Hats off to Pixar: somehow, they pulled off Toy Story 5

There were many reasons why I was sceptical (much like the rest of the world) about the very idea of a Toy Story 5 film. The franchise already had two endings: it was clear both from the way Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4 ended that they were, at the time, expected to close out the story. That made Toy Story 5 an obvious cash grab from a studio spooked by the modest box office numbers of its films based on original ideas. 

What's more, I've never been sold on the original premise of the Toy Story films. Even at their peak – perhaps especially at their peak – I thought their messaging peculiar, bordering on downright harmful. What does Pixar think it's doing, guilt-tripping kids (and nostalgic adults) for abandoning their toys? When in the future the Toy Story characters enter the public domain (by a process I don't fully understand), a horror film version will not be far off. For example, the notion that toys in storage stay sentient while being packed up in the dark is creepy in the extreme.

But would you know it, the creators of Toy Story 5 made a virtue of necessity. It turned out to be a good, solid Pixar flick, better than a lot of nostalgia bait out there and a lot better than it needed to be to draw the crowds. These past months, I've watched more films on the big screen than I usually do, among them Super Mario Galaxy, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Mandalorian and Grogu. I had a good time with all three of them, not least Mandalorian and Grogu (yes, it's like a couple of episodes of the TV show squished together, but I like the TV show). They had one thing in common, though: they weren't big on plot. They were clearly "hey, don't you just want to hang out for a time in this world with these characters?" kind of films.

Toy Story 5 could have settled for the same experience, but Pixar chose to aim higher. Maybe the studio has learned something after traumatising a whole generation with the plight of toys neglected by callous youngsters. In the latest two "cash grab" instalments (let's not deny this is why they were made) the Toy Story franchise has tiptoed away from the toys' more selfish motivations (basically "play with me or I'll diiiieee") and instead focuses on their mission to make their kid happy. 

In Toy Story 4, Woody unselfishly struggled to keep Bonnie's favourite toy Forky at her side; in Toy Story 5, Bonnie's remaining toys are more worried by her lack of friends than by the possibility that she could get tired of playing with them. When she gets an iPad-like device called Lilypad, they do feel threatened ("Extinction! Not again" Rex the dinosaur laments), but mostly they're worried about its effect on Bonnie. Jessie, the clear leader of the toys now that Woody's gone away, sees it as her task to find at least one suitable friend for Bonnie, someone she can really connect with. Lilypad blithely gets Bonnie three "friends" online, but they don't seem to be doing her much good.

The whole "tech vs toys" question that's emphasised in the trailers is actually the least interesting part of the film, at least until the message is nuanced by Jessie's reluctant team-up with another girl's "old-tech" toys ("the AA team") and Lilypad's earnest desire to be of use to Bonnie. The best takeaway message-wise from the film, in my view, was its argument for how playing with actual toys stimulates children's imagination. The sequences where Bonnie's or Blaze's (the other girl's) play-time is animated in a particular, colourful manner are a delight. Toy Story 5 acknowledges that playing a simple game on a device can be fun too, though.

For long-time Toy Story viewers, it's a relief when Jessie's old trauma of being given away by her first owner, Emily, is finally overcome by a moving realisation that she did make a difference to Emily. It leads her to a conclusion I wish the Toy Story films could have articulated long ago. When faced with the possibility of Bonnie outgrowing her, post-epiphany Jessie is chill: what's important is that she was there for Bonnie "when it mattered".

It's not a perfect film by any means: what with a few new toys being added to the roster each film, the Toy Story franchise now has bit player overload. Even when the focus is on the children's happiness rather than the toys', the supposed bond between toy and kid can still come across as a little eerie. When Lilypad suspects she does Bonnie more harm than good, she flings herself in a donation box: sweet or a kamikaze move? There are a lot of subplots going on, neither Buzz nor Woody is in any way essential to the plot, and the whole thing's a bit messy, albeit in a fun way.

For my part, I enjoyed this film more than Toy Story 4, and I especially appreciated how we get to become invested in Bonnie and Blaze and root for them to become friends. It was hard to warm to Bonnie in Toy Story 4: sure, she has no obligation to Woody (he's a toy!), but forgetting about him so soon after Andy gave him to her, and after Andy was so reluctant to let him go, did come across as a bit ungrateful. Here, Bonnie is allowed to be a sweet, if insecure, kid, and you're left hoping that the association with the more confident, quirky Blaze will do her all the good in the world. Another film with Bonnie as the toys' owner would give a certain symmetry to the franchise, which could then be divided into two trilogies. I can hardly believe I'm writing this, but I'm ready for Toy Story 6.             

Zootopia/Zootropolis 2 – Is the sequel better than the original?

I do appreciate the Epiphany holiday, which comes around just when you're feeling a bit grumpy that Christmas is in essence over. Not if the Three Wise Men have anything to say about it, it's not! For some lucky Swedish employees like me, what with the 6th being on a Tuesday, we get an extra "squeeze day" off this year. But it does mean that I have no excuse not to get a blog post in.

It's time to talk about Zootopia 2, released as Zootropolis 2 in Europe (why? I guess I could ask AI). Although Zootropolis 2 is in my opinion a somewhat better title – would you really name a city "Zootopia"? – I'll stick to the original title for the rest of the post for simplicity's sake. Zootopia 2 has become a smash hit which Disney Animation sorely needed, and also happens to be a very good film. But is it as good as the original Zootopia, or even better?

The plot is more or less what you'd expect. Optimistic bunny cop Judy Hopps and her new (police) partner, the cynical fox Nick Wilde, investigate another mystery that turns out to be a conspiracy, and end up being chased by their colleagues all over the city while trying to fix everything. Meanwhile, their partnership comes under strain. Somewhat unexpectedly, Judy is the one most willing to break rules for the Greater Good while Nick wants to play it safe. They fight, they make up, they become closer, and their reputation as crime-solvers is finally restored, while the city learns a new lesson in tolerance, this time towards reptiles.

I had a lot of time for the first film (or movie, as we're talking Disney and the US), so it's a relief that the sequel is as enjoyable as it is. I love Judy and Nick and their dynamic, and of course I ship them – judging by the reaction of a shady ant-eater when they're posing as a couple undercover, interspecies relationships are unusual but not impossible in this world. On rewatching the first Zootopia on Disney Plus, I also have to admit that in some ways, the sequel is a shade better than the original.

For one, it has the edge when it comes to pacing. The first Zootopia had to introduce us to the whole concept of the animal-ruled world and its capital, so the first half can feel meandering. When the sequel comes along, we're already on board, and the plot unfolds in a more streamlined way, which will probably make the sequel a tad more rewatchable. The focus on the Hopps-Wilde relationship is very welcome (though kids may fidget a bit in their big heart-to-heart scenes). Here, it truly feels as if the sequel isn't just repeating the same beats as the original, but digs deeper. New side characters like Gary De Snake are endearing, the animation top-notch (of course) and the Zootopia cityscapes as fascinating as ever, with lots of little gags strewn in to chuckle over.

In one instance, though, the original trumps the sequel, and because of the kind of movies Zootopia and Zootopia 2 are it's not unimportant. I thought the discussion about the nature of prejudice was way more interesting in Zootopia than in Zootopia 2.

Yes, you heard me. I'm actually praising the social commentary in an animated film. I willingly admit, normally I'm sick of political messaging being rammed down my throat when all I want is to enjoy a piece of entertainment. How annoyed I get depends on whether I agree with the sentiment (it happens) or the conclusions drawn (not often) by the earnest people who are trying to force-feed me their musings on the State of Society. The "let's fight prejudice" message is a tricky one. In itself, it's not controversial, though there are very different schools of thought on how prejudice is best counteracted (I'll not go into details, not when I should be talking about Zootopia 2). But it really has been done to death, and the very lack of controversy feeds into the messaging fatigue here. It's nice that you're for world peace, dear filmmakers. Can we move on now?

If we have to have a "let's fight prejudice" message in an animated film, though, I thought the first Zootopia handled the topic rather well. It showed that overcoming prejudice isn't always easy, not when your experiences seem to confirm the notions you already have unconsciously tucked away. It acknowledged that "real life is messy" and that it can take time to reach a mutual understanding. Moreover, by showing how the predators, not the prey, become a target for a smear campaign, it highlights that prejudice can cut all sorts of ways. You can be comparatively privileged but still become a victim of prejudices fuelled by envy and resentment. At the same time, it's not as if Vice-Mayor Bellwether (the film's twist villain, a put-upon sheep) didn't have a case.

There's no such nuance in Zootopia 2. We are informed at an early stage by Gary that reptiles "aren't the bad guys – they are", "they" being a family of powerful entrepreneur lynxes who run the city part of Tundra Town and want to expand it. Though the story has its twists and turns, there's nothing in it that overturns this initial statement. As soon as we hear that the lynx family's ancestor, who's supposed to have invented the city's crucial weather machine, is called Ebenezer, we know that he will turn out to be a crook. So, rich lynxes bad, outcast reptiles good. Nothing that we haven't seen in a myriad of other films, and not exactly the kind of setup to make you think. 

