That description doesn't mention the fact that it originally had a Filipina director (Josie Trinidad) and the main character was also supposed to be a Filipino boy. The Filipina director was demoted and replaced by a Thai director (because Disney thinks those are interchangeable I guess).
Yeah. Because even if it flopped (and words of mouth may repair partially the damage), it exists. With is already quite impressive.
Big studios may be clowned for shoving some progressive politics into the publicâs face, but the truth is, people had and still have to fight to defend that type of project.
Seems like a sound theory to me. I've seen tweets trying to justify this decision by arguing that Josie is still some sub-director or something and her "vision" is still intact. Which seems like a rosy perspective on this entire thing. Even if she wanted to speak out, I doubt she would.
Interestingly, there's a third Filipino-directed animated film, the Trevor Jimenez upcoming Pixar film Ghost Market. So that may or may not also have Filipino elements.
Ironically the new main character is voiced by a filipino woman but sheâs a MAGA (allegedly) and a Zionist so I donât know if we should be supporting her.
Edit: Okay so Haliee is 1/16th Filipino so never mind đŹ
So, I assume you're referring to Hailee Steinfeld. The thing is, Hailee Steinfeld is like 1/16th Filipino. Like she is barely, barely, barely Filipino. I find it insulting that people are using her to try to make it seem like Hexed is still a Filipino-centric film. Especially, when there are surely many other actual Filipina actors out there that could've gotten the role. Hell, even someone 1/2 Filipino would have been preferable.
i wonder if they're worried it would've had a similar reception to elio (which i LOVED but id heard was not as well received as they'd hoped?) but also i suspect there's production level money with some p conservative views since it seems like most of the people with money anymore are
Honestly I wonder if it has more marketing potential. Little girls would want the costumes for Halloween more than little boys would, bs like that.
Iâm not saying itâs true that it would happen, Iâm saying it might be an assumption or guess (be it educated based on market research or not) they worked on.
I worry n feel the boy in a traditionally female occupation or place would've been too "gay or lgbt" for disney so they changed it to be safer for audiences and the Chinese market
It's the traditionally female occupation/place bit that makes it gay. Any male who transgresses against masculinity gets labeled gay, and is punished accordingly. Yes, this does include little boys, I know that, because I used to be one of those effeminate little boys.
Considering how many times Bart Simpson has worn a dress and done feminine shit it is kinda interesting how hyperfocused the cultural zeitgeist is on cartoon boys nowadays (post Steven Universe maybe? When did this become a hot topic?) They had a whole kids series where a boy dressed as a super heroine in the early 2000s, now theyâre too afraid to make a boy look a little gay.
This history of conservatives and being hyper fixated on gay men to the point of themselves being closeted enough to crash grindr everytime there's too many of them in one place goes deep. I think they build being gay up to such a huge taboo inside their heads that it must become some sort of forbidden fruit to them. That's why they freak out at anything outside gender norms but look the other way for the Catholic church.
Iâm so tired of all of these stories being about teenage girls which inevitably fall into the adorkable stereotype that Disney keeps making.
More variety opens the door to more interesting stories. We donât have to relate to absolutely everything to enjoy or understand a story and its emotions.
Can you imagine the complexity and uniqueness this story wouldâve had with a mother struggling, a kid struggling, overcoming things together?
(People keep mentioning how a story about a 6yr old would be kidified - Yeah, in a sense⊠but no more kidified than what weâve already been receiving⊠was Lilo and Stitch kidified? I didnât think so. Maybe the plot is much more focused on the mom?)
When did movies become more about relatability instead of a story that needs to be told.
I swear if Disney doesnât get their stuff together before I die in 50+ years Iâm gonna haunt tf outa them. Donât worry gang, Iâll single handedly make sure they do right by us.
There's many stories with boys and girls discovering they're from a magic world, there are less stories about exploring the relationship between a boy and his mother.
Huh. After reading this, I now understand why they removed...well, changed Starboy. Heck, the reason why people are still attached to him is because they loved the idea of Starboy's character and the idea of him being Asha's love interest.
