Lowkey rant time but the writers were so transparent about their need to straight-fy and flatten Carlos in Descendants3 that we literally went from this
to him having ZERO line exchanges with ANY of the other guys. No, but for real, zero. You can count them if you want. His character in general was really downplayed in favor of some sporadic development of few other dynamics (but not even that much, it was just a half-hearted attempt to make up for all the time they wasted on random things/dialogues instead of fleshing out ALL the characters). And let me be clear, we are talking about a Disney movie targeted to kids, I’m not expecting a five hours thriller dishing random hot takes on existence through cryptic storytelling but like, coherence to past characterization? That’s literally the bare minimum.
But they watered down his entire personality and he barely even interacts with the rest of the VKs. They barely got him to TOUCH anyone who wasn’t Jane, he pulls out the splinter or whatever from Ben’s hand, he and Jay brush shoulders a couple of times because Cameron and Booboo were just that powerful, he maybe puts a hand of Gil’s chest for a moment while the camera is spinning and that’s it. The only time he speaks directly to Harry is to tell him to lay off his girlfriend, he turns his attention to Gil for 0.003 seconds, tells him to adopt a dog and that’s it. He doesn’t hold any conversations? With anyone? We are talking about the same boy who DEMANDED HIS FAMILY all sat down to speak about their feelings so that they could help each other in a time of need. That trait was completely erased from the narrative.
They presented him as a smart, traumatized but not weak or defenseless, tactile boy and we ended up with something else entirely. Cameron’s performance spared us a lot disappointment I think, because he was truly capable of just be Carlos so effortlessly, otherwise the contrast would have been that much jarring. Of course I didn’t expect they would go and make it clear and explicit he wasn’t coded to be straight but I sure wasn’t ready for the complete annihilation of all his personality traits, a terrible waste that just makes me sad.
