Life’s Full of Tough Choices, innit?

The end goal is to get the Trident. That’s the most important thing to Ursula as it is her ticket out of the exile. To get the Trident she needs to get to Triton and the best way to him is through his daughter, Ariel. We have to surmise that this Trident won’t work if it is stolen and that it must be willingly given for its power to be accessed the bearer. For some reason, it appears that this mythical fork is bound by some kind of oceanic legal standard. (you can read more about that in my very first post on this blog!)

So she makes a deal with Ariel. This deal is pretty foolproof too and heavily weighted in her favor. Ariel has to get true love’s kiss from a dude she hasn’t technically met.  That means Eric has to know he is in love with her for the kiss to work…a regular smooch won’t cut it. It’s often tough to get guys to acknowledge they are in love after many years of dating let alone 3 days so Ursula should have been fine. However, she gets a little antsy and casts a spell on Eric. To me, this seems like overkill since she had Ariel’s voice already and apparently it’s the only thing Eric is in love with anyway. But this was her big moment and one can’t be too careful. So she plays a pointless charade which does help her complete her main objective, but also ends up contributing to her undoing. So I ask: why didn’t she just kill Eric instead of entrancing him? With him gone, there’s no kiss for Ariel and no one to pilot the ship into her gut. I mean, she had no problem having her cronies attempt to drown him once her plan was completed so we know she wasn’t against murder. And there couldn’t have been anything in the contract that would have legally inhibited her from it could there? Why would Ursula have put something like that in there in the first place knowing she would cheat if she needed too? But, we do have to hand it to Ursula, she was queen of the sea for the 5 minutes before she became calamari…or would it be a poor, unfortunate sushi roll?

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Image Credit — fanpop.com

Almost 7 Questions about the 7 Dwarfs.

I love these guys. Don’t you? Together they are gruff, sarcastic and silly. Three traits I find awesome. And one of them delivers my favorite Disney line of all time. Snow White asks them ‘How do you do?’ and Grumpy answers: ‘How do you do what?’ But what is really the story with these guys? Are they friends? Are they related? I think when I first watched this movie I assumed the latter was true. Yet, Dopey is like 30 years younger than the other guys. If they were brothers, that is a pretty big age discrepancy. Not unheard of but definitely difficult in a time before modern medicine. And while it is not clear why these guys have chosen to live together, it is clear why none of them is named ‘Accounty’ since they have to work tirelessly, day after day, mining expensive jewels yet can only afford a small shack in the woods.

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Image Credit: superwallpapers.com

Did Ariel Ever Take a Bath? (pre-human)

This question takes me back to my childhood. Like most boys, I was never really fond of taking baths. I remember actually going a full week without one and I didn’t even bat an eye. I also used to think the act of water coming into contact with my skin was good enough to take care of any visible or invisible dirt that I had interacted with. A bath was equal to a swim, even if that swim was in a pond or lake. Water equaled clean. I have since reformed, but with that as a backdrop, I ask the question that many people have probably asked over the years: do those that live in the sea need to take a shower or bath? And to stay on topic for this blog, did Ariel or any of her merfolk feel the need to bathe? Don’t answer to quickly as there are a few angles in which we should review this query.

In the human world, we take showers for many reasons. Obviously cleanliness helps us remove filth from the world we live in. It removes things that we willingly put on our body like make-up, hair product or sunscreen. It helps us eliminate bacteria and other sickness causing agents that attach themselves to our skin. Outside of sanitary concerns, it also helps us from a social perspective keeping our own personal musk from going to far beyond our skin borders. And of course it feels good to take a shower, right?

So I ask again, do you think that Ariel, while in the ocean, ever took a ‘bath?’  I would assume while flipping her fins, she would surely come into contact with something grimey or slimey. Maybe some small sea bacteria would attach themselves to her while she swam around the reef. But we know that a shower would not be possible due to their complete immersion in the liquid. So, did she have specific brushes to scrape off the barnacles? And soap? How would that work? I guess she could use bar soap but you would think it would be hard to get it to apply itself underwater.

