#shrek the third rewrite

[gritsandbrits]

Shrek is woke because every main villain was a white person in a position of power who weaponized the status quo or tried to erase marginalized groups in some way.

#shrek #shrek 2 #shrek the third #shrek the third rewrite #shrek forever after #dreamworks #how my oc villain Bruce works is he embodies toxic masculinity and tries to make Charming into a badass warrior (it fails) #meanwhile Rapunzel is toxic feminitity; how rich white people use class & gender roles to punish those who stray from them #gwynn and rhodanthe being two black girls they struggle with their identity & how they can never fit White Ideals #but thats okay bc they learn to embrace their culture/traits & become better people for them #meanwhile Rapunzel loses all her friendships (&hair) chasing after a guy who doesnt see her as a person #and Bruce loses EVERYTHING bc his son ends up thinking for himself and who he wants to be: a hair stylist

[houseofthelilypads]

Shrek Princesses Rewrite Edition 🐸👑🍎👡😴💇

Based on my own headcanons & plans for their roles in my rewrite of Shrek 3. Because if I can redeem Artie and Charming then the ladies deserve that same chance!!

AND DORIS TOO >:[

Fiona

Had a private tutor during her time at the tower

When food wasn't available she took to eating lava bread and smoked rats and bugs

Is heat resistant

She did venture out the tower when dragon was away

Studied martial arts through books and watching on the magic mirror

Her friends often stopped by to visit her, but as they got settled in adult lives grew too busy

Fiona loves kids and hopes to give her own children a childhood she never had

Does carry some resentment towards her parents she only vents in private tho

She can sing but on a normal range. Any higher it well... The bird scene in the first film

She loves swimming and water activities partly due to being surrounded by lava half of her life

Her favorite colors are green and blue they remind her of nature and to her, nature = freedom

Has bleached her hair a few times

She makes mud based beauty products and sell them on the side

Still listens to Sir Justin's music and has been to his concert

Knows of Artie's existence; they bond a lot over their parental issues

Fiona mentors artie how to defend himself, he has some proficiency in martial arts

Inherited her red hair from her grandmother

The reason Fiona was an ogre is partly due to her father being the Frog prince and guess where frogs live?

It's also believed that one of fiona's ancestors actually married an ogre but VERY long ago; the curse just brought out her genes

Fiona loves to stargaze; she also collected obsidian and volcanic rock

Sleeping Beauty

Is in a long distance relationship with the Sandman

Her dress is green because that's the color her disney counterpart never wears

Is the last one to arrive at a ball and the first one to leave

She has beds in every room but is usually found sleeping on the floor

Doesn't want children because she's too exhausted and fears any potential kids might inherit her condition

She actually understands Fiona dating someone who isn't human nor royalty, she dates the freaking god of SLEEP

Has the most patience with Snow because she sleeps through her nonsense anyways

Just like the video game adaptation of the third movie, she has the power to summon an army

Was the most hurt by Rapunzel's betrayal, they were the closest due to their similar backstories and lack of a biological family

Rapunzel

Used to date another prince but he never came back to her tower so she eventually rescued herself. This is why she latched on to Charming in canon (and Bruce in my fanfic)

After getting charged with treason Rapunzel is made to serve community service. She hates it but considers it better than exile

She wears gold to match her hair

She owns a lot of wigs after suffering loss of her real hair (which she shaved off).

Cinderella

Cleans her own home

Lives in a smaller house compared to the rest

The others tease her for it but understands it's to make it easier for her to clean; having spent her whole childhood cleaning a giant estate

Is a master at blacksmithing and glassblowing; what she didn't JUST clean her home she had to do repairs too

Carries some cleaning supplies

Is VERY careful in leaving crumbs

Dislikes rats and cockroaches; she has a cat named Chandelier for this reason (my twist on Disney's Cinderella)

Is working to unlearn her people pleasing

has a better relationship with her stepsisters as adults

Her prince suffers from face blindness and as such gets her confused with other ladies. He even mistook Shrek for her

She doesn't mind kids but she rather work on reconciling with her stepfamily and heal from the abuse than pass down any baggage

The third strongest princess due to years of heavy lifting

Had the closest relationship with Fairy Godmother; was even considered a potential suitor for Charming but Cindy didn't like his vanity and immaturity.

When Cindy finds out about their plan to break up Fiona's marriage she is saddened but not surprised given Charming's past behavior

Snow White

She's my least favorite but I can explain why she acts like that

Developed an Ice Queen persona to protect herself

Living with seven bachelors rubbed off on her

Love rock music

Trained her animals to fight; found the larger animals surprisingly easier to tame

There's another Snow White but she is younger and has white hair.

If she ever sees her MGA doll irl she would be impressed that it's the only doll that managed to stay the most accurate to how she looks. She'd cut the hair

Does feel a little guilty for her mean girl attitude especially after it pushed Rapunzel away so post canon she works to be a little nicer

Her prince is actually the huntsman sent to kill her; he disguised himself as one to warn her of the evil queen

Still visits the dwarves time to time and even lets them live with her

Doris

Chose to reconcile with Cinderella after taking a good long hard look at herself

Is the girly girl of them all

The first thing she brought with her first paycheck was a purple dress, she couldn't afford the color after losing her home

Doesn't like to talk about her mother

After Fiona she is the 2nd physically strongest Princess

Knows every beauty trick in the book, every ingredient, foundation shade, even which brand of Lead

Shaves her legs using a sugar and lemon wax method, she doesn't use razors

She knows my OC Gwynn from when Gwynn was a teenager first arriving at the Poison Apple

She still has a crush on Charming, but tones it down after he starts dating Gwynn

Her friction with Mabel started after Doris expressed desire to make up wth Cindy, Mabel didn't see what they had to apologize for.

After Shrek 3 Doris works at the Candy Apple, which is an extension of the Poison Apple but FOR KIDS

#rapunzel shrek #snow white shrek #sleeping beauty shrek #cinderella shrek #doris shrek #shrek #shrek the third #shrek princesses #headcanons #shrek the third rewrite #princess fiona #fiona shrek

[juniaships]

The Once and Future Couple 👑🦆

Out of my OTPs this is the one that I want to get more into. I feel that if Artie ever gets a love interest it would be someone who accepts all of him not just because he's king. That's where Rhodanthe comes in. This is what they would look like during Shrek 4/post canon. As the future king and queen Artie and Rho work together to reform the knights of the round table to be more inclusive and honorable. They go on quests to help magical creatures, ogres and peasants, as well as overlooking the villain rehab program.

However their relationship isn't perfect, as they find themselves to busy to hang out. In Forever After Artie even risks putting their relationship in jeopardy after arguing over his refusal to attend the triplets party. But in the end they work out their issues because they've been through a lot together.

I tried to make Artie's outfit as close to his concept art as possible. I made two versions of Rho's dresses: white to symbolize her role as the Swan Princess & pink as her personal theme color. As far as ship names go I refer to them as the "Red Couple" or scarletswanshipping.

Picrew by @elequinoa on doll divine

#king arthur #shrek #shrek the third #shrek the third rewrite #shrek artie #artie shrek #artie x oc #canon x oc #artie pendragon #shrek oc #dolldivine #dollmaker

[ravangie]

DEADASS we had a writing project for our English subject back in high school wherein we had to rewrite a "bad" movie's story and script into something better 💀 My groupmates and I chose Shrek the Third aknfudkejrieje

I'm kinda curious, what are some major changes you'd do? (Plot, characters, etc.)

