- This show is sponsored by
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issues, lack of sleep, and more. Sound familiar? Visit better help.com/super and find out ways to lower your stress. Hey, brother! It is no secret that we
absolutely love "Encanto" around here. And this past weekend, I was driving home from
vacation with my wife, where we got into a very
interesting debate about the movie. The question is very simply, which member of the Family Madrigal is actually the most powerful? Because we've got quite
the lineup of abilities, from communicating with animals, to the ability to see the future, or be able to hear something
from over a mile away. It's a lot to consider. So we have to ask ourselves
if each of these characters were each given their own MCU
origin story, if you will, which one would actually
be the most useful? Some of these things are things that we're
already used to seeing in this kind of movie, like Luisa's super strength, for example, or Camilo's ability to shape-shift. And there's a very obvious reason why we see these abilities
over and over again. They're very easy to put to use quickly. That is as long as the
situation calls for, you know, lifting something extremely heavy or maybe going undercover for some reason. But others are definitely more unique. Like Isabela has the ability
to just manifest plant life at her fingertips. And sure, in the beginning,
it's mostly just flowers, but by the end, it seems like it could
be pretty much anything. How far could you take that? And so immediately, it felt like you could make
the argument for any character. Pepa, for example, can
control the weather. That's pretty massive. But on the other hand, there is the occasional catch as well. Like again with Pepa, she
can control the weather, but it's also impacted by her emotions. So in order to reach max power, she would need pretty strong
mastery, like over herself. And if somebody was able to figure out how to manipulate her, then that could get really
dangerous really quickly. Then there's a character that we don't get a ton of time with, Mirabel's mother, Julieta, who can effectively heal anything. And while that is maybe
less of like an air quotes, "fierce power," this is essentially
the underlying objective of so many world leaders who, you know, provide
health for everyone. Insert cynical comment here. But at some point, we sort of need to answer
a fairly deep question, which is what does it
actually mean to be powerful? Deep stuff sometimes
analyzing these Disney films. It's a hard job, but
someone's gotta do it. But so today. we are going to rank each member of the Family Madrigal from least to most powerful. Here we go.
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at the top of the page, and enter promo code SUPERCARLIN. Link is in the description down below. Okay, who is the most powerful member of the Family Madrigal? Right outta the gate, I would like to define
my personal parameters as to how I came up with my list. Because again, I think you could probably make arguments for just about any member of the family. There's such a wide
variety of abilities here. And while some are
really fun and exciting, it's hard to determine whether or not they're all that practical in the end. So my springboard for this argument actually launches off
of Thanos from the MCU, because I think he places
a very interesting lens over this conversation, both
thanks to his actual raw power, but also his underlying motivations as to why he does what he does. For starters, pretty much all of the
Avengers take a crack at him, and none of them can stop him regardless of how powerful they are. But then, and also
possibly more importantly, there are the underlying
reasons behind his actions. Thanos was a really great villain because he has a sort
of relatability to him, albeit is very much lacking
in his justifications. But at the end of the day, he isn't seeking like personal glory or some kind of magnificent
throne to rest upon. His argument is actually fairly simple. - Too many mouths, not
enough to go around. - His answer to this problem is to eliminate 50% of everyone randomly. - Random, dispassionate,