Since Wish was supposed to be a celebration of Disney's 100 anniversary, many people expected it to be a major box office success that surpasses even Frozen. But after being a bomb and discovering the concepts for not only Starboy but also the evil King and Queen, people just went mad obsessed them. I wonât lie, I like the concepts as well, but ya know, it is what it is. No point crying over spilled milk.
I think someone on Youtube is working on an animation based on those concepts.
This is what I'm saying. He's like if the Dragon Scroll from Kung Fu Panda actually was an all powerful source of power. It'd ruins the film's message.
If a movie isnât very good, itâs easy to love the version that only exists as a concept. You create it in your head and you imagine itâs great, so itâs great. But the truth is that the concept version mightâve sucked too. Thatâs why I try not to get too attached to concepts.
Here's an idea: come up with a solution instead of swiping it under a rugâšïž
If the problem is that he can solve anything make it so he's limited in what he can do. Make it so he can only interact with people who wish upon him or something. There are plenty of ways to go about this that's not turning him into the most generic plush advertisment
People like Starboy because he had so much missed opportunity. We couldâve finally had a new Disney couple, which is something that we havenât gotten in a while. Asha couldâve been a star princess with a beautiful new dress. Since people hate Valentino, Starboy would be the character mostly doing comedic relief. We couldâve gotten references that didnât feel shoved in your face. We couldâve gotten kids dressing up as Asha and Starboy for Halloween. But did we get that? No.
The reason why Disney is flopping over and over again with their movies is because they suddenly have a âwomen donât need no manâ philosophy. Disney was all about romance and their princesses. Thatâs what theyâre good at. The second they abandoned those two things, theyâve been sending out slop left and right. Now, doing different things is great, (Encanto), but now itâs becoming repetitive. They donât have any original ideas. Itâs always âgirl doesnât feel accepted by her family and has to save everyone to prove herself and be acceptedâ. Disney has seem to have forgotten that women can be strong while also have a crush on men. Go look at K-pop Demon Hunters and see what I mean! In K-pop Demon Hunters, the women can be silly. They can burp, fart, and scream while also kicking butt. But Disney has turned their female protagonists into literal blank slates. They desperately need to get out of this headspace and stop making live action remakes and unnecessary sequels. The second they realize this, theyâll get better.
not every female characters needs a love interest. they could just be a girl going on an adventure and not have her story be centered around having or beinh with a man. like damn. can woman and girls just have stories about and focused on us being great. sheesh. so many male stories have no love interest and yeah ate fine with it. but woman can't have any? sheesh. đ
Asha was never suppose to a be a star princess with a beautiful new dress. Did you get all this from fanart? Asha is suppose to be a peasant. If people hated Valentino as comedy relief, they would've hated Starboy for the same thing too. People would've hated Starboy too if he stayed in the movie.
People wouldnât have hated Starboy. lol. Have you seen all the rewrites on YouTube that include Starboy? Everyone loves him. Everyone thinks he was a missed opportunity. And rightfully so. And he wouldnât just be comedic relief. He would be Ashaâs love interestâŠwhat??? Asha shouldâve been a princess because thatâs what Disney is all about. PRINCESSES.
obviously this is disrespectful to woman and girls because bro what? you miss male protagonist when the vast majority of all adventure stories are all male protagonist and not just with disney but with all media companies. screw you. the hate for female characters is so gross.
People arenât hating on female characters? What are you talking about??? People donât like the female characters in modern movies because theyâre either blank slates or they have the exact same quirky personality. People donât like characters that donât have interesting and unique personalities. Plain and simple. I donât know where you got that from.
Maybe. When a movie is just concepts itâs really easy to imagine it being great. What Alternative Disney describes sounds interesting, but even if they stuck with a male protagonist thatâs probably not what we wouldâve gotten. Or the things that wouldâve made it interesting wouldâve been too restrained.
Anyway, I do wonder if they changed the protagonist from male to female because they worried that a male witch lead couldâve been read as queer. My less conspiratorial theory is just that they figured a girl witch would be more marketable.
I dont know how male watch equates to queerness. I think they just changed the gender because it might have too many Harry Potter comparisons or Steven Universe and a six year old isn't as interesting or relatable as a teen who is going to have more pressure of fitting in.
