Nov 28
Tangled, the new Disney Rapunzel movie, is pretty much the last place I expected to see a “Blade Runner” reference. But even beyond the spectacular animation and charming characters, there’s the occasional wink to geekdom in Disney’s new princess feature.
My theory: Pixar now basically runs Disney. And Pixar is a bunch of super-smart geeks. The easter eggs in Tangled aren’t the heavy-handed brickbats you see in second-rate animated movies. They’re more on the level of the shout-outs to “Firefly” in the TV show “Castle” – funny if you see ’em, not bothersome if you don’t.
Or, I could be crazy. Tell me if I’m crazy.
Beware, very minor spoilers ahead – but wait a minute – are spoiler warnings even relevant for a Disney princess movie? Really now, people.
- One character is introduced as a collector of tiny porcelain unicorns. Later, at a moment of crisis, another character sees a porcelain unicorn, which signals that the unicorn-collector is watching him. You just can’t do that in film today without it being a nod to how Gaff is watching Deckard in Blade Runner, leaving behind an origami unicorn as a sign of his presence (as well as potentially 73 other things, because that movie is deep). Right? Right?
- You could argue that “Chuck”‘s Zachary Levi is a bit of a geek icon. But Nathan Fillion is a much bigger geek icon. And the main character Levi so ably voices, Flynn Rider, is totally patterned after Nathan Fillion. I mean, come on – “the smolder?” Fillion gave his blessing to the film with a wink on his Twitter feed.
- Okay. So you have a quasi-Nathan Fillion. And you have a talking, somewhat superpowered horse. Do you see where I’m going here? At one point Flynn Rider says to the horse, “You … are a bad horse!” And everyone who saw Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog said, “The thoroughbred of sin!”
Okay, am I crazy? Because, let me tell you this: my daughter is almost five. She sang herself to sleep with a song from the movie tonight. I’m probably going to be watching Disney’s Tangled many, many more times.
Post a Comment