Why Is Chris Pine’s Villain Song in ‘Wish’ So Terrible?

Wish, as its ad campaign is quick to remind us, is a celebration of Disney’s 100th anniversary, complete with declaring itself an origin story for the Star of “When You Wish Upon a…” fame.

In that spirit, the film deliberately hearkens back to the studio’s past animated triumphs—and not just through its art style, which evokes (to varying degrees of success) the fluid watercolors of Disney’s 2D era through computer animation. After a number of films where a clear-cut antagonist is only revealed in the third act if one even exists at all (consider Encanto, where the real villain is generational trauma), Wish returns to a more classic Disney villain mode. King Magnifico (Chris Pine), the wish-granting ruler of the kingdom of Rosas, spends roughly a scene and a half as a benevolent tyrant before he’s revealed to be, well, a non-benevolent tyrant—with all the gloating, cape swishing, and evil laughter that comes with the territory.

There’s even, at long last, a new villain song! Much like the Disney villain itself, the villain song has been put on the backburner in recent years; there hasn’t been a proper one since 2009’s The Princess and the Frog, which featured Doc Facilier’s sinister bop “Friends on the Other Side”. (Tangled technically had one a year later, with Mother Gothel’s “Mother Knows Best”, but it was sung well before the character showed her true colors.) In theory, a celebration of Disney’s centennial is the perfect opportunity to whip out a wicked banger. The history of Disney has been written by its villains as much as by its heroes and princesses, and the songs they sing—Ursula vamping her way through “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, Scar ordering an army of goose-stepping hyenas to “Be Prepared”, the Devil and God raging inside the soul of Judge Frollo in “Hellfire”—are vital parts of their iconography.

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