I predict that later Zootopia films will go the same way and lean more into the buddy-cop (or possibly something more) dynamic between Judy and Nick rather than explore the prejudice theme. Fine by me, as long as we're acknowledging that this is what's going on, and that there's nothing we can really take away message-wise from a film that tells us to beware of lynxes (they look quite cuddly, though, not gonna lie) and root for the underdog. Zootopia 2 is great fun, and I'm up for the inevitable sequels. But a film of ideas it is not.

Mysteries of the box office: the case of Elio

Summer vacation blogging means low-hanging fruit. A Pixar film should do. The problem is, while I enjoyed Elio, there isn't an awful lot to discuss about it. Oddball kids united in friendship and shenanigans in colourful space settings are nice to see, but it's hardly new. The only unexpected part of this film was the focus on struggling parents or parent figures. Otherwise, Elio in its comfortable predictability is less easy to blog about than Turning Red or The Good Dinosaur, though I liked it better than both those films.

So let's return to the old angle of the box office. Since I last broached the subject, it has continued to puzzle me. I don't want to pan a film I haven't seen, but wasn't the success of Minecraft: The Movie somewhat surprising? I haven't seen a single good review of it. On the other hand, Thunderbolts*, appreciated by critics and by those who saw it (including me), did not draw the crowds. I know there's a gap between what critics and audiences like, but I'm not talking about snooty film buffs who abhor everything that isn't Bergman or Citizen Kane here. Popular YouTubers (well, most of them) enjoyed Thunderbolts*, but did it help the movie? did it heck.

And now, Elio, a good solid Pixar flick, has bombed despite good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, while the lacklustre Moana 2 met box-office approval. It's hard to see a pattern here. Yes, there seems to be a fondness for "known IP", but Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was based on "known IP", and that was no help. (I've mentioned that it's good, right?) All whining aside, though, the disappointing audience figures for Elio at least provides a mystery to be pondered in a blog post. Why didn't people go to watch it?

To start with myself, I very nearly didn't go to watch it either. What put me off was that the story, judging by the trailers, didn't seem that engaging. True, there was an early trailer way back in 2023 (I think), which was worse, as the film then seemed to focus on a tiresome "Earth on Trial" plot (has anyone but Star Trek: Next Generation made that cliché work?). This story, I'm happy to say, has been scrapped completely, but maybe a few potential cinemagoers were scared off early. The later trailers, by contrast, looked nice enough, but had "good streaming content" written all over them. They didn't sell Elio as something you necessarily had to watch in cinemas.

In all fairness, maybe it's not, the magnificent visuals notwithstanding. I went to see it because 1) my summer vacation has started 2) I'm a mousehead who wants to keep Disney animation and Pixar in business 3) films aren't released for streaming as early as they once were, as Disney especially has become disenchanted with streaming services as a stable source of income and 4) it looked like a fun time. As it happens, Elio exceeded my expectations, though the story wasn't the film's greatest strength. It felt oddly paced at times, with the title character's orphan status being a particularly forced plot point which didn't elicit the pathos the film makers were perhaps hoping for. But I am glad I went and didn't wait around for months for the Disney + release.

What I appreciated most was the overwhelmed parent angle. As Elio's parents are both killed off (without explanation) before the story starts, he's living with his father's sister Olga, who has no family of her own and has to give up her ambition to become an astronaut in favour of her safe, earth-bound job in order to care for him. Elio picks up on how his presence has upended his aunt's life and draws the conclusion that he's unwanted. Aunt Olga's struggles to connect to Elio are paralleled, not very subtly, with those of the alien war lord Grigon, who doesn't understand his peaceful son Glordon at all, but who still loves him. The scenes where Elio and Glordon respectively finally realise how much they mean to their parent/parent figure pulled at my heartstrings far more than Elio's dead mum and dad.          

Maybe here's another clue as to why the film hasn't done better. There's plenty of fun for kids, and something to chew on for adults, but there isn't much for the inbetween audiences. I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend Elio to teenagers and twentysomethings, at least not as something they needed to see at the cinema. For this middle-aged aunt, though, it did the trick.

Why is the Moana/Vaiana sequel a box-office hit?

So, I watched Moana 2 (or Vaiana 2, as it's inexplicably called in Europe) at the cinema this week. And it was OK. It didn't irritate me as Ralph Breaks the Internet did and was mercifully free from the Wise Natives vs Civilisation rhetoric of Frozen 2. The story, although there wasn't a lot of it, followed naturally from what happened in the first film, and it didn't detract from it. It didn't, for instance, separate close friends or sisters because "they need to let go" or some such rubbish. According to one YouTube review, the animation for this project was outsourced as it was originally supposed to be a Disney Plus series, but I still thought said animation looked really good.

Having said all that, the film felt underwhelming – "mid" as the kids may or may not say. The origin as a Disney Plus series really shows. Ironically, I think I would have appreciated it much more as a series, as the characters would then have had to be fleshed out. As it is, although Moana (yeah, I'm calling her that, so sue me) and Maui are as charming as ever, the secondary characters don't have a lot to do. Moana brings a crew with her on her new adventure with different skill sets, but these skills don't really come into play that much. Why did she have to bring the reluctant old farmer again? 

Villain pickings are slim. The antagonistic-seeming Matangi who holds Maui captive is a fun addition, but she's painfully underused. Instead, the main villain is a thunder god named Nalo, who only shows up as an angry face in the clouds and as a disgruntled, not very menacing guy in a mid-credit scene. Nalo has cursed the peoples of the ocean by sinking a particular island, which somehow means they can't find one another. Why? Because he thought splitting people up would give him more power. Why would it do that? No idea. As thunder gods go, Nalo is singularly personality-less. In a series, they could have explained things a bit better with a mythological flashback, but as it is...

It's not the only time the storytelling is a let-down, either. Moana and Co. make a deal with her old foe the Kakamora to defeat a giant clam in return for their help. But the clam-defeating is a dismal failure, and were it not for one of the Kakamora's own warriors they would have been worse off than before. This is not how deal-based storylines work! Since the Kakamora have no debt to pay to Moana and her crew, as they failed to deliver on their part of the bargain, this plot thread is simply cut short.

I could go on whining about how Moana 2 feels it has to hit the very same storybeats as the first film, which slows the whole thing up – does Moana really need a new "How Far I'll Go"-style song, or wouldn't it maybe have been better if her big ballad had a new topic this time? – but it's time to come to the question I posed in the title, to which I have no answer. In spite of everything, I had a good time watching Moana 2 (and there were some enthusiastic kids in the cinema audience). But I've no idea why it's such a smash hit.

It seems I'm as lousy at predictions in show business as in any other kind of business. Were I a studio boss, I would have no idea where to invest money in order to get a good return. It could be that cinemagoers aren't that fussed about creativity and originality, which is fair enough – I myself can feel that film snobs go on about these virtues a little too much. But in that case, why does entertaining and lightweight fare like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves and Red One bomb at the cinema? In both cases, you can argue "yeah, they seem fun but not unmissable: I'll wait until they hit the streaming services". But you can make exactly the same argument about Moana 2.

Maybe Disney's Bob Iger is right, and nostalgia is such a strong factor with filmgoers that they're prepared to show up at the cinema for a mid product as long as it's tied to a franchise they know and love. That would explain why Dreamwork's Kung Fu Panda 4 did well in cinemas, in spite of being an even more tired sequel than Moana 2. Apparently, it's much harder getting people so excited about a new potential franchise they're willing to leave their TV sofa in favour of the cinema. A film that's simply entertaining but little else isn't enough.

In the long run, as I've discussed before, this poses a problem. Disney and other studios can't rest on their laurels and churn out sequels forever. I suppose I should take my responsibility as a consumer and go to the cinema more often, if a film sounds promising enough, instead of lazily waiting for the streaming release. But for now, I'll snuggle down in my TV sofa and just be glad I'm not a studio boss.

Anticipation list follow-up: expectations met, mostly

Back in January, I did one of my almost-yearly "things to look forward to" posts (restricted to the area of pop-cultural consumption). As it's sadly a bit too early to start the 2025 lists, but I feel in the mood for a list post, what if I followed up on the projects I thought sounded at least vaguely promising? I mean, I know I've already blogged about some of them, but as a summing-up? No, I'm not dodging an in-depth analysis of the problems of making the multiverse work (in film/TV) at all...

I'll change the order around a bit, though; I'll start with the items I haven't discussed in blog posts yet and save the item that was the biggest disappointment to last.

Moonflower Murders: Thankfully, Swedish Television didn't let me down. They both aired the latest adaptation of an Anthony Horowitz crime novel and made it available on their streaming service, and I was well pleased with it. It had the same virtues as Magpie Murders: Lesley Manville's Sue Ryeland and Tim McMullan's Atticus Pünd make for a likeable sleuthing duo with their meetings on the border between fiction and reality (there's a multiversal incursion for you), and the way some of the actors played two roles in parallel plot threads was cleverly done. As with Magpie Murders, I felt less cheated by the way the two interlocking crime mysteries were laid out than when I read the novel. Moonflower Murders the novel ended with a firm goodbye to this particular fictional universe, but the TV adaptation (also done by Horowitz) leaves the door a little more open for a sequel. I would not say no.

