In case you don't know, a big part of my rather long hiatus and retiring from my past blog was because I had kids. Kids eat up a lot of free time, especially when they are really little. Now that they're a little older and a little more independent, I have a sliver more free time to pursue the things I like hence my restarting of this blog and getting into writing again.
We also can have fun family movie nights where we can watch something that doesn't quite make my brain leak out of my ears in annoyance. My kiddos love music so we tend to gravitate towards musical stuff, enter Disney's Descendants. I didn't think much of this franchise other than it was a cheap cash grab to try to mix High School Musical with Disney Villains but it had my girl Kristin Chenoweth in it and Kathy Najimy so why not give it a shot?
I got pretty much what I expected out of it. The songs were cute, the characters interesting (for a kids movie) and a kind of ok message about second chances and moving past your reputation. Good stuff. Plus, they wedged in a completely pointless and out of nowhere musical number for my girl, K-Chen because of course they had to get her to sing. It's not a great song but you do not hire Kristin Chenoweth in your musical to have her not sing. That's just stupid.
The basic premise is that all villains have been shipped off to an island and trapped there, you know, kind of like Australia. Anyway, time has passed and all the fairy tale characters have had kids now, even the villains and they've mostly grown to teens. So Belle and Beast's kid is becoming King and his first decree is to start giving the children of villains a second chance, starting with a few and expanding. They do, the villain kids are working for their parents but learn that being off an island slapped with a bunch of sanctions and being in a land full of freedom and opportunity is pretty sweet. They convert and prove their goodness, they're allowed to stay and everyone is happy. It's a solid little musical so we decided to give the second one a chance.
The second one has our main villain, Maleficent's daughter Mal, feeling out of place and deciding to go back to the island. The rest of the original villains and King Beast go after her to bring her back. King gets kidnapped by Uma, Ursula's daughter, so the kids band together to free him. Uma's point is that she wants off the island too and it wasn't fair that they picked four people to win the lottery of freedom and then everyone else is stuck on the prison island. This was an excellent continuation, it moved the story along and made a really good point about how the last one, really only redeemed four villains out of an entire island. The King decides to reopen the program, Uma is defeated and all is well. Solid sequel that actually continued with the concept it proposed.
Intrigued and noticing it was a trilogy, we decided to give the last one a shot. If you know anything about sequels it's that very rarely do continuations actually work or have quality but I enjoyed the sequel more than I did the first one for addressing a very real issue, that is treating the whole thing like a lottery that a select few get to benefit from. To my delight, the third film continued this thought process and took it to the next level. I was pleasantly surprised.
The third movie begins with the four main villain kids picking four more villain kids to come over to their side. Everyone is excited, parents are even bringing their kids over excitedly as if proud and hoping for their kids to get chosen (and not in the evil way as depicted in the first movie) like a parent hoping their kid gets chosen to go up on stage at a Wiggles concert or something. At first, I thought, oh so they're just going to redo the first movie but with different kids but then, something interesting happened. Hades tries to escape the island as they're bringing the kids back, causing major panic. As a result, Mal suggests closing the barrier forever, thus never allowing anyone off the island again but also, not allowing anyone new onto the island.
Suddenly, it clicked and I realized the bigger point they were making here and it's honestly pretty fucking great. It's super on the nose but come on, it's for kids. I neglected to mention that Mal and King Beast are an item and they're now engaged so she's going to be Queen. It's why she feels a need to protect the citizens, because she thinks it's her duty to help them feel safe, in spite of the fact that she'd be cutting the villain kids off from their families forever.
On top of this, Aurora's daughter Audrey has re-entered the foil and is jealous that Mal is going to be Queen since that was basically going to be her role if Mal never came to Auradon. She kind of loses her mind and steals Maleficent's sceptre from their magic museum and makes everyone fall asleep and turns some of them to stone. The race is on and Mal must get extra magic from Hades' ember on the Isle of the Lost. The villains basically have to team up with the other villains from the second movie in order to take a former good guy down. There is lots of distrust along the way, of course, but they soon learn that they are better if they work together. They bring her down, Uma and her lackeys are sent back to the Isle of the Lost and everything goes back to normal.
EXCEPT...the whole concept of locking people out because of what you think they might do because of preconceived notions about their "nature" isn't sitting right with Mal. Especially since someone from the "good" side is who put everyone in danger and people from the "bad" side are who helped save everyone. The division is stoking the fires of otherness and fear and the only way to bring everyone together is to actually bring everyone together. The final act of the movie is to tear down the wall/barrier to allow free crossing between the two lands. I was actually blown away that they went there and I know what you're thinking, it's a kids movie, of course it had a happy ending. But like, how did a silly fluff musical about Disney Villain teens end up about abolishing border walls? That's fucking awesome. Don't tell me it isn't.
This entire movie is a metaphor for something, don't you think? Something that might be going on between countries right now, as we speak? That or I'm just trying to entertain myself while I watch a silly movie about children of Disney Villains with my kids. Either way, I say that this franchise actually got stronger with its later entries and I'd say I enjoyed the second and third the best because of the issues it touches on and how well they handle them. I honestly never expected this type of commentary from a corporate entity like Disney. This isn't just fostering a feeling of everyone getting along, this is a stance against injustice at borders and to be frank, racial profiling and fear mongering of people who look "different".
Stop living in fear.
We also can have fun family movie nights where we can watch something that doesn't quite make my brain leak out of my ears in annoyance. My kiddos love music so we tend to gravitate towards musical stuff, enter Disney's Descendants. I didn't think much of this franchise other than it was a cheap cash grab to try to mix High School Musical with Disney Villains but it had my girl Kristin Chenoweth in it and Kathy Najimy so why not give it a shot?