fair to rich and poor alike. - It's an absolutely splendid plan, as long as you don't value
preservation of life, which we do. I recap all of this to
illustrate what I see as power. The thing that I guess would hope resides at the bottom of everyone's motivations who have ever sought it,
which flat out and most simply isn't necessarily the
ability to overcome evil, but rather instead, the ability to help out
the most number of people, the most effectively, and with the very important caveat of not needing 50% of them to disappear. I can't stress that part enough. So those are the rules. What is the power, and
who and how can it help? So let's dive right on
in with number eight, the not so mean, green,
future-seeing machine Bruno. Immediately I know what every
single person is thinking. Bruno is last? He can literally see the future. And honestly, I hear you. That ability is extremely powerful. Although, in many ways, is also completely and utterly useless. Sorry. Here's the thing. Seeing the future, prophecies,
etcetera, these are big. They drive the plot in so many stories. In "Harry Potter," the prophecy
is pretty dang important, but at the end of the day,
it's not the prophecy itself that is exceptionally dangerous. It really comes down to the person who is attempting to do something with it. Tell you who's even less dangerous is the person who gave the prophecy. Am I right? (woman choking) And again, our starting point must be, what is the power and how
can it actually help people? Because I think at the end of the day, the answer to that question is that it doesn't really
help anything at all. Because at the end of the day, the future is the future is the future. It is what it is. A fixed point of knowledge that becomes lobbed out into the future. It can be good or it can be
bad, but regardless it will be. And knowing it doesn't do anything about our ability to change it. The movie itself, I think even aligns with my thinking here. The townspeople get
really annoyed with Bruno for all of his predictions. Things like a fish would die, or if you might lose
your hair or grow a gut. They blame Bruno for these things. But it's important to remember he's not the one making them happen. He's just informing people
that they will happen, which is maybe not that nice, but still, you see what I mean? Time is like a sandwich. If all you have is the
present and the future, then all you have is bread. And bread isn't a sandwich. Wait, but then also what is
the past in this analogy? The plate? I think I'm lost. Which feels like a fabulous time to move on to number seven, Camilo, and his fabulous shape-shifting abilities, which to be absolutely fair
within the superhero genre, the ability to change
your physical appearance can be a massively useful thing. The original "X-Men" trilogy, for example, essentially relied on
Mystique for everything. But I'm gonna be honest with you, in this small town in the
foothills of Colombia, I think even the movie had a hard time selling this as an ability. Or at least it really had to get creative coming up with ways to show you how this was beneficial to,
you know, the community. Like, hey, I can watch your
child literally as you! Perfect babysitter. Or, or, or, stick with me now, I could greet you as you! What greater way to
feel welcome somewhere? No, not that useful. Okay, how about this? How about this? The ability to get seconds, huh? Extra food, extra serving by impersonating your sibling, whoo! What do you mean that doesn't help you or anyone else at all? Selfish much? The thing is though, if we
do go back to an example like the "X-Men," the ability to go undercover
or impersonate someone else so that you can, you
know, get past security or gain extra power, that becomes incredibly
useful as a member to a team that is otherwise trying
to do good in the world. But in a very practical sense, and especially if you're trying to literally better the world, it's hard to figure out how others can actually benefit from it,
especially on a larger scale, which is a caveat that I will say will spring up on more than one occasion. But in the meantime, let's
move on at to number six, the one, the only Ace
Vantonio, pet detective. I was really proud of that.
