OUAT vs. Other Fairy Tales: Compare & Contrast

[Speakeasy]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

An article about a feminist retelling of "Snow White" by a father in Berlin. 

I wonder if Henry met this version of Snow White in the nearby Wokechanted Forest?  Disney+ needs to buy this adaptation and use it for a Season 8 revival.

The Wokewood is a really nice place and Henry did enjoy his time there, but after his third daring escape from execution for Frequent and Malicious Microaggressions, he decided he'd had enough, the place is a social minefield.

He did think, upon arriving at The Western Front on the next leg of his journey, that it might not have been as bad as the actual minefields...

[KingOfHearts]

Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker was almost A&E levels of fanfic-y. (Not quite there, but close.) 

Spoiler

Kylo Ren gets a quickie magical redemption from Leia after becoming pretty irredeemable in The Last Jedi. He gets a visit from his ghost dad (er memory or whatever) like Regina did in 5B, and everything's cool. At least he wasn't victimized. I just think Ben Solo had a ton of potential that Rise of Skywalker (and the trilogy) wasted.

Palpatine coming back made about as much sense as Zelena or anybody else on Once Upon a Time being resurrected. I was actually pretty offended when Rey called herself a Skywalker. You can't just take someone else's last name. The whole point of the movie was Rey not being afraid of who she was, but then at the end, she denied her own identity. Making her related to Palpatine was such an OUAT twist that added nothing to the plot and was just for shock value. There was zero foreshadowing. 

What they did with the Sith reminded me so much of the Dark One mythology. "I am all the Sith" is very much Rumple or Emma being all Dark Ones in one. They even went so far to say if Rey killed Palpatine, she'd be the next Emperor/Empress, which was soooo much like the Dark One. Palpatine was basically Nimue/Clippy!Rumple.

In some ways, the movie was very OUAT-ish, both for better and for worse. Fun adventuring and wish fulfillment and all that. But there was also a lot of WTFery I'm sure A&E would think was just amazing.

Edited December 24, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

The friend I watch "Once" with visited.  The last episode we watched was "The Song in Your Heart".  I really couldn't bear to watch the 2-hour Season 6 finale with her, so we watched the live-action "Aladdin" instead.  Funny thing was when she saw the live action Jasmine, she said it sort of reminded her of the "Once" one.  Maybe in appearance or vibe because it was a live-action version?  She didn't remember that there was an episode in Season 6 which wrapped the Aladdin subplot. 

I sort of think it's nice to think of the musical episode as the series finale.  I don't know if we'll ever watch the rest of the series together.  She doesn't really care, LOL.

[Shanna Marie]

RE: The Rise of Skywalker (I seldom successfully manage to deal with quotes in spoilers or spoilers in quotes)

Spoiler

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who immediately thought of the Dark One with the bit about how Rey would basically become Palpatine and have all the Sith in her if she killed the Emperor. But this actually makes Return of the Jedi make a little more sense to me, if he was trying to do the same thing with Luke then. It's always bugged me that Luke spends most of the movie killing Jabba's henchmen and random stormtroopers, most of whom probably were drafted or clones rather than being true believers, and that's okay, but it's the worst thing ever that will send him straight to the Dark Side if he kills the person who's actually responsible for all this, the person whose death might actually end the war. But if it's not just that Luke will end up on the Dark Side for killing him, but rather that he'll be filled with all the Sith, then not killing him makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, Once never came up with any kind of explanation for why it was totally okay for Snow and David to kill random Black Knights who might have had their hearts ripped out, but executing Regina, a mass murderer who was responsible for all the problems, was a terrible thing to do.

On another note, I've been rewatching Haven, which has so many weird parallels to Once while still being a very different show. They're both about strange cursed small coastal towns in Maine, and both star a snarky blonde working in law enforcement who's somewhat immune to the town's curse (though that aspect of the story changed after season one on Once). I guess you could say that Haven does with Stephen King books what Once does with fairy tales, bringing in lots of his plot elements from various books and throwing them together in this new setting and with original characters at the center of it all. Anyway, I'm in the last season now, and the town is surrounded by a ring of fog/mist that cuts it off from the rest of the world. People can't leave the town. If they try to run into the fog, they find themselves running back into the town (there's an amusing scene in which a kid is playing catch with himself by standing at the edge of town and throwing a baseball into the fog, then catching it when it comes out again). But unlike when Once was cut off by the ice wall or any of the other magical barriers, they were cut off from the Internet and the telecommunications system. Also, no one in the outside world was aware the town existed. Even people who'd been to the town before no longer remembered it. Someone from the town who had left suddenly had no money because he'd deposited it in the branch in the town, so the bank had no record of him having an account.

But the thing that makes me think of what Once should have done in season six is the way they handled callbacks. They spent the last season tying things up (though they had the advantage of knowing from the start that it would be the final season), and in doing so, they brought back a number of things from previous seasons. But it's not like "Hey, we just ran into Ariel! Hi, Ariel! Bye, Ariel!" They used those plot elements for the story. People in the town have powers/abilities that can be useful but generally cause problems, and in the last season, they draw upon those abilities in a way that shows that the characters have learned. Like, there was a situation in season three that they stumbled upon and had to wing a way to get out of it. In the last season, they deliberately use that power to accomplish something and use what they learned works as a way of dealing with it. When the original actor from the previous seasons apparently wasn't available, they'd call back to that power but have someone who was a relative of the original character, since it tends to run in families. There's also a building sense of dread with the suspicion that the heroine is going to have to sacrifice herself to save everyone, but there are no shaky hand moments, no prophecy. It makes me think of what season 6 could have been. I guess they did revisit some earlier episodes, like with Cinderella, but I don't feel like there was ever anything that showed that they'd learned. They could have really done something with the Evil Queen, showing that they'd learned from fighting (and later becoming friends with) Regina, so they were better able to deal with the Evil Queen.

[Camera One]

I watched the animated version of "The Jungle Book" and now I am watching the live action.

I'm imagining I'm watching Graham's backstory.  He was raised by wolves so naturally he would have been Mowgli.  He could have hated other humans because they killed his animal friends.

I can't help it but when the evil tiger was talking and referred to his wounds caused by humans, he reminded me of Mother Gothel, hating an entire species due to their own experience.  

Can't believe I can't even enjoy a movie without thinking of Mophead.

[Camera One]

The live-action "Jungle Book" was better than I thought it was going to be.  Baloo the Bear inviting Mowgli to have a carefree life reminded me of Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King with Simba.  They did a good job of taking the scenes from the animated movie and executing them on a grander scale, like with the ruined palace of the apes.  They also fleshed out story points like why Mowgli had to leave the wolf pack and Shere Khan the Tiger's motivation to kill Mowgli.  I also liked how they changed the ending and didn't have Mowgli join the humans for no reason.  Like I said, this could very well have been Graham's backstory.  And then in the next part of the story, the humans in the village would be the villains.