I got pretty much what I expected out of it. The songs were cute, the characters interesting (for a kids movie) and a kind of ok message about second chances and moving past your reputation. Good stuff. Plus, they wedged in a completely pointless and out of nowhere musical number for my girl, K-Chen because of course they had to get her to sing. It's not a great song but you do not hire Kristin Chenoweth in your musical to have her not sing. That's just stupid.
 |
| She is singing flawlessly while doing this, FYI |
The basic premise is that all villains have been shipped off to an island and trapped there, you know, kind of like Australia. Anyway, time has passed and all the fairy tale characters have had kids now, even the villains and they've mostly grown to teens. So Belle and Beast's kid is becoming King and his first decree is to start giving the children of villains a second chance, starting with a few and expanding. They do, the villain kids are working for their parents but learn that being off an island slapped with a bunch of sanctions and being in a land full of freedom and opportunity is pretty sweet. They convert and prove their goodness, they're allowed to stay and everyone is happy. It's a solid little musical so we decided to give the second one a chance.
The second one has our main villain, Maleficent's daughter Mal, feeling out of place and deciding to go back to the island. The rest of the original villains and King Beast go after her to bring her back. King gets kidnapped by Uma, Ursula's daughter, so the kids band together to free him. Uma's point is that she wants off the island too and it wasn't fair that they picked four people to win the lottery of freedom and then everyone else is stuck on the prison island. This was an excellent continuation, it moved the story along and made a really good point about how the last one, really only redeemed four villains out of an entire island. The King decides to reopen the program, Uma is defeated and all is well. Solid sequel that actually continued with the concept it proposed.
 |
| Uma (Ursula's daughter) and Harry (Hook's son) hold King Ben (Belle and Beast's son) hostage |
Intrigued and noticing it was a trilogy, we decided to give the last one a shot. If you know anything about sequels it's that very rarely do continuations actually work or have quality but I enjoyed the sequel more than I did the first one for addressing a very real issue, that is treating the whole thing like a lottery that a select few get to benefit from. To my delight, the third film continued this thought process and took it to the next level. I was pleasantly surprised.
The third movie begins with the four main villain kids picking four more villain kids to come over to their side. Everyone is excited, parents are even bringing their kids over excitedly as if proud and hoping for their kids to get chosen (and not in the evil way as depicted in the first movie) like a parent hoping their kid gets chosen to go up on stage at a Wiggles concert or something. At first, I thought, oh so they're just going to redo the first movie but with different kids but then, something interesting happened. Hades tries to escape the island as they're bringing the kids back, causing major panic. As a result, Mal suggests closing the barrier forever, thus never allowing anyone off the island again but also, not allowing anyone new onto the island.
Suddenly, it clicked and I realized the bigger point they were making here and it's honestly pretty fucking great. It's super on the nose but come on, it's for kids. I neglected to mention that Mal and King Beast are an item and they're now engaged so she's going to be Queen. It's why she feels a need to protect the citizens, because she thinks it's her duty to help them feel safe, in spite of the fact that she'd be cutting the villain kids off from their families forever.
On top of this, Aurora's daughter Audrey has re-entered the foil and is jealous that Mal is going to be Queen since that was basically going to be her role if Mal never came to Auradon. She kind of loses her mind and steals Maleficent's sceptre from their magic museum and makes everyone fall asleep and turns some of them to stone. The race is on and Mal must get extra magic from Hades' ember on the Isle of the Lost. The villains basically have to team up with the other villains from the second movie in order to take a former good guy down. There is lots of distrust along the way, of course, but they soon learn that they are better if they work together. They bring her down, Uma and her lackeys are sent back to the Isle of the Lost and everything goes back to normal.
 |
| Can I just say that being evil gives you pretty awesome hair? |
EXCEPT...the whole concept of locking people out because of what you think they might do because of preconceived notions about their "nature" isn't sitting right with Mal. Especially since someone from the "good" side is who put everyone in danger and people from the "bad" side are who helped save everyone. The division is stoking the fires of otherness and fear and the only way to bring everyone together is to actually bring everyone together. The final act of the movie is to tear down the wall/barrier to allow free crossing between the two lands. I was actually blown away that they went there and I know what you're thinking, it's a kids movie, of course it had a happy ending. But like, how did a silly fluff musical about Disney Villain teens end up about abolishing border walls? That's fucking awesome. Don't tell me it isn't.
They spell out the message clear as day, you can't live in fear that something bad is going to happen and the more you segregate people, the worse things will get. All a barrier does is sow fear and discontent. Uma only became bad in the second movie because she was fed up with being trapped on an island forever with no chance of escape because of something her parents did. Because she belonged to that "class" though, she was villainized and thus became the villain in a desperate bid to escape her prison. You do what you have to in order to survive your circumstances.
Consequently, the people of Auradon were so scared of the villains that they locked them away on an island to feel safe when, ironically, their biggest threat came from the inside and almost destroyed them all. The acknowledgement at the end that this system is completely fucked up is honestly fascinating to me and the fact that they opened the barrier to everyone is the best note these movies could have ended on. You can't hold an entire group responsible for the deeds of the few.
 |
| Even Hades gets to come across the bridge |
This entire movie is a metaphor for something, don't you think? Something that might be going on between countries right now, as we speak? That or I'm just trying to entertain myself while I watch a silly movie about children of Disney Villains with my kids. Either way, I say that this franchise actually got stronger with its later entries and I'd say I enjoyed the second and third the best because of the issues it touches on and how well they handle them. I honestly never expected this type of commentary from a corporate entity like Disney. This isn't just fostering a feeling of everyone getting along, this is a stance against injustice at borders and to be frank, racial profiling and fear mongering of people who look "different".
Stop living in fear.
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