The Bad Batch season three: Is it just me, or have the animated projects from the Star Wars and Marvel franchises been consistently great of late, while the live-action projects are a bit more hit and miss? It may very well be just me with my soft spot for animation. Be that as it may, this Clone Wars spin-off, which perhaps didn't seem that promising on paper, outdid expectations with an engaging, well-knit overarching story about a band of brothers and a sister trying to carve out an existence during the Imperial era of the Star Wars galaxy. Crosshair remained my favourite throughout, but as he kept himself on the path of redemption he hesitantly started on previous season, new entertaining if unsubtle villains were introduced. Doctor Hemlock (I warned you!) with his pleasing design, satisfactorily high level of competence and purring voice (American-accented, which makes a nice change in this context as Star Wars baddies are so often played by Brits) caused my villain-loving heart to flutter, and disgraced Vice Admiral Rampart was a hoot.

Inside Out 2: Yeah, as I've previously mentioned, this was pretty darn good. Even though I prefer the original, which is more rewatchable, the way Anxiety is portrayed in this film is almost too relatable. Roll on Inside Out 3 – next time, I want to see Riley fall in love.

Belgravia: The Next Chapter: OK, I can't pretend it wasn't a let-down that Julian Fellowes didn't pen this supposed sequel to Belgravia, which at the end of the day had very little to do with the original. I had other reservations as well, especially at the start of the series, but taken all in all it was a solid period drama that felt a little closer to being set in a recognisable past than many costume dramas of late (which are often knowingly anachronistic). It particularly seemed to find its stride in the final episode. Poor Oliver Trenchard was hard done by, though.

Doctor Who series fourteen/season one: As you may already be aware, this was a big let-down for me. When will I stop hoping for Doctor Who to return to its former glory? It's hard to let go of hope when the very same duo that were show-runners back in those glory days are still running and/or writing for the series. But by now, Doctor Who has become so heavily politicised that it has a harder time getting away with things that weren't such a big deal in the olden days. 

When the main thrust of Doctor Who stories was about something bigger (love, friendship, the wonders of the universe, the problems of near immortality, the strengths and weaknesses of mankind) or something smaller (oooh, look, Daleks and Cybermen are fighting!) than politics, I could shrug off the odd bout of clumsy messaging. Now, it seems, clumsy messaging is practically all the show does. I had hopes that the Steven Moffat-scripted Christmas special would be a suitably light-hearted palate cleanser, but the sneak peek we've been given does not look promising. "Evil must logo"? Really? Also, the main villain being a Big Bad Arms Manufacturer isn't only clichéd, it's not quite as obvious a choice of common enemy as it might once have been. Yes, of course there are all sorts of ethical implications when a company's products are expressly made to maim and kill people. But at the end of the day, what are we supposed to defend ourselves with if we are attacked? Bananas?

I've not yet reached the point where I will stop watching Doctor Who, and most likely I never will. But for now, it's no longer my favourite sci-fi franchise. For all its faults, Star Wars has eclipsed it. It gave me the most memorable Doctor to watch this year.

What's new, Mickey Mouse? (As it turns out, not a lot)

After the announcements of the last weeks, from San Diego Comic-Con and Disney's very own D23 event, it's not an exaggeration to say that Disney is playing it safe. Extremely safe. Leaving aside the re-introduction of Robert Downey Jnr into the MCU – this time as high-profile villain Dr Doom (it could work) – we have a perfect avalanche of films in some way based on previous hits coming up from Disney and Pixar. We are getting prequels, sequels, and worst of all, live-action remakes of animated classics. Like many a commentator, I've been shaking my head and muttering about the death of creativity and the lack of original content.

Except –  maybe some of us, including me, are being just a little bit hypocritical? The other week, I saw a youtuber scoffing about the supposed "sequel fatigue" and pointing out how well sequels overall were doing at the box office. As he was talking about DreamWork's upcoming Shrek 5, I couldn't relate a hundred per cent (I have little interest in Shrek 5 unless Shrek and Fiona are made to face the consequences of callous pet-killing). Nevertheless, the youtuber was on to something. Because as much as I may groan over upcoming titles like Frozen III and Toy Story 5, I'm still going to watch them, aren't I?

Disney has had a rough couple of years, so I can see why they want to refill their coffers with safe bets. They may be well aware that people aren't over-enthusiastic about their upcoming animated projects. But we, the potential audience, don't have to be over-enthusiastic. We only have to be interested enough to buy a cinema ticket. I would guess – it's only a guess, mind – that this is what Disney's banking on. We can complain all we want about unoriginality, as long as we pay up.

There are some flaws in the reasoning, however. One is that Disney has created its own worst rival in Disney Plus. If people are only lukewarm about a film project, but nevertheless want to see it, they could simply wait until the film is available for streaming. Let's face it, if they're mouseheads (I don't know if it's a word, but I'm coining it) like me, they probably have Disney Plus anyway. All they need to do is wait. The studio has been lengthening the time it takes for their movies to reach Disney Plus, which is probably wise from a cinema point of view, but could hurt their streaming service in the long run. It's a bit of a bind.

Another purely commercial reason to keep experimenting with new stuff, instead of merely relying on tried-and-true franchises, is that both Disney and Pixar need to establish new franchises which they can milk in the future. Inside Out 2 has been a huge hit for Pixar, not least because it's seriously good (I'll come back to that). But there wouldn't be an Inside Out 2 if Pixar hadn't taken a chance on the first Inside Out many years back instead of simply churning out Toy Story sequels.

So I'm still a little worried about where the Mouse is heading long-term, even if they manage to consolidate their finances in the immediate future. A successful company always has to ask itself "what's next?" in order to stay in business. Even the most popular franchise reaches its sell-by date (I think Toy Story's already there, to be frank), and if Disney spends too little time developing new projects, they may find themselves in trouble again in a few years' time.

All the same, just because something is a sequel or a prequel doesn't mean it's bad. Look at Inside Out 2, a perfect delight of a film which managed to explain something I'd wondered since the first trailer: why Anxiety is its own emotion separate from Fear. I still think Inside Out 2 dodges the question of what puberty is really about; for all its faults, Turning Red was more honest about this. But hey, Riley is only thirteen in Inside Out 2. Maybe we'll get Love or Desire in Inside Out 3, which will surely be coming along at some point. And if overly cute Envy in Inside Out 2 grows up along with Riley to be less aspirational ("I want her hair") and more destructive ("I'll destroy her for being better than me"), then I'll not complain.

At the end of the day, for the audience, the big divide isn't between old franchises and new projects, but between high-quality and lower-quality films. Even easy-to-please customers like me cut up rough if we sense that we're being taken for granted. If the upcoming Disney and Pixar sequels and prequels seem tired and stale, they'll most likely underperform at the box office. If on the other hand the studios keep putting the effort into them that went into Inside Out 2, the Mouse should be fine. For now.

How to fix Disney's Wish

So, Wish finally aired on Disney Plus, in the middle of the week and after the Easter Holidays, when I (and I suspect many others, not least families with kids) would have had more time to watch it. It's not the only puzzling choice Disney has made in connection with this film.

I had a bad conscience in advance. I knew I wouldn't be able to watch the film totally unbiased, after the film has been generally panned by critics and fans. Throughout, I would be asking myself: "what's wrong with it?". At the same time, it's a fairy-tale film with a front-and-centre villain: just what I've asked for from Disney. Wouldn't it be disloyal not to appreciate their efforts? As King Magnifico would say: ungrateful, much?

But no. I don't feel bad anymore. I think it's pretty obvious Disney dropped the ball with this one. As the film is all over the place, a review risks being all over the place as well. Instead, I'll come up with suggestions on what I would have changed about Wish to make it work better, for me at least. It's a smug perspective, but it'll have to do, and I'll better get started 'cause there's a lot to get through.

Lean into the "wish conflict" plot line Before I watched Wish, my guess on what went wrong with it was that Disney made the premise over-elaborate. This is an easy trap to fall into when you construct a fairy tale from scratch. Actually, though, the premise is not at all bad. 

The subjects of the kingdom Rosas have willingly given their dearest wish to their sorcerer-king Magnifico, either on their 18th birthday or when they arrive in the kingdom, in the hope that he may one day grant it. Meanwhile, the wish is stored as a luminescent orb in his tower, and the wisher forgets all about what it was. Now, Magnifico only grants wishes he doesn't consider to be a threat to him or the kingdom, which turns out to be not that many. Asha, the film's heroine, finds out just how restrained he is in his wish-granting during an interview for a job as his apprentice.

The trailers made it look like Asha's goal was to make all the wishes come true, but the film is actually cleverer than that. Instead, what she wants is for the wishes to be returned to the people that have given them, if they're not going to be granted anyway, so that the wishers have a chance of making them come true themselves. Magnifico testily points out that the people who come to Rosas and voluntarily give him their wishes have already given up on making them come true. They see him as their only hope, and if he doesn't grant their wish then at least they don't have to long for something that will never happen.

That's actually an interesting discussion to have. If you're convinced your wish will never come true, is it better to forget it altogether? I'd say no, but the point is worth arguing. Too bad Magnifico goes dark so fast the main difference of opinion between him and Asha is soon forgotten.

