"This Wish," The Most Awkward "I Want" Song

“This Wish” sounds more like a demo rather than a finalised song.

To me the most egregious line is “throw caution to every warning sign.” It’s like they wanted to use the phrases “throwing caution to the wind” and “ignoring the warning signs” but couldn’t decide on one so they just merged them, failing to realize that merging them just…doesn’t make any sense at all. It really adds to the whole “ai-generated” feel of the rest of the movie, cause that’s exactly the kind of blunder an AI trying to analyze human speech would make.

It’s weird they wanted another radio hit when “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” was arguably the biggest hit of ‘Encanto’ and it’s a song that’s fully reliant on the story and even adds further context. ‘Wish’ just has songs because it’s supposed too, not because it’s adding further context to the story. As a result, it feels like a bad jukebox musical rather than an original piece

I'm honestly starting to feel like Julia Michaels was set up for failure from the very beginning, from being given little context on to what the damn movie was even supposed to be about, to being given 3 weeks to produce and finalize such an important song for the protagonist, to even being hired as the film's songwriter in the first place as it's clear that she's working way outside her element

Honestly I cannot take Asha's "Something more than this" line. Girl, something more than what? You live in a flourishing kingdom that doesn't charge anyone rent (as memed on as that line is, that is extremely generous of Magnifico) and has the optional chance to get your wish granted (I seriously will never understand why she was so distressed and shocked so many wishes dont get granted. Girl 1 wish a month means 12 total, unless your kingdom has a population of like 60 why is it that surprising.)

LESSON: don't try to Miranda if you're not Miranda

I feel like pop songs are supposed to be a little vague so people can interpret the song however they like, especially with break up songs. Musicals need to be more specific because they’re about the character and not the audience.

Why did they direct her to sing ‘weighed down’ as a high note?

"Throw caution to every warning sign" is such an odd line its REALLY making me believe my theory that these songs were AI assisted. That line and Magnifico's infamous "I let you live here for free and I dont even charge you rent". I refuse to believe those lines were written by actual, thinking human beings

The vagueness of the song really just sums up the biggest issue Asha herself has a protagonist. They gave an "I Want" song to a character who doesn't want anything. In most Disney movies - and most Hero's Journey narratives in general - the protagonist starts out with personal goals and ambitions that drive their actions to start with (Rapunzel wants freedom, Anna wants true love, Mirabel wants her family's acceptance, etc). And by the end of the story, they either achieve their goal, or they go on an arc where they gain something more meaningful instead, and realise what they wanted wasn't what they needed. There's a good starting point at first with Asha initially wanting to be Magnifico's apprentice, but then not even 15 minutes in, that's immediately swept under the rug and has nothing to do with the rest of the story. They don't even have her making a wish of her own, despite the entire plot revolving around her conflict with a villain whose entire thing is hoarding people's wishes. As a result, Asha has literally no personal desires or ambitions, and spends the rest of the movie as a passive non-entity who just goes and does whatever Star prompts her to do. She's such a bland and poorly-defined lead that the only thing she has even remotely resembling a motivation is just for other people to get what they want.

As much as you might hate it, another example of a song-writer heavily involved in the story of the movie...Lin Manuel Miranda! He did a lot of work with Encanto, and pushing through the first song before Disney could refuse or change things is how he got them to agree to such a large family in the first place.

This song really sounds like something i'd make up and sing to myself while walking or in the shower. Just, like, putting high notes wherever, no real throughlines, the occasional questionable rhyme scheme... I mean, if the character is making this up as she goes, then I guess it at least makes sense in context!

I think you're right about Disney keeping Wish bland to make it marketable. But I'd go a step further, and speculate they may have commissioned as non-specific a song as possible so they could still use it if they decided to completely overhaul the script again. Disney seems very scissor-happy in the editing room lately, and we can theorise Wish underwent at least one complete storyboard change by the concept art of 'Star Boy'.

It being written by pop song-writers pretty much explains it all, doesn’t it? But tbh I’m sure there’s plenty of pop song writers who can come up with better song structures and lyrics than Wish’s song-writers.

Everything I’ve seen about this movie makes me feel like it was written backwards. They wanted a 100-year celebration movie, so they called it ‘Wish’ to bring Disney full-circle, then were forced to create a villain who makes no sense. They wanted to have a popular song, so they wrote an I Want song because those do well, and ended up with a flavourless pop song instead of a classic Disney song. They wanted an art style that combined the new and the old, so made a weird hybrid 2D/3D thing that ends up lacking the hand-drawn charm and the modern developments and the art style just looks like a straight-to-DVD sequel.

So I make this wish That Disney would start giving a hoot about the good songwriting and storytelling again

Disney probably wanted the songs to be vague so that they can be played on the radio as a generic pop song, but let's be honest: the real reason is that they didn't have a script ready so the songwriters really have no idea what these songs are supposed to be about. They just have a vague idea of what the story is about, so they write music with that genericness in mind, without the characters singing anything specific to their situation or characterization, because they aren't given what these are. We know from the documentary on Frozen 2 that they were making a movie in search of a story, and even lifted an entire song from some other movie in production ("Into the Unknown", I think). It's safe to say that Disney's animation discipline has been shot to shit.

To give credit to "For the First Time in Forever" I don't think it's entirely dependent on its context. Anna spends the song listing off everything she didn't get to do from balls, romance and mundane things like just having company to talk to. Furthermore, both Anna and Elsa bring up the gates being opened which is what is mainly happening for the first time in forever and what makes Anna break out into song. It's obvious enough to tell that Anna is singing about wanting to be able to enjoy her freedom that everything she's sung about makes it clear she's been denied

I'll say the dissonance is also included in the animation. A lot of people confuse that with the film's rendering, but the actual acting of Asha in this song is incredibly derrivative when you comapre it to Tangled, Frozen, and Moana. The context is actually quite melancholic; Asha has just run from her home, upset and confused about Magnifico refusing her Saba and mother's wishes and her family are angry at her for questioning him about it. She's confronted with a massive lack of support in the face of seeing a problem she wants to solve. Her want is to confront Magnifico and allow all of Rosas to have their wishes granted. It's fierce and spiteful want, it isn't a longing or excitement the way Anna or Rapunzel's are, but despite that she's animated cheerfully smiling and running up to reach for the stars at the end in almost the exact same way they do. This is the issue all of Wish faces and it guts Asha's identity as a protagonist. She isn't allowed to manifest her wants in a unique, motivated way. It's fascinating to hear you discuss it from a song point of view and it really makes me wonder what a good "I want" song for Asha would have been

This song feels like someone built a puppy and every bone in the skeleton is upside down, and they trained it to do a little dance and make you go "aww" while it begs for death.