As part of the final full day of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Disney debuted a whopping 20 minutes of its upcoming animated feature “Wish.” Meant as a celebration of Walt Disney Animation Studio’s legacy, with nods to its illustrious past, it also marks a bold step forward visually for the studio, incorporating a painterly art style that sets it apart from virtually every other computer-animated movie in the library.
Originally announced at D23 Expo in 2022, back then what exactly “Wish” was remained fuzzy. During that presentation, it was mentioned that the movie would make nods to the company’s past but that it would be an original musical fairy tale, full of characters both dashing and devilish. Also that it would serve as a kind of origin story for the wishing star that has been featured in so many Disney classics. It was intriguing and confounding in equal measure. Having now seen 20 minutes of the movie, the intent of “Wish” has now been cleared up.
As Jennifer Lee, the chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios and co-writer of “Wish,” said during the presentation, work began on “Wish” in 2018. The goal of the movie was to “celebrate a century of storytelling,” since they knew it would be released as part of the Disney 100 celebration. They looked at some classic Disney development artwork by artists like Gustaf Tenggren, but instead of using those as a jumping off point, the filmmakers (led by directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn) wanted the artwork to transition to the film seamlessly.
In order to accomplish this, they developed a new style that would give everything a painted quality, something like watercolor. To tell you how long Disney has wanted to implement something like this, Glen Keane, when he was directing “Tangled” (then called “Rapunzel Unbraided”), attempted this look. (He wanted to see brush strokes on characters and backdrops.) It never happened. But as Lee pointed out during the presentation, a number of recent Disney shorts (like “Paperman,” “Feast” and most recently “Far from the Tree”) successfully married the artfulness of traditional animation with the control and razzle-dazzle of 3D animation. Now it was time for a feature to do that too.
The story of “Wish” involves a young woman named Asha (Ariana DeBose), who lives in a fictional Eurasian kingdom. She dreams of helping her elderly grandfather and in order to facilitate her wish, puts in for an internship with King Magnifico (voiced and sung by Chris Pine), the ruler of the land and a sorcerer capable of granting people’s wishes. She eventually teams up with the actual wishing star (which is very cute) and her goat Valentino (who now talks like Alan Tudyk thanks to the star’s powers) to stop Magnifico and make sure the people of her kingdom get their wishes granted.
Of course, the big highlight of the footage was the two songs that they showcased – one (“This Wish”) sung by Asha (DeBose actually sang this song at D23 last year), which is her “I wish” song and is extremely powerful; the other is a more jaunty call-and-response type song by Asha and various woodland animals as the star gives them the ability to sing and, more importantly, emote. (This is also how the goat talks.)
Julia Michaels, who has written songs for Gwen Stefani, Jesse Ware, Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa, wrote all of the songs for “Wish” and at 29 is the youngest songwriter for a Disney animated feature ever. She seems to have risen to the challenge; the songs are wonderful and the crowd was really feeling them. Also, this section of the movie was uninterrupted and the two songs were fairly close together but it never felt like too much music.
Inspired by “Sleeping Beauty’s” use of CinemaScope (the animators supposedly worked on pieces of paper the size of bedsheets), “Wish” will also be presented in CinemaScope with compositions that harken back to that earlier Disney classic. When Lee was talking about the film’s Thanksgiving release date, she reiterated that this was a big Disney movie that needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible. After watching the footage, hearing the songs and understanding what Buck, Veerasunthorn, Lee and the rest of the team are trying to accomplish, it doesn’t feel like a suggestion but a necessity.
“Wish” hits theaters on November 22.
