Hacker Cinema
Encanto
2021 · Film · 102 min
Part of Encanto Collection
Directed by Byron Howard, Jared Bush
The tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family—every child except one, Mirabel. But when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is in danger, Mirabel decides that she, the only ordinary Madrigal, might just be her exceptional family's last hope.
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60 comments on Hacker News
I only watch movies that are a series of randomly seeded intervals of tones at various pitches, random colors, with static added in. This ensures I never watch anything formulaic or predictable.
More seriously, it is interesting when a movie breaks out of a formula, especially in well established tropes, like Disney movies. Moana or Encanto come to mind as they convey stories where there either isn’t really a villain (spoilers, Te’Ka is not the villain), and especially in Encanto the conflict is more internal family issues than anything else.
But sometimes it feels good to just watch those archetypal stories. I know people hate on Marvel but the Thanos arc with the infinity stones and the snap was such a fun ride, over the course of many years. These stories are extremely formulaic but still enjoyable because on some level we are wired to enjoy these stories.
I base my multigenerational dream on the documentary “Encanto”
I had huge hopes for Mufasa and it was extremely mediocre. Below Wish and Moana 2 IMO. The bones of the plot were good, but the directing was bad. Too much crammed into too little runtime.
The music in recent Disney movies hasn’t been great, with the exception of Encanto. I just watched Mulan again and holy crap what a good movie. (Although it’s not Disney, I also watched Prince of Egypt again and that’s better than any movie Disney has made in a decade.)
I haven't seen Mufasa - is Kiros actually a "villain"? Disney has moved away from classic villains in a lot of their animated stories; I seem to remember reading that this was intentional and that they started moving this direction in their storywriting with Frozen, progressed it with Moana (whose "major antagonist" is a mute force of nature and minor antagonist is a silly hurdle to be jumped), and fully realized it with Encanto, which has no singular antagonist at all.
The jerks in these movies end up getting songs that make them out to be silly jerks - minor obstacles on the hero's journey. They don't get villain songs because they're not deserving of them, and the story isn't about defeating a villain, it's about fixing past mistakes/restoring the balance of nature/realizing one's potential/etc.
Google's AI summary of search results hallucinates. You might like it, but you may also end up seeing, and believing in, something that just doesn't exist.
For example, it says there's a sequel to a Disney film called Encanto, and there just isn't. https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3leezrzlvrk2m
I have an LG OLED C1 65" and the Vision Pro movie experience is nearly the same as the TV, except that you have to deal with all the lens glare in the Vision Pro, which is a big downside. An upside is that films like Encanto are in 3D, which looks really good for Pixar/CGI movies and pretty garbage for every other movie I've tried in the headset (for me, real films with 3D look like paper cut outs layered over each other and it's very distracting and looks lame).
But a nice 65" OLED TV is still cheaper than a Vision Pro, so I can't recommend it unless you are in a situation where you literally cannot put a big OLED TV in your space, or you're desperate to take your OLED TV with you on flights.
I also have a Quest 3 and without OLED for true HDR, it loses right away, and then it loses further on resolution. Audio quality is really good on Quest 3, but... If I really wanted to use a headset to watch a movie, I would use the Vision Pro, hands down. If I only had the Quest 3 on hand, I wouldn't watch a movie.
> If this was the intended meaning
Directors will leave these sort of against-the-grain intepretations open for film buffs. One can similarly watch Dumbo, Encanto and Coraline as involving, past an early part of the movie, a character in the process of dying.
Was Encanto the one they dumped on Disney+ real quick? It might have strongly affected popularity of the song (which is catchy as all hell, and can stand with Let It Go) since that was perhaps the peak.
None of the recent Disney animated movies have been “direct to DVD” terrible but they haven’t been exceptionally better than everything else.
It used to be that everyone basically considered Disney (and upstart Pixar) to be at the top of the class, and even extremely successful movies like Despicable Me to be a tier or two below.
