Warning: Minor Wish spoilers ahead.
Now here’s one way to celebrate your centennial.
There are more than 100 Easter eggs, allusions and nods to classic Disney films in the new animated adventure, Wish. That’s a staggering amount, even for a studio that has long embraced self-referential movie moments — and probably the most we have seen in a major release since Steven Spielberg’s pop culture extravaganza Ready Player One.
The Wish filmmakers confirmed as much to Yahoo Entertainment, with Jennifer Lee, the Frozen filmmaker and current CCO of Disney Animation, initially guesstimating there were “over 70” before producer Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster-Jones revealed that he had created a spreadsheet to track all the references, and there were at least 100 entries. Co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn put it somewhere between 100 and 150.
“It’s a very long spreadsheet,” Lancaster-Jones told us.
Written by Lee and Allison Moore, Wish was heavily inspired by — and intentionally shaped as tribute to — the 100th birthday of the Walt Disney Company, launched by brothers Walt and Roy Disney on Oct. 16, 1923. The animated feature follows a 17-year-old girl named Asha (Ariana DeBose) who leads a rebellion against the wish-suppressing ruler (Chris Pine) of their otherwise utopian Kingdom of Rojas.
As Lancaster-Jones stresses, however, the cavalcade of callbacks was secondary to the story. “The conception of the movie was really as a love letter to Disney Animation,” he says. “And then organically all of these things started to come together, like having a classic villain, having talking animals. But it all needed to feel organic to the story.”
“When we first wrote the story, we wrote it very straight as this original fairy tale,” Lee confirms. “And as we were rewriting and things were evolving, certain things would come in that almost felt like they were there for us. I’’ll just tease the concept of mirrors. … They did it organically. And then over time we also said, ‘Let’s not take ourselves too seriously. Let’s have fun.’”
The references are both general and specific, with more difficult than others to spot. For instance, the film’s premise traffics in some classic Disney tropes, following Asha as she interviews to become apprentice to the sorcerer King Magnifico (hello, Fantasia), wishes upon a star to gain her own powers (hey, Pinocchio) — which will include talking to animals (Snow White), including a charismatic rabbit (Bambi) — and reveals Magnifico to be an scepter-wielding (Sleeping Beauty) evil royal (Snow White again). Lee also teases bits of Walt Disney is Asha and Mickey Mouse in the anthropomorphic Star.
“There are things that thematically that are underneath it that are deeper,” says the filmmaker.
Look closer and you’ll discover more subtle salutes to the studio, like a Mickey-shaped mask, or poison apple hiding on Magnifico’s desk.
DeBose, the Oscar-winning West Side Story actress, has been looking closely each time she has watched the film, and she’s willing to share some (vague, relatively spoiler-free) findings.
“The hidden gems are so great,” she says. “I’ve spotted many of them. I don’t know that I’ve gotten all 100 or over 100 hidden gems or nods, however, you leverage them. But Alice in Wonderland is all over the film, which I love. There are some beautiful references to Pocahontas. … Some of this animation is inspired by Sleeping Beauty. … I’ve seen Fox and the Hound. I’ve seen Bambi. I’ve seen a lot. Atlantis. If you can find the Atlantis reference, hey yo! … I’m not going to tell you because that’s not fun for me. … There’s a simple one. If you look at her friends, there are seven of them.
“But if you love Disney, you’re going to find something to love in this movie.”
Add Lancaster-Jones, laughing, “And people are going to hopefully have to watch this movie many times to find all of them.”
Wish opens Wednesday, Nov. 22.
Laura Davis is an entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to Broadway, she offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
