the descendants movies are so crazy because the premise is literally what if all of the disney animated movies happened at the same time and afterwards the Good Guys resurrected all of their villains to give them a life sentence on a penal colony island where the only natural resource is an unlimited supply of pleather
it's like 99% about how the kids of the various disney princesses® going to school together and having cellphones but also cruella de vil's bleach-haired bastard son is there. who even asked for cruella to be included. were the working class human protagonists from 101 dalmatians involved in the construction of the penal colony or did the dogs represent themselves. and how does cruella successful manage hobnobbing with three actual evil wizards. the series starts 20 years later so they can all have fuckass little kids going to school so maybe it's been long enough for those kinds of barriers to be broken down but it seems crazy that three genuine article practitioners of the dark arts let a woman whose main claim to notoriety was "failing to kill a vast quantity of puppies" into the friend group. and by friend group I mean a polycule barely a step above the grandparents from charlie and the chocolate factory in terms of functionality.
in like the first 60 seconds you learn that after all of the disney animated movies happened at the same time all of the protagonists decided to merge their kingdoms into one mega kingdom and they democratically elected the beast, as in beauty and the, to be their Mega King who's more in charge than everyone else. the sociopolitical implications of all of the disney royalty deciding to surrender sovereignty to become The Empire of the Beast are kind of mind-blowing but it's hard to focus on that because new teenagers keep showing up and announcing "my name is Mo. you know, the daughter of Quasimodo?" I guess everyone defining themselves so strictly in terms of parentage and family line is sort of what you'd expect from a society that's basically structured the same was as game of thrones but christ.
the main plot of the first movie is that the 16 year old heir to the Empire of the Beast is about to be crowned god emperor while he's still in high school (why?) and reveals he has a bit of an abolitionist streak re: his parents' horrific penal colony. which is cool and all, it really seems like he must have had to fight against propaganda like a salmon swimming upstream to arrive at the conclusion that the penal colony is a little uncool. but also pretty immediately after he lets four villain kids into society maleficent's purple haired ne'er-do-well hits him with a love potion that leads him to unceremoniously dump his long-term girlfriend (baby sleeping beauty) in an extremely public spectacle after The Big Game. please my liege I know you're entranced by her purple hair and edgy spray painting but sleeping beauty is calling her bannermen to arms. this insult will not stand. also the effects of the love potion wear off almost immediately but he doesn't say ANYTHING and just lets his new gf keep sweating about having him ensorcelled until she brings it up herself, at which point he confirms that he's been aware for A While and is cool with her (successfully!!!) slipping him a magic roofie. they just keep dating and the only person mad about it is the girl who got dumped in front of the entire school.
the plot of the second movie is that maleficent jr is trying so hard to assimilate into normie culture (ie, being blond and wearing pastels) to be a good paramour to the new teen emperor that she has a nervous breakdown and runs away back to the penal colony. there she immediately finds herself beefing with ursula's daughter, who is big pissed that only four kids got to leave the penal colony and everyone else for left to rot. she decides to right this wrong by ALSO hitting the teen emperor with a love spell and gets /this/ close to successfully making him open the borders in front of everyone at prom before some bullshit circumstances happen and instead there's a fight between a giant cgi dragon and a giant cgi octopus girl. for the record the teen emperor is also not that mad about THIS love spell either and he does immediately concede that the octopus girl is a passionate community leader who raises valid concerns about his failure to follow through on his initial promise of amnesty for the children of the penal colony. he does get back with maleficent's daughter though, who has decided to be purple again to show that she now confidently lives in two cultures.
I've been talking a lot about maleficent's kid and you might be thinking "now what about the rest of her inseparable teen polycule" and I'm sorry to say that they simply are not getting as much sparkle as their colleague.
the evil queen from snow white's daughter has the next meatiest storyline, probably because these movies primarily exist to sell fashion dolls that can compete with mattel and they need kids to really like the girl characters. in the first movie she learns a very important lesson about how she doesn't need to act dumb to impress boys. in the latter two movies she becomes an independent business owner and by far the most politically savvy of the main 4, by which I mean she's the one vocally advocating for liberating the penal colony. she really grows into a very sweet and community-minded young lady and I liked her a lot.
cruella's son gets a dog in the first movie and an implausible heterosexual relationship in the second. in the third one he's just kind of there, although he does seem to have opened a sort of shelter for youths on the penal colony.
jafar's son who I haven't even mentioned yet is mostly there to be tall and do flips. in the first movie he learns that he likes sports more than stealing. in the second movie he forces the school fencing team to stop being sexist and let mulan's daughter join. crazy that sports are that sexist in a world where mulan and like presumably merida exist I guess but whatever. in the third movie he flirts with gaston's dumb-as-ham blond son for a few minutes and the two of them end up deciding to take a gap year and travel the world together which sounds fake but I swear to god is true.

