A movie needs to bring in twice its budget to be profitable[1] is the common rule of thumb. The budget doesn't include things like marketing, and the fact that the box office is shared with the theatre owner.
So in your example, it potentially lost money for Disney. The wikipedia article almost says as much [2]
"Although it underperformed at the box office ..."
[1] https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitab-5747305
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto
Encanto: $150m budget vs $250m box office.
So again, "no hit movies" is easily disproven with 10s of time to look into it.
> They haven’t had hit movie for years.
If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone singing that one song from Encanto I'd be able to buy Disney.
If you take "for years" to literally mean "more than one year", sure. I think it's colloquially understood to be far longer than that. "Encanto" came out in 2021 and I'd consider that a hit. The soundtrack saw wide play, everyone I know who's seen it loves it, and they're merchandising the hell out of it.
To be fair, I saw "Wish" with my family and we all enjoyed it, but it obviously didn't come close to "Frozen 2" numbers. They're not all hits. With animated film taking years to produce, those perhaps aren't the metric to use. It'll be another few years before the next major animated film by Disney is released.
The Marvel movies release more frequently and seem to print money. "Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3" came out last year and has done $845MM¹.
¹ -- https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2977202945/
Turning Red v Wish Dragon are both kindof Asian-oriented kids movies with pretty decent messages and "mature" topics if you watch them with an adult mindset. Those both kindof felt "cash grabby" but I didn't feel like I wanted my time back after watching them.
Luca (to me) was just so dull I barely remember the plot or message.
Encanto (v Puss in Boots Last Wish) both had a lot of "Soul" (Soul, and Inside Out being other really good animated movies), and I'd happily watch any of them again.
> So your imaginary grace period for covid effects extends until when, end of 2022 it seems like?
Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were not released in theaters in North America except for one week at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood for Luca and and one day there for Turning Red. They only got international theatrical runs, and then only in countries that did not have Disney+.
Maybe Disney lied when they said they cited COVID as the reason for cancelling the domestic and most of the international theatrical releases of those movies, but the fact remains that those releases were cancelled.
Soul only was in theaters in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia/CIS, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
Luca only was in theaters in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Türkiye, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates.
Turning Red only was in theaters in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
Compare to the last Pixar movie whose theater run occurred entirely before COVID. That was Toy Story 4, and here are the countries it was in that Turning Red was not in: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
In the countries that both Toy Story 4 and Turning Red had theatrical releases in Toy Story 4 made $26 million and Turning Red made $11 million. If we assume the performance would have been similar had Turning Red been released in those other countries that comes out to about $420 million, which is indeed easily twice its budget just as I had speculated. Probably higher, but to get a more refined estimate I'd need to look at the countries it was in and see how their theater performance in general was compared to pre and post COVID.
For Luca it had $39 million in the countries it had in common with Toy Story 4. Toy Story 4 had $70 million in those countries. Assuming the same ratio if Luca had been in the other countries Toy Story 4 was in, that gives Luca a projected $560 million.
> Maybe people didn't want to take their kids to watch a movie about panda periods?
It was the second most streamed movie in 2022 (Encanto was #1), which suggests of the theories that (1) people didn't watch it in theaters because they didn't want to watch it, or (2) people didn't watch it in theaters because it was not in theaters, the latter is much more likely. (BTW, Luca was the most streamed movie in 2021).
> It's crazy no one in this thread has suggested a possible drop in quality in the creativity at Disney
That's a defensible argument in general (and since you comment a few have made that general argument), but not as an explanation for why movies that weren't in theaters didn't make a lot of money in theaters.
That’s funny. I thought Luca was the best, Encanto was mediocre, and Turning Red one of the worst kid’s movies I’ve ever seen.
I thought Elemental and Turning Red were very well done story wise (Romeo/Juliet, teen angst), they are worth multiple watches on Disney+. Encanto (Disney, but not Pixar) was brilliant, it is too bad it didn't get the theater release it deserved because of COVID.
