Well… that was definitely a thing that I watched.
Okay, joking aside, was ‘Descendants: The Rise of Red’ the worst thing I’ve ever watched? Not even close. The core premise of the story actually had the potential to be—dare I say it—great—but similar to some other scenes in the Descendants franchise, it’s planning and writing didn’t always live up to it’s potential.
As a core premise we have two girls in the present: one a well-loved, well-looked after and very kind Princess and one a highly-traumatised, emotionally abused Princess who wants to break free from her over-bearing, often cruel parent. We go back in time to find our other two main cast members, the girls’ mothers, who each fit the personality of the opposing woman’s child. As a core premise that is extremely interesting and could lead to a fascinating look into how people are people, what shapes us etc. In fact, my favourite parts of this film lean in to these ideas—when Chloe (Cinderella’s daughter) learns that her Mother was mistreated and looked down on royalty/nobility because of it and when Chloe later goes to the younger version of her mother for advice, leading to her finding out that good and evil isn’t always so good and evil/black and white (though the rest of the film, other than Red, would probably argue against that as even in the past the kids are broken into ‘good people’ and ‘villains’).
Red’s story, with an emotionally abusive mother who murders people (yeah, they gloss over that a bit too much but hey-hum, I guess it is a DCOM), also had the potential to be really interesting. The initial scene, with a great song, really helped to set her up as a character as well as setting up her relationship with her mother. She’s isolated, emotionally abused (did I mention that already? It happens a lot in the film) and desperately wants to be her own person whilst, I think, not really even knowing who that person really is. When asked to do horrible things by her mother she avoids it or struggles to make those decisions, and when she does make a decision it ultimately leads to the death of our other main character’s mother (again, something Chloe got over pretty fast. I think it would take me a bit longer to help Red after she sentenced my mother to death and then, essentially, time-kidnapped me).
The death/execution of Cinderella, though mainly implied, is a dark twist for a DCOM and I wished they’d leant into it a bit more and allow our leads to really emote how this felt to them (although Charming’s screaming ‘No’ whilst the Queen of Hearts laughed was so cheesily done I couldn’t help but laugh, so maybe not the emotion they were after. I do think kids would probably have felt sad by this though. I know I would have as a child).
There was a bit of awkward acting at the beginning, especially with our two leads, but given they’re children and they were just starting out I’ll give them a break on that one. They did get a lot better as the film moved along and the character’s really started to distinguish themselves.
The songs too had ups and downs, with only really three songs that stood out to me for the right reasons. Red’s original song about being a rebel in Wonderland, though going on just a smidge too long, really set up her character and story arc well; as mentioned above the song between Chloe and past-Ella about good and evil not being so black and white is a great message for people of any age whilst also being a great emotional scene for Chloe to bond with the ‘real’ version of her mother; and the ‘main’ song sung by Bridget about being good and kind contrasts nicely with Red’s original song and with Bridget/Queen of Hearts character as an adult.
The earlier song with Chloe and Red singing together was highly unnecessary, however, and really hurt the pacing. We went from these really quick, dynamic scenes with dramatic things happening, to landing in the past to fix it and then suddenly we have a long, drawn-out song where we fight for a watch that neither of us really know how to use and don’t even really fight that hard for anyway (Chloe, at one point, got the watch, ran half a metre and then tried to casually stroll away as if waiting for her cue). I also wasn’t a big fan of most of the rapping in this film. A lot of it didn’t flow very well and came out quite clunky and cringy, though again perhaps it would be easier for kids to follow? I really don’t know. It just felt… Well, like bad slam poetry a lot of the time. There were a couple of times it worked, however, and didn’t happen often enough for it to bother me too much when it didn’t.
Now, I could name a million problems if I thought hard enough but, for now, let’s focus on the main one I’m left lingering with: they didn’t plan this plotline through. The whole story hinges on the fact that Bridget/Queen of Hearts/Red’s Mom was pranked as a teenager which changed her from an optimistic, kind-hearted girl like an even more twee version of Chloe into a heartless murderer who abuses her own child. They set this prank up to be something that made Bridget feel like a monster, get treated like a monster, and yet is reduced to not very much by her childhood best friend, Ella. We knew the date: the first school dance she attended, 2 days-ish away when our main characters arrive back in the past. We knew what was supposed to happen (sort of ): a prank. All Chloe and Red had to do was find and stop the person planning to do it.
The way this is written is almost like a mystery puzzle for the audience to solve. We’re introduced to a cast of characters, both heroes and villains, all of which could be potential suspects if they led it in that direction. Very quickly, however, Chloe and Red settle on the lead VK—Ursula’s sister ‘Uri’. But even though they settle on her so fast (she does have a vendetta against Bridget for being too nice and keeping wanting to be friends) I still got the sense that, no, she has to be a red herring, it’s far more likely to be someone we don’t suspect—like one of the heroes, or even Ella herself for the ultimate betrayal.
