Disney is contradiction. A vast corporate empire built on communal identity and the intangibility of dreams. Disney champions both the capitalist and liberal. It’s a conflict that comes to a head in Wish, the cinematic climax of the studio’s centenary celebrations. One hundred years of wonder, lovingly rendered in picture perfect animation. I must here raise my critical Achilles heel. Fully aware as I am of the film’s narrative faults, the resonance with which Disney, the dream, exists in my heart is strong. Those who share this potent feeling will find themselves as one with the emotional rush of Wish’s soaring exuberance. Any less easily swain may feel only the weight of marketable familiarity. It doesn’t take so much by way of over-analysis to spot the issues.
The persistent problem posed by prequels is the inherent need of each to justify its own existence outwit commercial appeal. It is a rare prequel that’s ever much more than the commodification of an original conceit. Lionsgate’s latest Hunger Games film, released almost a decade after the last, doesn’t quite reach that upper echelon. There’s too strong a feeling of superfluousness in this particular visit to Panem. Few have spent the last eight years yearning for a Coriolanus Snow origins story. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is, no doubt, a handsome and well acted affair but feels long at over two and a half hours.
Marvel’s latest is…well, it’s a lot. There’s a lot to like about The Marvels but a lot more besides. That’s not to say the Nia DaCosta space epic isn’t heaps of fun. It is. Bolstered by a terrific central ensemble, The Marvels is heartfelt and funny and just the right side of zany. But it’s also a very much overblown beast and surprisingly uninvolving. What with Marvel’s ongoing determination to lather all of recent projects in computer generated excess, a failure of the plot to tether itself to anything especially material rather nulls the impact. Fans will, no doubt, find much to enjoy, to mull over and dissect. As for the more casually invested, the pleasures here are rather transitory. There’s a reason so much of Marvel’s once billion-dollar bankability now feels a distant box office memory.
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