I get not being in the audience for a film. I felt like that about all the Star Wars prequels, and I spent my pre-10s on the original trilogy. I couldn't tell you what is wrong about sequels, even if they were done well I probably wouldn't be in the audience for them anymore.
I don’t know if that’s Disney’s problem, overall—Turning Red, Elemental, Encanto, and Raya and the last Dragon are all recent Disney movies with female leads who had interesting character arcs. Not all had love interests, but most the main character was too young. Raya could have, but she lives in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and anyway I don’t think the movie had room for another subplot.
I feel like some of the examples you list are a poor choice to illustrate your point.
Both Harry Potter (books so more than films, but in the films too) and Aang have plenty of flaws, and there's arcs and events that help them grow/develop.
It's been a while, but Katniss does have plenty of flaws and growth (and even some things she never overcomes about her self). Although, it's been a few years since I've read Hunger Games, I feel like she doesn't belong in the same category as Bella (which feels like a placeholder character intentionally). Tris from Divergent might be a good example though, but even there there's some growth.
Regarding some of the super heroes: they're all kinda "super" and very mary-sue-ish, I agree. But they still face challenges and difficulties they need to overcome, or the stories they're part of (rather than the character themselves) are otherwise interesting.
Most of the modern "strong female leads" are just boring (and this comes from a gay boy who LOVES strong women, my favourite characters are women: Sydney Bristol, almost every one from ATLA & Korra, Willow & Buffy, Halliwell sisters, Xena, Lara Croft, Jade from BG&E, women from Harry Potter, Aya from Parasite Eve games, an uncountable plethora of amazing female characters in Anime and manga, and I could go on and on and on, it's not like it can't be done, or hasn't been done, it has been done MANY times). The only challenge these modern Disney SFLs face is not believing in themselves (and as someone who struggles on and off with self esteem issues, I realise how difficult those can be, but also it's not "enough" to base a whole character around just that), usually with a sprinkle of "blame the patriarchy" in there too.
All this misandry and trying to portray any masculinity as toxic is just lame. It's very similar to Disney's queer coding of villains. I remember in my teens, while being a sexually confused and closed queer how sensitive I was to that bullshit and how awful and ashamed it made me feel. It's ludicrous how it's being done again, just the aggressor and targeted demographics are different now. I can't tell if that's just Disney's Modus Operandi, or of this is some type of bitter revenge writing. It sucked then and it sucks now, and it will continue to suck. We need to do better.
People mentioned elsewhere in threads that people complain about too many POCs. I've not seen much of this (maybe a few low quality posts online, but that's just racist drivel of a few small minced idiots, and rarely anyone cares about it). What people dislike is their liked characters' identities getting twisted to fit "modern audiences" (often it's MORE than just race). And the irony is, not even this mythological modern audience likes it because it usually ends up being a shallow self insert, so then down the line the audience gets blamed and called names). There's plenty of original PoC characters that are loved (of Disney: Mulan, Pocahontas, Aladdin/Jasmine, Moana, Lilo, Encanto cast). The whole "well why does it matter" argument is also a bit of a bad faith bait. If it didn't matter, why so bullishly insist on changing it?
Staggered how? They have averaged a movie a year for the last 40 years. The Disney live action movies have almost nothing to do with the release schedule of Disney Animation movies, nor have they impacted how many get made. They are completely different studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films
Their 3D movies in order are Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, Tangled, (Pooh), Wreck it Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, Raya, Encanto, Strange Worlds. That’s 15 movies in 17 years, and Princess and the Frog makes 16.
Bolt, Tangled, Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana was an excellent run. (Disney acquired Pixar during production of Meet the Robinsons, and about 60% of the movie was remade, every movie since was produced by Pixar descendants.)
