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The Case for an Enchanted Sequel
Mar. 19th, 2015 04:36 pmEnchanted is the movie about a typical, animated, classic Disney Princess (Giselle) who finds herself in our live action world (or one that very closely resembles it). Luckily, she happens upon the divorced divorce lawyer (Robert Philip) and his daughter (Morgan Philip) who are... much nicer than good sense would suggest.
What follows is one part loving satire and one part reconstruction of classic Disney animated relationships and tropes. Part of the reason I'm going to pick on this movie is that, in that reconstruction and satire, it's incomplete.
Also, the reconstruction was done better with the movie Ever After. And, if we're going to call a movie or franchise progressive, it had better actually progress.
That said, the progress can be achieved and it can be achieved with a good sequel.
Note 1: At the end of Enchanted, the whole world gets a heaping serving of "magic is real and chipmunks are sentient" shoved right into its face. There had to be an entire professional movie crew worth of people with cameras in their cell phones taking video footage of a day-glow-blue dragon falling to the street in order to poof into a cloud of smoke that clears to reveal the body of a woman who really should consult Regina from "Once Upon a Time" for some fashion sense.
Any sequel has to acknowledge that earth-shaking revelation upon all of live-action society. Any illusion that this is still the world in which we, the audience, lives will be on the other side of the Clark Kent Point.
Firstly, there's a minor problem I would want to correct. Giselle and Robert are presented as opposite sides, Giselle being optimistic and Robert being pesimistic. He isn't pesimistic, though.
The first thing we see of him is him giving his daughter a book of accomplished women in history. He describes this as teaching his daughter that happily ever after doesn't happen in real life. But, that's a bit of writer's skewing matters. If happily ever after never happens, why try for it.
Very soon after, we learn that he's in a relationship, a long term relationship that he does want to continue into marriage. He's taking his time and building up both common ground with Nancy Tremaine, as well as establishing a relationship between her and his daughter, Morgan.
These aren't acts of pessimism. This is a different kind of optimism, one that doesn't get enough credit in the movie. He views, perhaps as a result of past failures that are only alluded to, happy endings and relationships as things that take work. True, he could stand to be a bit more demonstrative. But, let's give the slow built relationship with strong investment of time and effort some credit.
This fix can be done by showing the time, the effort, the investment, and the fact that this isn't always easily and happily done with a song. That should be something shown in the sequel, but not the primary focus. The two big problems should be the focus.
One of the positives of Enchanted is the look at Nathaniel's unhealthy relationship with Queen Narissa. It's done with an eye towards child-friendly and not eating up time, but nice that it's done. Yet, that, too, is incomplete.
Queen Narissa is presented as evil for the sake of evil. If we're exploring what puts people on the wrong side of a moral line, we should actually explore that. We are getting some good villain-stories these days and I like that. However, I think that we tend to look, too much, to extraordinary tragedy as the reason. We don't have to. For that, let's look at the other problem.
Andalasia, the cliched classic Disney animated kingdom, is a class structured, patriarichal monarchy. I realize that, in the fantasy stories and faerie tales as they were originally told, there was an assumption that this was the ideal way of things. In our modern retellings, we don't have to pretend that classism isn't a thing or ignore that fantasy settings generally take place in a midevil setting. But, let's at least admit this isn't a good way to have a society.
In newer movies, it's become a cliche to partially address this. Society wasn't fair to Esmerelda or Quasimodo. Agraba's class system kept Aladin from being something other than a "street rat". Ariel missed showing up to sing for her father and the entire society had no choice but to support King Triton as he punished her by destroying her outside interest.
If these societies aren't exactly nice to our heroes, why don't we acknowledge that they're also the cause of the villains. No extra-ordinary tragedies necessary. The banal tragedy of having sex-negative views foisted upon one to the point of self-hatred is enough. The every-day tragedy of having ambition but no non-evil option to seek it is enough.
This will all work its way into the sequel, Enchanted 2: Electro-Magi-Political Bugaloo.
Enchanted focused on small-scale culture clash, let's focus the sequel on something larger scale, live action and animated worlds dealing with each other's cultures.
One of the main characters will be Queen Narissa. (She can survive the fall by reasons of magic.) Initially, she'll have a choice to make of whether to stay in Live Action world or return to the Animated world in which Andalasia is one nation. A thought might occur to her that, after learning a bit about this world, even though it's just learned about magic it is new, therefore she might be able to take over.
In learning, however, she would learn that she doesn't have to take over. She doesn't have to pretend to be the good woman who never steps out of place and neither does she have to be evil. She can be herself, ambitious as well as... well... who else is she? Does she even know?
At the same time, another main character will be Nancy Tremaine, who has to learn about Andalasia. At the same time, she'll learn that her ambitions, that made her so good at her own career, are being stymied. She doesn't have a socially acknowledged "good" option. And, it's not like she's the only one suffering under this system. She's just the one who has the language to put to her suffering.
The third main character will be Prince Edward. Prince Edward was the most privileged of all the land. And, what he'll find is the odd sensation of having a world that changes around him and people that change as well. He'd always thought that he was the good guy for going around hunting ogres... and now they're a people with thoughts of their own?
Through the changes that happen, Prince Edward will be the villain, desperate to catch Queen Narissa, thinking her the cause of his ills, desperate to fix everything to the way it was, he won't think of himself as the villain. He'll imagine himself to be the defender of the old ways, and he won't be alone in that.