Show King Magnifico's back story I had high hopes for Magnifico, and though they're not quite realised he's still the best thing with Wish. Reviewers have been frustrated with him, however, pointing out that he switches from tragic to moustache-twirling villain at the flip of a coin. Is he motivated by his traumatic past or by narcissism? Which is it? Pick a lane!

In fact, I could see a way to connect the Leader of the pack and Beagle boy sides of Magnifico's nature. Instead of using the classic storybook opening to tell us of his back story, why not show it to us in flashbacks? Seeing what he's been through for ourselves would make it easier for us to understand Magnifico's frail ego. His vanity could be linked to insecurity, which in part could be explained by his past. Maybe he wasn't always considered handsome and loveable?

Make the Queen evil (but loyal to her husband) Whenever a creative decision had to be made about Wish, the powers that be seemed to have made the wrong one. Apparently, someone had the idea of making Magnifico and his wife an villainous power couple, but it was left by the wayside. Instead, the Queen is all against using dark magic and such, which means sooner or later, for plot reasons, she will have to turn against her own husband.

If there's one cliché I hate more than any other, it's the "Oh, you're a bad guy now? Then I don't love you anymore" one. Quite apart from everything else, that's not how the Force works. Love tends to trump moral judgement. In the case of Queen Amaya, Wish initially made a good job of pressuring her into a situation where she simply had to sell out hubby (something he wasn't that sad about). But come the finale, she was far too chipper about his gruesome fate. She once loved this man. She should be heartbroken.

How much better it would have been to make her his evil ally and another enemy for Asha and Co. to defeat. Then the hinted-at prequel-to-Snow White elements of the story at the end would have gained in significance.

Make the Star a boy – and a love interest to Asha Another idea that was scrapped along the way. When a troubled Asha wishes upon a star after her failed interview with Magnifico, an actual wishing star comes down from the sky to help her. But instead of the studio going with one suggested concept of the Star as a boy of Asha's own age (17), the Star in the film is a cute little side character whose actual magic powers are unclear. Asha is a pretty standard New Disney Heroine with her "oh look, she's clumsy and nervous, isn't that relatable?" ways. That approach is getting tired by now. A proper romance – for the first time in ages in an animated Disney film – would have made her stand out more as a heroine.

Get rid of the cutesie-wutesie bits The film first started to go off the rails with the song "You're A Star", a nauseatingly saccharine and inconsequential number featuring singing animals, trees and mushrooms. Another fiasco is a song performance by over-excited hens conducted by Asha's baby goat Valentino. I thought Valentino was charming in the first trailer, but it turns out that the trailer contained his one funny line. All the others are so aggressively unfunny it almost looks like sabotage, and he adds nothing to the story. If one cute sidekick has to be retained, an improvement would have been not to give Valentino the gift of speech until the finale. Then he could just make cute faces throughout the story and finally trot out his one funny line at the end.

Cut Asha's mother and develop her friends Legend has it that the dreaded Jeffrey Katzenberg had the writers of Disney's Aladdin cut the hero's mother from the script: "the mom's a zero". Say what you like about Katzenberg, he's savvy: Aladdin's mother was not missed.

I'm sorry to say Asha's mom is a bit of a zero too. To be frank I didn't care much about her old grandfather either, but at least he had a plot function to fill. Asha's mother does practically nothing. She could easily have been removed from the story. Or, one of Asha's band of seven friends, whose personalities (or lack thereof) are based on Snow White's seven dwarfs, could have been adjusted to fill the part. Dahlia (based on Doc) seems motherly enough.

The seven friends are severely underdeveloped as characters, and of course you could have cut them too, or at least some of them. But another route to take would have been to flesh out the characterisation a bit. It's a mystery to me that only one of them has given his wish to Magnifico. Surely, not all the others are under 18 years of age? Including Dahlia the castle cook? Also, it makes it laughably easy to predict which of them will betray Asha. 

It would be better if most of the friends had given away their wishes and it had some effect on their personality. At one time in the story, Magnifico destroys the wishes of three random townsfolk who have been vaguely uppity in order to make a magic staff. Wouldn't the impact have been much greater if the wishes had belonged to three of Asha's friends? Plus at the end, you could make a little gag of Gabo (Grumpy) staying cynical even after getting his wish back, because that's just how he is.

Make the film 2-D or rethink the watercolour aesthetic The backdrops in Wish, like Magnifico's castle, are truly stunning. But the watercolour-y softer lines on the characters' faces look downright strange at times; I had a hard time looking at Asha's old grandpa. If the film creators wanted to lean into a celebratory "old-fashioned" Disney look, they should have gone the whole way and made the film (at least appear) hand-drawn.

Skip the clunky Disney references Yes, yes, Disney celebrated its 100th year last year, we get it. I don't mind characters from other animated Disney films showing up in the end credits, in fact I enjoyed that. But the clumsy references throughout the film were just pointless. Keep the ones to Snow White, seeing as it was the first animated Disney film: the dwarf-inspired friends, the magic mirror (and in my version an evil queen too). Cut all the rest.        

Villain clichés I can't get enough of

Continuing the villain cliché theme of the last post, here are some villain clichés I won't get tired of in a hurry. This is not a complete list by any means. To be honest, I'm a sucker for villain clichés, starting with the typical villain look (pale, thin, icy eyes, sharp features). These clichés are just a few of my favourites I can name from the top of my head. If I were to write down every well-worn villain trope I enjoy the moment I think about it, I could easily get material for a follow-up post or two. But that might just be too much like hard work.

"You and I are not so different" I think Arthur Conan Doyle might be the one to take credit for the widespread popularity of the "mirror image" villain, who resembles the hero in all sorts of ways – except he's bad. Certainly, when I think of famous villains before Professor Moriarty, they tend to be contrasts to the hero. The hero is brave, the villain is cowardly. The hero is kind and generous, the villain is mean-spirited and bitter. The hero is good-looking in a reassuringly homespun way (too much conventional handsomeness can sometimes be a red flag), the villain sports the pale, thin etc. looks outlined above (which I consider fairest of them all, but which aren't generally appreciated) or is downright deformed. And so on. The same often applies to heroines and villainesses. The heroines are pure and unbelievably big-hearted, the villainesses are grasping sluts. Look no further than Dickens, or Shakespeare for that matter, for numerous examples.

But then we get Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, similar in so many ways that it's easy to think of "what-if" scenarios where they might have been friends, either both fighting for good or both becoming experts in villainy. No-one else is at the same level as them. They have a unique understanding for each other. We get a grasp of all this during the span of one single short story. The "mirror image" villain has been a staple of popular culture ever since.

What's more, the "they could have been friends" scenario has often developed to a scenario where the hero and villain actually were friends until things went pear-shaped. Doctor Who's Doctor and Master friendship/rivalry is only one of many highly enjoyable Holmes-Moriarty rip-offs. As I've found out while doing my X-Men homework, there's Xavier and Magneto (though Magneto's case is more complicated than simply "going bad"). Not to mention the countless times we have heard the villain in a Bond movie or similar say "you and I are not so different/more alike than you realise" and the hero respond hotly "we are nothing alike". I know it's a cliché by this time. But as it forces the hero to question his own smugness – after all, aren't the villain's weaknesses the same as his own? – to me, it never gets old.

The hero-villain team-up This is squarely a popular culture thing, seldom attempted in a more literary context, more's the pity. At least once or twice or three times in a long-running TV series, there's a plot line that goes like this. The hero and villain – or heroes and villains, it can be a question of teams joining forces – face a bigger threat; realise that they have to team up to defeat it, sometimes after a little too much pointless squabbling; are successful in their fight because of their different skill sets and then go their different ways again, generally because of some betrayal on the villain's part, but sometimes because both parties tacitly understand that the harmony can't last. 

I'm not too fond of the ultimate villain betrayal cliché, but otherwise I love a good hero-villain team-up. The villain can ensure success by making the hard decisions and, say, kill off an antagonist without the hero getting his or her hands dirty, while the hero can shine when a more understanding approach is needed. You could argue that too frequent team-ups with the good guys can weaken the threat level of the regular bad guy, but I'm not too bothered by that. I'm only sad it always has to end.

Let's twist again (within reason) I'm aware that I'm being a bit contradictory here. Like everyone else, I got sick of twist villains in (fairly) recent animated Disney films and demanded a front-and-centre villain in the good old Scar or Jafar mould. Consequently, it seems that I can get enough of twist-based clichés.

Let me try to explain. Twist villains, and sometimes twist heroes, have a part to play in stories that are otherwise very black and white. Complex characters are always to be preferred to flat ones, but failing complexity, a character with all the attributes of a good guy turning out to be bad or vice versa throws heroes off balance and gives them a reason to reassess their world view, always a desirable goal for a villain-lover. If not everything is at it seems, then there's at least potential for complexity. Plus, I admit, I enjoy a good rug pull now and again – it's a shame so few twists really deliver that. 

The reasons I objected to the Disney twist villains are that there are too many of them in a row, and that the "villain-coded" characters of old (you could see they were bad just by the animation) were so delicious. But there is a case to be made for the much-maligned Disney twist villains too. I may get back to that in a future post.