And Tangled is better than Frozen, even if it didn’t have the zeitgeist. (Tangled is the highest rated of any movie I listed on Letterboxd, followed by Big Hero 6, Moana, and Zootopia, so I’m not unique in that opinion. Not sure what the Letterboxd community has against Bolt.) Outside of Chicken Little, there’s really not a bad movie on that list (I haven’t seen Strange World yet.)
If anything, acquiring Pixar doubled their animation output.
Encanto was unsubtle messaging condemning achievement and distinction, Moana wasn’t bad but also a transparent vehicle for progressive gender norms. They embody the parts that drags modern movies down.
Huh?
Disney Animation Studios (not Pixar) has made three movies in the last ten years that are among the highest grossing movies of all time (Frozen, Zootopia, and Frozen II).
In terms of quality, anecdotally two of my personal favorite Disney movies ever were done by them within that timespan as well (Moana and Encanto).
My impression has been that the gap between Disney Animation Studios and Pixar has drastically narrowed.
The message in Turning Red can be trivially read as a thirteen year old girl learning to prostitute herself against the wishes of her stifling and controlling mother, even if this wasn't the intent of the filmmakers. Concerned parents will probably also find it strange that a Pixar movie made for small children casually throws around words like 'degenerate' and 'stoner' and talks explicitly about pads for minutes on end.
I am not sure I would take popularity on the streaming service as a sign of financial success, given something like Encanto was big in both the box offices and after the fact streaming, but who knows what the balance sheet really looks like with these big companies these days.
> Coco and Inside Out did around $800m each, but Luca did very poorly, taking under $50m.
Coco had a domestic theatrical release and was in theaters in over 50 other countries.
Luca did not get a domestic theatrical release (except for one week in one theater). Internationally it was in theaters in 20 countries. Similar for Turning Red except it was only in theaters in 17 countries.
Luca and to a lesser extent Turning Red did reasonably well in those countries where they were actually in theaters considering that it was during a pandemic when attendance was down. If they had been released in theaters in a non-pandemic year and in all the countries Coco was in they would have probably been at least $500m movies.
Luca was the most streamed movie of 2021 (10.6x10^9 minutes of streaming) (and it was #9 in 2022 with another 5x10^9 minutes) , and Turning Red was the second most streamed movie of 2022 (11.4x10^9 minutes) (#1 was Encanto at 27.4x10^9 minutes).
BTW, Encanto did get a domestic theater release and an international theater release in almost as many countries as Coco and yet only pulled in $256m worldwide. I think that's a pretty good illustration of how much the pandemic affected box office.
I'm a huge fan of the Disney movies that came out when I was growing up (Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are my favorites). My kids like those movies a lot too.
But I think some wonderful movies have been made in the last ten years, most notably Encanto and Turning Red. They're both massive successes, and I think they are in many ways better than those movies I grew up with.
Not to mention Frozen, Moana, Inside Out, etc. These are all wonderful movies.
(Ratatouille is also great, btw, don't get me wrong!)
Yes I will say my daughter absolutely loves Encanto (and also Moana). Also the Good Dinosaur (but we had to cut back on that because she started growling like the feral child in the movie and that seemed like a bad development!). The music in Encanto is good.
>>the strong roles are all played by women
That's propaganda now?
Damn, make sure no one stumbles into a propaganda production like Kill Bill, or such an obviously wake drivel like the original Alien.
>>while men either bumble or act maliciously throughout the movie
Felix is the embodiment of a strong masculine character - looking after his wife and child at every step, with all the typical traits you'd associate with men. And Mirabel's father(Augustin) is literally the only character willing to stand up to the grandmother and her abbhorent treatment of Mirabel. I don't know which version of encanto you've watched, but I don't recall a single male character acting maliciously throughout this entire film - it doesn't happen.
Funny, I don't feel this way at all - Encanto is probably one of my favourite recent disney films, I must have seen it 100 times now(partially because of my kid watching it all the time, but that's the funny thing - despite pretty much knowing every single line by heart now, I still like it. The story is good and the songs are great).