I did find it ridiculous how Mowgli managed to walk through the jungle with the torch at record time.  I guess all fictional forests have destinations that are walking distance.  I also question why the animals would still defend Mowgli after he started a forest fire.  

I also watched the first episode of "Reign" because of Adelaide Kane.  She is a lot more likeable than Ivy, thank goodness.  I don't know if I'll continue since I'm not big on watching royal court intrigue with people getting murdered and executed and everyone preoccupied with having sex.  The modern music soundtrack is a tad distracting. 

But it is one of the few shows on the streaming service included with my cable package that sort of interests me, so I might continue.  It's weird with streaming that there are so many shows but it's actually hard to find anything you want to watch.  I decided to try out "Doctor Who", so I'm on the fifth season now, but I sort of lost interest with a new cast.  There really is no guarantee with a new cast even with a pre-established world.

Edited January 12, 2020 by Camera One

[daxx]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

The modern music soundtrack is a tad distracting. 

I couldn’t make it through the first episode for this reason. It just bugged me too much.

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

I decided to try out "Doctor Who", so I'm on the fifth season now, but I sort of lost interest with a new cast.  There really is no guarantee with a new cast even with a pre-established world.

I have found that I react to the major reboots of Doctor Who as though it's an entirely new show. If I like the cast and the things they're doing, I'll get involved, but if I don't get invested, I drift away. I loved the David Tennant Doctor, but got tired of the retroactive St. Rose stuff and was losing interest, then loved the Matt Smith Doctor with Amy and Rory, was less interested when the sidekicks left and didn't like the new one much, was even less interested with the new Doctor after that. I haven't yet seen the current one, since I don't have cable anymore. My library has the DVDs and I'll probably watch someday, but I'm not particularly motivated. I think the pre-established world makes me more likely to give each iteration a shot, but it's not a guaranteed thing that I'll stick with it or that I'll get emotionally involved in it enough to care. I still watched Doctor Who while I had cable, but it was almost a chore just so I could talk to my friends who were into it and because through my friends I was involved with the running of a Doctor Who convention (interestingly, the con went from huge during the 50th anniversary year to dwindling to the point we ended it a few years later, so I don't seem to be the only one who lost interest).

[Camera One]

So Netflix is doing what A&E should have done with Dorothy/Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland.  As we've discussed, Dorothy and Alice both visited a fantasy world, so it makes sense that they could identify with each other when everyone else refuses to believe them.

They've ordered a film called "Dorothy & Alice" for a crossover adventure.

https://geektyrant.com/news/netflix-is-developing-a-alice-in-wonderland-and-wizard-of-oz-crossover-film?fbclid=IwAR2I9rDw6ne_FH2NzJ8zBzrOeEoMPMIdBpLw81rmMKZCkDt0X0ZXx8o8pC0

This was the synopsis of the original script:

Quote

The original script found Dorothy Gale haunted by nightmares of Oz’s impending destruction. Sent to a home for others like her who experience troubling, vivid dreams, she soon befriends Alice, a mysterious girl who involves her in a perilous quest to not only save the worlds of imagination, but the world as we know it.

But a new writer has been hired and she plans to take the story in a "different direction". She wrote on Twitter:

Quote

“The Cheshire Cat is out of the bag. I’m writing DOROTHY & ALICE for @Netflix, a fantasy adventure epic. I grew up reading these books & this project has been endlessly fun to craft – to reinvent treasured characters and explore the worlds I wanted to inhabit as a kid.”

It would be nice if she does have deeper knowledge of the books and use them in her adaptation.  

[Shanna Marie]

I've got a book series recommendation that kind of scratches the OUAT itch, the 500 Kingdoms series by Mercedes Lackey. I know I've mentioned these books before in discussion here, but I didn't find anything in this thread in the last year and a half or so, and I found myself rereading them after wrapping up the rewatch, so I thought I'd throw them out there again.

Like OUAT, it's about the world where the fairy tales take place, with the various tales mashed up so the characters hang out together. There are also a lot of kingdoms within walking distance (though in this series, there's a magical reason for that, as there's a spell that makes all forests one forest, so you start walking through one forest and end up in a different forest in another kingdom). Instead of there being a human Author who has the power to alter stories, it's a kind of magical force that tries to make the stories play out, which is why there are multiple Cinderellas, etc. If there's a young girl whose father is widowed, the magical force kicks in and will nudge a widow with two daughters toward him, and they'll treat the daughter horribly, etc. Sometimes this all goes terribly wrong because while the magical force is trying to make the stories play out, the situations aren't always in line with the story. For instance, the prince in Cinderella's kingdom might be a small child, so she doesn't meet and fall in love with the prince and remains trapped. The Fairy Godmothers are responsible for monitoring things in their kingdoms and intervening to sidetrack the magical force or find a new story to play out that also works, like intervening before the dark sorceress goes totally dark so that instead she ends up as a good sorceress with a goth aesthetic.

Aside from the first book, The Fairy Godmother, which sets up the world and introduces the Fairy Godmother who appears in all the books, the books are mostly standalone and there's no particular reading order. They really straddle the line between romance and fantasy, with at least one couple getting together at the center of each book. I have to say that some of the plotting is at OUAT level -- in the first book, the big, final confrontation comes out of the blue and isn't set up at all (though, in fairness, that's kind of the point, as the main plot is about the main characters' growth, so it's not about any particular villain but rather about whether the main characters can deal with this big test, and if it had been set up it wouldn't have been unexpected for them). Some of the books are better than others. I loved the sleeping beauty one, which mashes up Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, but the beauty and the beast one made me want to throw the book against the wall because while the setup was clever (the big, bad wolf from the Red Riding Hood story is a werewolf and the Beast in the beauty and the beast story), what was really going on and who the bad guy turned out to be was ridiculously obvious, even though the characters didn't figure it out, so I kept hoping for a twist. So, basically, it's sometimes the experience of watching the show all over again, for good and for bad.

Alas, they're out of print because that imprint folded (though I think I heard she was re-releasing them as e-books), but I've found them in the library and used bookstores.

I guess in spite of being infuriated by the OUAT series outcome, I'm still craving something kind of like that. This is fairly close to the fairy tale side of the story (no modern world stuff, though).

[Camera One]

I looked them up and the whole series is at my local library, so I will try the books out when I have a vacation later this year.

I guess we all have to wait until Bridgette Hales and A&E's next "Epic" TV series to fulfill our craving.  Hopefully, it gets past the development process.

Edited February 1, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

They're not great literature, and the editing is iffy with lots of errors in the editions I have (which surprises me, since I know the editor), but it's the closest thing I've found to scratching the OUAT itch, with fairytale romantic adventures. I was doing a movie night last night and was in the mood for that sort of thing, but I've got Stardust and The Princess Bride more or less memorized and there's not a lot other than those that isn't bad, low-budget fantasy cheese. I guess what I want is maybe something like the live-action Cinderella, but with a bit more adventure (though that one did have the coach chase scene). Thanks to the LOTR/Hobbit movies and Game of Thrones, fantasy on film has become mostly massive armies and spectacle.

