Film Theory: Dolores BROKE The Magic! (Disney Encanto)

everyone keeps talking about how encanto doesn't have a villain well everyone is wrong dolores is the villain of encanto and i'm about to prove it hello internet welcome to film theory where i'm doing this video to justify the hundreds of hours of my life i've spent watching in kanto that's not even an exaggeration in kanto is my three-year-old ali's first ever movie obsession excellent choice on his part couldn't be prouder but if you know how three-year-olds work you know that it means i've watched this thing so many times that i'm approaching the heat death of the universe everyone is his favorite character every song is his favorite song and at this point i've had to explain the cracks and casita so many times that the kid is well on his way to becoming a structural engineer i don't quite have the heart to tell him that hugs won't repair drywall we'll have to save that lesson until he turns four obviously i'm joking casita isn't made of drywall but rather a combination of stone bamboo and clay in the traditional latin american construction style called baja wreck you can actually see the bamboo structure here while mirabelle chases bruno through the walls that said when casita collapses you don't actually see any of the bamboo or really any of the interior structural components of the house instead it's just a lot of stone and plaster where did the inside of this house go disney could it be casita's magic could it be secret hidden lore could it be that i've watched this movie one too many times yes definitely the last one as you might have figured out around watch 37 i started to notice some crazy details inside this thing to help keep me sane like here where tia peppa covers the ears of a stuffed teddy bear while she's talking about he who shall not be named or here where it looks like they gave mirabelle's father some hidden mickey ears or how the closing song literally brings together every other song from the show while also giving me some strong spring awakening vibes [Music] of course i'd be remiss if i didn't mention the fact that luisa's coliseum is filled with donkeys cheering her on and of course i have to get this rant off my chest but when mirabelle climbs to the top of bruno's room what she's climbing on doesn't actually exist in the overhead shot you can actually tell based on her angle relative to the door that she's supposedly facing and don't even get me started on how there's nothing for her to anchor her swing from and that her swing's momentum doesn't match the angle of her landing you can tell that this was probably at one point a montage that was cut down to one final swing in the final release just saying the bruno's room scene really bothered me but of everything in this movie no character has quite as many interesting animation details as dolores like here and we don't talk about bruno where the fish girl the only non-family member in the lineup gets replaced in the dancing with dolores so weird detail right probably some leftover element from the production but what's really interesting are dolores character details like here where she's forced to cover her ears when the fireworks start going off because of her super hearing or here where she claps using only two fingers because again doing more than that would hurt her ears or here where she casts an evil side eye to her cousin isabella hold on what that sort of a passive-aggressive look isn't something that i would expect to see out of a sweet unassuming character like dolores i mean this is a character that a ton of people stand for being the unsung hero of the family but then i did what i tend to do i dug a bit deeper and i really started to think about what we see and hear from dolores throughout this movie and bit by bit the pieces started to add up dolores is actively working against the family she is miserable she is sick of getting passed over and she's weaponizing mirabelle in order to sabotage the family and extinguish the miracle oh i'm sorry is that an uncomfortable truth i just have one thing to say to that let's start off with some of the details i already mentioned about dolores gift we're told in the opening song that because of her super gift of hearing she and it doesn't seem to be much of an exaggeration as we see that she's able to hear conversations happening elsewhere in town likely behind closed doors do we have a date tonight he wants five babies and while that seems like it'd be a cool power in theory in actual practice this thing would be miserable her sound sensitivity doesn't seem like it's able to turn off as it makes her actively recoil when things like fireworks go off around her as a result we see that she's constantly hearing information that she doesn't want to be picking up no one has to know i know it's also something that scientifically would slowly be driving her insane you see the amygdala is this little group of neurons roughly in the center of the brain that helps us with emotional responses specifically when processing fear responses when she cowers because of those fireworks boom big ol shot of amygdala activity as her fight-or-flight response kicks in because those sorts of jarring sounds are important for a human survival they tend to jump the line so to speak when it comes to processing it's actually believed that that's one of the reasons why the amygdala is in the center of the brain it gives a close proximity to all the other important functions of the brain again to jump start our survival instinct the thing is because dolores hearing is so good she would actually be inundated with these sorts of inputs all the time experiencing a constant sensory overload we're talking about someone who can literally hear an eye twitching from a completely different room of the house the only one worried about the magic is you and the rats talking in the walls oh elisa i heard her eye twitching all night her life spent hearing everything in the town and walls around her would be miserable she'd barely be able to focus on anything or get a night's rest but it's a blessing it can't be that bad these powers are meant to be a miracle i hear you're saying and sure some of the powers are admittedly really cool but dolores tia peppa and bruno well they got the short end of the stick on that one healing with food great super strength awesome controlling the weather fine in theory but having your own private rain cloud follow you around while you're in a bad mood thereby making your bad mood even worse yeah that's gonna suck clearly the face of someone feeling hashtag blessed and it's worth remembering tia peppa is dolores mom that powers just seemed to run on that side of the family i guess bruno meanwhile got himself a gift that literally gets the entire town to hate him and has affected him mentally to such a degree that he feels like he must constantly perform superstitious luck rituals that is not a blessing also can we just talk about bruno's room the giant cliff side of stone a room that was again bestowed upon him by the miracle yeah that sucks too even the movie acknowledges this one i left my tower which was you know a lot of stairs and dolores well as we discussed while everyone else is clapping and watching fireworks she's waving her fingers around and covering her ears when everyone else is peacefully