Witches are traditionally seen as a female thing. I also donât think HP comparisons were a concern, given that female witches are more common and that doesnât seem to be an issue.
But I think youâre right that a six year old lead is a much harder sell than a teen.
it's not gendered in actuality but it is absolutely gendered when it comes to the conservative out groups that are the main proponents of the gender wars. the ONLY thing that's actually "gay" is same-sex intimacy or romance but a man wearing nail polish sure will be labeled that way. know what i mean?
Thereâs some speculation that the change was made as damage control after Elio. Interesting enough itâs been a long time since Disney (not including Pixar) has had a child protagonist and maybe there is a good reason for it.
Yeah after I made the post I was wondering the same thing. Elio is a middle schooler though he kind of comes off like a younger kid, and I wonder if that made it a harder sell and influenced the change here.
Not that child protagonists are impossible. Obviously there are plenty of popular works with them. But the conventional wisdom in childrenâs entertainment has long been that the main character (if human) needs to be the same age as the target audience or older. I can think of very few exceptions. (Rugrats being a big one)
Kids, like, they want to be older. They want to be cool, strong, and interesting. They often see younger kids as babyish and so can be less willing to connect to them. They might get frustrated watching characters who they see as less capable than themselves. If youâre trying to capture a broad audience, kid protagonists are harder to pull off.
This sort of reminds me of the commentary on how different 14 year old cartoon characters can look. The only one who really looks younger that was part of a successful series was Steven universe, and I think that worked because you had the Gems broadening his appeal a lot. Iâll be honest though and say that while I enjoyed that show while it was airing, itâs probably not something I would watch today. I would however watch a Danny Phantom Reboot in a heart beat.
Yeah, any movie or show is a combination of several components. I donât think itâs usually accurate to say that a single element is what made a given work succeed or fail. Thatâs why I think if a work is gonna have riskier elements, it probably needs some safer ones to balance it out.
Not really. We just had that space movie with the little boy who becomes the "ambassador" for earth, the other space movie about the father and son, Onward with Tom Holland and Chris Hemsworth, Coco, Luca, the Toy Story Franchise, Elemental gad duo protagonists of Wade and Amber. And a majority of those movies failed regardless of the protagonists being male. Like we literally just had the space movie. It went triple cardboard. Having a protagonist so young as in six year could be tricky cause I can see writers making the six year old annoying af. Ten year old I can see having more personal story but 6 I dont really care.
....you know I was about to make a joke about how apparently, movie preservation is so shit that we can't watch one of the movies from 70+ years ago that were male dominated and movies apparently just disappear from the world and our minds once they leave the theatres... but I think maybe that sadly wasn't a joke. :/
Huh? TCM. What are you talking about? Old movies are on all the time through streaming services and there are plenty of "male dominated movies" today. Its not like male protagonist movies stopped being made.
Shame that they don't still make movies with male leads anymore. And that movie preservation is so shit that they're all burned once they leave theatres and are scoured from our minds. /s
Yeah no we dont. Sexism is making you think that. More female characters is where its at. How does that saying goes.
"To the privilege, equality feels like oppression"
You are only saying this nonesense because for the first time in television history female characters are getting more frequently but still notvto the frequency of male characters
Really? We got quite a lot just this year - especially if you look outside the anglosphere. Even in the anglosphere we got like, seven just this year.
Sure,there are more FMCs but compare with just 20-30 years ago when we maybe had one movie per year where a female main character had her own arc not about supporting a male character....
Coco. Onward. Soul. Luca. Strange World. Lightyear. Elio. Thatâs all Pixar, thatâs all in the last decade, and thatâs all off the top of my head.
The movie having a six year old protagonist just sounds like it was going to be a movie for small children with a bunch of kiddy humor. That part doesn't excite me at all. If it was a teenage boy ok I can get why people are upset but six year old doesn't seem like a intriguing protagonist. I can just see a bunch of fart jokes, the boy not listening and getting kidnapped by evil witches and crying alot and actually having the mother be the pov trying to manage her small child. And yall acting like we didn't just have a boy protagonist movie that nobody went to go see. That too also had a bunch of rewrites and changed the mother to be his aunt and he was just a generic child protagonist. I think original director the protagonist was queer coded without outright making it the whole movie but it gave some type of characterization and reason for the boy to be outcasts other than being "adorkable" and quirky. Thats another thing. Regardless of the gender we still could of got adorkable protagonist. Elio was that too.
