Why WISH's “Welcome To Rosas” is worse than you thought (video essay)

in my opinion the introduction is the most important part of any musical it's supposed to set everything up it's supposed to make you care a strong musical number grabs our attention and helps us suspend our disbelief understanding the rules of the universe we're stepping into Disney historically has the tradition of doing this right think of the foreshadowing encircle of Life in The Lion King or Bell notam at Hunchback think of how Bell and Beauty and the Beast establishes Belle's character in Conflict so perfectly I just finished the most wonderful story about a beant stock and an that's nice and how much less interesting would Hercules be if they just spoke the backstory instead of giving us the gospel truth what our story is listen to him he's making this story sound like some Greek tragedy meanwhile with wish's opening number welcome to roses Disney tried but they don't quite get it right let's get into it how does it work do you see the film first no and no okay oh my God I'm going to start by talking about framing the framing of a musical number is crucial the framing of Welcome to RZA is that Asha our alleged hero is giving a tour of the island this is to say the least a contrived way to introduce our setting right before the song begins Asha is out of breath and stammering our first impression of Asha is that she is indeed quirky and awkward adoral even sorry that phrase made me gag a little bit First Impressions matter and this first impression is one that tells me that Asha is more designed to be relatable than to be a character in a story compare this to the family majal its most obvious predecessor while Asha fumbles around like a buffoon Mel is very confident and ready to start the song and explain her family I'm only part of the amazing M the song also has a somewhat functional rhyme scheme but you know that's neither here nor there Mirabel comes off more immediately as a protagonist I would personally like to follow because she seems like she has real goals and a personality even though she's been given a few more minutes of screen time by this point Asha hasn't been established yet Beyond being quirky this doesn't really change throughout the movie though so I suppose it's not false advertising let's get into the first verse this is supposed to establish the setting were in the first line that sticks out to me is where the greatest Creations are all on display where greatest Creations are all on display I watched wish and I don't recall any focus on inventions or technology in Rosas nothing about art or any other type of creation either I know this sounds like a nitpick but we're establishing a setting here Asha then goes on to explain how Rosas is a place where your dreams come true in a collection of completely inconsistent meters that Force the singer to use weird holds and pauses to make it work well hey come to the right place this line doesn't even lead into the following one there's no other place just full of surprise Dre reality Collide not to mention that surprise and Collide doesn't work as a slant rhyme in a musical it's trying to rhyme eyes with ey and those consonant are just too different to sound conducive to my ears slant rmes like this are okay in pop music but musical numbers are traditionally a lot stricter naturally this pop songwriter gave us a catchy chorus instead of a refrain here inity the best word I could use to describe it is vague in my video about this wish I theorized that Julia Michaels was given very little context and time to write the songs that's why the chorus here in welcome to Rosas feels like it was written in one draft the line no wha ifs and no wonders doesn't even make [Music] sense I've never heard somebody use the word wonders to mean wondering I've only ever heard it used to describe something being amazing so Asha basically said that Rosas has no amazing things which you know great advertising the post chorus Rhymes us with [Music] Rosas okay get ready for more lyric Theory this doesn't work for two reasons first the vowels are slightly different it's a short a versus a short u while these vowels are pretty similar they're still distinct I guess you could pronounce Ros us like roses but it doesn't really work for the second reason which is that the emphasis of the rhyme is off since the emphasis is on Rose it doesn't match up with a plain us you'd have to find a word or phrase that rhymes both syllables of Rose us like o us if you want to stretch the pronunciation like the song does the second verse finally gives us some context to the setting but it's like a speedrun it's twice as long as the first first in terms of line count but still manages to rush through everything it starts by mentioning that magnifo build Rosas and has magic powers which the movie spoken introduction already established so these lines add nothing and are useless to the audience this magnif and he many years ago with eyes that can glow no no no I'm totally kidding but he is powerful okay that's not even a slant glow and Powerful straight up don't rhyme it's similar to the US and Ras rhyme where the bowels kind of sound similar but not really powerful is pronounced with the emphasis on the initial po syllable so to make this work even as a slant you need to pronounce it like powerful which is not how we say that word we put all the strength on the initial pow because that gives the word its weight oh and one more thing oh he's just like us with a Twist he's just like us with a Twist is a seven syllable line over four4 time which means it's trying to fit seven syllables over eight beats this can work but in this case it feels like Ariana deos had no direction on where to place the syllables so she rushes through the first four and can't find a place for the last [Music] three yeah we're still talking about Rhymes there's another problem with the attempted rhyme of 18 and ceremony while 18 has its emphasis on the last syllable ceremony has its emphasis on the initial and second to last syllable the two words don't line up 18 could rhyme with a single syllable word like scene but ceremony can't ceremony is a pretty hard word to find a rhyme for in that regard if you can take any