In 1937, Walt Disney Studios released their first film: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Seventy-eight years later, Pixar announced that they would be releasing “Toy Story,” a tale of adventure and friendship among toys.
Pixar released this movie through Walt Disney Studios, making it the first collaborative project between these two companies.
Little did Disney or Pixar know, both had kick-started multibillion dollar corporations. “Toy Story” began a franchise that made over 3.2 billion dollars in theaters and “Snow White” started a whole series of Disney princess movies that turned out to be extremely successful, giving Disney the funds to branch beyond princess films.
Despite this past success, Pixar’s most recent release in partnership with Disney, “Elemental,” was a filmmaking failure and Disney’s “Wish” somehow managed to be worse.
Both films contain a severe lack of good characters and world-building. Instead of playing to cliches like one might expect, there are no cliches. There’s just nothing; it’s an empty movie. There’s no plot twist, no character growth, no world development and none of the charming Pixar spark that draws audiences in.
“Elemental” is a world where personified versions of the four elements live in Element City.
The film’s protagonist is a fire person named Ember Lumen; a very creative name, good job Pixar.
She is the daughter of immigrant parents who moved to Element City after they were kicked out of Fireland. Ember grows up while being trained to someday run her father’s shop, but surprise surprise, she has anger issues.
The filmmakers present this as something that is going to be part of Ember’s character arc; that she’s going to learn how to handle stressful situations without exploding. However, her character growth never comes and she ends up running from her problems at the end of the movie.
Throughout the movie, we learn that Ember has little desire to actually take over the shop one day, she’s just saying she does so as to not disappoint her father. By the end of the film, she’s told her father otherwise, and that’s fine. But at the beginning, when she has a meltdown in the basement of the shop, it’s extremely clear that she is going to have to learn how to control her anger when dealing with people, not just customers.
Unless she were to become a hermit, she will always have to deal with people. Because of this, it makes no sense as to why by the end of the movie she hasn’t gotten any better at calming herself down. And then she just leaves the city to explore what she might want to do, leaving audiences in the dark.
The better way they could’ve done this is by the end of the movie, have put Ember in enough spots to practice controlling her anger, and then by the end of the movie, she’s all but mastered it before she leaves the city.
In October 2023, Disney celebrated their one hundred year anniversary, capstoned by Disney’s “Wish.”
It is set in the Kingdom of Rosas and is ruled by King Magnifico, a sorcerer who has the power to grant the wishes of the kingdom. The movie is about the classic Disney trope of granting wishes. The movie is about the classic Disney trope of granting wishes.
At age 18, the residents of Rosas surrender their wishes to King Magnifico in exchange for forgetting them.
Our protagonist, Asha, is interviewing for a position as Magnifico’s apprentice when she learns about his process of taking and granting only specific wishes. She confronts the king and he lashes out at her, telling her that he’s not going to grant her grandfather’s wish.
The thing that doesn’t make sense is that she threatens to expose his doings to the kingdom, he threatens her family’s wishes, and then he just lets her go.
To add to that shaky introduction, Asha is the exact opposite of past Disney princesses. She’s supposed to be brave, funny, and save the kingdom from evil. However, as a character, she’s just a compilation of traits from past Disney princesses. She doesn’t have her own unique spark that really brings her character to life.
To add to that, King Magnifico is doing what he’s doing for the good of Rosas, which, if you look at it from that perspective, is a valid argument.. Her interference with his system could mess up the happiness of the kingdom. From this lens, Asha is the antagonist.
If the wishes of the people are going to be bad for the kingdom, then eliminating them and granting them at will seems like the best solution.
From this angle, Asha is actually trying to disrupt the peace of the kingdom, making this a huge plot hole; the whole drive for the movie is gone.
The character of Asha also has no personality. She exhibits all the characteristics of past Disney princesses but with no added unique spark of her own. She’s got the bravery and courage of Merida, the adventurous nature of Moana and the spunk of Anna, but she brings nothing new to the table.
What she does bring is the continuation of Disney’s “adorkable” princess era.
Audiences are getting tired of this trope. Add that to the horrible plot of the movie, the lack of a clear villain and the protagonist’s lack of originality, this movie is the start of Disney going downhill.
Together with the flop that was Pixar’s “Elemental,” both corporations are starting to deteriorate.
If they want to release movies that are original, creative and compelling for the audience, they each need to take more time developing their characters and not playing with tropes.
If Disney and Pixar want to recover from these two filmmaking disappointments, an emphasis must be placed on character building, world building and the storyline. Otherwise these companies might be on the downhill slope forever.