Oooh that's cool! Wish i could do something Shrek related when i was still in school or uni, why didn't i think of that back then!

As for your question: oh man, what WOULDN'T i change.....

Let's put it this way: I am now constantly in the mindset of female universes, so all of my ideas revolve around female versions of the characters. And I don't want to reveal my ideas right now, since i DO VERY MUCH HOPE TO illustrate them one day. I want it to be a pleasant surprise. Hope you don't mind waiting too much❤️👀

#i myself am also waiting like I WANNA SEE IT MATERIALISED TOO #too bad there's only 24 hours in a day #ravangie answers #ask

[coratorium]

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Take a shower "real quick"

BEGIN AFTER-ACTION REPORT

TIMELINE: 9:04 PM- BREACHED SHOWER. BEGAN WASHING 9:08 PM- DISTRACTED BY MENTAL REWRITE OF SHREK THE THIRD WHEREIN PRINCE CHARMING'S MINIONS ARE OTHER PRINCESSES AND WEALTHY NOBLES INSTEAD OF RANDOM VILLAINS AND FIONA COMES WITH SHREK TO FIND ARTHUR RESULTING IN HER GETTING MORE SCREENTIME AND A LARGER ROLE IN THE PLOT 9:29 PM- REMEMBERED THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE QUICK, RESUMED WASHING 9:36 PM- WASHING COMPLETE. BEGAN DRYING PROCEDURE 9:37 PM- SUCCESSFUL EXTRACTION FROM SHOWER

EVALUATION:

B+. STILL SOMEHOW MUCH FASTER THAN USUAL. FIT MORE PUSS IN BOOTS SCENES IN NEXT REWRITE.

[urwaifustolemylongfurby]

Fun fact about Shrek: The much derided third movie was gonna be almost entirely different. The original lost script felt much more in line with the themes of the first 2 films, was gonna include different new celebrity voice actors voicing now cut characters, n had a vry different soundtrack of recent n classic hits. Even tho it was sure 2 b a success with the critics n audiences who luved the first 2 films, DreamWorks was afraid the casting n soundtrack just wouldn't resonate enough 2 make more money than b4. So they ended up having to rewrite almost the entire thing at the last minute 2 accommodate DreamWorks' demands 4 a more 'resonant' cast n soundtrack. The song from the original soundtrack they were most scared of including?:

#shrek #shrek the third #shrek franchise #dreamworks animation #what could have been #2000s #2000s nostalgia #2000s kid #movie trivia #Youtube

[iamanonymousagain]

What characters/shows/plots should I rewrite?

Opaline (MLP G5)

Velma(from that shitty HBO series)

Twilight Sparkle (MLP G4. I personally don't like her story.)

The Third Shrek film (what was DreamWorks doing)

The story behind the crystals from MLP G5

Bright/Shaw(Depending on who you are.DISCLAIMER! I'M NOT DEFENDING THE ORIGINAL CREATOR'S ACTIONS! I DON'T FEEL LIKE GETTING HARASSED OFF OF TUMBLR! PLUS THE ORIGINAL CREATOR IS A SCUMBAG! Mini rant over.)

My own AU of the Minecraft world( updates and what not. I think brining back the super secret settings would be cool)

Or anything else you guys want me to do. Please don't chase me off. I just got Tumblr. I'm risking everything on number 7. Either you guys are going to hate me or you guys are going enjoy the rewrites.

#creative writing #science fiction #fantasy #alternate universe

[something-writing]

Rewatched the Shrek movies recently and it got me thinking. I think Shrek the third isn’t quite as bad as everyone says it it- but I think it could have been so much better-

I think it would have been better if Shrek decided to force Prince Charming to come along on the journey to help get Arthur and train Arthur in the social etiquette of royalty Charming was trained in his entire life. The banter this allows would be very fun. Charming plots the coup from the original movie before they leave, and it’s planned to take place as soon as they come back with the heir to kill Shrek and Arthur at the same time. 2 birds with 1 stone.

BUT! While they’re on the journey there and back again Charming and Shrek bond (slowly) over both their shared snark and being raised in an environment were they were expected to be one thing and didn’t really get any encouragement to be anything else or forgiveness for fulfilling the role they were forced into. They also bond with Arthur, same as the first with the campfire scene, here Shrek gives Arthur the same talk while Charming is brooding while leaning against a tree at the edge of the light (because he’s dramatic).

They get back to the kingdom and the coup begins! Betrayal of the trust that’s been built up! But Charming doesn’t want that anymore and helps to put a stop to the coup, solidifying his redemption arc. You can even keep the scene where he’s looking for Shrek and asks Pinocchio where he is because everyone else still thinks he’s evil.

Maybe there’s a running theme of asking Charming what he really wants from life so that when we get to Arthur’s speech about being whatever you want and all the villains are saying what their dreams for their lives are Charming can have this final moment of opening up. Charming stays in the castle with Arthur as a royal advisor so that their story is wrapped up and doesn’t feel quite so much like the third movie doesn’t exist in the 4th movie.

I don’t know, I think it would be cool. Thoughts?

#this sounded better when I explained it out loud to my sister though #I like to try to rewrite movies that I think are either bad or wasting their potential #it’s a fun writing exercise #Shrek #Shrek 3 #shrek the third #thoughts #random nothings #writing

[disneyat34]

Tangled at 35

A review by Adam D. Jaspering

Tangled was an important milestone for Disney. After years of experimentation and practice, Disney’s animators were finally comfortable and proficient in the use of CGI animation. Thankfully, they hit the milestone in time for their 50th animated film.

No more was CGI considered the inferior alternative to hand-drawn animation. It wasn’t met with “good enough,” or “nice, considering the circumstances.” Computer animation was finally meeting the quality expectations indicative of the Disney brand. But such an achievement didn’t come easy. 

Animated films, like any film, are beholden to the screenplay. The movie was first conceived by Glen Keane. Keane had been animating for Disney since the 1970s, and was supervising animator through much of the Disney Renaissance. For his achievements, he was given the opportunity to direct a film. He chose to adapt a version of the fairy tale Rapunzel. That would be the final easy decision of the filmmaking process.

The earliest version of Keane's movie dates back to 1996. A far cry from film we know as Tangled, this version was named “Rapunzel Unbraided.” This treatise was a genre-bending farce. Two modern-day teenagers, a jaded couple with relationship issues, found themselves transported into a storybook. There, they were forced to assume the roles of Rapunzel and her prince. It would be a satirical work, lampooning fairy tale plots and overused tropes.

The concept was scrapped in the early 2000s. For starters, Shrek was released partway through the film’s conception. Rapunzel Unbraided now looked like a copycat. More significant were the technical problems. In their attempt to pivot to computer animation, Disney wanted Rapunzel Unbraided to be fully digital. The animation staff knew their limitations. Anything they could offer would be subpar. As such, Keane proposed a compromise: Make digital animation that emulated hand-drawn animation.

Instead of the round, textured imagery associated with CGI, animators would instead produce flat models. These models would be colored in high contrast shadows, giving it a cel-shaded aesthetic. They would then be propped up against a background that looked painted. It was 3D animation, trying to hide its third dimension. 

Mock-ups and concepts were produced, but it was all for naught. The concept was ambitious, but universally recognized as unfeasible. Doubly so for a feature-length production. The proposed art style would eventually be used in later Disney animated shorts Paperman and Feast.