Turning Red is equally great - as someone who has also grown up in the 90s the film just gets so much right, it's a delight to watch. The story turns into absolute nonsense by the end but meh, the joy of watching teenagers figure out how to get money for a concert they want to go to is worth it.
I'm sure Disney was disappointed in Lightyear's performance given its marketing push and brand appeal, but I don't think you're listing the movies that are central to Disney's strategy anymore. Ever since COVID, Disney has pretty much banished Pixar to Disney+, not as "premium" releases that cost extra, but just included day one on the service. If they had theater runs, they were limited or international-only. That includes such films as Soul, Luca and Turning Red, whereas Encanto from their other animation company (Walt Disney Animation Studios) got a wide and successful theatrical run. Turning Red's box office returns are irrelevant because of this. However, due in part to people going back to theaters and (largely) to the film's brand recognition, Lightyear became the first Pixar film since 2019 to be given a real theatrical release. And the main reason it bombed was, I believe, because everyone and most importantly families had gotten used to being able to watch those movies on Disney+ for a lot cheaper. Even if that one waited two months to come to the service.
As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.
Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-adverse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.
So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.
Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".
Encanto's full of dodgy propaganda, it's just disguised. Look at the tropes and you'll see that the strong roles are all played by women, while men either bumble or act maliciously throughout the movie. It's woke in a subtle way, but woke nonetheless.
The parent was complaining about modern Disney films containing (I'm assuming "woke") propaganda.
Encanto was just a really relatable story about a family.
I would argue “ability to stream a 1+ year old movie repeatedly, on demand” is part of what makes keeping your subscription worthwhile.
I think Disney intentionally took a lot of family-oriented films and kept them out of theatres during covid (reminder Encanto released in 2021) to avoid the optics of creating super spreader events where children are at the forefront. In their conference call they mention going back to theatrical releases.
FWIW, Encanto (Disney Animation, 2021) and Turning Red (Pixar, 2022) were the most streamed movies on any platform for all of 2022 according to Nielsen. Moana (Disney Animation, 2016) was #4.
It's debatable whether these films feel like "sequel direct to DVD" or not, but I don't think it's debatable that audiences are watching them.
https://www.adweek.com/lostremote/nielsen-top-15-stranger-things-most-streamed-program-2022/71019/
Yup. Even if you only look within a relatively small category of films one per year can miss a bunch. For example, consider the category of animated feature length films released after 2000 in the US, and pick one per year by picking the winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
In 2001 you'd miss Monsters, Inc. because of Shrek.
In 2002 you'd miss Lilo & Stitch because of Spirited Away.
In 2004 you'd miss Shrek 2 because of The Incredibles.
In 2005 you'd miss Howl's Moving Castle and Corpse Bride because of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
In 2008, no Kung Fu Panda because of WALL-E.
In 2009, no Coraline or Fantastic Mr. Fox because of Up.
In 2010 you'd miss How to Train Your Dragon because of Toy Story 3.
In 2011 no Kung Fu Panda 2 because of Rango.
In 2012 no Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, or Wreck-it Ralph because of Brave.
In 2014 no How to Train Your Dragon 2 because of Big Hero 6.
2015 no Shaun the Sheep Movie because of Inside Out.
2016 you miss Kubo and the Two Strings and Moana because of Zootopia.
2019 No How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World because of Toy Story 4.
2021 you'd miss Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca because of Encanto.
Most of the winners are good...but if you just put all the above mentioned films in a pool and asked most people to pick their top 14, most would have a lot of films on their list that were not among the winners of the aforementioned years.
Honestly, I think it has more to do with the gutting of Pixar and Disney studios after Lassiter was forced out. I believe I heard that that Encanto was the last Lassiter idea that he pitched to Lin Miranda before he left. I think that probably helps explain why it seems cohesive. Versus almost all of the more recent Disney and Pixar stuff feels like poor copies or overly targeted identity flicks. Disney studios is kind of a mess, almost all of the innovation is now happening outside of Disney. Lego movie, spider verse, etc.
