that, once unleashed, hurtle her into a spectacle-filled journey out of suburbia and into a vast witch realm called Hexe. Forced to team up with her cautious mother, Alice (voiced by Rashida Jones), they uncover family mysteries that could change the world of witches forever.

Source: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/news/a ... uncements/

At the center of the story is Billie Doe (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld), introduced as the first Disney heroine to stomp around in combat boots. She's opinionated, scrappy, and stuck in a world of rules she can't stand. Concept art revealed a hooded cape laced with a thorny-vine motif that feels like a nod to Sleeping Beauty. Her mother, Alice, is voiced by Rashida Jones. The character team, led by heads of animation Michael Franceschi and Louis Jones, leaned into the exaggerated proportions of the Milt Kahl era, a design choice the directors said opens up plenty of room for physical comedy.

Hexed opens 15 years before the main events, where a one-year-old Billie discovers magic within her and accidentally tears open a portal to another realm. A ridiculously cute rough-animation pass of baby Billie floating awake and delighting in the portal drew big laughs. Alarmed, Alice gives her daughter a bracelet framed as "protection,” but it secretly caps Billie's magic so she can never open another portal. That tension between limitation and potential becomes the spine of their relationship.

Fast-forward fifteen years: Alice grinds away at the most boring job in the most boring town (the company motto, glimpsed in concept art, reads "Think Inside the Box"), while Billie chafes against school uniforms and rules she didn't choose. After getting hauled into the principal's office over a liberated school mascot (a real owl in a cage), Billie snatches his laptop and bolts for the bathroom to destroy the evidence, only for her bracelet to snag and snap on a hook, sending her powers haywire and dousing the principal in purple goo.

Spooked, Alice prepares to skip town, prying up floorboards to retrieve stashed magical artifacts, including a spellbook. As she packs, a menacing crow-shaped shadow turns out to be just a pigeon. Or was it? Billie, meanwhile, paces a purple bedroom cluttered with bespoke decor (including Aladdin's magic carpet), experiments with her own magic, and opens a portal of her own, leading into a wooden hall lined with witchy ephemera and a mural depicting witches persecuted by settlers before retreating into the woods and their own realm.

There, she's met by a magical book named Elias Quire (Stephen Fry) and an enchanted quill (Tracey Ullman), who put her through a wry, BuzzFeed-style questionnaire, riffing on whether she's ever been persecuted, drowned, or burned at the stake, before admitting her into Hexe, a safe haven for witches.

Billie steps into a world where nature and magic intertwine; beautiful, wild, and a little unhinged. A 2D animation test showed her coaxing a pumpkin to grow, only for it to explode; another found her trying on magical fashions at a mirror, including a black dress with raven wings. Just as she realizes this might be where she belongs, her mother turns up and is promptly captured by Hexe's magical police, leaving Billie to wonder how Alice got there and what the authorities want with her.

To mount a rescue, Billie gains a companion in Bucket, a walking enchanted cauldron who behaves like a loyal dog she can ride (a test animation by Tyler Pacana showed Bucket wobbling on 3 legs and flopping onto its side, using one of its handles like a snout to sniff something out). The pair set out to find Beef Roger Crummchuk, a three-eyed magical cat Veerasunthorn cast as Billie's Yoda, a surly, reclusive Cheshire-by-way-of-the-swamp character with a body that stretches and floats and a head that lifts clean off its neck to fish out, say, a martini glass. He's a bit of a drinker, the directors joked, though strictly in a Disney-magical sense. He packs up his magical hoarder's paradise of a trailer to ferry them on the mission.

From there, the world only gets bigger and stranger: concept art revealed a Maleficent-worthy castle guarded by a giant, chained bat, animals that double as powerful witches, and a tower sequence in which three bats attack Billie before transforming into witches. Eagle-eyed viewers caught Billie's nails (blue, dotted with stars and crescent moons), echoing the Sorcerer's Hat from Fantasia, the studio's own emblem. The throughline, the directors stressed, is family: Billie's full potential is bound up in secrets about her mother's past, and the two will ultimately lift each other up to redefine the world of witches.

Veerasunthorn, speaking as both a daughter and a mother, framed the film as a chance to get curious about the sides of our parents we never thought to ask about: the joy, the mischief, the mistakes, and how much of who we are may have taken shape long before we were born.

Source: https://www.laughingplace.com/disney-en ... ook-recap/

[PatchofBlue]

Those are all some really fun set-pieces they're teasing.

My prediction is that Billie's grandfather was some Voldemort-level baddie and there's some prophecy about his descendants wreaking total devastation over the human and magical world, and Alice stole her away from that world hoping to escape fate. If Billie was magically ordained to be this wicked sorceress, that would parallel her place in the human world as this sort of perpetual trouble-maker and really underscore the normal fears a parent would have over their kid.