A new treatise, "Rapunzel," was devised in 2003. This version was closer to the original Grimm Brothers tale. Keane wanted this incarnation to be atmospheric and foreboding, akin to Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Sadly, Keane never saw his vision fulfilled. He stepped down as director in 2008. It was private knowledge at the time, but he suffered a heart attack and didn’t have the stamina to complete the film. Instead, Disney turned the project over to Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, the director and the storyboard director of Bolt. Keane remained onboard as producer and animation supervisor, serving in a less-intensive capacity.

Greno and Howard authorized another overhaul. Characters, story, and settings were rewritten and redesigned for a third time. The movie was finally released in November, 2010. A mere 14 years after its initial pitch.

Several movies in Disney history have had prolonged developments. Alice in Wonderland and The Black Cauldron were conceived decades before their production started. In the meanwhile, they were shelved; nobody was working on them, and they never cost the studio a dime. 

In other instances, movies were forced into rewrites or reconceptualization. In extreme examples, both Beauty and the Beast and The Emperor’s New Groove were changed into entirely different films mid-production. But even these radical decisions only lengthened the 4-year production window by several months. 

Tangled had both a prolonged development and massive overhauls. In all its different iterations, Tangled was in a constant state of production and pre-production for nearly a decade and a half.

To put it simply, Tangled was an expensive movie. The production cost was $260 million. The Princess and the Frog cost only $105 million, while the upcoming Wreck-It Ralph would only cost $160 million. Tangled is the most expensive animated film ever made. At the time of writing, it is currently tied as the 12th most expensive film of all time.

To maximize returns, Disney analyzed the impact of The Princess and the Frog. It was agreed, the biggest marketing mistake was the film’s title. Selling a film as a princess tale was detrimental; boys were turned off, assuming the film wasn’t for them.

Disney wouldn't repeat this mistake. They deliberately advertised the film as an action comedy, not a fantasy romance. Posters and trailers featured both the hero and heroine as equally important. Finally, Rapunzel’s name was removed from the title. The movie was given a new title, Tangled. It doubly represented Rapunzel’s trademark long hair, but also the intertwined fate of the two leads.

Several staff members met this name with derision. The purpose of adapting the Rapunzel story was the pulling power of Rapunzel’s name. However, that pulling power only exists if audiences can immediately recognize the film as a Rapunzel movie. Rebranding may have been unavoidable, but surely there was a better solution than renaming the film to a generic one-word adjective.

In the end, the studio executives got their way. Whether the title itself contributed to the film’s success is unknowable. However, it did spawn a new trend in animation. Multiple studios, Disney included, trended towards simpler, one-word titles. They were short, they were punchy, they were direct. They represented the idea studios were trying to convey: these weren’t the classic fairy tales you grew up with. These were newer, cooler, and most importantly, trademarked interpretations.

As told by the Brothers Grimm, Rapunzel is an antiquated and absurd story. Most everybody knows the basic elements. The story is of a young woman, trapped in a tower by an overbearing guardian. Unable to leave, her hair grows uncontrolled and uncut. The only way to enter or exit the tower is using Rapunzel's hair as a ladder.

Most people forget (or never knew) Rapunzel was barely the main character of her own story. The first half of the tale takes place before her birth. It involves her parents stealing vegetables from a witch’s garden. The witch claims Rapunzel at birth as payment for the theft. It's her that keeps Rapunzel hidden away. As a final insult, the witch names Rapunzel after the stolen produce. "Rapunzel" isn't supposed to be a name at all, but the German word for Lamb’s Lettuce.

Like Beauty and the Beast, Disney knew the best course of action would be to discard the classic story. There were too many elements that would seem silly and superfluous to modern sensibilities. There was also too little focus on Rapunzel herself. The hair, the tower, and the witch were the only parts that would remain.

In place of the discarded elements is a braided plait of plots. Three separate stories intertwine. The first, an old woman discovers a magic source of eternal youth. She keeps the enchanted flower exclusively to herself for centuries, elongating her life. One day, the local regent pursues the legend to save his ailing wife. He takes the flower, heals the queen, and unknowingly passes the restorative properties to their unborn daughter. The selfish crone kidnaps the child, raising it as her own, desperate to keep access to the magic.

Second, a young thief steals the crown jewels of a local kingdom. Pursued by the palace guards, he betrays his accomplices. On the lam, he must keep distance from his growing list of adversaries. He makes an unlikely ally as he tries to keep both his life and his ill-gotten gains. 

Third, A young girl on the cusp of her 18th birthday longs to see the world outside her confining home. Kept in seclusion and isolation by her adoptive mother, she concocts a plan to escape. She has one goal, meager as it may be, to attend an annual festival featuring sky lanterns. These lanterns are the only sign of the outside world she can see from her window.

These are the plots of Mother Gothel, Flynn Ryder, and Rapunzel, our villain and two heroes, respectively. Tangled is a feat in storytelling. Characters and elements are used to their fullest extent. The three plot threads overlap, intertwine, crisscross, double back and converge to create a style of storytelling unique to Disney. We see a wide range of traits in a variety of circumstances against a panorama of supporting characters. There’s never an opportunity for things to get static.

Pared down to its barest essence, the movie has one core component: Rapunzel has long hair. Not just long, unfathomably long. Seventy feet long, according to official sources. Longer than anyone could ever grow in real life. This is the central hook of the film.

Rapunzel's hair is used as a ladder, just as it was in the original fairy tale. But that's only the starting point. Disney doesn’t throw away the opportunity for creativity available to them. What all could a person do if forced to carry 70 feet of unkinkable, unknottable, unbreakable hair?

Rapunzel uses her hair as a rope. She uses it as a snare. She lassos with it. She swings with it. She rappels with it. She uses it as a whip. She uses it as a nearly-prehensile appendage. There are so many uses, major and minor, explored in great lengths. For essential plot progression, for individual quirks, and for one-off jokes. The creativity and its implementation are perfect.

Being the central focus of the film, the animators absolutely had to get the weight and movement of Rapunzel’s hair correct. It couldn’t be a hard piece of shellac, or lifeless like a flopping piece of fabric. It had to look like hair, move like hair and feel like hair. And that meant drawing it like hair.

In total, over 140,000 individual strands of hair had to be accounted for. The animators could have hypothetically animated Rapunzel's tresses just like the rest of the film. That would be the hard way. Instead, animators employed a recently developed computer program.

A specific subset of animators were tasked exclusively with animating Rapunzel's hair. Rapunzel's hair had 173 reference points. Animators could choose which points moved where, and what they interacted with. The computer then handled gravity, friction, collisions, and inertia.

Further complicating matters were the lighting and shadowing effects. Rapunzel's hair isn't just blonde, it has a radiant gold luster. Literally; it illuminates in several scene. As such, each strand of hair couldn't be a 2-dimensional thread, but a microscopically hollow tube. Light effects needed to flow through each strand, lighting it up like fiber optics.

With the hardware limitations of the time, it took over 30 hours to render a single frame. At 24 frames per second, multiplied by a 100 minute runtime, Tangled’s enormous production window makes even more sense.

This dedication to craftsmanship is evident throughout. There’s a unique style to Tangled, making it look unlike anything else offered by Disney. The saturation and use of color emulates an oil painting. Specifically, animators drew inspiration from the Rococo art movement. The artwork of painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard was used as references by the animators. As a result, Rapunzel’s violet dress and yellow hair are dynamic contrasts to the verdant greens and ruddy browns that surround her.

The violet and gold color scheme are further explored at the kingdom of Corona. An entire city on an island surrounded by a bright blue sea, Corona is the kingdom Rapunzel was spirited away from as an infant. In honor of the lost princess, the citizens light candles in her memory.