OK, I admit it, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is pretty great

A few years back, I was gloating because I believed that Illumination, the studio that came up with the annoying Minions, had got their hands on Disney's angriest competitor DreamWorks. It seems the reality is more complicated: the two animation studios now have the same parent company, but they remain separate. So, spoke too soon, and too uninformedly. What's more, any input DreamWorks may have got from Illumination doesn't seem to have harmed them in the least, quite the contrary.

I really didn't expect to like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for a number of reasons. One, it's the sequel to a spinoff which was quite decent but didn't beg to be followed up. Two, it is, albeit tangentially, part of the Shrek franchise, which is the main reason I have a lingering scepticism towards DreamWorks in the first place, in spite of really enjoying many of their films. The Shrek films' ambition to "deconstruct fairy tales" is so clearly aimed at the Disney versions of said tales that it becomes embarrassing, and there's a mean streak running through them that I know many people appreciate but I kinda hate. 

Three, the theme of The Last Wish, as praised by a number of critics online, didn't seem to be ideally suited for a family film. It appeared to centre to an alarming degree on confronting and accepting your mortality. That may be an interesting topic for grown-up critics, but what about the kids, a not unimportant target audience? If anyone should be allowed to not to have the inevitability of death rubbed in their faces, surely it should be children.

But, I have to admit defeat. I was won over. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is vivaciously animated, cleverly plotted, and has engaging characters. Yes, the "value your life" message is in there, but it's not what everything's about. Puss isn't the only one who may come to realise that he already has what he needs, "no magic required". The last wish of a fallen star, which he and many others seek, becomes a useful MacGuffin in order to highlight this theme. The way the map to the star changes, and the terrain and its challenges with it, depending on who uses it, was a great detail, inventive and unironically fairy-taleish.

The villains are also particularly strong. There's the dead-serious one (literally), a scary wolf in a hood, armed with two sickles, whom Puss meets in a tavern while drowning his sorrows in cream when he's found out he's on the last of his nine lives. Puss thinks he's a bounty hunter at first. He's not.

Then there's the potentially redeemable antagonist Goldilocks and her bears, a band of small-time crooks (as signalled by their far-from-posh English accents). I really liked the take on the Goldilocks story here: in this version, the bears adopt the orphan girl, fondly imagining that she's part of their family now. Goldi is not so sure.

Lastly, there's a more traditional Shrek-type villain, Big Jack Horner, who is Little Jack Horner grown up to a far from good boy. He's traditional in that he is a comic villain, but also (as the best ones of the Shrek villain bunch) a lethal and ruthless one. The big difference to the Shrek films is that the protagonists respect him and take him seriously. "Oh no, not Jack Horner" Puss exclaims in dismay when he learns who has the map. "That's why you don't mess with Jack Horner", Puss's sometime partner and love interest Kitty comments later, grimly. This approach makes the comic elements of Horner funnier than if he'd been the endless butt of Shrek jokes. At the same time, the cats are right to fear him.

Jack Horner also serves a useful purpose as a dark-humour-magnet. There are Shrek-type jokes of the too-harsh-for-a-Disney-flick kind in this film, but as they're mostly connected to Horner and his actions they're far easier to take than if Puss & Co. had behaved with casual cruelty (as Shrek and Fiona sometimes did). Whether they're heroes or anti-heroes, I prefer protagonists I'm supposed to root for to steer clear of meanness and pettiness. Villains, now, that's a completely different matter.

Pixar's Elemental: strong on romance, weak on allegory

I have similar feelings towards Elemental, Pixar's latest film, as many others (judging mainly from YouTube). On the strength of trailers and movie clips, I wasn't too eager to go to the cinema to watch it, and was tempted to wait until the Disney + release. When I did watch it at the cinema, however, I was pleasantly surprised and had a really good time.

Why wasn't I more excited for the film, then, as I could see from the trailers etc. that the animation would be stunning and colourful? The general impression of the Elemental's premise seems to be "haven't we seen this before?". A world with humanised elements doesn't come across as very innovative from a studio that has already given us humanised toys, bugs, monsters, fish, emotions and more. What bothered me more than a certain staleness in the Pixar formula, though, was the staleness of the themes addressed. Were we really getting "let's overcome prejudice" and generational conflict? Again?

I've seen the "let's overcome prejudice" theme in animated films and elsewhere many, many times. Zootopia (or Zootropolis in Europe, but as I don't know why the title was changed I'll stick to the original one) is the most high-profiled example among the animated flicks, and to be fair I thought it handled the subject matter rather cleverly. More recently, we've had Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca, and apparently Trolls World Tour from Dreamworks (which I haven't seen) tackled the same issues. It's especially popular to use allegories when trying to put the anti-prejudice message across, and while I can appreciate the good intentions behind them, I feel as if I see another clunky metaphor for immigration (looking at you, Marvel's Secret Invasion) I shall scream. I've already expanded on why I especially dislike allegories where humans are the discriminators and the discriminated against are another species of some kind. At least Elemental doesn't go down that road, but still: this has been done.

Generational conflict is the latest favourite topic of animated Disney films, and it sometimes crops up in Pixar too. I'm getting pretty tired of this as well, especially as generational-conflict films tend to be short on villains. Encanto, Strange World, Turning Red and now Elemental all have the younger generation questioning and/or wanting to break free from the older one, and zero villains.

But enough whining (for now). In spite of my misgivings, I very much enjoyed Elemental, which luckily isn't just Zootopia all over again. What I especially liked about the film was the romance. Here we have two protagonists – the prickly fire girl Ember and the somewhat mushy but endearing water guy Wade – unapologetically falling for each other in a classic romcom scenario. When's the last time we got that in an animated film? Seems like ages. And it's not just one of the characters doing all the running, either. Ember and Wade see the point of each other and complement each other: she appreciates his ability to connect to others, he admires her spark and can-do approach. It's really sweet.

The other main story thread, about Ember's parents' experiences as immigrants to "Element City" and how they affect Ember, has its moments too, though for my part I was more into the love story. Ember's sudden realisation that she doesn't really want to take over her father's shop felt as if it surfaced a bit abruptly after we've seen her repeatedly trying to prove to her dad that she's ready to take over. But maybe that's the point: she feels so guilty about not really enjoying shop work that she's suppressed her ambitions.

The main problem with Elemental is that the allegory of elements living together in one city doesn't serve either of these plot threads. Yes, it's visually impressive, and has inspired the animators to a lot of creative character and city designs. But it doesn't really work. However romantic the scene is where Ember and Wade finally dare to touch and manage to do so without destroying each other, you can't help wondering what will happen when they get even more tactile, plus if and how they'll manage to have children. 

As for the immigrant story, its personal approach is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike Zootopia, Elemental isn't about bringing harmony to a whole society; it's just about Ember trying to have a relationship and find a career that fits her talents without upsetting her parents. This makes the film more engaging and less finger-wagging than if it had gone further down the social commentary route. On the other hand, it can't use the same gambit as Zootopia, where there were no one-to-one parallels between different animals in the film and different groups of people in the real world, which lead to more general and less infected musings on the nature of prejudice. But in Elemental, the fire people are immigrants; they've already been established as such within the story. However, the physical danger that water poses to fire, and fire to everything else, has no equivalent in the real world. Elements really don't mix, but humans can. 

I don't think Element City is meant to be a one-to-one parallel to, say, New York (what would that imply about the air and earth people – that there are some immigrants who've had it easy?), but with some real-world parallels being so explicit, Elemental falls between two chairs when it comes to its world building.

Quibbles aside, Elemental is a heartwarming love story and sometimes touching family drama which is beautifully animated. It's definitely worth watching in a cinema. But Pixar does need to look out. In a film like Inside Out, they were really committed to the idea of animating a girl's emotional development by making her emotions into characters of their own. They had fun with the concept, whereas in Elemental, the animated elements are mostly a way to dress up a story that might as well have been told as a live-action romcom featuring humans. If the story and concept don't gel, then maybe one of them has to go.

Finally, we can expect a new Disney villain – but then what?

"That's just bad storytelling!"

This reaction to the lack of "bad guys" in a game was one of the few worthwhile lines in Strange World, last year's Disney animation offering. I didn't care for the film, for slightly ignoble reasons. 

I could claim that it was because of the bland characters, the unengaging generational conflict which compares very poorly to similar themes in Encanto, the unflattering character design which favours mushroomy noses and small eyes or the sometimes yawn-inducing story. But to tell the truth, what really annoyed me was the eco message, which I knew was coming in one form or another throughout the film. When it was delivered, it was in a different way than I expected, but the moral conveyed still boils down to the same: that we should abandon our modern, comfortable way of life to Save Mother Earth. The "get back in the caves" message always acts a red flag on me. If we'd been spared that, I think I could have forgiven the film much, even the three-legged dog (what demographic is he supposed to appeal to, exactly?).

But, to get back to the quote above from the disreputable adventurer grandfather we're not supposed to root for. (Nor did I: if anyone had my sympathy, it was the farmer dad, especially as his son was such a whiny, ungrateful brat.) When the old reprobate is right, he's right, and he was right here. As per usual, however, his views and those the film wished to pitch didn't match; there's no villain in Strange World. Nor is this a new thing in Disney animation.

