Why People Are Calling Wish's King Magnifico Disney's First True Villain In Years
Spoilers for "Wish" follow.
The villains from Walt Disney Animation's feature films have traditionally been so striking and scary that the company has thought to separate them into their own brand. The brand tends to focus on Maleficent (Eleanor Audley) from 1959's "Sleeping Beauty," Cruella de Vil (Betty Lou Gerson) from 1961's "One Hundred and One Dalmatians," Ursula the Sea Witch (Pat Caroll) from 1989's "The Little Mermaid," the Evil Queen (Lucille La Verne) from 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," Captain Hook (Hans Conreid) from 1953's "Peter Pan," Hades (James Woods) from 1997's "Hercules," and Dr. Facilier (Keith David) from 2009's "The Princess and the Frog."
Occasionally, one might find Gaston (Richard White) from 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" in the mix or Chernabog from 1940's "Fantasia." These characters are all memorable for their scary designs, their misguided lust for power or destruction, their resentment, their hatred of the world, or their mere overwhelming spite.
In recent years, however, Disney seems to have become incredibly squirrelly about its villains. Rather than create characters that bear the exciting dramatic immediacy of being outwardly evil, Disney has chosen to make its villains wounded, misunderstood outsiders with relatable motivations and a sympathetic backstory. One can see this in the company's recent round of remakes. In 2017's "Beauty and the Beast," Gaston is implied to be suffering from PTSD. The villains in "Moana," "Tangled," and "Raya and the Last Dragon" are made villains by circumstance. In "Frozen," the villain isn't revealed until the last act.
The need to make all Disney villains sympathetic and relatable robs them of their dramatic power. Sometimes evil is better.
This is why King Magnifico from "Wish" is such a relief. He's a wicked, selfish, vain, greedy dude, and that's enough.
King Magnifico, the Selfish
King Magnifico is played by Chris Pine, and he has, perhaps refreshingly, no redeeming qualities beyond his zaddy-like good looks. He founded a kingdom in the Mediterranean called Rosas, and he has learned enough sorcery to grant wishes. He doesn't grant wishes, however, but hoards them. Proclaiming it to be a favor to his constituents, Magnifico can reach into people's hearts and remove their most profound ambitions. He keeps those ambitions in magical spheres which he has been locking away in his study for many years. Those with their ambitions — their wishes — removed, become grey-eyed, depressed, and destitute. Rosas' citizens, however, still celebrate Magnifico as a grand, benevolent ruler, and they still hold annual festivals in his honor.
Magnifico says that his wish-hoarding has something to do with keeping his kingdom safe. He wants to amass power to avoid a repeat of a vaguely defined event from his past. At some point, however, the need to protect people fell away, and the need to acquire more and more power became his primary motivation. He even has come into possession of a dark book of forbidden magic that he will, naturally, open and use before the film's conclusion. Magnifico is also revealed to be vain, amoral, and kind of a sociopath.
Audiences can likely see how wicked Magnifico is right off the bad. Stealing and hoarding wishes at the expense of his people? That seems dodgy. The makers of "Wish" give no thought to redeeming Magnifico, nor to giving him a sympathetic and understandable backstory. He's a manipulative king who has convinced his subjects that his austerity measures are good for them. Power has gone to his head. And, "Wish" argues, there's no coming back from that.
The modern ruler
"Wish," in refusing to make Magnifico sympathetic, not only retains his dramatic, villainous power but allows him to emerge as a metaphor for corrupt leaders in general. One can join a position of political leadership with the best intentions, but mere proximity to power will always prove to be a corrupting influence. Watch Michael Ritchie's 1972 political thriller "The Candidate" to see the downfall of a well-meaning politician in action. Perhaps Magnifico's siphoning of hope out of his citizens' hearts did have an understandable origin, but it ceased to be understandable long ago. He now holds wishes around himself, keeping his citizens' support by very occasionally deigning to grant one — and only one — wish. Some people have been waiting decades to have their wishes granted.
Magifico seems to be, like "Frozen II," one of Disney's recent efforts to interrogate their habit of fetishizing royalty. Many of Disney's animated features feature princesses, fictional kingdoms, coronations, and other trappings of the medieval European monarchy. While little kids may be able to project themselves into the rich, coddled on-screen princesses, it should also be acknowledged that the royals live exclusively on the taxes and wealth generated by the people. A well-fed royal usually means the starvation of a hundred serfs. In "Wish" and in "Frozen," the monarchs interact more intimately with the citizens than in previous Disney films, and audiences can finally see clearly the power imbalance.
Magnifico is a corrupt ruler who might possibly invite some viewers to see previous Disney royals as potentially corrupt themselves. Sleeping Beauty? Cinderella? Elsa? Perhaps all are eventually corrupted by power. This is a grim message for a Disney feature, and perhaps an ironic one, given that "Wish" is supposed to be the studio's self-celebratory centennial film.
Magnifico is Bob Iger
There also seems to be a thematic streak of "Wish" that is expressly anti-Disney. Magnifico lives in a tower, keeping the wishes and fantasies of others locked away and out of their hands. When one has their ambitions removed, they lose all memory of it, meaning Magnifico more or less legally owns their dreams. How is this not a metaphor for what Disney does? They buy up other people's intellectual property and then refuse to let it go. Disney has infamously appealed copyright laws so they could keep the rights to certain characters and iconography.
Example: for many years, Disney owned the exclusive rights to A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh," ensuring that their version of the character was the only one people could see. When the copyright finally lapsed in 2023, one filmmaker responded by making "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey." The movie sucks, but one has to admire the filmmakers' temerity and open, corporate defiance.
In "Wish," Magnifico is seen to own wish spheres that contain the stories of "Peter Pan" and "Mary Poppins," two other intellectual properties that Disney has attempted to monopolize. Is Magnifico actually just Bob Iger? Is Disney irredeemably evil for keeping the dreams of others? It's easy to see Rosas' citizens as hardworking writers and artists who contribute to the Disney machine and who receive no credit nor any ability to take their work back.
And if that's the case, what does the ultra-magical anthropomorphic wishing star in "Wish" represent? It has the ability to grant wishes but has no stake in taking away people's dreams and hoarding them for itself. It merely wants to let creators create.
The Star, of course, is the encroaching spirit of Public Domain.