I'm not gonna lie to you guys. I was pretty excited
that it came together. We, of course, get to see
Antonio get his power, which is the ability to speak to animals. And I do hear immediately
what you're all thinking, which is that the ability to
speak whale pays dividends. - A whale? You know, I speak whale. And this has been factually proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. - We're in a whale! Don't you get it? - However, there are not whales
everywhere, unfortunately, in which case Antonio
would absolutely crack the top three on this list. No whales. Here is my argument as to why the ability to speak to animals might not
be as useful as it may seem. I'm not even sure if it
immediately seems useful. But at least according to "Encanto," Antonio's ability to speak to animals also seems to come with this conclusion that animals would be willing to listen. - I told them to warm up your seat. - I tend to think that this
feels a little bit optimistic. And I say that because we humans already have the ability to
communicate with each other. And just because we can
communicate with each other, does not mean that we are
always willing to listen. So adding a huge variety of other species into this equation, all of whom would likely
have priorities of their own, and you mean to tell me that
we only have the one human who is capable of
communicating with all of them. - Alrighty then. - From there though, let's move on to the middle
tier of powers with number five. And I have to admit that
it pains me to say this because this is one of my all-time
favorite characters, Luisa. - Okay. - I know, I know, I know. Like, super strength is
just absolutely paramount in the world of superherodom. And near, as I can tell, Luisa might not just have super strength, but quite literally the
ability to just lift anything, you know, donkeys, bridges, mountains. I mean the sky is the
actual literal limit here. And so I will gladly admit
that there are very significant and important uses for
this kind of strength. But because that is true, we as humans have also done
a huge amount of innovating to solve that very problem. Like, you know what's almost as good as someone who is strong as an ox? An ox. As powerful as a bulldozer? An actual bulldozer. And now I do want to be super fair, because someone who is as smart
and nimble as a human being with the same strength as those things, has got to have applications
beyond what I can even imagine. However, once again, we find ourselves with that
kind of scalability problem. How many people can we actually help? Drive down any interstate
at any point in time, and you'll likely see dozens, if not hundreds of pieces
of heavy machinery. And that's just one road in one place. And the world is quite
literally covered with roads, with thousands of more
pieces of heavy machinery. And that's just roads. It's not counting buildings or mining or any of the other numerous locations where you might need something
that's incredibly strong. And once again, Luisa is just simply the one person and just cannot be everywhere all at once. Plus if I know Luisa like I think I do, it would be a mighty burden
to not be able to help everywhere that needs her. And I'd hate to put that on her. I will say it though, I bet she could TKO Thanos
with a single punch. And that does bring me joy. That said, though, that'll bring us to number
four with supersonic hearing, and Dolores. Dolores can hear a chorus a mile away or an eye twitching in another room, or, you know, the sad sounds
of her forgotten uncle who is living inside of the walls, reenacting telenovelas
with, you know, rats. - [Man] I'm Jorge. I make the spackle. - All normal stuff. You know? Dolores's ability for supersonic hearing, I think is very similar to her brother Camilo's
ability to shape-shift. It's incredibly useful if
implemented as part of a team. Again, let's imagine you're trying to overcome
evil of some kind. The ability to gain intel
through this ability would be incredibly beneficial. Because at the end of the day, knowing someone else's strategy is easily the fastest
and best way to beat them at whatever it is. Famously on the TV show of "Survivor," there are two players
who have actually won the entire game twice, and they both used the same
tactic both times, sleuthing. In some cases, literally burying themselves
near a well of water, just in hopes of overhearing something when someone else comes by. So while Dolores, again, has some of those scalability
problems similar to Luisa, I do think that you're
able to take her abilities and especially apply them to something like national defense. Or for that matter, she could just quite
literally serve as a mediator between the two nations because
she can quite literally know what both parties are
saying behind closed doors. I think she can do a lot
towards achieving world peace. And so in my opinion, that
makes her pretty dang powerful. But not quite as powerful
as this list's number three, who I would make a firm argument for the possibility of being number one, if not, for one small caveat, it's Pepa. Pepa is a really unique case when it comes to how her ability works, which is, of course,
to control the weather. Again, if we toss back to
other examples of herodom, we know that this ability
is a pretty big one. Storm from the "X-Men," who essentially has the exact same powers, and Thor, the god of thunder, are both extremely OP
characters in their own right. So the ability to control the weather, especially in the ways that it seems like Pepa
is capable of doing it, could do things like, you know, solve climate change or, you know, ensure ideal growing seasons for farmers, protect endangered species, even combat, or just literally stop
