Wish’s Villain Would Have Worked With 1 Specific Change

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Disney’s Wish.

Disney’s Wish could have been made better had it changed one specific thing with its central villain, King Magnifico. Given that Wish under-performed at the box office, only generating $31.7 million during its opening weekend, it is essential to analyze what went wrong. Disney has been known to expertly craft stories that reel in audiences, but Wish fell flat in this regard. One of the main issues with the story was that King Magnifico didn’t serve his purpose of being a riveting character that viewers were able to truly care about.

Villains are often the best part of a story, as it can be as fun to deeply hate a fictional character as to deeply love one. Because of this, if King Magnifico was a well-constructed villain, he could have been enough to really captivate audiences and have increased the success of Wish as a whole. Instead, he came across as extremely one-dimensional and like a caricature of a villain.

Wish Should Have Elaborated On King Magnifico’s Back Story

There is one simple change that could have been implemented to make King Magnifico a much better villain. Wish should have elaborated on his backstory to help establish the motive behind his horrible actions. The film touched upon it briefly, stating that Magnifico is trying to protect his own people after the loss of his family, but it needed to be discussed more fully. The best characters in any movie are those who feel multidimensional, and this would have given King Magnifico another layer to him.

It also could have made his villain song in Wish better. As it stands, his song is one that just highlights his self-absorption and arrogance. Given that he has had massive trauma in his life from losing his family, the song could have been so much more meaningful. While every villain doesn’t need an in-depth backstory to feel complete, some of the best do. Lotso from Toy Story 3 and Syndrome from The Incredibles benefited by having a backstory that made audiences somewhat understand how they were able to move ahead with their sinister plans, and this is something Wish would have been served well by also.

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Wish Should Have Included What Happened After The Queen Left Him

The issue with King Magnifico stems from the fact that Wish forgot to give him human tendencies, other than the brief backstory that was never revisited. Had the movie shown what happened to King Magnifico after his wife left him at the end of Wish, he could have seemed like more of a well-developed character. Audiences should have had the opportunity to see if he was remorseful after losing the last member of his family, or if he was still confident in the decisions he had made. Not providing this information contributes to him feeling like an incomplete character and villain, which was an unfortunate part of Wish.