Girl who’s too old for DCOMs talks about Descendants Rise of Red for way too long:
- Literally no joke, I’m a firm believer that this is the best descendants movie and I wish we could’ve followed this story since the beginning
- im so so happy that they had a much bigger budget! This franchise really needs big set pieces, a lot of CGI, costumes that look expensive and a cast that can actually act, so it paid off
- ok so I’m gonna highlight a few things, let’s go
- I was really shocked they killed Carlos off (for obvious reasons, my respects to Cameron), as this franchise is for younger kids and dumbs down a lot of things. China’s delivery and her tears made me very emotional. Which is no surprise as she carried the other 2 movies she was in on her back
- Red is a very likable protagonist but some choices made for her character were boring. She’s not really looking for approval from her mom and she clearly has a good head on her shoulders so I don’t see the reason of having the “fake outs” that she will actually sentence someone to death but again, kids movie
- we only got one and a half scene of Maddox but I already love him
- Rita Ora and Brandy ate and left no crumbs. They play queens because they are queens
- after the reveal that there was a prank that turned the QOH evil, I expected that Cinderella had something to do with it (more of that later)
- I did cringe a little on how much rapping/sing-talking there was. If you want that hire Lin Manuel Miranda
- I’ll forever be bitter that Disney flipped Kenny Ortega off and stabbed him in the back, but that being said, Jennifer Phang couldn’t have done it better. She knew how to work with the script and the budget. Although some of the photography and choreography felt a bit weird
- it was certainly a choice that young Bridget looks nothing like her older self. Specially um…skin tone wise. There’s some implications I won’t get into
- im very surprised on how little we saw of the supporting characters. I thought Aladdin, Jasmine and Fay were going to be more prominent. And poor zellie (btw stupid name, just use Rapunzel)! Who got cut out of the movie completely!
- Aladdin and Jasmine were absolutely adorable!
- uliana and the other villains were fun antagonists. They were what I expected so I don’t really have notes.
- it probably has something to do with the IP but I don’t see why not have Uli just be Ursula but whatever
- I do appreciate that this installment finally made clear of what the lore is. We finally got confirmation that this universe isn’t a sequel to the movies, which was very confusing in the first 3
- this is gonna sound horrible but. Im so glad they committed to killing Cinderella. I do wish they had done that before Chloe and Red time travelled to give Chloe more motivation. In fact I’m very happy that this movie was darker than the other. Disney animated movies always had a lot of death so this feels closer to them than the other 3 ever did
- Now onto me thinking Ella was in on the prank, this will be long: the movie has third act issues and it was very anti climatic, which even led me to believe there was going to be a twist until I saw there were like 5 mins left. Anyway, when Cinderella told the QOH “it was just a prank and that was so long ago” I was convinced she had been involved, so I was looking out for it. I was reading into every expression Ella’s actress had and thought I saw that she was pretending to be Bridget’s friend to get out of her abusive home. I thought that it would’ve been revealed that when the prank was done, she’d maybe just do nothing and leave Bridget helpless because she was afraid that if she did help, she’d never be like the other princesses or something. It would’ve been so cool to see Chloe’s view of her mom shatter, as she only knew her as this benevolent queen who’s only kind and perfect.
- obviously none of that happened and the climax felt really flat. We should’ve seen the dance in the beginning of the movie, not knowing who the characters were, then we go to the present, then once the time travel happens, we don’t spend as much time before the dance and we get the dance a little before the third act and see a few of the things play out. Like Ella and charming falling in love, or even Fay giving her the dress and shoes before, and a Carrie like scene of the prank almost happening that is stopped by Red and Chloe. Then back to the present and a BIG ENDING MUSICAL NUMBER!
- All that being said, I hope we get more sequels. I think it would be cool to see this as more of an anthology thing, following different protagonists so the stories don’t feel too stuck into a few characters. Also Disney, cmon. You’re a streaming site now, let’s get some cannon queer characters please