natural disasters altogether. On the whole, this one is huge. And really, the only thing
holding her back at all, is the fact that her
abilities are in a way affected by her own emotions. This hitch, if you will, of her emotions affecting the
weather for all of humankind does kind of come with a
sense of liability to it. And it is made pretty clear
throughout the entire movie that this is a little bit of a struggle for this particular character. But also rightly so. She is a human being, and absolutely entitled to her
emotions, both good and bad. Just also, would, you know, uniquely have some more impact if she were to experience
loss or have her heart broken. Looking at you, Felix. No pressure. Well, not no pressure. I mean, you got this,
just don't mess it up. I feel as though I've said too much, probably making it worse. So no better time to simply
move on to number two. And I have to tell you
guys, at this point in time, I am quite literally splitting hairs because our final two candidates
are incredibly strong. But in the runner-up spot, I'm going to place
Mirabel's mother Julieta. It might be shocking to hear her rank so highly on this list, but what she is capable of is so powerful that I actually think
it would be sought out by super villains the world over. Her ability is fairly unique, at least when it comes to
the process of how it works, but she can essentially
heal anyone of anything with her cooking. And I will say that I think the only thing that really held her back
from the top spot here is that I don't totally know how it works. Like, what technically counts as something that she has cooked and thereby has been imbued
with the healing powers? In the movie, we see her use what is already a fairly
simple Colombian dish known as arepas. So once again, you kind of find yourself in
that question of scalability. How many of those could she make? And therefore, how many
people on the planet could she potentially heal? Like if she worked all day and all night, she could absolutely make a ton of these, but seven billion people on the planet is still a lot of people. So if she were to run
a factory, let's say, where she makes thousands
upon thousands of these every single day, does that still count because
she's overseeing the process? Or does she actually need
to individually craft every single one? Because then again, that
could take a long time. And then if you wanted to take it one step further from that, like what happens if she
makes an entire vat of rice? Does each individual grain of rice count as something that
she has then cooked? Because if so, then you be able to take one of the most plentiful
crops on the entire planet and make massive batches all at once. And at that rate, it is literally conceivable that you could cook a grain of rice for every single person on planet Earth. And that is power. Actually, almost though, while I was researching for this video, I found a really fascinating art exhibit by a group called Stan's
Cafe out of the UK. Their exhibit did exactly this. They would have these huge piles of rice where each individual
grain represented a citizen from that respective country. So this huge mound here
represents the United States. That's over 330 million grains of rice. Pretty cool, right? But I also think this
is a really great note to move on to our final
and most powerful member of the Family Madrigal. - Isabela! - As I've said, our top three are all extremely capable when it comes down to what
they're capable of doing for the world. But Isabela is truly no joke. At the beginning of her story, we know that she is capable
of essentially producing an unlimited number of flowers, which while absolutely beautiful, and in some cases, I'm sure
are edible as some flowers are, this doesn't exactly
immediately register as, you know, overpowered. However, by the end, she is literally capable
of setting her will to grow anything, cactuses,
trees, carnivorous plants, like, seriously, Isabela,
what else can you do? Because again, on a global scale, it seems like she could just
immediately regrow forests. She could ensure healthy
crops the world over and provide habitats
for animals everywhere. She really hits both environmental
and humanitarian projects extremely well. Like the ability to just
instantly grow a massive forest can massively offset carbon emissions. And the ability to grow
healthy crops anywhere could effectively just solve world hunger. And for that matter, and I know that I haven't looked at any of the other
characters through the lens of like what they would
be capable of in combat, hers is also still really cool. Like for all intents and purposes,
her ability to, you know, control vines that she can
just instantly create at will, are not that different at
all from telekinetic powers, which is constantly classified
as one of the most dangerous and powerful skills that you can be given. But I have to say the icing on the cake is just the simple fact that basically anything Groot
can do, she can also do. And boom, there you go, guys, the powers from "Encanto" ranked. And if the MCU wants to give
each of these characters their own live action origin story, I am completely here for it. Or my question of the day
though, what do you guys think? Did I miss an obvious argument anywhere? Or is there someone who you
think ranks a lot higher or a lot lower than where I place them? Let me know in the towel
section down below. (text booms) But guys, as always, thank
you so much for watching. Be sure to like this video
and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.
(bell dings) If you'd like to find out why
the color of Bruno's cloak is so very interesting, be sure to check out this
video right over here, but otherwise until next time, bye!