[daxx]

Have you tried “into the woods”? It’s fun.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, daxx said:

Have you tried “into the woods”? It’s fun.

I enjoy the original Broadway version of Into the Woods, but the Disney film takes out of lot of the edge that makes it great. Into the Woods is a cynical parody that really didn't need to be put into a polished three-act structure. In the original musical, the narrator dies, allowing the stories to spin into all sorts of directions. In the Disney version, there is no narrator, so things start going bad out of nowhere. There's also a lot less death.

That's not to say being "edgy" makes something good, but it was apparent Disney's corporate was all over making sure the properties were preserved. If it had been done by another studio, I know for a fact it would've been better. Into the Woods just isn't Into the Woods if it doesn't subvert expectations in its own cynical way.

Edited February 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Into the Woods is another one I have memorized. I have the DVD of the Broadway version and of the movie version, and I can sing the whole thing from memory (I have the Broadway cast album on CD).

There are things I like about the movie version, but I'm still mad that they cut "No More." It's the turning point of the story for the Baker. The music starts. You're waiting for that song. James Corden would have killed it. And it doesn't happen. They skip right over the emotional climax for that character.

"Hello Little Girl" gets a lot creepier when the Wolf is basically a man in a suit and Red is an actual child than it is in the Broadway version where it's a wolf costume and Red is a young-looking adult actress (probably late teens/early 20s).

But the staging of "Agony" in the movie is absolutely brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny, and I love Anna Kendrick's Cinderella.

[KingOfHearts]

Finishing S2 of my Buffy rewatch and seeing some of that "omniscient villain" trope popping up. In the episode "Passion", Jenny is about to cast the spell that returns Angel's soul. But then Drusilla gets a random vision, and suddely Team Vampire knows exactly where Jenny went to get the supplies, and where she's casting the spell. The premonition was super convenient for them. There's been other times that vampires get an upper-hand simply because Drusilla gets a vision literally out of the blue and oftentimes specific to that episode. It's not like she had a prophecy at the beginning of the season and it paid off later. Her visions just happen when the plot needs them to. If she sensed some kind of "disturbance in the force" that'd be one thing, but she seems to know all the critical details whenever the Scooby Gang is about to do something important.

Although, I'd say OUAT is even worse because many times the writers won't bother to explain why villains know the information they do. They just know it because they're supposedly super influential with eyes and ears everywhere.

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

Although, I'd say OUAT is even worse because many times the writers won't bother to explain why villains know the information they do. They just know it because they're supposedly super influential with eyes and ears everywhere.

I think that's the key factor. At least on Buffy, they'd established Dru's visions ahead of time. Yes, they were conveniently timed (I guess you could argue that her visions were tied to pivotal events, so of course she got them when they were most useful), but they didn't come out of the blue. They were a key character trait. On OUAT, villains just randomly knew stuff for no reason that was established, and sometimes straining probability--like Zelena somehow knowing about everything that happened between Hook and Ariel, as well as exactly how he felt about it. Even if she'd bothered to have him tailed by flying monkeys or could watch any event at any time in her magic iPad, how would she have known about his guilt complex? At that time in the show, he was still playing it cool and wasn't overtly guilt tripping. You could have had him under 24/7 surveillance without getting signs that he was feeling bad about his past. He was still denying that his heart wasn't really in piracy anymore. In fact, that was the problem that happened with Ariel, that he was so desperate to prove he was still a pirate not only to Blackbeard but also to himself. It's one thing to be aware of events, but having deep insight into the psyches of others when they were extremely non-astute emotionally, themselves, was ridiculous.

[Camera One]

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

On OUAT, villains just randomly knew stuff for no reason that was established, and sometimes straining probability

That explains well why I didn't get the same feeling on "Buffy".

And of course, on OUAT, sometimes, villains just randomly didn't know stuff for no reason.  Like when Hades or Peter Pan forgot to keep tabs on everyone, just because.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

It definitely helps the audience believe something when an established character trait conveniently aids the villain or the heroes. We don't know how often Dru has visions because we are only going to see the ones that are relevant to the story, but the implication is that she has them more than just when the Scoobies are planning something. She's had them for centuries. It could also explain why she managed to be so long lived even though she's fragile and not entirely there mentally.

Once never managed to explain the omniscience of its characters and it frequently removed me from the story due to the implausibility of it all.

[Camera One]

Another thing with shows like "Buffy" where the characters do research is that it feels more believable when they figure out something that could help them.  On "Once", it always feels random and out of the blue when someone comes up with some solution or MacGuffin.  It's hard to buy into a world where the rules seem to change on a whim.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

Another thing with shows like "Buffy" where the characters do research is that it feels more believable when they figure out something that could help them.  On "Once", it always feels random and out of the blue when someone comes up with some solution or MacGuffin.  It's hard to buy into a world where the rules seem to change on a whim.

I feel like A&E were trying to make Belle their own version of Willow, doing research on the computer or in the library. But we never really saw her doing it outside of a few choice scenes in S4. When the Scoobies are trying to figure something out, you see them discussing possible solutions, researching different kinds of texts, and formulating plans. There were scenes in OUAT that were literally just Belle running in with a random solution out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure we didn't even know she was studying anything.

They were definitely scenes in OUAT where the characters were discussing things. (Actually, that became almost every other scene in later seasons. I hated them.) But they didn't feel particularly productive because the characters weren't actively doing much else unless they were directly involved in the A plot. Their solutions didn't come from research most of the time. They'd just go, "maybe we'll do this" and then stumble onto some deus ex machina. No real preparation, just a lot of talking. Their victories never felt earned.

Makes me think about how much potential Belle had as a character and not just as Rumple's arm rest. She could've worked with Hook or even Regina to come up with solutions to magical problems. I could see the Storybrooke library becoming a recurring set. 

Edited February 14, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I feel like A&E were trying to make Belle their own version of Willow, doing research on the computer or in the library.

Makes me think about how much potential Belle had as a character and not just as Rumple's arm rest. She could've worked with Hook or even Regina to come up with solutions to magical problems. I could see the Storybrooke library becoming a recurring set. 

Sadly, I could never buy that Belle was an encyclopedia of knowledge and wisdom.  

Maybe it was because her first episode was pretty much seeing Belle with Rumple.  I don't feel like we got a sense of who she really was on her own.  Instead of being the smart heroine of the source material, she seemed a little like a bimbo.  It didn't help they wrote stuff like Belle and her mother deciding to save library books while the castle was being destroyed by an Ogre.  Surely, there was another way to show us that they treasured books.

