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‘Songbirds & Snakes’ reigns supreme over Thanksgiving stretch with $42m five-day; ‘Napoleon’ steps on Disney’s ‘Wish’ with $32m+
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- Authors
- Anthony D'Alessandro
- Published
- Nov 26 2023
- Word count
- 3370 words
Disney has another huge bomb on their hands. And the second in a row for Walt Disney Animation Studios specifically after Strange World was the biggest bomb of last year..
Wish had terrible reviews, especially for WDAS standards. And it had really terrible word of mouth among audiences, getting an A- Cinemascore (same as Lightyear) and an 81% verified audience score on RT. It didn't have to be like this. This had the potential to be a big hit. But that went down the drain when they released the music and so much of the internet made fun of it. And in fairness, the music is pretty bad. Instead of getting someone reliable like the Lopez duo behind the Frozen films, or Lin Manuel Miranda, they got a lesser known artist that had never written a musical before. A weird choice for the big movie to celebrate the studios 100th Anniversary.
In other news, Hunger Games is holding up well. It's audience scores were pretty high everywhere else except for Cinemascore, in which it got a B+. But that seems to be an outlier when looking at the RT score and the Posttrak scores. Word of mouth on this is insane. TikTok has lost their minds over it. And it's well deserved, cause I quite liked it as I said here. I have not stopped listening to the soundtrack and it seems like I'm not alone. It's kind of funny that at the same time that a Disney musical is releasing, the soundtrack that is getting more of a following is from a Hunger Games movie.
It will be interesting to see how Wish plays out in the long run. Elemental was rumored to be a box office bomb but it had success in the long run. I wonder if the same will be true with Wish. I have seen a trailer for Wish and it seems like something my kids would want to see. However, it’s going to be a few weeks before we have time to make it to the theater.
Wish is getting a lot of "it sucks and I know this because I saw a trailer, listened to a clip of a song and watched a tiktok telling me it sucks" buzz online
It's a bunch of adults being like "we're just tired of getting the same old thing" because a single song sounds like LMM wrote. To quote someone else I saw online, uninterested people just walk away, these folks are pulling the same shit they do for a Women/WoC led film. It's annoying.
I don't know that that's entirely fair. It's a similar reaction to avatar. If something comes from a lineage of success (in avatar's case budget+Cameron, in wish's case, Disney animation) it becomes noteworthy for it to buck that trend, and thus people are automatically interested.
That being said, I do agree that there is a tendency to pile on a bit more than usual, with a bloodier more joyous feeding frenzy for the reasons you have pointed to.
To be clear the bulk of the criticism I've seen has been people who haven't seen the movie and are complaining about the villain song. Like it is a direct quote about being tired of the same old thing - Moana is just seven years old, but they're tired of LMM vibes, and though Wish is an original (non-adapted) story with a black lead, they think it's unoriginal.
I'm not talking about critics, I'm talking about social media comments. The critiques are not that different from The Marvels, The Little Mermaid, etc. They've decided it's bad, and insist it has to be good for them, regardless of what the kids like.
And while I get that there are other aspects here, I don't feel like the criticism of, say, The Good Dinosaur, hit the same notes. Even though Pixar never flopped. Maybe I'm wrong but ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
I won't make it to the theater for other reasons, but I'll probably watch Wish on streaming and probably like it fine.
Nb: in avatar's case it bucked the trend of critical, not commercial success.
The top 3 bombs of last year all belonged to Disney. I'm wondering if, how, and when they're going to course correct because a lot of their movies, including their franchises like Star Wars and Marvel continue to generally disappoint. Can't be good for their business, but maybe it's healthy in the long run that this half-way-to-monopoly way of running their TV and movie productions isn't (seemingly) working out
Lol, in what world is A- a “really terrible” score? That’s the highest score out of the films listed here. Just because you can point to another failure with the same score doesn’t mean the score is bad. Plenty of films have done much better with much worse scores.
So Cinemascore works in a rather inflated way. Different movies have different standards for what is considered good. Family/animated movies have pretty inflated scores so something like an A- is pretty bad, although not as bad as what Strange World got. The RT score is definitely pretty horrendous though.
Lightyear got the same score and had terrible legs as a result. That’s why that’s brought up. Another animated movie with an A- Cinemascore is Ruby Gillman. Both Gillman and Wish are the only animated movies this year that got less than an A.
There's a site where I read web fiction where 5 stars is impossible due to review bombing, and anything below 4 stars is trash because most people who like a story will just give 5 stars. This means that for that site, the real measure of quality is where it falls between 4 and 5 stars. Without knowing the venue and the nuances of their rating structure, you might avoid scoffing at someone's description of how good or bad a given score is.
Apart from the movies doing well, I feel it's a little odd to share the headlines which depict how well a billion dollar corporation is doing. It's so farfetched from our personal lives and quite frankly, I don't feel like celebrating capitalist companies like that.
However, a good movie can be good and we should celebrate well-made art. So maybe the headlines can reflect that in some way?
end rant
I don't think anyone is celebrating it in the way you mean, but I can see where you're coming from. However box office is still important and interesting to someone who loves movies. Following the business aspect of it and see what performs and what doesn't lets you speculate about the direction of the media you're into which I think is fun - will your new favorite movie get a sequel for example? Or like gamers who check out Steam charts or subscriber numbers for WoW and so on
I've always been a little annoyed (maybe more bored) with the endless fascination with box office, especially stories that compare the income of new movies vs movies from previous years. There are too many factors that make this measurement useless (there are higher ticket prices now, and more people, but more competing forms of entertainment). Even within a specific year, the focus on box office is a reason why so many movies are risk-averse formulaic junk.
I get the impression that box office results have huge implications in what studios are going to be green lighting in the coming years. I can understand not following the business side of the movies, but these numbers will have an impact on the art.
Side question-where can I go to see what’s playing? Google discontinued showtimes eons ago, so I switched to rt. But neither the hunger games nor songbirds and snakes shows for me, even when i click “movies” and “in theaters”.
Edit: duh on hunger games = songbirds. Also, enshittification of everything continues apace. Searching for “showtimes” on google brings up their (less useful than the original showtimes) applet. Despit having the “today”
Filter enabled, every third film is “upcoming”. And Inhave to click theough “show more” a few times to get everything available.
You can use Fandango or look directly at the website if whatever theater is near you.
I just use the app/website for whatever theater I want to go to.
Weird, Google's showtimes show for me. I just searched "showtimes near me" and they came up. Unless you're referring to something else?
It was at google.com/showtimes. Gone 10 years now?
Has anyone seen Wish? Is it as bad as I've been reading? It certainly looks that bad.