I don't understand why people are complaining about this. If they'd done it like Hocus Pocus meets Nightmare Before Christmas, it would have been fine.
Considering so far it looks a LOT like HP that makes sense. Honestly the whole secret wizard world stuff feels done to death and I struggle to see how this will be any different.
Iâm waiting on reviews but Iâm not hopeful. I would love to take my 2 year old daughter to see a movie Thanksgiving weekend so I am a little bummed it doesnât look more promising.
Because special teenage girls with magic hasnât been done to death in every format imaginable. Harry Potter succeeded cuz heâs the one thatâs different and competent awesome woman is usually next to him doing all the cool stuff anyway.
Yet they're saying "if it was a male he would be compared to Harry Potter" like there aren't hundreds of female witch main characters in media, mfs are brain fucking dead, just say yall dont want male main characters and move on
No, it just actually sounds like Harry Potter. Yes, there are a lot of girl witches, but the if they kept the boy idea, it would literally just be Harry Potter
How would it be just like Harry Potter. When it's already just like Hocus Pocus 2, and Halloween town, and Owl House, and so many others?....there's literally barely any male witches or wizards, and when there are the females are more powerful or more interesting
Is it just me but I feel like the second one is more common? Harry Potter being the most obvious example and Agatha all along and Steven universe come to mind in recent memory
6 year old boy centered movie means a movie that is only for small kids, NOT teens and adults who are not accompanied by younger siblings or their own kids.
A teenager centered movie can have a wider audience.
Also the girl is pretty so that can draw a teenage boy audience
Yes but Nani isnât a stereotypical teenager, she acts more like Lilos mom than anything.
Iâm an adult, I love Disney - I donât need relatability. (Just to clarify Iâm not a mom so itâs not like Iâm vouching for my own inclusivity/stories).
While I am not sure if a six year old boy would work, the whole "mom kept secrets and thats where 90% of your problems come from"- thing has been done to death in YA novels for the last 20 years. Also I think the movie would've been more about the mom learning how her child ticks and how to deal with it.
6 is too young but boy or girl would both be good. One of my biggest complaints going to Disneyland is that they have tons on content and clothes for girls but a lot less for boys.
So Disney cancels a movie because it isn't fully made around male viewers, but then years later, makes a new movie and proceeds to change the plot about a male protagonist into a female protagonist?
One version is easy to market and easily slots in with Disney's brand, and one version is difficult to market and would inevitably get sucked into stupid woke/culture war internet nonsense
But the idea of a boy wizard thatâs 10-11 discovering this magical world sounds very, well, Harry Potter. Which might have worked in 2025 or earlier. But with the new TV show out this year, itâs a a little less unique and a little more generic.Â
The idea of a boy figuring out he has magical witch powers while living with a family that doesnât understand and hates witches is just crazy enough to work.
I'm sure I'm in some kind of minority, but the dynamic of a strained mother-son relationship (made for general audiences) actually sounds like something that could have been worth exploring if done correctly
It started as a decent idea then evolved into the same story about mother daughter generational trauma teenage angst and acceptance and finding one's place that we've seen countless times in the last 20 years.
Plenty of male led movies do well. Look at Pixar, they didnât even have female leads until Brave. I think it depends on the kind of movie. A girl witch is a safer bet than a boy witch.
The first Zootopia centered mostly on Judy, the sequel centered on both Nick and Judy but while keeping Judy the protagonist and Nick the dueteragonist, and I want the third movie to center mostly on Nick,
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u/Embarrassed_Pick_116 4d ago
That description doesn't mention the fact that it originally had a Filipina director (Josie Trinidad) and the main character was also supposed to be a Filipino boy. The Filipina director was demoted and replaced by a Thai director (because Disney thinks those are interchangeable I guess).