Still the plot kept going and Chloe and Red kept being fixated on Uri and the VK’s. We find out they were going to steal a book from Headmaster Merlin (and hello Higgins from Ted Lasso, what are you doing here and how much did they pay you to do this? You were my favourite though so I’m not complaining). We find out the book is enchanted so when the ‘wrong person/bad person’ touches it they’re eternally frozen in place. We see this happen to Uri and her friends whilst Red is given a boost of confidence when the book allows her to open it, revealing to herself that she wasn’t evil like her mother, she was just traumatised to think that way. Yay. (Jokes aside, I still really wish they’d let themselves explore this fully as it truly was an interesting concept). Merlin sends the VK’s into ‘eternal?’ detention for trying to steal the book and Red and Chloe take the book back to their room they slept in the night before. They announce that they’ve solved the problem. The entire time I’m thinking—ooo, so how are they going to realise that they haven’t solved it? How long until they realise that if the book was always going to freeze the VK’s, they couldn’t have been the one who pulled the prank and someone else must have done it?—this is getting really good.
What? What do you mean we’re going back to the present? Oh, so we’re going to go look in Bridget’s Looking-Glass again to prove that history hasn’t changed and we haven’t fixed anything? No? We’re still going back to the present? Well, I suppose that’s a darker way to take it, to show these girls the world with Queen of Hearts having taken over and Chloe’s Mom and potentially a lot of others having been killed leading to them going back again. Oh, no. The Queen of Hearts is just good again. Everything’s alright. That’s the end. So we’re not resolving anything we’ve set up? We’re not even getting to see the final dance where Ella spent too much time with Charming and didn’t notice/wasn’t there for Bridget when whoever actually pulled this prank pulled this prank? Then… what was the point? Why did any of this film even happen? What wasted potential.
I felt so disappointed by the end. Even with Uma’s promise of the story not fully being resolved and a sequel to come, all I felt was disappointed. No story that could follow the rushed end we were given could explain away all the plot points that had been set up and magically dropped. No amount of cheerful song could explain the rapid heel-turn the Queen of Hearts/Bridget had with one simple change that shouldn’t have theoretically been changed (if Red still exists then Bridget still has a child with the same man and if Chloe still exists then Ella and Charming still left Bridget alone at the party after agreeing to be there for her, regardless of whether a prank was pulled).
Now, I’m not saying any of the Descendants films are perfect. Most DCOM’s in general aren’t. But I will say that at least Descendants 1 and 2 had clear plot structure from start to finish. They were planned out, plotted. Sure, maybe their pacing wasn’t great sometimes and some of their scenes were nonsensical, but hey they at least had the basics: a beginning, middle and end that made sense and were cohesive. Descendants 3 is a whole other story as I think it still stands alone, even ignoring the film I’m talking about in this blog post, as one of the worst bouts of writing I’ve ever seen (Queen of Mean, however, is a bop and I will stand by that).
I can’t say ‘The Rise of Red’ was horrible. To say that would be a disservice to all the good things it does have, including it’s basic core premise. What I will say is that ‘The Rise of Red’ was a story with a lot of potential that was let down by some poor writing choices and one of the most rushed endings I’ve seen in a long time. And for those that may say, ‘oh, it’s just a film for children. It’s good enough’—children deserve good films too. They deserve to be treated with respect and they deserve the best stories that we can give them. Why would we expect less for them than we expect for ourselves?
And just imagine, if they’d gone with one of the heroes/good kids having done the prank it would: a. lead to Bridget not trusting anyone so she becomes isolated, b. Bridget could have learned how to be bad by the VK’s as they would relate to the person she would become, C. it would give some depth to Ella’s lesson about people not being black and white/good and evil, as somebody that they perceived as good (even Ella herself) would turn out to have made a mistake/done a bad deed that led to a great evil, D. It would have made a more cohesive storyline that then led to the dance that they’d been talking about the entire film were we found out who was behind the prank and why. This makes the messages less confused and be a more compelling watch with a satisfying ending. Even Teen Beach Movie, which has a very similar time-travel and fixing things plot, managed to get this mostly right.
Still, Merlin’s cloak was great and I loved the dedication to Cameron Boyce at the beginning—though I do question Mal and Ben’s decision to make Uma the school Principal—seriously, have they made any good decisions as King and Queen? This is why teenagers should never be made rulers prematurely—You hear me Beast and Belle? You couldn’t have lasted ten more or twenty more years before you upped and retired early? Really?
Anyway, thank you for reading my ranting and if you enjoyed ‘Descendants: The Rise of Red’, great. I’m glad you found something that brings you joy. I thought it had some really great things in it too. Have a great day.
Signed,
The Literary Onion
P.S. I’m sorry if there’s any mistakes or weird things in this post. I wrote this about fifteen minutes after finishing the film when I couldn’t get over my shock at the ending and needed to vent. It also happens to be 1am as I’ve finished writing this and I’ve had a very full day recording videos for both my NEW FOOD-BASED INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUBE CHANNEL (imagine me yelling that like a newspaper boy on the street in the past shouting ‘Extra-Extra’ and desperately trying to flog his papers so he can afford dinner that day). Yes, you can now find my food based videos, including: How To Make videos, Testing Gadgets, Testing Myths and Cooking Methods, Testing New Ideas for Dishes that pop into my head and more if you go my NEW INSTAGRAM PAGE (again, newspaper boy) @literaryonionfood, my YouTube page @TheLiteraryOnion and my writing based posts etc. at @literaryonionwriting. Feel free to follow and like over there, as well as over here, and I hope you’re all having a great day wherever in the world you are.
The Literary Onion 