I recently did a month of Disney+ when they sent me promo for first month for $2.99.
During that month I watched the Pixar movies Soul, Luca, and Turning Red (and rewatched Onward). I also watched the Disney movies Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto. And Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. Oh, and also the latest Dr. Strange and Thor Marvel movies, plus the Loki series.
Are you seriously claiming that all that was garbage?
Or they simply watched everything they were interested in watching on the first service so there was no point in keeping the subscription active. It's not like it takes any effort to cancel. They will come back to it later (it's easy at most to reactivate a dormant subscription) when it has accumulated enough new stuff.
That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).
For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.
Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.
Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.
I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.
I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.
Encanto is a very bad movie. The plot is weak, it is weirdly monarchist, the third act is a complete mess.
Like many people you fell in love with some aspects of the presentation and music, but the film doesn't hold up and that's why it's going to be a sad, forgotten entry in Disney history.
If you rewatch Encanto and think about royalty, think about Ferdinand Marcos, think about how poor everybody else in this town is and how they jumped to rebuild the house of the richest, most privileged people, you may find you like the movie less.
If you look again at Bruno's strange arc and how weak his predictions are, how little justification there is for exiling him, you might see that every plot development happens because it's time for a plot development now.
Encanto was written backwards, reverse-engineered from successful stories. It is not art. It is garbage imitating art with a thick layer of lyrical frosting on top.
Coco will live forever because it's well-written and means something. Encanto is a direct-to-DVD level production.
> They're still making good ones: Frozen, Moana, Encanto. Just watch those and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Probably the most objective way to view this is to actually look at the list of films from any given decade and see how many flops they had [1]. There's a bias at play here: the only movies we remember Disney making a decade+ ago are the hits. We don't often remember the misses.
Apparently Disney's "Renaissance" ended with Tarzan in 1999; but here are a list of movies that have come out since the end of this golden era:
- Monsters, Inc.
- Lilo and Stitch
- Treasure Planet (a personal favorite)
- Finding Nemo
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- The Incredibles
- Ratatouille
- WALL-E
- Up
- Tangled
- Brave
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Frozen
- Inside Out
- Encanto
I'm sure there's many great ones that you might love that I'm missing. But I'd say this lineup is potentially better than the list of movies spanning The Little Mermaid to Tarzan. To the author's credit, I will say there's part of me that's nostalgic for the traditional style of 2d character animation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Pictures_films
Sure, but would Encanto have surpassed more of the remakes? I’m not sure. No recognizable IP, no big explosions, trailers didn’t exactly lend themselves to an event movie. Not exactly characters for the theme parks either.
As a millennial who grew up watching the great Disney movies of the 90s, I just pretend the remakes don't exist.
Disney (classic Disney-Princess-Disney, excluding Pixar, Marvel, and all the "properties" they've acquired over the years) has made a great movie once every 3-8 years for the past few decades. In between, they've always made utter garbage to squeeze every dollar out of the great ones. Almost every Disney sequel has been a turd. Doesn't anyone remember how disappointing it was? This is just more of the same.
They're still making good ones: Frozen, Moana, Encanto. Just watch those and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Neither Turning Red nor Encanto are Pixar movies? They're from Walt Disney Animation Studios, rendered with Hyperion (just like Frozen, Tangled, Moana or Zootopia).
i'm feeling that mass production of the last year is making this lees than was before. for example i feel the best looking pixar movie is toystory 4(graphic wise, and coco graphic+art direction), current movies like red, or souls, feel cheaper being a lot less "magic feeling", and look like inside out graphics a movie from 2015(7 years), movies like encanto feel more polished and movies like the spiderverse from 2018 feels more creative and risky.
