Look I know Rapunzel paints and Tiana cooks, but if you guys don't think Mulan is the Most Creative Disney Princess, you're wrong.
She's literally introduced in this perfect scene that highlights her whole character, flaws and strengths:
The first time you see her she's:
Cheating, which is totally the opposite of what honor-code General Shang would do.
Undisciplined, which is what going to the army fixes.
Problem-solving—by writing the recitation she can't remember on her wrist—
BUT LISTEN. That last one is the first hint you have that she's the Most Creative Disney Princess. Because guess what? She's not the first young woman to cheat at the matchmaker test. The Matchmaker specifically checks to see if she's cheating when the test begins. But the rest of them wrote their cheat sheet on their fans.
The Matchmaker was prepared for the usual kind of tricks. But Mulan's full of her own ideas, not everyone else's.
You guys know the rest. She dresses up like a soldier—nobody suspects her because the idea that someone would do that never occurs to everyone else. She climbs the pole by tying the medallions around each other when none of the other recruits can figure it out. She lights the cannon by grabbing Mushu instead of searching for flints. She creates an avalanche instead of just taking Shan Yu out. She tricks the Huns by dressing her friends up as concubines. She defeats Shan Yu with his own sword and a bunch of fireworks.
But even beyond problem-solving, Mulan never does things like other people do. She doesn't even do things like other women do.
She doesn't just walk across a bridge, she jumps from pillar to pillar. She doesn't just bring her father tea, she puts a spare teacup in her sleeve because she knows she's clumsy.
Mulan is creative. But you know what that moment proves? That she's not just a representation of all women-versus-men. Mulan is representative of a human, who sees where she has strengths, and sees where she has weaknesses. She uses her strengths to her advantage and works to improve or make up for her weaknesses. She doesn't try to be exactly like a man. She just tries to use what she's got to do the right thing. And finding ways to use what you've got, even if it's not like what everyone else has, is creativity.
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I remember during the making of Tangled, the filmmakers said they had to work hard to design Rapunzel’s tower to be beautiful and seem like a cozy, fun environment, while also making Mother Gothel seem sweet and loveable, if manipulative.
Because, they said, if the environment is too much like a prison, and Gothel is too much like a villainess, the audience wouldn’t believe in Rapunzel as a character. They’d think she was either stupid or cowardly, to stay in such a nasty situation without trying to escape sooner. But if her circumstances seem just livable enough, just sweet enough, that you can see some of the appeal, then you wouldn’t blame her for waiting so long to leave.
Why didn’t they do that with Wish?
Why didn’t they think that relatability through?
Nobody is really feeling compelled to root for the everyday Rosas citizens during the movie. You don’t feel like rooting for Asha’s cause, or even Queen Amaya’s. Because you think to yourself, “why did it take the townspeople so long to ask the question ‘why can’t we just have our wishes back?’”
Asha comes up with those culture-breaking questions, inexplicably, in the first twenty minutes of the movie. It takes the rest of the townspeople about 24 hours to suddenly start asking that, too.
So why don’t you root for them?
Because when something bad happens to them, part of your brain goes, “why didn’t they see that coming, though? Why didn’t they ask questions? That one’s a little bit on them.”
And you don’t really feel that feeling you got with Mother Gothel, where you were like, “Oh yeah, I can see why the main character trusted this villain; the villain really seems to care about the hero, if you didn’t know what she was after.” You don’t;t get that same feeling with Magnifico. Because the whole idea of what he does—by erasing people’s memories and yelling at them and having no moments with regular folk where he’s warm and personal and building trust—is so malicious that we don’t believe the other characters couldn’t see it.
We COULD HAVE believed it. If they’d added in good writing and character moments to make it believable.
When Magnifico interacts with the people who trust him and are duped by him, he’s up on a stage, flashing superpowers they don’t have and then disappearing back into his tower after only granting one wish. He’s not on the welcome tour with Asha. He doesn’t know his own palace staff by name. He’s done nothing to build the trust all the side-characters unquestioningly give him. So even at the end, when everyone’s like, “aw, we wanted to believe in Magnifico,” we don’t feel it. Because didja? Why? Everyone could see that coming.
Meanwhile Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel she loves her most every time she leaves. She laughs with her. She reinforces every conversation they have with the idea that she’s desperate to protect Rapunzel. She brings her her favorite soup as a surprise and remembers the ingredients. She goes to get white paint on a very long trip so Rapunzel can paint. She compliments her strength and beauty—even if it’s backhanded. She calls her “dear,” and “darling.” She knocks thugs out with sticks, returning even after she argued with and supposedly ‘gave up’ on Rapunzel, all to supposedly’ protect’ her. So when Rapunzel realizes it was all an act, and she’s wrathful and furious and grabs Gothel’s hand, we DO feel it. Because we believed that Rapunzel really didn’t see this coming, so the shock stings worse. We don’t blame Rapunzel, and we do blame Gothel.
Just another example of what #NotMyDisney forgot about themselves.
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Flynn cutting off Rapunzel's hair is actually an incredible expression of love because he's getting rid of the one thing that directly caused her "mom" to abuse her and thus is truly setting her free from all that horribleness because now she no longer has the very thing itself that was causing it. That also means not even he could use it against her and is proving he loves her beyond it. The now-short length is also truly a part of this literal cutting away of the abuse-tool too, because now even it being long is gone and she no longer even has to think about it if she doesn't want to beyond basic maintenance. The length of her hair was just as much of a tool to hurt her as the magic powers, because her "mom" was using it to have her own freedom but didn't let Rapunzel use her own hair to leave. Getting rid of her hair in all the ways it was used as a tool of abuse and reducing it to something she only needs to care about if she wants to is literally the best gift he could give her.
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