The entire kingdom of Corona was modeled on the French castle and commune, Mont St. Michel. Despite this, there’s nothing specifically French about Corona or all of Tangled. The film has a deliberately conflated identity. It’s representative of no place and no era. It possesses an unmistakable Old World charm, but no parallel beyond that. Some elements are reminiscent of the dark ages, while others resemble the 18th century. They all intermingle, creating a fantastical land to accompany its magic. It’s not quite France, not quite Britain, not quite Germany; it’s everywhere and nowhere all at once. This also conveniently excuses everyone having American accents.

The film's villain is Mother Gothel. A woman of indeterminate age, she is physically in her 40s, but actually centuries old. She's become reliant on the rejuvenate magic present in Rapunzel's hair. It is the only thing keeping her alive, requiring its use on a weekly basis.

Gothel is a special class of villain, not seen since Lady Tremaine from Cinderella. She’s not particularly strong or powerful, but she is conniving, malicious, and evil all the same. She doesn’t need to strike down Rapunzel with her hand when she can instead break her spirit.

Her sole motive is also her greatest weakness as a character. Gothel is for all intents and purposes immortal. But she doesn't do anything with that immortality. We don't know what she wants, or what she does with all her free time. She clearly has a life somewhere, independent of Rapunzel. But everything she is and everything she does revolves around keeping Rapunzel hidden and subservient. Gothel's life is a tautology. She prolongs her life so that she can live a life devoted to prolonging her life.

Kidnapped from her birth parents as an infant, Rapunzel has only known Gothel as her mother. For her entire life, Rapunzel has been subject to Gothel’s mind games. Rapunzel is repeatedly told the world is treacherous and dangerous. She's told she's far too weak and powerless to brave the risks. And with no frame of reference, Rapunzel is forced to believe the lies.

Rapunzel’s tower is both her prison and her home. She’s lived alone for her entire life. She has no communication with the outside world and limited resources to fill her days. What does she do with such little space and so much time? Whatever she can.

The film’s opening song, “When Will My Life Begin,” demonstrates the frustrations of an extrovert forced to live the life of an introvert. Rapunzel has a multitude of hobbies and interests. Some she's passionate about. Some are distractions. Some are self-appointed busywork. She's blithely frustrated with her unfulfilling and unrealized life. 

We see the various skills and abilities Rapunzel has acquired through rote repetition. While it's an enthusiastic way to start the film and introduce Rapunzel, there is a missed opportunity for foreshadowing. None of the skills she demonstrates are revisited throughout the film. We're told she's adept in guitar playing, ventriloquism and papier-mâché. She's shown being skilled in close-quarters combat, using a frying pan as a weapon. What could have been a great storytelling opportunity is just a series of one-off sight gags.

Rapunzel as a character is defined by her circumstances. Living sheltered and alone for nearly 18 years, she has a childlike disposition. She's naïve, trusting and optimistic because she's never known any reason not to be. Likewise, she's also well-versed in a number of areas, exuding a level of unearned confidence. She knows what she wants, and she knows how to get it. She just doesn't know anything about society, geography, or social interactions.

The only thing Rapunzel knows of the outside world is an annual festival of floating lanterns. She doesn't know what they are or where they come from, but she's so intrigued by their existence, she must know.

Enter the male lead of the film, Flynn Rider. Flynn is on the run from law enforcement, carrying a jewel encrusted tiara in his satchel. To avoid capture, he stumbles far into the forest. He accidentally stumbles upon Rapunzel's tower, believing it to be empty. Caught off guard, Rapunzel subdues Flynn and hides his satchel. This gives us the film's inciting incident. Rapunzel needs an escort to the lantern festival. If Flynn accompanies her, she'll return the satchel and its contents.

Flynn was designed to be a charismatic, likable scoundrel. By intention, he was equal parts Han Solo, Gene Kelly, and Errol Flynn (his namesake). He's witty, snarky, humorous, but always with a debonair charm about him. He's never humiliated or demeaned, always coming out of each situation with his head high.

What makes him interesting instead of conceited is how he plays off Rapunzel. Flynn is determined to believe he is the hero of his own story. A swashbuckling rogue, akin to Robin Hood. Instead of another daring adventure, he's now playing bodyguard to a naïve girl who's somehow calling all the shots. The wind is taken out of his sails, but they're still very impressive sails.

Flynn’s design was the work of a focus group. The directors corralled every woman from the Disney Animation Studio for a meeting. Plastered on the walls of a boardroom were photographs of popular Hollywood actors. The ladies were asked what they physically liked and disliked about each man. Sources have confirmed Johnny Depp, David Beckham, Hugh Jackman and Brad Pitt as testing particularly well.

Dubbed "The Hot Man Meeting," this feedback gave Flynn his unique look. Curtained hair. Brown eyes. A healthy physique, but not overly muscled. A strong jawline. Expressive eyebrows. Some facial hair, but not a full beard. And the setup for a running gag presented throughout the film, a prominent nose.

The film is overflowing with likable and charismatic characters. Even the animal characters are dynamic additions. Maximus is a no-nonsense steed in the palace guard, relentless in pursuit of Flynn. So much so, it's understood he's the authoritative head of the entire squad.

It's details like this that really sell the world of Tangled as fundamentally unique. One scene features Flynn and Maximus engaged in a sword fight. An adventure movie staple, Tangled makes their version iconic. For starters, it's held in the runoff channels of an aqueduct. These channels are so large and voluminous, Flynn and Rapunzel are essentially surfing down water slides. Second, Flynn isn't armed with a sword at all, but a skillet. Finally, all this is in happening so Flynn can combat a horse gripping a blade in his teeth.

The difference between madcap insanity like this being random nonsense and unique style is context. Every strange decision is justified. Every odd element is explained. It's ridiculous when experienced outside of the film, but inside the world of Tangled, it all makes sense.

Maximus has a unique place in the movie. He's sentient, intelligent, clearly able to understand everyone, but cannot speak. He's an animal living in a human's world. As is Rapunzel's friend and pet chameleon, Pascal. Both use these restrictions to opposite means. Maximus's silence gives him a no-nonsense air. He's in service of the law and pursues criminals with a stoic determination. He uses a piercing gaze, flared nostrils, and an unhappy sneer. Pascal uses his oversized eyes and comical smile to emote. He's playful, endearing, and fully in support of Rapunzel and her goals. Everything he does is for her.

It's common to associate these traits to animated animals. Tangled also uses this attributes in an unlikely place: Rapunzel’s parents. The king and queen of Corona are seen throughout the film. They run a gamut of emotion, ranging from desperation, hope, grief, optimism, disbelief, and finally jubilation. We spend very little time with these two. They are an accessory to Rapunzel's story. But every moment we spend with them, we learn so much about their identity. By the film's end, they are as familiar as any other major character, all without ever saying a word of dialogue.

Tangled is a film that is strong on story, strong on visuals, and strong on character. Usually a film is lucky to achieve one of the three, but Tangled gets all three near perfect.

The soundtrack is another exemplary work from Alan Menken. The indeterminate era and setting are reflected in the film’s music. The sound of medieval madrigals are partnered with acoustic guitars and soft rock. It makes the world seem comforting and vibrant. The music is as essential to every scene as the background. When Rapunzel and Flynn arrive at Corona, the music swells, encompassing the joy onscreen. The movie blossoms into a full dance sequence, not seeming superfluous or egregious.