Matt Damon talks and laments about this. What killed the mid-budget movie was the collapse of DVD sales. Without DVD sales, there is no extended "second bite" that allows word of mouth to build up. So, instead, your marketing is $30-$50 million and you need to make that back.
Getting a second bite is also responsible for the recycled pablum with China pandering--if you say something that the Chinese government deems unacceptable you lose your shot at that market.
As for "episodic", I suspect that's less a "deep dive" and more ADHD background watching on a phone. "Encanto" was an absolute poster child for this--"HEY! LOOK UP NOW! HEEEEEEEEY!" "Okay, volume back down. You can go back to your text messaging for a while." "HEY! LOOK UP AGAIN! TIME TO PAY ATTENTION! HEEEEEEY!" ad nauseam.
Aside from what my sibling comment said about a fantasy world, why'd you pick Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist and The Dragon Prince? Surely shows like Abbott Elementary and Euphoria would be more culturally relevant? Or recent animated movies Encanto and Turning Red?
And even as far as the Dragon Prince is concerned, it's interesting how you mention it as overrepresentation when much of the diversity is relegated to secondary characters. Callum, Rayla, Claudia, Soren and Viren are all white (elves are in some ways minority coded, but the British accent makes that remain firmly in the realm of coding), and seem to be straight and cisgender.
I personally love stories with "overrepresentation" - and not only just to make up for a massive history of erasure and underrepresentation. It makes me so happy to hear people saying "I usually don't feel seen, but THIS character, they look/sound/act like me!" Honestly, as a gay man I still don't feel especially seen - and as far as gay characters I feel connected to beyond just that, it's pretty limited. I can think of maybe... 4 main characters? And they're all in the past few years.
PS: This may sound weird, but I've heard a lot of folk in western, urban (isolationist) environments explain how the recent Disney/Pixar movie 'Encanto' has moved them deeply because of it's depiction of strong community. If you have not seen it, check it out and see if the lifestyle depicted there in the background to the story calls to you, it might be a good test to see if this is what you're craving or if it's something else.
> Frozen has a villain -- Hans.
Elsa is treated more like the primary antagonist (Anna is the protagonist.) Elsa is redeemed rather than defeated, but that's more a matter of ending than overall structural role.
> Really only Encanto doesn't.
Sure it does (at least, it has an antagonist responsible for the crisis that the story addresses and resolves.) Their identity is even announced at the climax of the film, just in case the viewer hasn't recognized it. (Like Frozen, and Moana—whether, in the latter case, you consider Te Kā or Maui the ultimate antagonist—the antagonist is redeemed and reconciled with the protagonist and the broader community rather than defeated.)
I don't mind a lack of character growth. I am extremely over the cliche Hollywood screenplay formula of:
1. Protagonist has problem and character flaw.
2. Tries to solve problem without fixing character flaw.
3. Solution blows up.
4. With help from friend, protagonist realizes flaw and fixes it.
5. Now able to solve problem.
But with Encanto, I really disliked how the plot undermined its own theme. The movie sets up an important moral statement that Mirabel doesn't need to be magically special to be valuable and valued. She can have worth because of who she is as a person. Then it throws that out at the climax by giving her some magic anyway because fuck it.
I think we all need to have a talk about what a "heavy" plot is. You don't NEED a villain for a plot to be heavy - I would argue that Encanto's focus on internal, emotional stakes is far heavier (and darker!) than most movies with clear-cut heroes and villains. It also resonates with people in a much more personal way - the vast majority of people can't identify with Aladdin's battle against Jafar (As fun as it is), but I know several people who were on the verge of tears watching Encanto because they could identify with Mirabel's struggle with her place in her family.
> I found the elder sister being physically strong and an impressive leader and yet still a woman and also have vulnerability to be pretty new. Her arc didn’t involve
Well, I thought Encanto had good music and animation at the same time that the writing and plotting was a train wreck, and this is one of the best examples why.