Quote

They were definitely scenes in OUAT where the characters were discussing things. (Actually, that became almost every other scene in later seasons. I hated them.) But they didn't feel particularly productive because the characters weren't actively doing much else unless they were directly involved in the A plot. Their solutions didn't come from research most of the time. They'd just go, "maybe we'll do this" and then stumble onto some deus ex machina. No real preparation, just a lot of talking. Their victories never felt earned.

Those conversations were often used as filler or exposition.

Character 1: We found out that <villain> is going to do this.

Character 2: So you're saying that <insert exposition about stuff we already know>

Character 1: How did that happen?

Character 3: Well, <insert more exposition about stuff we already know>.

Character 6 (enters): We just found out <villain> is in the <mines / forest / Main Street>!

Character 4: I'm going to go after him/her/them because it's my centric!

Character 2: I can't let you do that. <insert reason why it won't work>

Character 3: But maybe <insert some other random thing they could try>

Character 5: All is not lost.  With Hope™ we can overcome this.

Character 4: Well if you're going to come with me, then let's go headlong into this poorly thought out plan.

Snowing: We'll warn everyone off-screen and come back for another group conversation later.

Swoosh to Flashback.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

On 2/13/2020 at 10:11 PM, Camera One said:

It really is hilarious.  The Lily flashbacks were meant to justify Emma needing to keep Regina as a friend.  This show is so messed up... a major character is made to feel bad that she dropped a toxic influence in her life in the past, so is motivated to include a different toxic influence in her life in the present.  

It still makes me laugh that Lily is meant to be Emma's Faith. On BTVS, Faith was meant to be the protagonist's shadow self, but on OUAT, the writers had to make Lily literally Emma's darkness. 

Edited February 16, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

51 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Saw A&E's show Amazing Stories being advertised on the OUAT Facebook page. It's coming up pretty quick. (March 6.) I thought it was weird considering it's on Apple TV+ and ABC is owned by Disney.

Let's break down the "Amazing Stories" trailer...

1) Patient hooked up to machines.  Who wakes up.

Prince Charming waking up and/or Snow waking up and/or Cursed Henry waking up and/or Aurora waking up, etc. etc etc. check.

2) "What if it does these things for a reason"

LOL, wait and see, it really doesn't.

3) "Maybe all this always happened."

Are we ripping off "Lost" again, A&E?

4) "I may have something."

Let me guess, a MacGuffin or a previously untold backstory that helps us in this present dilemma?

5) Gruff Grandpa to kid.  "Great.  Buckle up"

Old Male Emma?

6) "I'll see you on the other side"

Of the town line or the Underworld or what?

7) "It's a pretty good story... I'll tell it to you sometime."

Maybe in ten episodes when you don't care anymore.

--

The whole thing felt like a bunch of well-worn sci-fi and/or fantasy tropes.  They might as well call it "Retold Stories".

Edited February 17, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 2/14/2020 at 8:38 PM, Camera One said:

Maybe it was because her first episode was pretty much seeing Belle with Rumple.  I don't feel like we got a sense of who she really was on her own.  Instead of being the smart heroine of the source material, she seemed a little like a bimbo.  It didn't help they wrote stuff like Belle and her mother deciding to save library books while the castle was being destroyed by an Ogre. 

I somewhat had the same impression of cartoon movie Belle, to be honest. Yeah, she liked books, but everything she read sounded like her world's version of a Harlequin romance. Not that there's anything wrong with reading fluff for pleasure, but you're hardly a bookish intellectual if that's all you read. It's funny that in the "Belle" song, which is basically "Not Like Other Girls: The Song," the local girls are treated like bimbos for swooning over Gaston, while Belle is supposedly superior because she's reading a book that's essentially the same thing (not swooning over Gaston, in particular, but swooning over a hero). They improved it somewhat in the live-action movie version, where Belle also read Shakespeare, and they showed that she came up with inventions and was teaching girls in town instead of just going around acting superior. I've seen a comic that riffed on the "Belle" song, with one of the villagers talking about, "There goes Belle, saying mean things about us and acting like she's better than everyone else."

Show Belle was all over the map. Initially, they just said she liked books and had Rumple creating a library for her be a grand, romantic gesture mostly because books were a big part of movie Belle's character. But she didn't come across as particularly deep or well-read. Then later, in the Mulan flashback, they suddenly went to that fiction trope of "likes to read=knows everything" with her suddenly being able to read foreign languages, just because she likes books. That's similar to the way Willow was treated (and later in the Buffyverse, Fred), where the smart girl who likes books is somehow an all-purpose know-it-all who can read just about any language, even if they're from other worlds, and is an expert on all things, because books. Willow was an ordinary high school girl before she met Buffy, and then a year or so later can translate spells from arcane demon languages. At least Belle was from another world where there were magical languages. But all we ever really saw her reading was that one stupid romance novel, so why would she have needed to be able to read multiple languages? It actually made more sense for Hook to be the one who was familiar with other languages, since he'd traveled widely, but he only got to translate something once. It would have been funny if there had been a situation in which Belle was trying to translate something based on learning it from a book, and he, who'd used the language in real life, corrected her on her translation, since it was colloquial rather than literal.

And it's not even like these people are good at research, and therefore can find any information. It's always just "To the books!" and they start randomly pulling books off shelves and flipping through them, cover to cover. They never seem to have the books organized in any way, so that it can be like, "You take the history section and see if you can find an event that seems similar to our situation. I'll look in the earth magic section." Then we had Belle so brilliant at research that she was e-mailing some professor in our world about magic from their world, and she didn't seem to ever actually check his credentials so she never found out he was really Rumple. But I guess because he was a professor, she figured he knew everything about everything, because books.

This is similar to "science" being an all-purpose, general ability, so if you're good at "science," you can hack a computer system, sequence DNA, identify rocks and minerals, know about every species of bug and plant, and analyze the chemical composition of something. And read any language in which books about science are written.

Liking to read mostly probably means you have above average verbal skills. That's all. It's what you read that determines what else you know. (Sorry, that's a pet peeve in fiction.)

[Camera One]

They never implied in the cartoon movie that Belle was super smart, just that she was perceived to be kooky because she loved reading books for escapism.  They didn't imply that she was this brave heroic figure who sacrificed herself for her kingdom.  The cartoon Belle just went to find her father.  "Once" gave the wrong impression of Belle from the start, with that low-cut dress.  They didn't establish her character before throwing her in with Rumple.  The flashbacks progressed rapidly so we saw her grow close to Rumple by the third flashback even though it was supposed to have been months.  There was no transitional event which explained why she was willing to give Rumple a chance.  The subsequent Rumbelle episodes only made things worse, not better, especially the 4A retcon that Belle knew how dastardly Rumple was before she even agreed to live with him.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

They never implied in the cartoon movie that Belle was super smart, just that she was perceived to be kooky because she loved reading books for escapism. 