Not counting the reprisals or Rapunzel's magic incantation, there are four songs in Tangled. It's an odd number, leaving Tangled straddling the genre line. It's rather anemic compared to other Disney musicals, which feature five or six numbers. Can Tangled rightfully be called a musical, or is it a normal movie where characters happen to sing?

At any rate, Tangled's soundtrack accidentally reveals Disney's musical formula. Disney films feature four different types of songs. These four songs hit the four requisite beats. They identify characters, hit emotional notes, and diversify the soundtrack. These four are The love song, The ‘I Want’ song, The silly song, and The villain song.

We've already touched on The 'I Want' song, "When Will My Life Begin?" As for The love song, I have nothing to comment on. “At Last I See the Light’ is well-constructed and serves the film aptly.

The villain song, ‘Mother Knows Best’ is interesting to dissect. All of it is deliberately over-the-top and theatrical. Voice actress Donna Murphy is allowed to flex her Broadway sensibilities to the fullest degree. The various pitch changes and tremolos make it clear that she’s having fun. It's also a dark juxtaposition with her words being horrifying and insulting.

The playful nature and the upbeat melody bely Gothel's horrifying premonitions. She is scaring her daughter into obedience and servitude. The visuals drive the point home. Everything happening onscreen is darkly comical in relation to the song. It's terrifying taken out of context. Conceited taunting is exactly what one wants from a villain song.

‘I’ve Got a Dream’ is the silly song. Rapunzel wins over a tavern full of ruffians, encouraging them all to pursue their secret desires. Even if those desires are strange or uncharacteristic.

It's not that "I've Got a Dream" is a bad song, but it is easily the weakest from the film. For starters, every single ruffian's dream concerns a long-harbored secret. Secrets kept, as they're rather unmasculine or childish. The message of following one's dreams is being confused with encouragement to buck gender roles. Surely there must be one brigand who's dreaming of something that’s not ironic.

The song drifts off track, stretching its central point, trying to justify its place in the movie. A character having dreams and aspirations despite impossible obstacles is a common theme. It applies to the large majority of Disney films.

Rapunzel’s story is only tenuously tied to dreams. She wants to leave her tower. She wants to visit Corona. She wants to see the lanterns. The film tries to justify this as a dream, but it feels like a retroactive establishment. It’s hardly a dream, more of a strong curiosity. ‘I’ve Got a Dream’ feels like it was written independently of Tangled, then forced into the narrative. Though it's jaunty and entertaining, it stands out for the wrong reasons.

It’s a golden opportunity the movie outright misses. The focus point of Tangled shouldn’t be on the pursuit of dreams. It should be about age and confidence. Gothel infantilizes Rapunzel to the point of helplessness, smashing her confidence. She keeps Rapunzel in a state of perpetual childhood.

It’s why, near the end of her adventure, Rapunzel’s return to the tower seems so eerie. The colorful furniture and childish drawings that once defined her are now omens of her cursed state. She has all the intelligence and maturity of a grown woman, but she’s subjugated to live eternally as a little girl.

Rapunzel left her tower for only a few days. In doing so, she immediately developed emotional maturity, self-reliance and social skills. She even found romance. She’s an adult now, but is being forced back into the life of a child. Her tower hasn't changed at all; the imagery that once defined Rapunzel as a character now defines her tragic circumstances. It’s why the movie takes place on her 18th birthday, the gateway between adolescence and adulthood.

Gothel uses magic to prolong her youth and deny her true age. The only way to maintain such a life is to subject Rapunzel to the same fate. The final act of defeating Gothel is a symbolic one. Rapunzel’s hair is cut, destroying the magic, literally and figuratively severing what tied the two women together. 

Visually, Rapunzel turns from a doe-eyed girl to a grown woman with no physical changes other than a shattered bob. A haircut which, while narratively important, forever reminds us that Tangled was released in 2010.

The major element that defines Rapunzel as a character is confidence. Either its presence, or its denial. She’s spent her entire life being told she’s weak and incapable, she has no choice but to accept such claims as fact. When she has her very first taste of capability, she realizes she’s capable of so much more. When Disney Animation released their first truly-successful CGI film, it was the dawn of a brand new era in animation. It was a long time coming, but with Tangled, at last they saw the light.

Beauty and the Beast Fantasia The Lion King Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Cinderella Alice in Wonderland Sleeping Beauty Mulan Tangled The Little Mermaid Aladdin Lilo & Stitch The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Pinocchio The Jungle Book Robin Hood The Sword in the Stone Bambi The Emperor’s New Groove The Hunchback of Notre Dame The Princess and the Frog The Great Mouse Detective 101 Dalmatians Bolt The Three Caballeros Lady and the Tramp The Rescuers Down Under Atlantis: The Lost Empire The Fox and the Hound Fantasia 2000 Peter Pan Dumbo Hercules Meet the Robinsons Brother Bear The Black Cauldron Melody Time Oliver & Company Treasure Planet Tarzan The Rescuers Pocahontas Saludos Amigos The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad The Aristocats Dinosaur Fun and Fancy Free Make Mine Music Home on the Range Chicken Little

#Tangled #Disney #walt disney #Walt Disney Animation Studios #disney studios #Disney Canon #Film Criticism #film analysis #movie review

[grifalinas]

The end of Shrek wasn’t ‘Fiona learns to love her ogre form’, it was ‘Fiona realizes that her cultural beauty standards aren’t universal and applying ogre beauty standards to her ogre form means she is still beautiful’. This isn’t a bad thing- any message depends on delivery and Shrek does a really good job of delivering its message, and it’s easy to extract the message to a more real world context to make it about how unfair it is to expect someone to live up to cultural beauty standards that shouldn’t apply to them, or even the idea of whether you fit cultural beauty standards or not, there will still be people who think you’re beautiful by THEIR standards. Or you can apply the behavior context alongside the line about beauty to mean an appreciation for standards even beyond beauty standards. It works, it has a solid delivery, it’s a fun movie that holds up, it’s not ruined by this being the point of the ending, BUT, this being the point of the ending DOES change the lense through which we analyze the movie.

In fact, I think Shrek 2 is a much better vessel for Fiona learning to love her ogre form, because that one actually forces her to consider what being an ogre means to her beyond merely ‘the man I love thinks I’m beautiful like this’. Shrek would love Fiona whether she was an ogre or a human, and he would give up being an ogre if it would make her happy, which puts the decision of whether she should be an ogre into her hands. In this case, I think the delivery COULD have been better, but it was still pretty solid overall.

(By the way, I’m not saying you should be allowed to force your spouse to change species for your happiness, just that’s the situation the narrative creates.)

Now, I’m one of the few people who actually enjoys the next two Shrek movies, but I do agree that they lost the thread a bit, and I would have definitely preferred the stories to go in a different direction than they did- Shrek deciding to embrace being a married man with a social life should not have required him to give up all isolation, privacy, and personal space, and in a way they reversed the points from the first two by pushing him into a mainstream idea of married life and forcing him to prioritize that over what would make him happy. The next two movies should have been about Shrek and Fiona finding a middle ground between their two priorities to make their married life work, and if the children must happen, they should have been a part of the story, not a prop. (Also, the fourth and third plots should have been reversed. Honestly, the third movie could be removed completely, but I did enjoy it, so it can stay on those grounds, just change the order of the movies and rearrange the framing device of the original fourth one to suit the changes, and then do some rewrites so that they hold to the spirit of the originals’ spirit- you can even lean into the direction of embracing ourselves despite cultural beauty or behavior standards that people apply to the original, and make something much more consistent and coherent.)

