![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mni1) One good thing about watching online, long after the original release, is that I don't have to worry about dealing with that 3-D nonsense.
2) I'd read on Wikipedia that there was a controversy about the title -- with the accusation that Disney removed the female lead's name from the title in a crass and manipulative pander to boys in the audience. I don't know if that's the actual reasoning or not, but I'm glad the change was made. Because that film is to the original story what pureed parsnips are to maple vanilla ice cream: They look kinda similar, from the far side of the room. But get closer, and they smell different, taste different, and feel different. So it's good they put a different label on the carton.
3) This may come across as heresy to some... But I like the movie better than the original. Then again, the original is my second least favorite Grimms' tale (my first least favorite is Sleeping Beauty)
4) Still, this movie did take up a lot of time with a pet peeve of mine: Horses are not dogs! Don't spend all your animating and voicing talent creating a magnificent stallion, and then have him sniff the ground, wag his tail, and sit on his haunches like a dog (you're already giving him human expressions and mannerisms to make his emoting familiar, after all). The gags aren't that funny. There will be kids in your audience who know what real horses are like. And the kids that don't know can learn.
5) So -- This movie did remind me of the original (because of names), and that got a plot bunny hatching in my brain. So, this is how the original ended (1857 version, translated from the German by D. L. Ashliman):
So... Rapunzel spends the first part of her childhood hidden away in a walled garden (and she's not a princess; her parents were commoners), her pubescent and young adult years hidden away in a tower, meets and falls in love with the one man who finds her, and the only man she's ever seen in her life, and then spends "several years" as a young single mother in the middle of the forest raising the twins that one man has fathered (so she survived... and made a life for her family. She couldn't have been utterly miserable).
From there -- from a life where she has known nothing but almost complete solitude from birth-- to get whisked into the world of royal etiquette, protocol, and political intrigue (married to a man with depressive and suicidal tendencies). ...Seems to me, that's where the story really gets interesting.
So I have a plot bunny where there's a threat of treason at the castle, or a war, and Rapunzel helps the royal family escape the castle, back to the forest, where she uses the magic she learned at her foster-mother's knee to help defeat the evildoers, and she saves the day. And/or her son and daughter could grow up to be adventurers...
2) I'd read on Wikipedia that there was a controversy about the title -- with the accusation that Disney removed the female lead's name from the title in a crass and manipulative pander to boys in the audience. I don't know if that's the actual reasoning or not, but I'm glad the change was made. Because that film is to the original story what pureed parsnips are to maple vanilla ice cream: They look kinda similar, from the far side of the room. But get closer, and they smell different, taste different, and feel different. So it's good they put a different label on the carton.
3) This may come across as heresy to some... But I like the movie better than the original. Then again, the original is my second least favorite Grimms' tale (my first least favorite is Sleeping Beauty)
4) Still, this movie did take up a lot of time with a pet peeve of mine: Horses are not dogs! Don't spend all your animating and voicing talent creating a magnificent stallion, and then have him sniff the ground, wag his tail, and sit on his haunches like a dog (you're already giving him human expressions and mannerisms to make his emoting familiar, after all). The gags aren't that funny. There will be kids in your audience who know what real horses are like. And the kids that don't know can learn.
5) So -- This movie did remind me of the original (because of names), and that got a plot bunny hatching in my brain. So, this is how the original ended (1857 version, translated from the German by D. L. Ashliman):
The prince was overcome with grief, and in his despair he threw himself from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell poked out his eyes. Blind, he wandered about in the forest, eating nothing but grass and roots, and doing nothing but weeping and wailing over the loss of his beloved wife. Thus he wandered about miserably for some years, finally happening into the wilderness where Rapunzel lived miserably with the twins that she had given birth to.
He heard a voice and thought it was familiar. He advanced toward it, and as he approached, Rapunzel recognized him, and crying, threw her arms around his neck. Two of her tears fell into his eyes, and they became clear once again, and he could see as well as before. He led her into his kingdom, where he was received with joy, and for a long time they lived happily and satisfied.
So... Rapunzel spends the first part of her childhood hidden away in a walled garden (and she's not a princess; her parents were commoners), her pubescent and young adult years hidden away in a tower, meets and falls in love with the one man who finds her, and the only man she's ever seen in her life, and then spends "several years" as a young single mother in the middle of the forest raising the twins that one man has fathered (so she survived... and made a life for her family. She couldn't have been utterly miserable).
From there -- from a life where she has known nothing but almost complete solitude from birth-- to get whisked into the world of royal etiquette, protocol, and political intrigue (married to a man with depressive and suicidal tendencies). ...Seems to me, that's where the story really gets interesting.
So I have a plot bunny where there's a threat of treason at the castle, or a war, and Rapunzel helps the royal family escape the castle, back to the forest, where she uses the magic she learned at her foster-mother's knee to help defeat the evildoers, and she saves the day. And/or her son and daughter could grow up to be adventurers...
no subject
Date: 2013-07-29 03:06 pm (UTC)And: I agree with you about the original being unlikeable. Rapunzel's innocence and the prince's failure to actually do something to warrant marrying her makes it even rape-ier than the usual "you saved me! now we shall make babies together!" plots.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-29 07:35 pm (UTC)Indeed. In the original, non-bowdlerized, version, he actually visits her every day for weeks. And although the phrase "They had sex" never appears in the text, Rapunzel does ask Mother Gothel why her clothes aren't fitting anymore, and why she's suddenly nauseous every morning when she wakes up... And that's how Mother Gothel figures out Rapunzel has not been so lonely in her tower as previously assumed (it is mentioned in the original version that she goes into labor and gives birth in the forest; from the second version onward, the children are just sort of there, at the end). So, not only doesn't the prince do anything to save her, he shows every indication that he would have been happy to keep her as his private little sex object indefinitely.
So, really: the whole premise that this charming, handsome, prince is evidence that the outside world is not as cold or ugly as Mother Gothel says it is falls apart. As far as I'm concerned, the prince is as ugly as they come.
(Another thing I like about this Disney version is that, Rapunzel, having no cultural cues for "this is what sexy looks like," responds to the Romantic Male Lead's early attempt at "charm" with nothing but confused frustration)
...The problem with writing that story is: the trouble I'd have giving Rapunzel reason to weep over the prince, thus curing his blindness.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-30 04:16 am (UTC)You would have to swing this as a very dark fairytale retelling indeed, I'm afraid. I'd hate to think what Mother Gothel's backstory would have to be to make her so hellbent on isolating a girl-child from the world.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-30 05:28 am (UTC)I'm often amazed at which stories from among the 210 that Jacob and Wilhelm collected became famous, and which get forgotten (at least among the anglophones).
I mean, Rapunzel is considered by many to be a "standard," because the romantic leads are both pretty. But The Singing, Springing Lark (another blockbuster movie-to-be-made if ever there was one) is barely known at all... Went looking for it on YouTube, the other night, to see if anyone had put up an illustrated video of a reading. ...And the only videos I found were in German (and the visuals were all still images... so I couldn't even follow along).