[ad_1]
Eight of the world’s signature flames can be yours with this collector’s set of handcrafted fires made from a variety of flammable materials from around the globe. Includes Zimbabwe thatch hut, old-growth forest, jagged wreckage, Appalachian tinder, residential, chemical plant, Tokyo five-alarm, and sagebrush.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
Wish, the 62nd film released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a bad movie. The film is meant to celebrate the studio’s 100th anniversary, but instead, its incoherent story and reliance on millennial cliches for cheap jokes come off like it was fed into an AI generator and spat out onto the big screen. And the music, always a staple in Disney films, has some really lovely parts that are sadly weighed down by terrible lyrics.
Overall, Wish is a hot mess, but for Kingdom Hearts fans, its core premise could have significant implications for Square Enix’s Disney and Final Fantasy crossover—that is, if Tetsuya Nomura and friends decide to incorporate it into future Kingdom Hearts games.
Wish is set in the kingdom of Rosas, where King Magnifico, a sorcerer with the power to grant wishes given to him by the common folk, hoards wishes as magical orbs and refuses to grant ones he doesn’t believe will be good for the kingdom. When a citizen turns 18, they give Magnifico their wish for “safekeeping” in his study until the day he decides to grant it. While he might believe himself righteous, as protagonist Asha points out, Magnifico has created a system in which he controls the fate of everyone in Rosas, rendering the townsfolk hopeless as they wait for their wishes to be granted. As the film progresses, the king’s true nature as an egomaniacal bastard becomes apparent and Asha leads a rebellion against his tyranny.
But what does this have to do with Kingdom Hearts? As Asha learns more about the wishes in Magnifico’s clutches, it becomes clear that some of these wishes have to do with events that lead into various Disney movies. One Rosas civilian wants to fly, wears a green tunic, and is named Peter like Peter Pan. Valentino, Asha’s pet goat who gains the ability to speak because of magical shenanigans, wishes for a place where all mammals live equally, referencing the idyllic vision of 2016’s Zootopia. Asha herself becomes a Fairy Godmother and dons a cloak similar to the character from Cinderella.
There are other references, like Asha’s group of friends all dressing and acting similarly to the seven dwarves from Snow White. And when Magnifico is defeated, he’s trapped in a mirror, basically becoming the Magic Mirror from the same movie. There’s even a split-second frame in which his face is outlined to look like the mask that inhabits the mirror in the 1937 film.
All of this (and the 90 minutes of other Disney movie references) is part of the purpose of Wish—to celebrate Disney’s history—but there’s a larger implication here: Rosas is the center of a connected Disney universe. According to co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, as well as co-writer Jennifer Lee, Wish isn’t hardwired as a multiverse launch pad, but it does imply characters like Peter Pan, places like Zootopia, and songs like “When You Wish Upon A Star” are the dreams of the citizens of Rosas. Prior to this, Disney has featured the occasional crossover detail before, like Frozen featuring characters from Tangled in a crowd shot, which Disney has mostly acknowledged as cute nods. But Wish makes an entire plot point out of Disney’s most beloved characters and worlds having an inception within its kingdom.
This raises questions as to how that world would function in a potential Kingdom Hearts’ crossover. Will Kingdom Hearts play with the abstract ideas Wish hints at? In Square Enix’s RPG series, protagonist Sora and his friends Donald and Goofy travel to various Disney worlds on a spaceship. But before these worlds were separated, they originated from Scala ad Caelum, which featured heavily in Kingdom Hearts Union χ and in the final section of Kingdom Hearts III.
Incorporating Wish and Rosas into Kingdom Hearts’ world would require a great deal of retconning, as Square Enix has already been building out its own connected lore for 20 years. It’s unclear if it will even have to reckon with it anytime soon given Kingdom Hearts IV has been in development concurrently alongside the movie, and Disney began work on Wish in 2018, a year before Kingdom Hearts III launched. While we don’t know what Disney worlds will appear in the next game, we can reasonably assume Disney and Square have been talking about Kingdom Hearts IV while Wish was in production.
Kingdom Hearts has released plenty of prequels and midquels in between its numbered entries that help recontextualize story beats or fill in gaps, but Scala ad Caelum’s place as the root of Kingdom Hearts’ Disney crossover is pretty well-established. So it might just be easier for Square Enix to ignore Rosas and Wish’s Disney cinematic universe entirely. However, the series is no stranger to tweaking characters, worlds, and relationships to fit its own narrative. On top of weaving the existence of the shadow-like enemy Heartless into Disney movie plots, Kingdom Hearts has continued to fold new movies into its storytelling.