[that-bookworm-guy]

I’m letting the first draft of my last WIP sit, it’s going to need a lot of work seeing as I wrote it in 12 days, so I need to rewrite with a completely clear mind. 

So I’m working on another idea from my ideas book.

The original idea involved a family of three siblings and a prophecy which involved two boys saving the world from something (honestly, I’m feeling evil spirits for some reason.) Apart from that I’ve not done much more planning.

So the middle sibling, who is the twin of the eldest is left out because they were born a girl. So the eldest and youngest are trained their whole life for this big event, which they’re not sure what it is. 

The middle sibling is just kind of dragged along to training mainly to be a punch bag, like their parents are shitty tbh. 

The youngest of the siblings really doesn’t want to be involved in saving the world, he wants a nice quiet life without any trouble. He’s shy and not really fighting material, but his parents think (hope) that he will be the brains of the duo. 

It was originally going to be about this girl who is branded a problem child because she knows she’s invisible to her parents so wants to kind of push them to see how much she can get away with ( a lot)

But something didn’t feel right. So I did something I promised I would never do, I made the middle child a trans guy. (for those that don’t know, I’m a trans guy, before I start getting hate for this)

(You can see where this is going, hold on with me)

So Damien (his chosen name and the only name he will go by in the whole story) is introduced in the story by setting fire to a science lab in his college. His twin, Kieran tries to stand up for him, but the head just knows it was Damien. I haven’t got a name for the youngest, but I’m thinking around 10-13.

The twins are 17. I wanted an age that wasn’t too much over 18, but wasn’t exactly a child. I’m considering having the twins turn 18 during the story. 

So Damien has already come out, is living as a boy, there will be no coming out. He will have a legal name and title change, but won’t be on hormones yet.I don’t want this to be a coming out story. I want this to be a character that is already socially transitioned. His parents were like ‘okay, do whatever’ pretty much because their focus is on the other two.

Now Damien isn’t a hero. He doesn’t want to be a hero tbh he is a bit of a shit. But I’ve had to decide beforehand his morals.... how far would he go? What would he do and not do?

One thing I’ve decided is that he won’t lie. Here’s a paragraph from my first draft of a chapter.

Damian didn’t say anything. He was many things, but he wasn’t a liar. He may not exactly tell the truth by freely offering up information. But he wouldn’t tell a lie. He had enough of people lying to him his whole life. If he could stay silent or twist the truth in a way so he wasn’t lying but wasn’t telling the whole truth, like Pinocchio in the third Shrek movie, then he would. But he refused to straight-up lie.

If asked straight up something, he will answer because his parents lie to him a lot and he knows how shitty it can feel. This is probably going to get tricky, because he may have to decide at some point whether to lie to someone or if to tell the truth. 

I’m also probably going to make it so he won’t bully anyone, he may be an arsehole to everyone, but he won’t be a bully. He also won’t do anything to serious injury someone (nothing other than maybe a bump and a bruise).

He is going to be a character some people love and others will hate. 

Back to the storyline, obvious the prophecy is linked to the first two boys in the family (I’m going to make it so it isn’t like the first two born males, it’s going to be worded in a way that makes Damien fit it). While the youngest is over joyed at not having to fight anything, Damien is like ‘fuck’s sake’ because he really isn’t a hero. His parents will be like ‘we fucked up.” and will try to be nice to Damien because now the twins are going to bring great pride onto the family, but Damien is like ‘fuck no’ to them. 

Maybe at the end I’ll have the twins (if they survive) leave home with their younger brother because the youngest sibling really shouldn’t be in the care of their parents, seeing as the parents just cared about the pride it will bring on the family, instead of their children’s well-being. 

I’m also thinking that maybe the younger sibling will come along to help his siblings save the world, because he’s trained for it, and even though he technically is let off of the prophecy, he wants to help his brothers. 

#long post #writing #writeblr #writer #kyle writes

[gritsandbrits]

Angrboda as Rhodanthe, Lady of the Swan Lake & future Queen of Far Far Away. Background from Barbie In Swan Lake. I don't know poo about God of War but the moment I saw Angrboda I KNEW immediately she was THE PERFECT faceclaim for Rho.

#angrboda #angrboða #god of war #shrek #shrek the third #shrek oc #fan character #edit #oc x canon #shrek the third rewrite #artie x oc

[houseofthelilypads]

When planning my rewrite of shrek the third one of the many ideas i had was make artie an ogre. The curse didn't just affect fiona but everyone else in her immediate generation so any cousins she may have were also turned, and why harold and lillian never had another kid.

The twist would be Artie taking human form by night & ogre by day. Ogre Artie defies the stereotypes: instead of brutish and messy, he's gentle and tidy; instead of being clumsy, he's careful and intelligent. He doesn't eat bugs or anything yucky but loves human food, and his closeness with human culture puts him at odds with Shrek. The conflict would be shrek teaching artie how to embrace his ogre side. Eventually Artie decides to keep the curse because he doesn't have to give up one side or the other, he can be can both. The idea of one of the greatest icons in history being a monster but possessing the HEART of a hero makes for a cool twist.

I also saw one au where Artie comes from harold's side of the family and is a frog as well, I think that could work. Eventually I just settled on the uther backstory and have artie be made fun of due to uther's behavior, showing how a parent's bad rep affect their own kids. But also bullying can happen to anyone, bullies don't need a reason to pick on you but you can chose to walk away and don't have to help them.

#artie shrek #shrek the third rewrite #shrek the third #shrek #artie pendragon

[juniaships]

I wanna point out im not entirely writing Rapunzel out of my shrek 3 rewrite, her arc is going to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of throwing away genuine friendships for a guy & treat every woman you meet as competition. Rapunzel also doesn't try to engage with the rest of the outcasts. Even tho they accepted HER, she still looks down on them. While she TRIES to be friendly to gwynn she quickly devolves into jealousy once gwynn and charming grow closer. Essentially she represents people esp. Those with privilege refusing to engage critically & not want to work on themselves bcuz they fear giving up every single thing they have even something as simple as talking to new people.

#shrek the third #shrek 3 #shrek the third rewrite #shrek #fanfic

[nerdyrosie]

Any good “Shrek the third” rewrites out there?

[aion-rsa]

Why Pirates of the Caribbean Didn’t Need Any Sequels

https://ift.tt/2ECLVGL

Pirates of the Caribbean was never meant to be a franchise. Not really. Of course one could also argue the concept was never meant to be a movie either. Originally a theme park ride which opened at Disneyland in 1967, Pirates of the Caribbean becoming a movie is the kind of high-concept thrown around by Disney execs huddled at a conference table. Indeed, it was creative executives Brigham Taylor, Michael Haynes, and Josh Harmon who brainstormed the basic plot for a Pirates movie during the same period the studio greenlit The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion movies. However, what made the eventual Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl a classic came from the type of creative inspiration Disney couldn’t anticipate or control… yet.

Released in 2003 with modest expectations from the Mouse, and even more cynical predictions by the rest of the industry, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie ended up standing tall among the last of a dying breed: a surprise box office hit not based on a property with a built-in audience. Coming out at the crossroads of summer blockbusters being driven by practical and digital effects, and analogue filmmaking versus digital cinematography, the movie was released as an old-fashioned adventure yarn in the spirit of Errol Flynn with a modern twist.