eating dinner she's forced to listen to her unrequited love talk about his proposal plans her life sucks while mirabelle feels sad about not being special in her super-powered family dolores has it so much worse because she has powers that actively work against her living a happy life if saving herself and her mother tia peppa from these miserable cursed powers isn't a motive to try and end the family's magic i don't know what is oh wait i do know another motive for dolores in addition to you know getting herself out of the immense sensory overload that she's constantly being subjected to destroying the magic also might help with the whole unrequited love thing in we don't talk about bruno we learned that bruno's prediction for dolores was that mariano [Music] aka isabella it's likely that dolores could want to destroy the family's magic in an effort to either a derail bruno's prediction or b sabotage the engagement with isabella thereby allowing mariano to be free for her i mean we see how eager she is to scoop him up when he becomes a free agent at the end of the movie have you met dolores okay i'll take it from here goodbye but working against the family to do it seems like a bit much right wrong let's actually go back to the moment that i mentioned in the intro her evil side eye to isabella watch the scene when asked whether there's a date for mariano's proposal we get this do we have a date tonight he wants five babies and pause in this one look we actually get a huge revelation about dolores motivations in this movie she's not just sad about mariano marrying someone else she actively resents isabella's relationship with him in fact the way i see it she might have even made up the whole he wants five kids line in order to freak isabella out maybe even scare her away it does seem to have quite the impact and if you think well that's too sinister of a move for her really it's not from the opening moments of the movie dolores is established to be very self-serving when the children of the town are harassing mirabelle about her gift something that mirabelle is clearly uncomfortable admitting based on her whole song and dance trying to deflect away from their questions dolores just pops out and exposes her with nothing but a shrug later when mirabelle's trying to hype dolores up with mariano she literally just shoves her out of the way and that's just the petty stuff what about all the times that she actively goes out of her way to explicitly sabotage members of her family look at the information that she does and doesn't choose to withhold in the movie at the proposal dinner it's dolores who decides to start the chain of events that makes the night into a mess despite knowing the chaos that it would cause she actively passes on the information about mirabelle finding the vision the first opportunity that she gets and instead of staying quiet at the climax of the meal she blurts it out why why would she do this because she's a gossip that has no self-control no that's not a good enough reason in fact the movie tells us exactly what's going on a couple minutes prior go back to the lyrics of we don't talk about bruno in the final round while everyone's singing a reprise of their earlier verses it's tricky to make out dolores lyric but her words actively change from the first time she sang it the first time it goes he told me the man of my dreams would be just out of reach betrothed to another it's like i hear him now but when she sings it again it changes he told me the man of my dreams would be just out of reach betrothed to another another and i'm fine and i'm fine and i'm fine and i'm fine she repeats it four times something tells me that she's not actually fine going into that dinner and while she's more than eager to share that bit of information with the family to ruin the proposal dinner look at what information she chooses to withhold from everyone she doesn't stick up for mirabelle the first time the cracks appear again this is someone who can literally hear an eye twitching and yet she doesn't hear any of the cracks that have been forming in the house since bruno left and since mirabelle's failed gifting ceremony that is frankly not possible wait have you been in here patching the cracks it means that she's willfully hiding that information and speaking of willfully hiding information bruno in the walls while the rest of the family thinks that he disappeared or ran away dolores knows that he's been hiding in the walls for years to hurt him every day and yet again she never reveals that information to anyone a human being her own family member is living in the walls of her house and she does nothing about it my guess is that it's because he's the one who predicted that she'd suffer and be overlooked but regardless the reason you gotta admit that is cold but do you want the biggest proof that this is intentional not just me overthinking some random moments in the movie look at the final door when casita collapses everyone loses their powers and all of a sudden dolores life is on the up and up she and her mother no longer have to deal with their awful curse powers she's finally able to be seen by the man of her dreams i see you and i hear you but then after they rebuild casita the madrigals get a new door that depicts the entire family excited that the magic has returned everyone is happy in this door picture with an upturned mouth everyone except for dolores eyes downcast and literally the only person without an upturned mouth it is weird it is a really strange detail in a series of strange details all around this character here's the tl dr friends dolores is old enough to know about bruno's prediction in fact she knows that mirabelle is somehow connected to all the cracks in the walls and that the family is scared of mirabelle killing the miracle and knowing that notice who knocks over the first domino dolores she's the one that points mirabelle in the direction of louisa she's the one that continues to sew family discord by dropping truth bombs during important dinners she's the one actively concealing the cracks while also covering up family members living in the walls she's the one made miserable by her power and the one forced to live in jealousy of her cousin and she's the one the only one to look sad on the final door when everyone's powers return in storytelling a villain is a character whose actions oppose the positive resolution of the plot everything dolores does and doesn't do throughout the movie actively drives more cracks into the house and goes to extinguish the miracle if that my friends isn't a villain i don't know what is and that theorists is how the casita crumbles but hey that's just a theory a film theory [Music] you

Channel: The Film Theorists

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Keywords: encanto, encanto theory, disney, disney theory, dolores, encanto dolores, encanto secret, encanto song, encanto songs, we don't talk about bruno, we don't talk about bruno song, encanto tiktok, mirabel, bruno, bruno encanto, encanto pressure, movie encanto, encanto surface pressure, full movie encanto, encanto soundtrack, what else can i do encanto, bruno song, tiktok encanto, encanto all songs, film theory, film theorists, matpat, disney encanto, encanto music

Id: Xz2oowy5JxY

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022