Somehow, Disney managed to go from the played-out twist villain trope to no villain at all in several films in a row. Moana's head villain turned out to be something else, though it did still have the crab Tamatoa and his catchy villain song. The only antagonist in Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet was a computer virus created by mistake by Ralph and his insecurities. In Frozen 2, the villain was Elsa's and Anna's long-dead grandfather, shown briefly in snow-statue flashbacks, which hardly counts. In Raya and the Last Dragon, the threat was the Druun, a faceless, impersonal plague. No villain in Encanto – though the villain-song style of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" could be a part of the song's success (however, Bruno turns out to be a sweetie). And now Strange World, where the only villains are Ourselves. After all that, I'd begun to despair of ever seeing a memorable bad guy in a Disney film again. For some reason I couldn't quite understand, villains didn't seem to be fashionable. 

And, then, suddenly, a new hope. Disney's animated film of 2023 is set to be Wish, and the trailer features: a villainous king! Voiced by Chris Pine in honour of the good old heartthrob-turns-villain-actor tradition, King Magnifico (subtle) is a good-looking, seemingly popular monarch who promises good times for everyone as long as they "give your wish... to me". Whereupon his eyes turn menacingly yellow, and we hear a sinister laugh echoing in the trailer's background.

Oh boy oh boy, as Mickey himself would say, how I've missed this. I'm a little nervous that Wish will try to accomplish too much, cramming in callbacks to previous Disney films and a lot of side characters. But for Magnifico, the bar isn't set very high. The very fact that he exists pretty much gets him over it. I'm quite happy to give one of my wishes – to once again set my eyes on a front-and-centre, larger-than-life Disney villain –  to him for safekeeping.

Does this mean that Disney animation is on the right track again? Not really. After having once again swapped producers, Disney animation has announced that its new projects will be: Frozen 3, Zootopia 2 and, for Pixar, Toy Story 5. Yes, the sequel avalanche is upon us again. One thing one can say about Disney's animated output these last years, villain-less as it has been, it has featured several new stories which didn't build on already existing franchises. Look, you don't need me to tell you how uninspiring these new titles are. Toy Story 5, really?

As for villains, things look bleak. But hey, I could be wrong. It's not as if the original Frozen and Zootopia didn't have worlds worth revisiting. Maybe Frozen 3 will forgo the nature-vs-civilisation rhetoric of the second installment and dive more deeply into Scandinavian folklore and fairy tales instead? And maybe we get to see Hans again?

Torn about Turning Red

It's funny, I can't really make up my mind about Pixar's latest film Turning Red. My ambivalence started even before it aired. Some odd decisions were made about its release which made me feel a mixture of pity for the Pixar people (for being shackled to Disney, who do not always seem to have the studio's best interest at heart) and irritation. The trailers, unlike the ones for Onward and Soul, were pretty good: I liked the protagonist Meilin's spunk, and the red panda she intermittently turns into is cute. At the same time, as someone who usually enjoys Disney Animation films more than Pixar ones, I have a latent resentment towards Pixar, as the studio that know-it-all animation experts often compare favourably to Disney's own more "sentimental" fare. I go into a Disney film wanting to enjoy it. I go into a Pixar film expecting to enjoy it, but if I don't, I'm not altogether sorry. What really puts me off is any hint of smugness or moral superiority – and the vibes I was getting from the latest Pixar project weren't quite exempt from that.

All the same, the film apparently tackled female puberty and its problems, and unlike many male YouTube reviewers I have first-hand experiences of this (albeit from the distant past). Surely, I thought, I would find the film more relatable than some of them did. When I sat down to watch it – in something of a hurry, as I had to finish it and my washing in time for the Swedish final heat for Eurovision the same evening – I was optimistic.

I mention my hurry, because I think I would have appreciated Turning Red more if it had been the evening's main event, which I could then have enjoyed while relaxing with a glass of wine. As it was, the sometimes hectic and jumbled feel of the film was heightened by the circumstances. I still liked it. The animation's gorgeous, the setting (Toronto in the early 2000s, with Meilin being part of a well-established Asian minority) felt different and exciting and the characters are likeable. I laughed a couple of times and cried once. Still, it didn't strike as much of a chord with me as I expected.

To briefly sum up the main story: Meilin Lee, a confident, high-achieving thirteen-year-old, is happy with her life, although her wish to please her loving but overprotective mother Ming is starting to collide with her teenage interests such as hanging out with her friends and fangirling over a boy band. Then, the night after a particularly intense experience, Meilin suddenly turns into a giant red panda. She finds out that she can keep the panda in by controlling her feelings, but when her mother finds out what's going on, she's not surprised. Turning into a red panda when in an emotional state has been a feature for the women in the family for generations, but there is a ritual which can fix the problem. Until it can be performed, Meilin has to juggle her panda-ness and a plan to attend a concert with her friends featuring their beloved boy band 4 Town without their parents' knowledge (especially not Meilin's mother's).

Part of Turning Red really is relatable and/or believable. Early teenage life is in many ways captured well – the strong bond of friendship between Meilin and the girls she hangs out with (Miriam, Priya and Abby); their crushes on the 4 Town members which don't preclude an interest in boys closer to home; the way life can seem to conspire to embarrass you and the all-importance of certain events. But then there are some scenes that just felt overdone, and they mostly concern Ming. I have a hard time imagining a mother who, when discovering the romantic fantasy drawings her thirteen-year-old daughter has made of herself and a boy, leaps to the conclusion that something really has happened between them and races off to confront the oblivious youngster with her miserable daughter in tow. There's being overprotective, and then there's being plain daft. The way Ming embarrasses Meilin later in the story (while still under the impression that her daughter is suffering from her first periods, not red panda fits) also beggars belief, but I can just about buy it as an attempt to be discreet which goes completely awry. All the same, I think the film could have cut both these scenes and not lost out on much – the strains in the relationship between Meilin and Ming are already established elsewhere.

The red panda transformation, obviously, is a metaphor for puberty, and a somewhat too heavy-handed one. Many family films (and plenty of children's classics) work on two levels. There's the surface level of imaginative adventures, then there's a deeper level of questions raised which adults (and precocious children) can ponder if they want to. The problem with Turning Red is that the surface level doesn't quite work. The red panda shenanigans, though they are given an explanation in family lore, have difficulty standing on their own two feet. It's hard to disregard the link with female puberty and just see it as a fun girl-transforms-into-animal flick if one would choose to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if children who haven't hit puberty yet and see this film are left bemused about what's really going on, and I can't really blame those male YouTubers if they couldn't properly get into it.

That red panda is really cute, though.

It's worth talking about Bruno (and the rest of Encanto)

Is it just my imagination, or hasn't there been nearly enough hype about Disney's latest animated film Encanto? I keep waiting for my nerdy YouTube channels to provide reviews and analyses, but only one of them has stepped up so far with a short (if enthusiastic) review. And yet, I thought this film was really good – better than Raya and the Last Dragon, and I liked Raya a great deal. 

There are so many positives when it comes to Encanto. Mirabel, who provides the focus for the film, is Disney's most engaging heroine for quite a while: she's warm, sweet, fun-loving and just flawed enough to be human. I preferred her not only to stoic warrior Raya, but also to, say, Moana, and to both of the Arendelle girls as portrayed in Frozen 2. The animation is stunning, the characters are charming, and the songs (penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame) catchy, sometimes extremely so – I've been humming We Don't Talk About Bruno for days. I watched the film on Friday, when it premiered in Sweden, and was, beforehand, disgruntled that I'd booked a matinée, thus dividing up my whole day. Afterwards, I was grinning happily. This is a real mood-lifter of a film.

The story takes place in a remote spot in Colombia (time period uncertain) and revolves around the family Madrigal, three generations of it living under the same roof in a house full of magic. The house (casita) isn't the only magical thing in the village: since the community settled, each new member of the Madrigal family has been given a magical talent or gift which they have then used for the common good under the watchful eye of Alma, or Abuela (Grandmother) as she is called by everyone. Mirabel is the exception: she never got a gift, much to the disappointment of Abuela (who has no magic either, incidentally, though she does watch over the family's magic candle). Although the Madrigal in-laws – Uncle Félix and Agustín, Mirabel's own dad – are also magic-free, Mirabel feels more and more left out. Then one night, she sees cracks appearing all over the family's beloved casita. When she alerts the rest of the family, though, they are gone. But Mirabel remains convinced that the magic is in danger and that she's the one to save it.

I really appreciated the family dynamics in the Madrigal household. I've always resented that Tolstoy quote about all happy families being alike while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (though no doubt it's quoted out of context). Besides being patently untrue – how many unhappy families aren't unhappy in exactly the same way? – it makes happy families sound boring. The Madrigal family is happy, in the main: they are close-knit and loving. The cousins are like siblings: shapeshifting scamp Camilo chaffs his female cousins in the same way a brother would, and Mirabel comforts her little cousin Antonio like a big sister would. The family's marriages are a success: moody Aunt Pepa and enthusiastic Félix make a surprisingly well-matched couple, and Mirabel's parents both do their best to bolster their youngest daughter's self-worth. But that doesn't mean that there aren't rifts and room for drama: For instance, Mirabel is especially envious of her sister Isabela, who has the gift of being able to produce beautiful flowers and who likes to flaunt her seemingly perfect life. And yet, having a magic gift may not be all it's cracked up to be. The film has to keep a balance between keeping the Madrigals likeable and yet making us sympathise with Mirabel's frustration. Sometimes it falters: I didn't think it likely the Madrigals would forget to include Mirabel in a family photo – wouldn't her parents notice and protest? – and Mirabel's solo song about wanting a magic gift didn't tell us anything we didn't already know about her state of mind, and comes across as a bit whiny. But for the most part the balance is kept, and you can sort of see where everyone's coming from (though it's hard to sympathise with Abuela at times). 