The first game made the Seven Princesses of Heart (which included Alice, Snow White, Jasmine, Belle, Cinderella, and Aurora) into a unified, magical force that affected the entire known Kingdom Hearts universe. Kingdom Hearts III made sure to add newcomers Rapunzel, Anna, and Elsa as part of the New Seven Hearts meant to take up the mantle. So Rosas could realistically be molded to fit the needs of a new story arc—perhaps it could be the origin point of the new worlds Sora will explore in Kingdom Hearts IV, further explaining the expanding lore without stepping on the toes of the story the series told before.
Kingdom Hearts’ interconnected Disney universe was a pretty novel idea back in 2002 when the first game was released. But nowadays, crossovers are so common they’re having diminishing returns. Take a look at recent Marvel Cinematic Universe box office numbers and you’ll see people are less infatuated with the concept of everything they watch and play weaving into one another. A shared Disney universe is a core theme in newer games like Disney Dreamlight Valley and Disney Mirrorverse, but Kingdom Hearts is one of the few examples where those worlds feel cleverly woven into each other, rather than thrown together in a disconnected pocket dimension. Now that Wish is at least toying with the idea of Rosas as the source of characters and ideas seen in previous Disney films, Kingdom Hearts is in an interesting position. It has to either reckon with one of the movies it may feature eating its lunch—albeit with its hands instead of a perfectly good fork and knife and just generally making a mess of the table—or find a way to wiggle out of the bind it’s put the series in.
I do wonder if, given Wish’s middling reception and box office performance, Square Enix might opt not to touch the movie or its characters at all, as it would complicate things in ways that are probably not worth the trouble. But Kingdom Hearts has put some mid-ass Disney movies in its games in one way or another, so who knows? Yes, I’m looking at you, Chicken Little. In the meantime, let’s hope whatever Disney is cooking for 2024 doesn’t read like it was written by ChatGPT.
[ad_2]
Kenneth Shepard
Source link
[ad_1]
Shay Mitchell and Elsa Hosk partnered together to design a modern, multi-use baby bag collection.
Shay Mitchell and Elsa Hosk come together to create The BÉIS x Elsa baby collection. This is the brand’s first large-scale design collaboration and first play with pattern. Designed to be versatile in a parent’s life, the bags are just as personally useful as they meet parent-specific organizational needs, with a chic, effortless aesthetic. The bags are made to grow with the parent and child, featuring add-on accessories for the early-child stages that can be removed later on.
“We are in the business of making chic things, and it was important to us to make a backpack that doesn’t look like, well, a backpack. You can hide the straps completely, which is one of our favorite features. Now you see it, now you don’t! There are snaps on the side that change the shape of the tote. Includes an easy to access front pocket, a key leash, trolley pass-through, insulated pockets on the side, and 13″ laptop pocket. the attention to detail on this bag is unmatched. There are 400 ways to model this bag, and Elsa can model them all,” shared Mitchell and Hosk
The line includes a Tote, Backpack Tote, Changing Clutch, Caddy and a gift set in three brand new patterns – leopard (wild child), floral (garden party) and check (play date). With function-forward designs, each bag can be utilized for a newborn and adapt to their ever changing lifestyle as they grow into little jet setters themselves.
Mitchell and Hosk don’t want individuals to be deterred by the collection if you don’t have children, “You may this is only an option if you have a kid. We are here to tell you, the tote insert for everyone. It’s the perfect station for all of your needs. it also has pockets to organize everything, insulated bottle compartments, and stroller straps.”
Shay Mitchell and Elsa Hosk with their children.
The new collection also offers a gift set complete with a toy and a hat that comes wrapped in a beautiful cloth. Mitchell and Hosk designed the hat adjustable to suit all sizes after experiencing how hard it was to find baby hats.
Hosk was inspired to create a non-baby, baby bag, essentially a tote that grows with you, transitioning effortlessly through all stages of life. “I am someone who doesn’t really like baby bags, I want everything to be chic, a tote I can bring to the beach and no one will know it’s a baby bag. Everything on the market is black, tan, or brown. We felt we should do something fun, bringing in patterns and colors that make us happy when you see them,” she said.
Shay Mitchell with the multi-functional clutch that can be use to hold diapers, wipes, changing pad … [+]
As far as The Clutch the pair was inspired by designing something that you could easily bring to dinner rather than a backpack or huge bag. “Everything you need can fit in the clutch, we promise, and if that weren’t enough it unzips to be a changing station that stands on its own,” they shared. “This small but mighty clutch has stroller straps, pockets for organization, a key leash, and even fits your ipad or laptop.”
The limited edition collection will live on Beistravel.com.
[ad_2]
Yola Robert, Senior Contributor
Source link