Can Narissa and Nancy Tremaine, working together, defeat Prince Edward's rule with a shining armored fist? Can Nancy convince Edward that he needs to change with the world rather than hold it back? Will Narissa feel that the only way to do good is by doing some of the old evil and learning from the French Revolution's response to royalty?
It'll be fun to find out.
What follows is one part loving satire and one part reconstruction of classic Disney animated relationships and tropes. Part of the reason I'm going to pick on this movie is that, in that reconstruction and satire, it's incomplete.
Also, the reconstruction was done better with the movie Ever After. And, if we're going to call a movie or franchise progressive, it had better actually progress.
That said, the progress can be achieved and it can be achieved with a good sequel.
Note 1: At the end of Enchanted, the whole world gets a heaping serving of "magic is real and chipmunks are sentient" shoved right into its face. There had to be an entire professional movie crew worth of people with cameras in their cell phones taking video footage of a day-glow-blue dragon falling to the street in order to poof into a cloud of smoke that clears to reveal the body of a woman who really should consult Regina from "Once Upon a Time" for some fashion sense.
Any sequel has to acknowledge that earth-shaking revelation upon all of live-action society. Any illusion that this is still the world in which we, the audience, lives will be on the other side of the Clark Kent Point.
Firstly, there's a minor problem I would want to correct. Giselle and Robert are presented as opposite sides, Giselle being optimistic and Robert being pesimistic. He isn't pesimistic, though.
The first thing we see of him is him giving his daughter a book of accomplished women in history. He describes this as teaching his daughter that happily ever after doesn't happen in real life. But, that's a bit of writer's skewing matters. If happily ever after never happens, why try for it.
Very soon after, we learn that he's in a relationship, a long term relationship that he does want to continue into marriage. He's taking his time and building up both common ground with Nancy Tremaine, as well as establishing a relationship between her and his daughter, Morgan.
These aren't acts of pessimism. This is a different kind of optimism, one that doesn't get enough credit in the movie. He views, perhaps as a result of past failures that are only alluded to, happy endings and relationships as things that take work. True, he could stand to be a bit more demonstrative. But, let's give the slow built relationship with strong investment of time and effort some credit.
This fix can be done by showing the time, the effort, the investment, and the fact that this isn't always easily and happily done with a song. That should be something shown in the sequel, but not the primary focus. The two big problems should be the focus.
One of the positives of Enchanted is the look at Nathaniel's unhealthy relationship with Queen Narissa. It's done with an eye towards child-friendly and not eating up time, but nice that it's done. Yet, that, too, is incomplete.
Queen Narissa is presented as evil for the sake of evil. If we're exploring what puts people on the wrong side of a moral line, we should actually explore that. We are getting some good villain-stories these days and I like that. However, I think that we tend to look, too much, to extraordinary tragedy as the reason. We don't have to. For that, let's look at the other problem.
Andalasia, the cliched classic Disney animated kingdom, is a class structured, patriarichal monarchy. I realize that, in the fantasy stories and faerie tales as they were originally told, there was an assumption that this was the ideal way of things. In our modern retellings, we don't have to pretend that classism isn't a thing or ignore that fantasy settings generally take place in a midevil setting. But, let's at least admit this isn't a good way to have a society.
In newer movies, it's become a cliche to partially address this. Society wasn't fair to Esmerelda or Quasimodo. Agraba's class system kept Aladin from being something other than a "street rat". Ariel missed showing up to sing for her father and the entire society had no choice but to support King Triton as he punished her by destroying her outside interest.
If these societies aren't exactly nice to our heroes, why don't we acknowledge that they're also the cause of the villains. No extra-ordinary tragedies necessary. The banal tragedy of having sex-negative views foisted upon one to the point of self-hatred is enough. The every-day tragedy of having ambition but no non-evil option to seek it is enough.
This will all work its way into the sequel, Enchanted 2: Electro-Magi-Political Bugaloo.
Enchanted focused on small-scale culture clash, let's focus the sequel on something larger scale, live action and animated worlds dealing with each other's cultures.
One of the main characters will be Queen Narissa. (She can survive the fall by reasons of magic.) Initially, she'll have a choice to make of whether to stay in Live Action world or return to the Animated world in which Andalasia is one nation. A thought might occur to her that, after learning a bit about this world, even though it's just learned about magic it is new, therefore she might be able to take over.
In learning, however, she would learn that she doesn't have to take over. She doesn't have to pretend to be the good woman who never steps out of place and neither does she have to be evil. She can be herself, ambitious as well as... well... who else is she? Does she even know?
At the same time, another main character will be Nancy Tremaine, who has to learn about Andalasia. At the same time, she'll learn that her ambitions, that made her so good at her own career, are being stymied. She doesn't have a socially acknowledged "good" option. And, it's not like she's the only one suffering under this system. She's just the one who has the language to put to her suffering.
The third main character will be Prince Edward. Prince Edward was the most privileged of all the land. And, what he'll find is the odd sensation of having a world that changes around him and people that change as well. He'd always thought that he was the good guy for going around hunting ogres... and now they're a people with thoughts of their own?
Through the changes that happen, Prince Edward will be the villain, desperate to catch Queen Narissa, thinking her the cause of his ills, desperate to fix everything to the way it was, he won't think of himself as the villain. He'll imagine himself to be the defender of the old ways, and he won't be alone in that.
Can Narissa and Nancy Tremaine, working together, defeat Prince Edward's rule with a shining armored fist? Can Nancy convince Edward that he needs to change with the world rather than hold it back? Will Narissa feel that the only way to do good is by doing some of the old evil and learning from the French Revolution's response to royalty?
It'll be fun to find out.