I promised to talk about Bruno, so I will. He's the black sheep of the family with the power to see into the future, though mostly the bad stuff (Isabela is the only one who claims to have had a completely positive prophecy about her life from Bruno, much to her little sister's irritation). Bruno is a shoo-in for my favourite character by way of being a villain fake-out. After his apparent disappearance years earlier, the family's kept quiet about him, and when Mirabel asks questions about him they paint him in sinister colours. He's designed to look faintly sinister too, yet when Mirabel meets him he turns out to be a shy, well-meaning bloke freaked out by his own gift and still full of affection for his family. It's no spoiler that Bruno isn't the villain: that's made pretty clear by the trailers. I was half expecting there to be a double twist where it turns out that he's villainous after all ("this is why we don't talk about Bruno"), but the film didn't go there, and though it would have been rather neat I liked non-baddie Bruno enough to be relieved. Another favourite of mine is Mirabel's big sister Luisa, whose magic power is super strength, and who's expected to be "the strong one" of the family both mentally and physically in a very big-sisterly way. (As a little sister, I feel a little sheepish when listening to her song Surface Pressure.)

Are we back to Golden Age-standard Disney, then? Well, maybe not quite. They've still not tackled many of the problems I've had with the latest Disney films, like (again!) the lack of a memorable villain, or indeed any villain this time around, and the fear of giving the heroine a love interest. I say fear, because there's something cowardly about the way Disney avoids romantic plots, so their female protagonist won't be perceived as "weak" by an over-censorius public. (We do get a love triangle with the side characters, so that's something.) Also, the story is rickety, in large part because the magic element of it is never explained. I know that this is supposed to be magical realism (a genre with which I'm unfamiliar) where magic is part of everyday life and you don't make a big fuss over it. But there still has to be cause and effect, hasn't there? If the casita had suddenly had normal cracks, there would have been an explanation, so why isn't there one for the magical cracks? If cracks in the house equal cracks in the family, why didn't they appear when poor Bruno was ostracised? Why does the magic grow weaker when Mirabel has had an important heart-felt conversation with one of her family members, but stronger when she has an important heart-felt conversation with another family member? Why wasn't she given a gift? Is she Abuela's future replacement, and in that case, couldn't she at least have been given a room? What does the magic want? I wanna know!

All in all, though, Encanto – like Raya – is a step in the right direction after the slump of Ralph Breaks the Internet and Frozen 2. But if Disney wants to step away from European fairy tales as source material, they need to up their game when it comes to inventing original stories. A colourful setting is not enough.

Pixar's Luca : more heartfelt than brainboxy (and all the better for it)

What can I say about Pixar's latest film, which premiered a week back directly on Disney + (and without the annoying "premier access" hurdle: hey, I was prepared to pay more to view Raya and the Last Dragon early, but Cruella? Come on!), that hasn't already been said? Critics have called it a charming little gem of a film about friendship, with likeable characters, which also happens to be perfect summer viewing. And - no great surprise - this is exactly what it is. 

Some reviewers have been underwhelmed by the simple plot. They have come to expect more advanced, thoughtprovoking content from Pixar. But to me, the messaging in Pixar films can be a bit hit and miss. I don't always buy their pitches: for every Soul or Inside Out, there's a The Good Dinosaur or Incredibles 2 where what appears to be the central message leaves me pretty cold. Why is it so important that Arlo the dinosaur mans up: shouldn't his parents be taught a lesson about accepting your children as they are instead? Is wanting an easy life really such a terrible thing, as the villain (with whom you're clearly expected to agree on this point) claims in Incredibles 2? Yes, Pixar films usually make you think, but pretty often it's about why a film you've enjoyed didn't quite gel with you. An uncomplicated story in the Luca vein from this studio was welcome for me.

Having said that, I didn't look forward to watching this film, precisely because its message - as gleaned from the trailers - seemed so very standard. Please, don't "overcome your prejudices" again! Like so many films and TV shows before it, Luca seemed set to use a completely different species (cute sea monsters, in this case) as an analogy for some Beleaguered Minority or other. I'm not fond of these analogies at the best of times, and they've been done to death.

It's a good thing then, in my opinion, that the film doesn't spend too much time on the sea-monster angle, but instead focuses on the emotional core of the story. Luca is a sea-monster kid who has been warned to stay away from the surface and humans, but is curious about their way of life. So far, so Little Mermaid. But then he meets another sea-monster boy, the confident Alberto, who actually lives on land and loves it. He encourages Luca to surface and explore life as a human - whenever the sea monsters are on land, they take on human form, though if they are splashed with water their original appearance peeps through. The boys form a heartwarming bond. Alberto's the cocky one, but in fact he knows a great deal less about land life than he lets on, and it's pretty clear from the start that he needs the wide-eyed Luca's friendship as much as Luca needs his, if not more.

Luca's parents find out about his surface adventures and want to send him to the deep of the ocean with a weird uncle just to keep him from danger. This prompts him to run away and brave the small town of Porto Rosso together with Alberto, where in their human shape they team up with a tomboyish girl named Giulia in order to win a triathlon competition and get money to buy what they consider the ultimate ticket to freedom: a vespa.

The story is more or less an excuse to get to know the characters and explore their relationship to each other more. Lucky then that the characters are so engaging. I particularly warmed to Alberto: it mattered to me that Luca should not lose faith in him. (What with my sympathy for Barley in Onward, I suppose one could see a pattern emerging.) The side characters are good too, Giulia's intimidating-looking father especially. The small town of Porto Rosso is properly idyllic in a very Italian way - it's a good thing Enrico Casarossa, who directed and cowrote the film, is actually from Italy, or it might have been accused of being just a tad stereotypical when it comes to depicting Italian culture. Although the town makes a grand fuss over its supposed sea-monster-slaying heritage, you can sort of guess that when it comes down to it the boys are pretty safe: the residents seem genuinely nice as opposed to, say, the townsfolk in Disney's Beauty and the Beast who can turn to a threatening mob in a trice when confronted by something unusual.

There is one misfire in the characterisation, and that's the villain. I've wanted a front-and-centre villain in a Disney or Pixar film for ages, and Ercole, the protagonist trio's rival for the triathlon cup, is certainly that: sadly, he's also a bully, which is one of the least interesting types of villain out there. The character is a caricature, and while watching I caught myself wondering whether the film wouldn't have been better off without a villain (a very rare thought for me to have). In Ercole's defence, his plot function is probably primarily to be a bastard so that the rest of the townsfolk don't have to. You couldn't remove him from the story without upping the conflict by making the other Porto Rossians more hostile. And there is one useful villain lesson to be learned (which incidentally ties into the friendship theme): always show due respect to your minions.

It has been said that Luca isn't only a coming-of-age film, but also a coming-out film. To which I'd say - eh - yes and no. Yes, because the parallel between the sea-monster dilemma and coming out in a hostile environment is pretty obvious. The sea monsters could be seen to represent some other minority like immigrants, but as they look like "ordinary" people on land and are only in trouble if something they are hiding is revealed, gays seem to be the best minority fit (and some lines and incidents at the end of the film strengthen this interpretation). No, because Luca's relationship to Alberto, as well as his relationship to Giulia, aren't romantic, not even in a pre-teen Love Actually kind of way. The film does such a good job of exploring friendship that you risk missing out if you see the relationship dynamics going on between Luca, Alberto and Giulia as just another love triangle. Alberto's jealousy of Giulia isn't that of a discarded lover but of a friend who finds himself sidelined and less important to his best buddy than he once was. Giulia undermines him by showing Luca what human life is really like, but she's not aware of doing this, and she sees both the boys as great pals. Luca is drawn to Giulia not because of some physical attraction, but because he is intellectually curious and Giulia can provide him with answers. 

"Friendship jealousy" is rarely depicted on film and on TV in my experience, at least compared to the romantic kind, and I thought it was really interesting to see it addressed here. That's not to say you can't imagine romantic complications ensuing further down the line - but during the scope of the film, these three kids are just friends. And as it shows, that can be complicated enough.

Will Cruella get the Maleficent treatment? Probably not - but the film could still be really bad

Depressingly enough, politics tend to seep into our appreciation of culture and popular entertainment a lot more than one would have thought or wished. Therefore, it's heartwarming when there's a meeting of minds across the political divide. The other week, two YouTubers in my feed who are on completely different sides ideologically had just about the same reaction to the trailers for the upcoming (live-action) Disney film Cruella. Which was: have Disney completely lost it? Are they seriously expecting us to root for a woman who wanted to skin puppies to make a fur coat??