True. It was more the talk around the movie that made Belle out to be some kind of genius because she liked books -- which is one of the Hollywood tropes. And I guess that compared to previous Disney princesses, she was practically a Rhodes Scholar. It was OUAT who really turned her into a know-it-all who read multiple foreign languages and who had random arcane knowledge, in spite of most of her reading apparently being that one silly book.

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

"Once" gave the wrong impression of Belle from the start, with that low-cut dress. 

They had the same problem with her that they had with Tiana, where they took someone whose original story had her being middle (or working) class who married royalty and turned her into a princess to begin with. The big golden dress was supposed to be Belle's big Cinderella moment at the turning point of her relationship with the Beast, when they actually had a kind of date night. It wasn't supposed to be her everyday wear. I think TV Belle comes across as sadly naive and kind of silly, like she goes into the situation with Rumple thinking of herself as a great hero and that maybe it'll end up being romantic. It's like she's read a bunch of "beauty and the beast" themed romances and thinks that she's getting to live out her fantasy. Movie (both Disney versions) Belle (and the fairy tale character) doesn't seem to have any expectations.

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

There was no transitional event which explained why she was willing to give Rumple a chance.

But he caught her when she fell off a ladder! That's proof that he's a good person, deep down inside, and that he has a good heart.

[Camera One]

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think TV Belle comes across as sadly naive and kind of silly, like she goes into the situation with Rumple thinking of herself as a great hero and that maybe it'll end up being romantic. It's like she's read a bunch of "beauty and the beast" themed romances and thinks that she's getting to live out her fantasy.

It was the classic book "Her Handsome Hero".   Could they have come up with a more cringe-worthy title? 

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

It was the classic book "Her Handsome Hero".   Could they have come up with a more cringe-worthy title? 

Yeah, you think they could have come up with something that made it sound like Arthurian legend or Shakespeare, or something highbrow and classic that she was basing her personal code of honor and her ideals for life on rather than it being essentially a cheesy romance that would have been a paperback if that world had paperbacks. "Her Handsome Hero" is in the same vein as stuff like "The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby."

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, you think they could have come up with something that made it sound like Arthurian legend or Shakespeare, or something highbrow and classic that she was basing her personal code of honor and her ideals for life on rather than it being essentially a cheesy romance that would have been a paperback if that world had paperbacks. "Her Handsome Hero" is in the same vein as stuff like "The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby."

And they claim this show is all about empowered females who are not defined by men.

[Speakeasy]

9 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, you think they could have come up with something that made it sound like Arthurian legend or Shakespeare, or something highbrow and classic that she was basing her personal code of honor and her ideals for life on rather than it being essentially a cheesy romance that would have been a paperback if that world had paperbacks. "Her Handsome Hero" is in the same vein as stuff like "The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby."

😄😄😄

What's even funnier is that in the very episode that introduces that book, Gaston actually comments on its tackiness both in the present and the flashback. Whatever the truth about Belle in the original cartoon, Gaston is, definitively, meant to be a violent, illiterate oaf, and here he apparently feels he can look down on the intellectual princess for her trashy taste in literature.

Also wanted to say i thought about creating a sockpuppet account to give extra likes to your post about the Power of Reading and the Power of Science. There are different books about different things! A person only has time to read a certain number of books and know about a certain number of things!

[KingOfHearts]

12 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, you think they could have come up with something that made it sound like Arthurian legend or Shakespeare, or something highbrow and classic that she was basing her personal code of honor and her ideals for life on rather than it being essentially a cheesy romance that would have been a paperback if that world had paperbacks. "Her Handsome Hero" is in the same vein as stuff like "The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby."

Surprised it didn't have some shirtless guy on the cover.

Everything with Belle and Gaston could've been interesting, especially in the Underworld. I was hoping it would be revealed Gaston wasn't that bad of a guy, not great but not horrible. Belle was actually looking for a bad boy to save and it wasn't Gaston's fault. That would've fit the theme of that 5B episode, which was Belle creating moral standards just to feel superior. 

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

24 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Everything with Belle and Gaston could've been interesting, especially in the Underworld. I was hoping it would be revealed Gaston wasn't that bad of a guy, not great but not horrible. Belle was actually looking for a bad boy to save and it wasn't Gaston's fault. That would've fit the theme of that 5B episode, which was Belle creating moral standards just to feel superior. 

At the end of the day, Belle clearly didn't like Gaston all that much since the Ogre incident was the one and only breaking point.  Whereas with Rumple, flaying a man alive day after day and kidnapping a baby in the flashback, and condemning an entire town to die, including babies and children, are apparently worthy of forgiveness.  

Edited February 18, 2020 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

At the end of the day, Belle clearly didn't like Gaston all that much since the Ogre incident was the one and only breaking point.  Whereas with Rumple, flaying a man alive day after day and kidnapping a baby in the flashback, and condemning an entire town to die, including babies and children, are apparently worthy of forgiveness.  

Yep,  Gaston does one bad thing and he's the worse. Rumple does a million but he's got a good heart and should be forgiven. I'm still not convinced that Rumple didn't have anything to do with the Ogre incident or the ogres attacking Belle's kingdom. I wouldn't put it past him to do either.

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Also wanted to say i thought about creating a sockpuppet account to give extra likes to your post about the Power of Reading and the Power of Science. There are different books about different things! A person only has time to read a certain number of books and know about a certain number of things!

I wonder if this is because Hollywood writers don't read much, themselves, so they don't really know how books work.

Another aspect of that trope is that there's always only one book lover in a group, and you're either a bookworm who's crazy about books and knows everything, because books, or you never touch a book unless you're being forced to because you've been reluctantly drafted into doing research. In real life, book lovers tend to flock together. Almost all of my friends are also big into books. I wouldn't know how to deal with someone who didn't read at all. But then most TV characters aren't friends with people because they have something in common. They're thrown together by other circumstances. Willow ended up being friends with Buffy mostly because Buffy was new and gravitated to the outcasts rather than Cordelia's gang, but Buffy and Willow didn't have all that much in common outside of fighting vampires and demons (and Willow didn't get into that until she met Buffy). Belle wasn't actually friends with any of the others and probably wouldn't have hung out with them if they hadn't had to fight off evil together. She didn't seem to care about leaving them all behind when she left town to grow old more quickly.

Nobody other than the designated bookworm in these groups reads, even just for fun. They talked about Henry liking books, but did we ever see him reading anything other than that storybook or the occasional comic book? Season 7 adult Henry was an author, but did we ever see him reading anything? Most authors I know read constantly (maybe that explains why his book was a flop -- he wrote something structured more like a TV show than like a novel, with a different villain every few chapters, because he'd never actually read a novel). I thought for a while they might have done something with Hook and books, since in season 2 he was often lurking in the library and was usually holding a book, then he had stacks of books in his cabin on the Jolly Roger and ended up being the go-to guy to help Belle with research. That might have been a fun unexpected character quirk, the sexy pirate who's secretly a bookworm, but they never developed it.