Curse of the Black Pearl was not seriously set-up for sequels, prequels, or a shared universe, yet it would spawn all of them in one way or another. Still, in its most undiluted form, Pirates’ success was predicated on a creative spark from the filmmakers involved, chief among them director Gore Verbinski and actor Johnny Depp, which Disney could not stifle or curb. Instead the pair made a throwback quite unlike anything else in the marketplace, and its singular quality is also why its eventual sequels would, to varying degrees, fail to recapture that 2003 lightning in a bottle.

After being thought up by Disney executives, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie incubated during a very different era for the studio. Disney’s live-action movies then released under the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle banner had long been struggling. Worse still, their animated movies were also beginning to falter with duds like Dinosaur (2000) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) signaling the Disney Renaissance was over. Within this anxiety, Disney first hired Jay Wolpert and then Stuart Beattie to write screenplays between 2001 and 2002 for Pirates, even as the studio vacillated on what they wanted. For his part, Wolpert imagined his heroic Jack Sparrow to be played by Hugh Jackman (hence the name Jack), but the studio didn’t think he could carry a blockbuster solo. In fact, Disney wasn’t even sure Pirates was going to be a blockbuster.

On the one hand, the studio was approaching Matthew McConaughey to play Sparrow after the actor proved a solid team player on their Touchstone Pictures’ Reign of Fire—it also helped that executives believed McConaughey resembled Burt Lancaster, who just happened to star in the last successful Hollywood pirate movie… 1952’s The Crimson Pirate. But Disney was also considering shuttling the concept over to the direct-to-video market, with either Cary Elwes or Christopher Walken as Captain Jack. Aye, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner had such cold feet on the project, and eventually about Depp, that he tried to stop production at the eleventh hour before cameras rolled in 2002, nervous because The Country Bears (starring Walken) flopped that summer.

But given the original setup for the picture in those early drafts, it is easy to see why there was a lack of confidence in the material. In its initial conception, Pirates of the Caribbean was intended to be a PG buddy comedy about a pirate named Jack Sparrow and his jailor Will Turner setting off to rescue the governor’s daughter; she’d been kidnapped for ransom by the dastardly Captain Blackheart, a generic baddie for a more generic plot. There were no twists or turns, Aztec treasure and curses, marooned islands, or the subversive streak cherished by the eventual filmmakers who discovered the heart of the movie was “sitting on a beach drinking rum.”

That inspiration luckily came in the quick turnaround of Dick Cook, the newly minted Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group chairman, convincing first Jerry Bruckheimer to produce the flailing Pirates of the Caribbean project and then, at Bruckheimer’s insistence, talking oddball actor Johnny Depp into starring in a Disney movie. Depp actually took the meeting with Cook to land an animated voice acting gig that would appeal to his children, but upon hearing the word “pirates” and the prospect of sword fighting, his ambitions for working at Disney quickly grew.

With a screenplay being hastily rewritten by new scribes Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, who’d just come off Shrek and another all-time classic swashbuckler in The Mask of Zorro, Pirates of the Caribbean became a movie produced too quickly by a struggling movie studio to fully control, especially as its moving parts were transported to the actual Caribbean, including Elliot and Rossio, who continued rewriting the movie on-set to director Gore Verbinski’s specifications. For context, Verbinski’s biggest hit at that time was the decidedly not-family friendly The Ring.

“To make this film in under a year from an outline, it was really essential to bring them in,” Verbinski said about Elliot and Ross during his Curse of the Black Pearl audio commentary. The director had the writers’ shrewd intuition, which added a supernatural curse that upped the movie’s CG-spectacle for modern blockbusters and made it more in line with the Disneyland ride, as well as the ability to add narrative and verbal complexity on the fly.

Said Verbinski, “In looking at the genre and saying, ‘Why hasn’t it worked?’ I found a lot of the sort of dialect [in recent pirates movies] didn’t feel like it was really from Robert Louis Stevenson. You know, the ‘Black Spot,’ any kind of that pirate flavor out of Treasure Island. It sort of went away.”

With Pirates of the Caribbean, it came back with a vengeance. Released eight years after Renny Harlin’s lackluster Cutthroat Island failed at modernizing pirate movies by way of ‘90s aesthetics, Verbinski and Depp brought the old-fashioned wonder of Stevenson and Golden Age Hollywood pirate movies of yore roaring back. While the film’s marketing revolved around the then-cutting edge CGI effects of cursed men who in the light of the full moon turn into skeletons like they’re right out of some Disney park attraction, the reason the movie is still extraordinarily satisfying nearly 20 years later is because of what occurs outside these relatively limited digital set-pieces.

Narratively and visually, Verbinski and his merry crew of filmmakers pulled from Michael Curtiz’s classic Captain Blood (1935), which is likewise set around the escape of an imprisoned pirate with a brand on his flesh at the British Port Royal colony in Jamaica. Several scenes, like the decidedly PG-13 levels of roustabout action on the island of Tortuga, are even lifted directly from that movie. Others, like when Jack Sparrow and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) sneak aboard an enemy ship while breathing underwater in a capsized rowboat, are taken shot-by-shot from the much goofier Crimson Pirate.

But more than just paying homage to classic pirate movie iconography, the original Pirates of the Caribbean recaptured those earlier movies’ mirthful sense of adventure. The “dialect” Verbinski refers to is not resurrected by Depp’s idiosyncratic Jack, but it oozes out of stage thespian Geoffrey Rush. A classically trained character actor, Rush leans hard into the hard-Rs of his speech, all but literally muttering “argh.” He leans into every pirate stereotype and makes a feast of the scenery while doing so. Verbinski even joked he only wanted Rush because Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers were dead: that old school charisma is what turned this potential “paycheck” role into one every bit as essential in recapturing swashbuckling fun as Depp’s.

The same could be said for so many of the other elements, from the use of actual on location shooting (and in the Caribbean for parts of the movies unlike the Californian coasts used by Captain Blood) to at least one actual replica of an 18th century merchant vessel—The Lady Washington, redressed to look like the Interceptor in the film. The other two major vessels in the movie, the Black Pearl and Dauntless, were at least built two-thirds to scale on sea barges while CG filled in the rest.

And despite it being her breakout role, Keira Knightley’s performance as Elizabeth Swann is often overlooked. At only the age of 17, Knightley holds her own against co-stars Depp and Rush, and creates a compelling protagonist who is visibly working the angles of her situation in every scene. In lesser hands, Elizabeth could’ve been blandly innocuous, the “love interest,” but in the finished film she drives the plot, convincingly outsmarting Barbossa and Sparrow at every turn. And while performing the functions of an old-fashioned Hollywood love story, Knightley’s screen presence turned her into a star just as readily as a teenage Olivia de Havilland became one after Captain Blood.

But then that first major Hollywood pirate movie was on Verbinski’s mind during the production of Pirates of the Caribbean, both in how that 1935 movie’s swashbuckling scope made its director and two leads A-listers, and also in how he could subvert its tropes now in the 21st century.

“I knew the film could support [Depp’s performance] because Orlando’s doing Errol Flynn,” Verbinski said. “I mean if you look at Jack Davenport [as Commodore Norrington] and even Orlando’s performances, on their own they’re really solid, but in context they’re fuel for [Depp] to consume.” And consume them he did.

Captain Jack was always meant to be the amorous hero of Pirates of the Caribbean, a mischievous Han Solo to Will Turner’s Luke Skywalker that gets to kill Darth Vader at the end. But as screenwriter Elliot surmised in 2003, “The characterization, the personality of Jack is what we wrote. The expression of that is purely Johnny Depp.” He’d swing from pulleys like Flynn, but do so while screaming in bloody terror. He was a familiar narrative archetype, but as singular an anti-hero as Hollywood has ever seen.