And if she had no concept of this human practice, why was she not completely confused by the bath she receives when she becomes a human. Sure the bubble are interesting, but were bubbles really something new to her? Every time a mermaid moved underwater, thousands of bubbles would appear around them.  Maybe she was just remembering her till-recent former life and hearing Sebastian’s words echo, ‘we got no troubles, life is the bubbles, under the sea.’

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Image Credit —-> deviantart.com

How Bad is Aladdin’s Memory?

Remember the opening scene of Aladdin where he is chased mercilessly by the palace guards for stealing a loaf of bread? Or when he is arrested by the same guards who also brazenly disobey direct orders from the Princess? Or the time they grab the foreign dignitary & potential suitor visiting the palace and try to drown him? What about when the Sultan & the Princess are enslaved by a former adviser and they are conspicuously absent from the rescue party? I bet you remember. I bet someone else probably remembers too: Aladdin. Yet he allows each and everyone of this seedy bunch to remain the primary protectors of the kingdom. How could you trust this group? I’m sure he probably tells himself they were just ‘following orders,’ but that brings into question where their loyalty lies. If it were me, I would have seen if there was any room for a few more guests in Jafar’s lamp before the Genie chucked it into the Cave of Wonders. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s atonement.

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Image Credit: wikia.disney.com

Did the knights go AWOL?

I was watching Beauty & the Beast the other day and the scene came on when Cogsworth is taking Belle on the castle tour. You remember it? Down one of the hallways they encounter a dozen or so suits of armor. Cogsy makes a lame joke and then rudely commands these knights to return to their positions. Cut to near the end of the film, when the crazy townspeople led by Gaston march to kill the beast and who is left to defend the castle? The servants?! Where are all those knights? These guys would be nearly unstoppable and could easily route the town’s butcher, baker & candlestick maker yet they are strangely absent from the foray. I don’t blame them though. If I was a knight and a castle servant bossed me around, I would make sure he became cognizant of his error when the time was right.

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Image Credit: @Disney

A snow monster?

One of the primary messages of Frozen is the importance of love between sisters. Love is (spoiler) what breaks both the curse of endless winter and cures Anna’s frozen heart. It also makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. Almost fuzzy enough to forget the numerous times that Elsa has either directly or indirectly tried to kill her sister. The first is mere minutes into the movie when young Elsa slips and falls and ends up launching an icicle at Anna’s head. Later on, Anna won’t stop hounding Elsa to return to Arendalle and ends up receiving an ice blast in the heart for her troubles. Both of these are considered accidents and therefore semi-excusable. Elsa is simply not able to control her powers. We get it. We feel for Elsa….we understand being told to ‘conceal don’t feel’ and then removed from contact with the outside world was not the best course of action her parents could have taken. We are all Team Elsa. And then she creates the snow monster…

Elsa creates a terrifying, demonic beast not on accident or even to protect herself, but to simply hasten her sister’s departure from the ice castle. Wasn’t that a little overkill? Couldn’t she have just created some super long ice slide home or something? Did she really need to forge something so malevolent and terrible that would not only chase them out but ultimately try to kill them? As much as I would like to, I just don’t think we can chalk this up to Elsa’s fear or lack of control. We’ve all seen that she can manipulate her powers pretty well even before she figures out the whole love thing. Don’t you remember her perfectly sculpted ice stairs, ice dress and the intricately designed ice castle?

Then at the climax of the movie, when Anna sacrifices her life for her sister, it would only make sense that Elsa would apologize for the multiple murder attempts. But, no! She doesn’t even mention it! She gets off scot-free by simply removing the winter that she originally caused and then makes an ice skating rink. So then why is Hans the villain? He only tried to kill Anna once…maybe one of the things that Elsa shouldn’t have let go of was taking some responsibility for her actions.

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Image Credit: aceshowbiz.com