The comments beneath the trailers are often in the same vein. What the heck - are they really turning Cruella de Vil into a "girl boss"? Cruella, who is generally considered both irredeemable and unforgivable? There is a musical parody called Twisted, where apparently - in a clear dig at Wicked - Jafar from Aladdin is shown to be a good chap, really, who's only been maligned. I haven't seen it, but I've heard one of the songs from it, where Jafar meets a bunch of other Disney villains who give their - more or less - credible takes on their tales. The sob stories are well under way, when Cruella suddenly appears exclaiming: "I only wished to have a coat made out of puppies!" "You're not helping", Scar growls. "Disregard that". 

Even Once Upon A Time, normally a fictional villain's best friend, went with the "Yeah, no, she's just a psycho" explanation in Cruella's case - evil, in this particular instance, was born, not made. (Cruella shouldn't really be in the Once universe in my opinion, seeing as she's not a fairy-tale character, but she was fun and one of the more bearable things about Problematic Season Four, so I'll not complain too much.) If you can't catch a break in Once, you can't catch a break anywhere. Public opinion is, not unreasonably, fixed: no sympathy for the potential dog-skinner.

While agreeing that it would be a disaster to try and prettify Cruella's misdeeds, I was interested to see that people draw the line here, because I don't remember there being much of an outcry over Maleficent when it appeared. But she's just as bad, surely? I mean, she cursed an innocent baby to die -  not right away, granted, but on her sixteenth birthday! Even if you change the story so that Maleficent herself softens the curse to eternal sleep which can only be lifted by True Love's Kiss, she doesn't come out of it smelling of roses (especially if she doesn't believe there is such a thing as TLK). And yet Disney, disastrously, didn't settle for the Once recipe of adding nuance and complexity to a villain by telling their back story (which I would have been totally on board for): they tried to more or less exonerate Maleficent. Yes, they grudgingly seemed to admit, the baby-cursing was perhaps not the greatest thing she ever did, but couldn't we see her point? (Er... no?) Didn't she make up for it afterwards by protecting Aurora? (Again... no?) Most of the time, good old Mal was just a kick-ass protector of the Moors, and the mean king who stole her wings was the real villain. People seemed pretty much to accept this head-scratching take on the bad fairy, but when it comes to giving Cruella the same treatment, they rebel. So... cursing babies is OK, but killing puppies is not OK?

To be fair, though, I think much of the negative reaction to the Cruella trailers might be a delayed response to what Disney did with Maleficent. The trailers themselves don't really seem to be in an exonerating vein. The Cruella we see appears pretty cracked from the start and not likely to turn out to be someone we will sympathise a whole lot with. So what if she has trouble with her boss? So what if she starts out scrubbing floors? It doesn't follow that we are meant to feel sorry for her. My guess is, she'll be a bad lot from the beginning, and the unfortunate quote "I am woman. Hear me roar" in the trailer is not to be whole-heartedly embraced. Nevertheless, because Disney messed up so badly with the Maleficent back story, commentators are on their guard and prepared for another botched villain make-over. I don't think we need worry that the film will go down the "poor little mistreated Cruella" path, though - I can't see it becoming a thing.

However, even if Disney steer away from a Maleficent disaster, it doesn't mean that the film will be good. The trailers hint at a rags to riches story, but wasn't Cruella rich to begin with? I remember watching a YouTube video on the "which Disney villain are you based on your star sign" theme, as you do. Being a Leo, I was hoping to get Scar, but instead I got Cruella. I was miffed, but when I saw the scene they'd chosen - where she sweeps into her old school friend's house as if she owns the place, drawling "Anita, daaarling", displaying massive condescension towards Anita and contempt for the decent but in worldly terms unsuccessful Roger - I had to admit it was sort of a fair cop. That sense of entitlement struck a chord. A "sharpening of villainy through hardship" back story seems a very poor fit for this fur-wearing diva. It might conceivably work as a prequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians where Glenn Close's Cruella was more of a nut case than anything else - but do we really need an explanation of her? Although I basically never think a villain back story is a bad idea, I may have to concede that in Cruella's case, the less you dig beneath the surface, the better. 

Will I watch the film, though? You can bet on it, darling.

Disney plays it safe with Raya - but it's a good game

The first thing people seem to ask in reviews of Disney's latest animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon, is "Is it worth paying extra for?". The deal is that if you pay for "premier access" to the film, you can watch it now on Disney + (providing you have a subscription, that is). If, however, you wait until June, all you need is the Disney + subscription in order to watch it for free as part of the package. The US price for premier access is 30 dollars: here in Sweden, it's 250 Swedish crowns, which is about the same, and approximately what you pay in Sweden for two cinema tickets (admittedly expensive ones, probably with 3D thrown in). So, yes, it's pricey, but from our point of view not that pricey.

As you can guess, I paid, feeling a right mug for not being able to wait for the "free" release. But - somewhat to my surprise - to me it ended up being worth it. After the film, I didn't feel like I'd wasted my money. Instead I thought "Yeah, this was good, and I needed it now". So yes, providing you're not short of cash, and providing you love Disney films, I'd say it's worth paying extra.

That's not to say I thought the film was perfect. Though it was better than I expected from some of the trailers, it didn't live up to my most fervid hopes. The positives first: this film felt like there was a lot of thought and feeling put into it. Frozen 2 and Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks the Internet seem very lazy in comparison. Whereas the world of the enchanted forest in Frozen 2 felt incoherent and cobbled together ("giants are cool, that water horse thingy is cool, Samis-or-something-like-them are cool, a fire lizard isn't really a thing in Scandinavian folklore but who cares"), the world of the five kingdoms that used to be Kumandra hangs together and is really quite fascinating. Hopefully the films gains enough of a following to spark a spinoff animated TV series like, for instance, Tangled and Big Hero 6, because these settings have a lot of potential for further adventures. 

The animation is gorgeous. The story is effective. The message isn't only the old one of "we should overcome our prejudices and get along with each other blah blah" but delves a little deeper into the matter of trust - it makes a case for daring to trust your fellow men, while also acknowledging that it isn't always a good idea. I can get behind that. The side characters are charming (I was not wholly convinced by the over-capable "con baby", but she has an important plot function) and the comic relief the dragon Sisu provided didn't grate on me. Also, she had some real insight to contribute, which was nice.

On the flip side, I didn't care that much about Raya, the heroine. In fairness, she is given a plausible motivation and isn't just "kick-ass". Her goal is to reassemble the Dragon Gem, a magic artefact which was broken six years before in a tussle between the five tribes, releasing an age-old menacing force called the Druun in the process, which turns people - including Raya's father - into stone. The good news is that if the Druun can be defeated, everyone turned into stone will come back to life. Raya partly blames herself for the catastrophe, because she trusted a girl from a different tribe who betrayed her, so it's understandable she's glum and hard to come close to, but it also makes her less fun to be around than, say, Rapunzel.

Once she's teamed up with Sisu, Raya only has to get all the pieces of the broken gem, but that's easier said than done. Each enemy tribe/land - Tail, Talon, Spine and Fang (the lands are named after a river in the shape of a dragon - Raya is from Heart) - have a piece of it and guard it fiercely. In each place Raya goes, she and Sisu more or less inadvertently pick up a companion: a business-savvy young boy, the aforementioned baby and her band of trained thieving monkeys and a fearsome warrior with a soft heart. They have all lost their families to the Druun. I appreciated that there wasn't any time wasted with Raya feeling bad about having had prejudices against Tail, Talon and Spine people - she and the side cast just got on with bonding without much fuss. Then they come to Fang, and things become a little more complicated.

I've slid back into mainly positives, so let me come to my major gripe: the new formula for Disney animated films has, regrettably, stuck, and each time it's reiterated it gets harder to get out of. This means, firstly, that there's no romance. Disney's line when it comes to animated films is not so much politically correct as politically safe. They do not want to offend anyone. By setting their film in an East-Asian fantasy world, they've got the diversity thing sorted. (Though mark my words, people will try to be offended nevertheless and find something they can call "disrespectful" - good luck with that.) By making Raya - and her antagonist Namaari - women with warrior skills, Disney can beat the "girl power" drum a bit. Raya isn't allowed a male love interest, because it would (or so Disney thinks) annoy feminists to see her go weak at the knees over some man. And she can't fall for Namaari either, because that would be too bold (there were apparently people who boycotted Onward because a female side character made a passing reference to her girlfriend). Honestly, why aren't Disney heroines allowed any love lives anymore? (Except in the case of Anna and Kristoff, and let's face it - was he a pushover in Frozen 2 or what?) This is supposed to be escapism!

And finally, the new Disney formula means that there is no interesting villain. I'm not sure why it would be so contentious to reintroduce a Disney villain in the classic mould. Is it because if he's a man and too elegant and silky, some bright spark will think he's "queer-coded"? (This has actually happened with Scar and Jafar - Jafar's bid for Jasmine and the deleted scene where Scar hits on Nala notwithstanding.) But maybe I shouldn't see political motives behind every corner. For whatever reason, the whole concept of the Druun is almost an affront to a villain-loving heart. I mean, a mindless, soulless, faceless force, taking the form of vaguely animal-shaped ominous clouds? Are they kidding?

Raya and the Last Dragon is a very good film. In a way, it's a return to form for Disney animation. But I can't help thinking that Disney sets itself rather narrow parameters within which to work the company magic. The Dream Factory isn't out of the woods yet.