Luisa sings a song about how she's stressed by all the responsibilities she has. Except that she doesn't have any responsibilities - they are not depicted before or after her song. She's not a leader and no one follows her. She doesn't run anything in the family or in the village. All she ever does is lift things and put them down at the direction of someone else. Her song makes no sense and her character has no arc.
The movie takes this same approach to the much more plot-central relationship between Mirabel and Isabela - we're told that they hate each other, and then they have to make up, so there's a song that accomplishes that by hand-waving. This level of writing makes the song worse so that the movie can also be worse.
They're called "family" movies and not "children's" movies for a reason. Kids are usually watching these with their parents, and when they're done well, every age group gets something out of them.
Frozen, Up, and many others accomplish it well. I personally found Encanto completely boring.
i read an article about a month ago about how disney animation has steadily migrated away from a villain, to the self (or some other internal conflict) as the primary antagonist.
frozen moana frozen 2 encanto
during that time there were also traditional "villain" types: big hero 6 zootopia ralph breaks the internet raya and the last drago
agree or disagree, it's an interesting read: https://screenrant.com/encanto-movie-villain-disney-pixar-copy-good/
I kind of disagree. I found the elder sister being physically strong and an impressive leader and yet still a woman and also have vulnerability to be pretty new. Her arc didn’t involve her marrying a man or finding absolution in becoming less independent as is common when a strong independent woman has a character arc. The lack of any big bad and instead implications of danger because of complex family expectations and dynamics are also new. When I was young there was always some big evil person (scar in lion king, Ursula in little mermaid). Even more recent but older movies like Tangled had bad/evil people with no nuance. Now a days childrens movies are much more nuanced in good and evil and I really liked the diversity of characters in Encanto and the diversity of how these characters get validation.
Catching up with a couple of friends recently, it came up that our daughters, all of similar ages, are crazy about watching Encanto and even more keen on the songs. It's perfectly reasonable to have normal movie-criticism opinions about the film, but for the target audience, it's a smash. Another 'Frozen'.
That's my problem with Encanto: technically it's very impressive. All the rest: standard Disney movie with forgettable songs, forgettable characters, forgettable story that rushes from plot point to plot point with no time to breathe.
And given all the magic in it it's so highly unimaginative with it.
Isabella's lament was the best part of the movie (filled with emotion, meaning and imagination), but it's literally just a "meaningless stepping stone to discover Bruno" within the movie.
Slight aside, but Encanto is a brilliant film, we watched it together as a family first but my 7yo daughter has watched a few more times since. We have had to listen to the sound track each way on the school run for the last couple of weeks, which to be honest is no bad thing as its so good.
The "Welcome to the Family Madrigal" sequence at the begging of the film is absolutely jaw dropping, if you don't watch the whole film at least watch that sequence to see what is now possible. The fabric simulation for her dress while dancing is so incredible.
I believe it's reference to new Disney movie Encanto - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvWRMAU6V-c
Encanto is really good. The music is wonderfully done, my son doesn’t get tired of me looping it for him on our music streaming service.
I’m sure we are going to like red panda also. My son is 5 and hasn’t been to a movie theater yet.
He also says it was during "a movie night for kids," and the author thinks people should be paying for normal movie theater stuff, like popcorn:
>You want to see Spider Man? You desperately want to bring your kids to Encanto or Sing 2? And you want your popcorn, food, and drinks? Cool. But if you don’t tip...
If someone is taking their kids to a movie night, I wouldn't expect them to tip for tickets, popcorn and soda. And if there's a theater where the workers get upset that you don't tip them for those, I'd expect people to avoid it and go to a normal theater.
One public example would be TMDb (The metadata source that also OPs project is using): https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/568124-encanto/watch
> When was the last time you saw actually original[...], creative, non-"mainstream" movies at your city's cinema?
Encanto (11/24)
King Richard (11/19)
Last Night in Soho (10/29)
The French Dispatch (10/22)