I think a TV exception to a lot of the book-related tropes might be Legends of Tomorrow, where some of the characters had a book club for a while, there are one or two more "bookish" characters who like research in their field of expertise without necessarily knowing everything, the least likely person turned out to be a closet romance fan who ended up writing romance novels and became a bestselling author, and the others seem to occasionally pick up a book for pleasure reading without being bookworm know-it-alls.

[Shanna Marie]

Not to keep piling onto Belle, but something occurred to me. I've been reading a lot of historical biographies lately, and the kind of education Belle seems to have had (aside from maybe the magical languages) seems to have been fairly common for royalty in the 16th-18th centuries (and even later). Princesses were taught multiple languages and read widely in a variety of subjects. They have books Elizabeth I put together as a child, in which she translated things from Latin or French, and vice versa. The daughter of the daughter of James I was BFF with Descartes, corresponding with him in French about math and philosophy. TV Belle wouldn't have been a freak among her peers. She might actually have been a bit low-brow. This is where the show taking a middle-class character and making her into some kind of royalty (I don't know that they ever gave Maurice's title, but they lived in a castle and were responsible for their people) changes the story. Movie Belle may have been a bit privileged from having a parent who valued education, and they had moved to the poor provincial town from a more sophisticated place, but she was still more or less a social peer with the people she found dull because they didn't like books and she was from a class where reading for pleasure wouldn't have been that common (mostly because they wouldn't have had a lot of leisure time). But TV Belle starts to look like a jerk if you think about it -- like in the Mulan flashback episode, in which she's all smug and superior to the louts on the quest because she was able to read the book written in a foreign language. They were working class or peasants and didn't get the kind of education she did, so essentially she was thinking herself superior because she grew up with a lot more privilege than they had. How are they supposed to value books and reading when they probably had to work rather than being educated? It ended up coming across as rather "let them eat cake."

[Camera One]

Article about all the things they had to balance when making the "Mulan" movie:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/inside-disneys-bold-200m-gamble-mulan-stakes-couldnt-be-higher-1280999

It will be interesting to see how it turns out.  The Mulan storyline from "Once Upon a Time" will be really tough to beat, though.  😪

[Speakeasy]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

Article about all the things they had to balance when making the "Mulan" movie:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/inside-disneys-bold-200m-gamble-mulan-stakes-couldnt-be-higher-1280999

It will be interesting to see how it turns out.  The Mulan storyline from "Once Upon a Time" will be really tough to beat, though.  😪

Thank you for posting that, I still have no intention of seeing this movie-I don't have much interest in any of these live action remakes except maybe The Little Mermaid when they get round to that-but it's very interesting to see the kind of issues that were faced in making it. 

I think this also highlights that doing Mulan any kind of justice on OUAT would have been tricky-I mean, sure, OUAT is not high profile enough that the CCP would take that much notice of it but still, anything that MIGHT damage Disney's share of the Chinese market is going to be something to be wary around. 

I do wonder what the right approach would be for her. In theory she should have had her own story arc, with an appropriate duly researched storyline but, well, time and money and stuff, and if you do a big Mulan story and mangle it in some unpleasant way it's worse for publicity than mangling King Arthur because, as the article says 'she belongs to China'. 

And from the other side there's the fact an American audience will, by and large, ONLY know her from the Disney movie and no nothing about Chinese myths and folklore in general... And if this was a different kind of show that'd be fine because you could just introduce the Chinese figures through dialogue the way that something like 'Teen Wolf' or 'Supernatural' or any number of magiccy genre shows will introduce an unfamiliar creature, but because OUAT was based around 'here's a character you recognise, now here's the TWIST!' then that wouldn't have worked.

[Camera One]

I have an inking Disney wasn't watching A&E very closely when they adapted Mulan and they assumed no one in China would watch it.  At the very least, Mulan should have gotten her own centric at some point... instead, she was weirdly used to support another supporting character's centric, starting with the episode with Belle.

Here is another article:
https://collider.com/mulan-li-shang-not-in-live-action-remake-reason-why/

I had read that they had removed the character of Shang from the movie (Mulan's love interest in the animated movie).  It turns out they decided to split him into two characters due to the MeToo# movement and how it's inappropriate for a commanding officer to have a romantic interest in a recruit.

[KingOfHearts]

Finally saw Frozen 2 and - I can't believe I'm saying this - I thought Once Upon a Time was a better sequel. OUAT's Frozen plot with Ingrid made a lot more sense and didn't feel as tacked on as Frozen 2's. 

Loved how Elsa and Anna's parents died for the same reason, almost like the writers took it from OUAT. It was the same guilt-ridden character beat for Elsa and everything.

Edited February 29, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

I watched about 45 minutes of it tonight, and this continuation thus far feels very unnecessary.  It doesn't appear like there is anywhere new for the characters to go.  The beginning is quite song-heavy, but not purposeful.  Was Anna's song basically saying her character "journey" is to deal with change?  And Elsa is just feeling dissatisfied overall with life?  I guess being Queen involves nothing much.   Are pre-teens supposed to identify with the snowman?

It reminded me of "Once" when they managed to evacuate the entire kingdom of 50 people to the cliffs, even pronouncing "Everyone is out and safe!"  How could they be sure?

Season 8 on "Once Upon a Time"...

EMMA: I've been hearing a voice.
SNOW or HOOK or REGINA:  You've been hearing a voice and didn't tell me?!  We made a promise not to shut each other out!

Elsa "waking" the spirits of the Enchanted Forest is kinda random.  I mean, why now?  

And here comes the useless Rock Trolls who know nothing.  "I see no future."  LOL, thanks.

The visuals in the Enchanted Forest are very pretty.  

OMG, am I really seeing a Disney princess grabbing a sword?!  

I guess I'll finish watching this tomorrow.

Edited February 29, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

I have an inking Disney wasn't watching A&E very closely when they adapted Mulan and they assumed no one in China would watch it. 

I suppose that's a fair assumption, maybe I'm seeing sinister Communist plots everywhere when it's more likely they just didn't know what to do with her

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

At the very least, Mulan should have gotten her own centric at some point... instead, she was weirdly used to support another supporting character's centric, starting with the episode with Belle.

Hah... Yes, always a sidekick, that's definitely a low point for someone who's such a big deal in China.

I think the writers and audience being unfamiliar with her was probably a factor there. It might be easier to just use her as a swappable sadsack sidekick rather than trying to adapt her story. Even using the Disney movie woulf be tricky because while Mulan herself is a Disney icon, no one besides Mushu the Silly Dragon is really widely remembered from her movie-which I think is a shame because Shan Yu deserves to be an iconic villain, and he'd be a very interesting OUAT villain, being a Fiction Land Muggle who would, despite that, be ABSOLUTELY FUCKING TERRIFYING.