lesson from this video please let it be that if you can't find a good rhyme for a word just choose a different word in general this verse is kind of lifeless it's a very simple AABB rhyme scheme no variation the syllable counts of each line are all over the place so you can never get comfortable with a rhythm there's even a point where the singer cuts herself off to make a line fit could be you most importantly the spoken introduction of the movie already establish that magnifo can grant wishes so this information is redundant yes the characters she's speaking to in the context of the film don't know about this but we do consider an earlier example in Beauty and the Beast the spoken intro is about the Beast Belle is about well Bell more importantly it's about Belle's relationship to the Village that's the key thing that's missing from welcome to Rosas because the context of Welcome to roas is Asha giving a tour she can't interject with her personal feelings this takes away so much from the introduction because we're getting nothing about Asha who's supposed to be the driving force of the story as its protagonist the only personal thing she mentions is her hope for her sabah's wish to be granted which again was already established by this point not only is there nothing to establish Asha as a character there's nothing to establish the conflict in B the conflict is apparent Belle says it herself there must be more than this provincial life she's tired of the same old thing every day it also does a great job establishing who she is as a character she's curious intelligent and doesn't care about how she's perceived by others another example is when Will My Life Begin similar to Bell Rapunzel feels trapped in her routine and wants to see more while when Will My Life Begin is definitely Poppy and upbeat there's a distinct sadness to it as it goes on Rapunzel reads the same three books every day and she's almost out of room on her painting well she's bored and wants to leave in welcome to Rosas there is no conflict you could remove it from the movie completely and nothing would change welcome to Rosas feels incredibly forced like everything else in this movie they understand that they needed to add a certain element but they weren't quite sure why they saw songs like Belle and Do You Want to Build a Snowman yes Frozen kind of had two intro songs and said well other Disney movies do that so we should do it too but what if the songwriter like understood the assignment better if I were to rewrite this movie I'd shift the conflict back so it's more immediate from the beginning maybe Asha notices how complacent and boring everyone is and wants something greater that way not only do we have a baseline for Asha to work from but we also establish her as having like a personality values even something we can instantly connect with and relate to then I changed the song to actually be dynamic welcome to Rosas is a very static song the first chorus sounds just like the last with the exception of a couple instrumental [Music] flares musical numbers are meant to be dynamic they build and soften to better Express evolving emotions they have stories this song is just expository dialogue being forced into what I can charitably called verse Julia Michaels may be a pop songwriter but even she should know better than this there are plenty of pop songs that are Dynamic stories Taylor Swift has dominated the world like that now if it were up to me I'd start the sequence similarly to B Asha would walk through her City narrating the things she's used to seeing she'd start by pointing out the things she really does love maybe it's the sound and feeling of the Ocean Air or the beautiful architecture or the friendly people then she goes on to talk about magnifo everyone around her says that magnifo is the best but there's something off about it which Asha would comment on she finds it concerning that nobody has any complaints about their king or about anything in general they live the same routine every day and don't aspire to do anything more Asha being 17 hasn't given up her wish yet so she still has a grand desire to do I don't know something pick a dream she doesn't know the truth about magnifo yet so she asks why everyone is so half-hearted about life the climax of the song would be Asha reaffirming her intention to live life to its fullest now we have a conflict in themes to work with this sets up wish to be about following your dreams and not accepting a complacent life it sets up Asha to have a motivation that we could actually connect with in the real movie she's upset that not everyone's wishes can be granted which makes her seem immature and selfish if her goal was to break away and do something great with her life we could have a protagonist with a real hook we actually want to see her succeed and be interested in how her story unfolds all of this can be set up by just the intro song but instead of taking advantage wish passes up every opportunity to flesh out its world or protagonist it feels like it doesn't understand at all what the point of a musical even is has juliia Michaels ever like watched a musical and thought about it I genuinely don't think she has wish feels like a musical made by Executives who think musicals just exist to shut up their kids in reality musicals are their own form of Storytelling they're not just a collection of songs interspersed through a paper thin movie like in sing they're a way of communicating Larger than Life emotions could you imagine an action movie where the directors didn't think that action scenes were that important this is a the same thing these songs aren't here to be turned into Tik Tok Nightcore Dance videos they serve a fundamental purpose to a story but that's not important to the powers that be anymore for Moana 2 they're at least getting real musical writers but I also jinxed wish so maybe I shouldn't say anything else thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video check out my channel as Ry Master for more Disney musical analysis that's all for now I hope you have a great day

Channel: Pixel Playhouse

Views: 203,208

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Id: Gdv803rEhMI

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2024