Why King Magnifico is a Disappointing Villain

But… but he lets us live here for free! And he doesn’t even charge us rent! /j

What Disney misunderstood about their classic villains is that their simpler motivations make them designed to be unsympathetic. They’re evil for the sake of being evil, but the movies they’re in never try to frame it like they aren’t. I agree that fleshing out Magnifico’s backstory would’ve been the best of both worlds, but this movie didn’t seem like it was willing to commit to both sides of his character.

What sucks is that King Magnifico has nice design and they gave him a wife, and Disney literally did nothing with both. He's the first villian with a wife, and it goes no where. So disappointing. 😢

I honestly was expecting Asha’s grandpa to turn out to be the real king all along while Magnifico had just erased his memory and took over his place as king

The thing that frustrates me is that Magnifico easily could have worked as a sympathetic antagonist or as a full-blown evil villain. If the writers wanted a classic Disney villain, they could've had him grant a very select few wishes and then use the rest for power from the beginning. Or if they wanted a more sympathetic angle, they could have shown his descent into madness as completely a product of him messing with powers he doesn't understand and then freed/redeemed him at the end. It feels like they didn't want to commit to either direction and ultimately failed at both - the character we got feels like he was written by two separate writing teams. And there was literally no reason it had to be this way!!!

Wife was the worst character. Imagine to love your husband, but doesn't tell him about oil which protected from mind control and after all of the events where she does know that he was on book influence doesn't give a clue about his situation and put him in jail. Like...They did a total sociopath she is more twisted villain than Magnifico itself.

How cool would it be if an evil wish was actual helping the heroes take him down only to once granted take full control of him making him into a literal monster? Not only would we get a sympathetic Villain with him but also a pure evil one too. Or you know just make the Queen also evil, That'd be sooo cool!

Found it on TV Tropes: Unintentionally Sympathetic: After the movie's release, some people view King Magnifico as this for a variety of reasons. His tragic backstory of his family and home being destroyed and him vowing to protect his kingdom from suffering that same fate, as well as his stated reasoning to Asha for not granting Sabino's wish has much more ground to stand on than intended and the people of Rosas are shown to live content and peaceful lives for free under his rule even with how he handles the wishes. Some also see his fate as Karmic Overkill as his actions that could be considered evil were only committed after he had been corrupted by the Book of Forbidden Magic, which he had only began using reluctantly and out of desperation. Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Queen Amaya giving up on trying to saving Magnifico from the Book of Forbidden Magic's corruption just because it says that it's not possible has lead to some not feeling as much sympathy towards her as the film wants. Queen Amaya was originally going to be a villain in an Unholy Matrimony with King Magnifico, running the kingdom of Rosas as a crime family not unlike the The Sopranos. She was also going to have a Sphynx cat called Charo as her pet.

magnifico's "twist" was so weird bc it happened before he earned the viewer's trust, isn't the whole part of the "twist" being that we didn't see it coming??? they didn't commit to him being evil from beginning to end but they also didn't commit to a slow decent to madness, they just wanted both and didn't commit to either... it's feels half-baked

And when people found out about the artbook that was released BEFORE the movie was out, it was shown that not only Magnifico was the villain, but his WIFE too. We would have had a Disney villain couple. Which only sours the potential of not only this movie, but the characters too.

Was he immortal? He seemed to be 50, meaning he was the king for 25 years or so, if not. So Gramps made this wish at 75? Never explained. One of many stupid things that made no sense.

Im sick of the idea that all disney movies, from snow white to zootopia, need to be connected by some kind of multiverse. These people have no confidence in their creations anymore.

The villain is not a villain at all. His Kingdom is happy, he is a great ruler and him granting you wish is very generous of him. The true villain is the MC, an 18 yrs old girl who is entitled to be granted her wish. Created chaos and propagated bad values that dreams should be granted by magic and not hard work.

I don't feel like actually watching he movie but even from just this, it doesn't even seem like his motivation is even evil at all? Like is he cherry picking wishes that directly benefit him specifically, or is it he overthinks everything and therefore barely grants any wishes? Because if it's the latter, that's not evil that's more cowardice than anything.

King candy is a major part why wreck it Ralph was so great as opposed to its sequel where a major bad guy was none existent and just played like a therapy session.

We could have had a villain couple. We were going to get a villain couple, and then Disney changed their minds. The early concepts for Wish were better than what we got.

I was really hoping that Disney would subvert expectations by having Magnifico be a twist NON-villain. Asha would start secretly granting all wishes, leading to complete chaos and/or people losing their ability to do anything for themselves. As they tried to fix it, Magnifico would learn to be more generous, and Asha would learn that sometimes it's for best that we all don't get exactly what we want, when we want it. Basically the moral of the story would be "sorry kids, but it's actually good that mom doesn't let you use her credit card to buy infinite Roblox DLC"

The reason he's a disappointing villain is because he's basically a father figure trying to do what's best for everybody & keep everybody happy. The "evil" scene is almost like a Dad telling his child that they cannot have everything they want just because they want it. His people live in paradise and the little brat wants more because I WANT IT lol. Imagine if they had made a hand-drawn film about a young boy trying to discover the secret of the "Wish Upon a Star" song and the villain was the typical power hungry evil wizard/witch (Jafar, Queen Grimhilde etc). It would've gone bonkers but Disney cannot write that story anymore. It's like they are allergic to it.

The problem is they wrote him as a parody of the classic Disney villain instead of writing him as a classic Disney villain.

As some one who hasn't seen the film yet and is looking from the outside in, I get the feeling that disney either either forgot how or really doesnt want to go back to traditional always evil villains. Just by looking as his design that looks more like a classic disney prince and listening to clips of "thanks i get" which sound so up beat and cheery for a a villain song, it genuinly seems like they were struggling to not make this guy a complete twist villain.