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Here is another article:
https://collider.com/mulan-li-shang-not-in-live-action-remake-reason-why/

I had read that they had removed the character of Shang from the movie (Mulan's love interest in the animated movie).  It turns out they decided to split him into two characters due to the MeToo# movement and how it's inappropriate for a commanding officer to have a romantic interest in a recruit.

...

OK, well I understand the reasoning there and as this is an iconic story that's going to be taught to children around the world I suppose it's important not to legitimise that sort of thing. 

And besides which I'm pretty sure Pretty Captain Shang isn't part of the authentic Chinese version, and it's not like theirs is one of the great romances of legend.

...

TWITCH

...

[KingOfHearts]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

I watched about 45 minutes of it tonight, and this continuation thus far feels very unnecessary.  It doesn't appear like there is anywhere new for the characters to go.  The beginning is quite song-heavy, but not purposeful.  Was Anna's song basically saying her character "journey" is to deal with change?  And Elsa is just feeling dissatisfied overall with life?  I guess being Queen involves nothing much.   Are pre-teens supposed to identify with the snowman?

The opening felt very bland, as if nothing happened between films. Not that no time had passed, but during that time... nothing happened or developed. The characters are the same and aren't struggling with any new challenges. I really hate how Disney films have been handling royalty lately. Queens and princesses never seem to make decisions for the good of their kingdoms any more. Elsa put her people in danger by summoning the spirits, so why should Arendellians trust her? We haven't see her do anything but terrorize them. Then Anna broke the dam to flood the kingdom, jeopardizing everyone's homes, because it was the "right thing to do." Of course, she didn't bother to even consult anyone about it. These characters kept running off and putting themselves in danger without considering any of the consequences. Weren't Anna and Elsa raised as royals? Wouldn't they have some idea of what their duties were? 

I'm just tired of Disney characters acting selfishly or "going on their own path" to forsake others. I realize these are kids films but that doesn't mean your characters should act like candidates to die alone from natural selection. They don't have to act stupid. 

 

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The opening felt very bland, as if nothing happened between films. Not that no time had passed, but during that time... nothing happened or developed. The characters are the same and aren't struggling with any new challenges.

That's a good way of putting it.  It was also the reason I found it pretty difficult to really get immersed in the movie.  Granted, I never really liked the original movie that much UNTIL I rewatched it after 4A, so maybe I didn't hugely love any of the characters.  But still, it was hard to connect with them on any level.  

Quote

I really hate how Disney films have been handling royalty lately. Queens and princesses never seem to make decisions for the good of their kingdoms any more. Elsa put her people in danger by summoning the spirits, so why should Arendellians trust her?

I was confused that it seemed Elsa consciously summoned the spirits.  I thought she was just singing a song and randomly did some jazz hands.  Why didn't she consult the Rock Trolls about the siren she was hearing?

I found myself a little annoyed at Anna trying to stop Elsa from doing anything, even though I know Anna was just being protective and didn't want Elsa to get hurt.  In "Once", I think Anna was the one who left to find out what happened to her parents.  

I think the Elsa in "Once" (who feared that without Anna, she wouldn't be able to control her magic) was actually more interesting and organic than the Elsa in this sequel (who felt dissatisfied and an urge to go "into the unknown" for no discernible reason despite her job of ruling the kingdom).

I guess I'll finish watching the movie later today.

10 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I think the writers and audience being unfamiliar with her was probably a factor there. It might be easier to just use her as a swappable sadsack sidekick rather than trying to adapt her story. Even using the Disney movie woulf be tricky because while Mulan herself is a Disney icon, no one besides Mushu the Silly Dragon is really widely remembered from her movie

These Writers seemed to have zero interest in doing any real research or deeply mining any source material.  If they couldn't even make themselves familiar with Oz beyond the MGM movie, or read up on other variations of "Cinderella" or check out a Sparks Notes synopsis of "The Count of Monte Cristo", I'm not surprised that they didn't bother with Mulan, even though they clearly wanted to use her early on.  I mean, it was a pretty cool mash-up with Aurora and Philip, but that was probably the full extent of their thought process.   Mulan acted like the typical abrasive "strong" female at the start of Season 2.

They could have had an arc incorporating different tales from Arabian Nights at the same time as the Aladdin arc, but they didn't.  Similarly, there are other stories from East Asia that had been done in conjunction with "Mulan" despite viewer unfamiliarity.  Back in 2001, NBC even produced a (pretty badly made) TV mini-series about The Monkey King based on "Journey from the West".  

Edited February 29, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I think the Elsa in "Once" (who feared that without Anna, she wouldn't be able to control her magic) was actually more interesting and organic than the Elsa in this sequel (who felt dissatisfied and an urge to go "into the unknown" for no discernible reason despite her job of ruling the kingdom).

It's treated like she was just changing majors or moving out of a small town. There's no consideration of the hundreds subjects who would be affected by Elsa chasing her whims. When you think about it, Arendelle's extremely unstable. Just look at the timeline.

Both the king and queen die at sea on a secret voyage.

Elsa and Anna, heirs to the throne, go public after having been cloistered in the castle for years.

Elsa is coronated as queen, then shortly after is revealed to have dangerous ice powers that are feared by the population.

Elsa puts Arendelle in an eternal winter and leaves.

Anna, now the only heir to the throne, also abruptly leaves.

Hans, a prince from another kingdom, is put in charge of the throne.

Elsa and Anna return after Anna nearly dies. Hans is forcibly removed from power after he attempted to usurp the throne.

Less than a year later, Elsa summons mystical spirits that terrorize Arendelle's citizens. Her subjects are forced to evacuate in order to avoid mortal danger.

Elsa and Anna leave again, both nearly dying on their travels. They don't seem to have any officials or royal guards to maintain things while they're gone, so the rock trolls offer to help.

Anna intentionally breaks the dam and nearly floods all of Arendelle before Elsa arrives at the last minute to stop it.

Elsa abdicates from the throne and leaves to live with another people. Anna is crowned the new queen.

This doesn't even include any of Arendelle's sketchy past with Elsa's grandfather and the dam. Why would anyone respect Elsa as a leader when she and her sister have kept putting everyone in danger? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Hans came back and started an uprising. Once Upon a Time, as odd as it sounds, put more effort into addressing the state of Arendelle. With Elsa in an urn and the kingdom literally being put on ice, it wasn't so troubling when the characters were off in Storybrooke or whatever. When Arendelle did melt, Elsa and Anna urgently wanted to get back. 