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A performer best known for eschewing his handsome good looks at this time in favor of prosthetics and off-center performances like in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, Depp was not an obvious choice for the role. But at Bruckheimer’s insistence the character actor was in, and when he first met with his director Verbinski, the only thing the filmmaker was certain of is that Depp would play against his good looks.

Thinking back on their first meeting with affection, Verbinski recalled, “[He] said, ‘I don’t think Jack has a nose because he lost his nose in a sword fight, but it got sewed back on and it’s blue because the circulation is bad.’” It was a radical choice, one certain to die once Disney executives heard it, but it indicated the kind of subversive streak Verbinski thirsted for—one that could bounce off an old Hollywood aesthetic.

Said Verbinski, “This was in the infantile stages of the Bruckheimer and Dick Cook experience, and Synergy back home is talking about McDonald’s cups and happy meals. And on the third bottle of wine at a restaurant in London, we’re talking about a nose being sliced off.” It was the counterbalance the movie needed, and the type of creative-leaning these two eccentric talents gravitated toward. In Verbinski’s mind, Bloom must be D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers so Depp can play the rock star (Keith Richards to be exact). It also freed Depp up to improvise lines where he pondered if Will Turner, or the entire male population of France, were eunuchs. “You have to pervert the genre at almost every opportunity,” said Verbinski.

Yet perversion is not exactly a word that comes to mind with Disney. Not before 2003, and not soon afterward. But in the fast turnaround on a pirate movie in 2002, Verbinski and Depp could be quite perverse with the material, although not without pushback. For example, while the studio accepted Bruckheimer’s insistence that a pirate movie needed to be PG-13—a first for a Disney movie released under the studio’s official banner—there was immediate repulsion when Depp showed his personally selected wardrobe for Jack Sparrow, complete with five teeth capped to look like a golden grill in front. Depp was instantly summoned to a meeting with Bruckheimer and Cook.

“Three went away and then I secretly added one,” Depp said in 2003. “But the two that went away were the ones I used as bartering material.” In a 2010 interview, Depp later clarified how much concern there was over his performance as the dailies rolled in.

“They couldn’t stand [Jack],” Depp said. “I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, ‘He’s ruining the movie.’” Depp even referred to several executives as “Disney-ites” who feared he’d turned their heroic pirate into an openly gay character. “[They were] going, ‘What’s wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay?’ And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite; ‘But didn’t you know that all my characters are gay?’ which really made her nervous.”

According to Verbinski, Eisner even panicked when he saw a daily of the final shot of the movie, with Jack caressing the phallic-shaped handles of the Black Pearl’s steering wheel.

These were bold and bizarre choices made by both Depp and Verbinski at the peak of their creative talents. Today, it’s easy to forget how transgressive Depp’s Captain Jack appeared at the time, particularly after he turned Sparrow into a paycheck-generating caricature during the fourth and fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But in 2003, the character was brazenly unlike anything any studio would put at the forefront of a summer tentpole, least of all Disney. For that matter, it’s impossible to imagine such creative mojo being left unchecked on a Disney tentpole today, not when the studio has turned superhero movies into a finely tuned assembly line, and still seeks to do the same with Star Wars.

Of course the changing tides were imminent in ’03 too. Ahead of release, Verbinski, Elliot and Rossio, and the armada of filmmakers attempted to make the ultimate pirate movie. The director even mused there were only five types of pirate stories to be told: buried treasure, building a crew, marooned anti-heroes, kidnapped damsels, and the good-man-turned-scoundrel. Pirates of the Caribbean did them all in a single movie, complete with Aztec curses.

But shortly after principal photography wrapped, and even as Disney executives privately stewed over what Depp was doing to the movie, the studio quietly added the subtitle “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” signaling they wanted sequels. Yet considering the kitchen sink approach to every classical trope being honored and subverted in the original movie… did there really need to be a sequel?

In retrospect, no. Admittedly there’s quite a bit in the second Pirates movie to enjoy: Verbinski and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s sun-drenched photography of Caribbean locations was back, as was Penny Rose’s historically authentic costuming, and of course Depp. But the script was looser; and though the CGI was impressive with the motion-capture performance of Bill Nighy as new heavy Davy Jones and the giant tentacles of a Kraken, which harkened back to another Disney favorite, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the more enmeshed the franchise became with CG-spectacle, the more it got away from what made the first a brilliant throwback.

The initial Pirates sequels also fell prey to the franchise fad of the early 2000s. Before gritty reboots or “shared cinematic universes,” the buzzword in studios offices was “trilogy.” While the original Pirates was a blast of creative energy put into one film with no setups or dangling plot threads, it was released in an era when Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels dominated the box office; even superhero movies were haphazardly trying to jump on the fad via X-Men and Spider-Man rushing awkward threequel finales.

But no matter how grandiose composer Hans Zimmer’s score became, Pirates of the Caribbean was not Lord of the Rings, and trying to force that square peg into a round hole triggered diminishing returns. While the second movie had fun developments like Davenport’s Norrington becoming a major character who washed out of the British Navy and was now a disgraced pirate crossing swords with Depp and Bloom during a spectacular three-way sword fight, the third film had no clear vision of what to do with him after a cliffhanger ending. So he was unceremoniously killed off. I’d even argue the third movie didn’t know what to do with any character to match the franchise’s sudden pretensions. So Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, designed to be classic happily-ever-after types in the vein of Captain Blood, are unconvincingly morphed into tragic star-crossed lovers with an ending that reaches for the majesty of J.R.R. Tolkien. By trilogy’s end, they’re doomed to see each other only one day per decade. It wants to be mythic, but it’s really bloated melodrama.

Still, it was better than what came afterward. Realizing there was yet more money in the Pirates brand after the trilogy concluded, Disney churned out two more movies where everyone but Depp and Rush were gone. Gorgeous 35mm cinematography was replaced by bland digital photography, on-location shooting in the Caribbean was kept to a minimum, and the performance that once got Depp an Oscar nomination became a phoned-in parody of itself. Even the characterization of Jack is off, with the resourceful pirate tactician everyone mistakes for a fool turning into a fool everyone inexplicably mistakes for being clever.

In this way, all the elements that made the original so refreshingly lovable were run aground, much the same way Disney’s modern attempts to repeat the narrative beats of George Lucas’ once revolutionary Star Wars movies from earlier decades had led to a recycled emptiness by the time we reached last year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The creative transgressions of Verbinski and Depp in their prime were sandblasted and smoothed by a studio system that’s only become better at dulling the edges of any and every intellectual property. Just ask Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the original directors of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

The fifth and final Depp-led Pirates of the Caribbean movie attempted to use prequel elements wherein audiences met a de-aged Jack Sparrow winning battles in his youth. But by then audiences had tired of the shtick. So Disney now seeks to reboot the brand with Margot Robbie in the lead. Undoubtedly her maiden voyage in the franchise will be loaded with easter eggs and dangling setups for sequels and spinoffs, and perhaps even a shared universe of Pirates movies. It’ll surely make for a smoother transition than the original movie had to indefinite expansion. And yet, I suspect the standalone quality of the first is what will always make it the most valuable treasure buried in this franchise’s sea.

The post Why Pirates of the Caribbean Didn’t Need Any Sequels appeared first on Den of Geek.

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