I will say that A&E did a good job of working Ingrid into the Frozen universe. She didn't feel shoehorned in because her backstory explained why Elsa's parents were so fearful of the ice powers. It gave Arendelle a darker backstory like Frozen 2 did, but it utilized stuff the first movie had already set up. (Like the rock trolls erasing memories, for example.) It wasn't this contrived second story about completely different people in a completely different place. Of course, it had the added benefit of also being in the Once Upon a Time universe where it made perfect sense for the parents to go to Rumple. I think its funny that both versions had a far off Enchanted Forest where magic is more commonplace.

I've been on a hate streak with Disney and Pixar sequels because I feel like they play it too safe and don't really need to exist. (Or there's character assassination, as in Wreck-it Ralph 2.) Frozen 2 had beautiful animation, surprisingly funny humor, and a few nice songs, but it suffered from an awful plot. Disney can't seem to do good plots any more. It definitely wasn't the worst Disney sequel, but I'm very "meh" about it. At least it got me to appreciate Once Upon a Time. That's a rare occasion. 

Edited February 29, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

16 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Loved how Elsa and Anna's parents died for the same reason, almost like the writers took it from OUAT. It was the same guilt-ridden character beat for Elsa and everything.

It is a pretty obvious plot beat, and about the only way to keep the parents from looking like even worse parents for leaving their kids alone and locked up in a palace. At least this gives them a good reason and makes it look like they were actively trying to do something to help instead of just isolating Elsa.

Though there is the Unified Disneyverse theory that they were going to Rapunzel and Eugene's wedding, since you can see Rapunzel and Eugene in the crowd entering the palace for the coronation. Meanwhile, their ship is the wreck that Ariel explores. (This is just a wacky Internet theory that hasn't been validated.)

5 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I really hate how Disney films have been handling royalty lately. Queens and princesses never seem to make decisions for the good of their kingdoms any more.

I think one issue is that they've started to focus more on royalty. I guess Snow White and Aurora were already princesses, but they were living in exile and weren't functioning as royalty. Otherwise, the stories were about marrying royalty. Ariel's kind of a gray area, since she is a princess in her own world, but her story is still about her marrying royalty. I think Jasmine is our first princess who's living as a princess. Then we get Merida and the Frozen girls who are already princesses and living as princesses. Their stories also aren't about marrying royalty. They don't seem to have found how to write royalty and find the balance with having the characters be relatable and interesting. They probably think that a princess doing her duty and putting her kingdom first is boring, so she has to be independent and rebellious. Doing a sequel to what's essentially a coming of age story is also tricky. They had room to do a sequel, since Elsa was still single at the end of the first movie and we don't have to worry about our queen being an old married woman (probably not relatable to the Elsa-obsessed little girls). But Elsa had a pretty complete character arc in the first movie, so they either have to come up with some new area for growth or retrace their steps.

I don't know if they're still planning the Brave sequel, but I think there's room for Merida's story to continue, since she was so young. The first movie was about her avoiding having to get married, so a natural progression would be for her to be older and now finding someone she actually wants to marry (probably someone very inconvenient).

34 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Hans, a prince from another kingdom, is put in charge of the throne.

I have to yell at the TV whenever this part happens. Elsa's just been officially crowned queen after coming of age. Their parents have been dead for years, so somebody has to have been in charge all that time as a regent. Why would you put a foreign prince in charge when the regent who was running things until very recently should still be around? Is there no royal council, prime minister, or anything like that? It's the dumbest thing ever to put a foreigner in charge of your country -- and it doesn't seem like it's even a case like the House of Hanover, where they were descended from a king of that country. There had to have been a better way to have Hans be a threat without being that dumb. Heck, they could have had him descended from the same royal family, so he might have some claim to the throne if something happened to Elsa and Anna, say his grandmother was the younger sister of Elsa's grandfather and married a foreign king. A couple of lines of dialogue might have fixed that, with Anna awkwardly blurting something about them being cousins and him reassuring her that they're distant cousins, but both of them have an ancestor who was king of Arendelle.

[Camera One]

If Elsa and Anna's parents shipwrecked in the Northern sea and the ruins of the ship were in the Enchanted Forest that no one could enter or leave, then how did anyone know for sure they were lost at sea?  Was it just assumed?  The King and Queen weren't actually going to the Southern Isles, so no one would have sent word that they never arrived at their destination or anything.  I suppose they just never came back, so eventually the regent and the palace officials had to conclude that they were lost at sea?

[KingOfHearts]

17 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If Elsa and Anna's parents shipwrecked in the Northern sea and the ruins of the ship were in the Enchanted Forest that no one could enter or leave, then how did anyone know for sure they were lost at sea? 

The scene where Elsa and Anna found the shipwreck reminded me of Lost. "Oh how did this important piece of our backstory impossibly land here?"

Quote

I don't know if they're still planning the Brave sequel, but I think there's room for Merida's story to continue, since she was so young. The first movie was about her avoiding having to get married, so a natural progression would be for her to be older and now finding someone she actually wants to marry (probably someone very inconvenient).

I really liked how Brave handled it. Merida could still be independent enough to not be forced into an arranged marriage, but she also compromised by performing her royal duty. Royals really can't just go do whatever they want unless they're dictators, so Disney is kind of in a bind where they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. I realize these are mostly kids movies and kids don't care about royal duties all that much, but some of these storylines are teaching irresponsibility to some extent. Like it's okay to run off at the expense of others because you're dissatisfied. Brave's conclusion was a bit more practical and selfless.

Princesses can afford to be more rebellious than queens.

Edited February 29, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

38 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If Elsa and Anna's parents shipwrecked in the Northern sea and the ruins of the ship were in the Enchanted Forest that no one could enter or leave, then how did anyone know for sure they were lost at sea? 

Why would no one be able to enter or leave? Or are you talking about the curse? They were shipwrecked long before the curse. All the stuff with Ingrid happened probably at least 4-5 years before the curse (since Belle hadn't met Rumple and Roland hadn't been born yet while Belle was at Rumple's palace). Elsa had been urned and Anna frozen before the curse.

Generally, they know a ship has gone down when items from that ship wash ashore but there's no sign of the ship itself. Not everything stays on the bottom of the sea. They were getting stuff from the Titanic washing up in Nova Scotia for a while after it sank. However, it's a bit trickier how Hans and/or Blackbeard would have known the precise location of the wreck, given the technology of the time. Look how long it took to find the Titanic's wreck, when we had a good sense of the longitude/latitude where it went down, plus modern technology like sonar and submarines. Maybe Nemo popped by in his submarine and found it for them?

So, I'll buy that they knew they were lost at sea. Storm in the general area plus no ship arriving, plus items or pieces of that ship washing ashore, do the math. Knowing the precise location of the wreck? Not so much.

[Camera One]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Why would no one be able to enter or leave? Or are you talking about the curse?

Sorry, I was referring to "Frozen II", the animated movie, where the Enchanted Forest was stuck in an impenetrable mist or something.  That was where the ship was.

In the original Frozen movie and on "Once", I agree that wreckage would be washed ashore.