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your choice absolutely free. (light upbeat music) What is going on, Solo Fam. My name is John Solo and today, we are discussing the very messed up origin story of an already messed up Disney movie, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." When I was growing up, I was never really a fan of this movie. I didn't necessarily dislike it, but there wasn't much
about it that I enjoy. The plot and its themes were just a little too complicated for me. I understood what was happening, but not exactly why it was happening. For example, I never understood why Frollo hated the gypsy so much or why it was such a big deal that he had feelings for Esmeralda. So in order to make this episode and actually know what I'm talking about, I had to re-watch the movie this weekend. And while it still isn't one of my favorite Disney movies, I found it pretty entertaining. I also found it to be surprisingly dark and deal with some pretty adult themes for a Disney movie. So if that's how Disney decided to tell the story, imagine how dark the original is. As usual, before we dive into that, we're gonna go over what happens in the Disney classic. Before we do, though, make sure you hit that like button so we can reach our goal of 5,000 likes and keep this series going strong, and subscribe for new Disney content every single week. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" takes place in Paris, France and follows a deformed bell
ringer named Quasimodo. He was born to a family of gypsies that were all arrested or killed by the gypsy hating Minister
of Justice, Claude Frollo. In order to atone for the
murder of an innocent woman, he reluctantly adopts her deformed baby, names him Quasimodo and raises him in the Notre Dame Cathedral where he eventually
becomes the bell ringer. The two do not have a
healthy relationship. Frollo psychologically
manipulates Quasimodo into thinking he's too weak for the cruel outside world. And the hunchback is totally
subservient to his master. Despite being told he'd be shunned for his
monstrous appearance, Quasimodo attends an annual celebration called the Festival of Fools and initially enjoys himself. But he ends up being humiliated by the citizens of Paris until a gypsy named Esmeralda saves him. In order to avoid arrest for her public display of witchcraft, Esmeralda is confined to
the Notre Dame property which provides sanctuary from the law. Before you know it, Esmeralda has stolen the hearts of three different men. Quasimodo; the captain
of the guard, Phoebus; and the beyond creepy Frollo. Who upon learning of her escape, launches a city-wide woman hunt which soon devolves into chaos. He attempts to burn Esmeralda at the stake for rejecting his advances, but she ends up being saved by Quasimodo. And the other gypsies Frollo arrested are freed by Captain Phoebus. In a last ditch effort
to kill his adopted son and the gypsy he's fallen in love with, he pursues them to the
balcony of Notre Dame. And after an intense altercation, falls to his death. In the end, Quasimodo is respected and celebrated for his valiant efforts to save the citizens of Paris. And Esmeralda and Phoebus fall in love, and live happily ever after. Like I said, a pretty dark story. But it's still got nothing on the 1833 novel written by Victor Hugo. What's interesting about this book is it wasn't just written to tell the depressing story of a crippled bell ringer and the gypsy he fell in love with. Hugo actually wrote the book to bring awareness to the value of Gothic architecture, which at the time, was either being neglected or torn down and replaced with newer buildings. As a result, this book contains a lot
of really lengthy passages, unnecessarily long passages, that you might compare to the writings of JRR Tolkien. He often goes into an
excessive amount of detail describing the buildings that make up the book's setting. He even pauses the story in chapter three to go on a tangent about the architecture of Notre Dame and how any attempts to improve or repair the building have only made it worse. Personally, I don't blame anyone for wanting to move past the
Gothic style architecture. There's only so many
gargoyles you want in a city because what if they come alive and start eating people? Did you think about that, Victor? So the hunchback book
was kind of difficult to break down for this episode. It's roughly 10 chapters long and contains flashbacks, plot twists, and even replay scenes from
different perspectives. In order to make my retelling as clear and concise as possible, I'm gonna be going through the events in chronological order. So just like the movie, Quasimodo is born to a family of gypsies. Only unlike the movie where his mother sacrifices
her life to protect him, his family actually kidnaps the newborn daughter
of a woman named Gudule and replaces her with
the deformed Quasimodo. As a result of this, Gudule sort of loses her mind. She starts to hate the gypsies and believes them to
have eaten her daughter. She ends up leaving
Quasimodo in a special bed in Notre Dame for unwanted children, where families with the means to support another child can adopt them. Only as you might expect, no one wanted to take
the deformed Quasimodo. That is nobody except for the deformed, not deformed, except for the priest, Claude Frollo. In the book, his adoption of Quasimodo is much less out of fear or wanting forgiveness from God. The real reason comes from his childhood. When he was young, his parents were killed
from the plague of 1466 and he was left alone to
raise his younger brother. Seeing the baby Quasimodo
helpless and unwanted, he couldn't help but think of his own younger brother and how he could have been subjected to the same fate if it weren't for him. So we took it upon himself to adopt the baby hunchback. He named him Quasimodo, raised him in the cathedral, and also taught him how to read and basic social skills. The problem was, on top of his physical deformities, which included an oversized wart which made him blind in one eye, red bristles all over his face and a hump coming out of his back, Quasimodo also had mental
disabilities as well. So he wasn't a quick learner and Frollo would often become frustrated. From a very young age, the hunchback became
fascinated by the church bells. And by the age of 14, he was the official bell ringer, which also ended up making him deaf. So he's just not in good shape. Now, while Frollo truly
had good intentions when adopting Quasimodo, he is just not a good person. So as a result, the relationship between
he and the hunchback is pretty much the same as in the movie. The next scene takes place
at the Festival of Fools and this is actually
where the book starts. Just like the film, Quasimodo decides it's time to get out and see the world. And just like the film, he's elected the Pope of Fools for having the ugliest face of all the festival's attendants. Not trying to be rude, but I get it. I get why he won the contest. Some of the crowd picks up the hunchback and carries him around
the city in celebration while the rest of the
festival's attendants gather around the
beautiful gypsy, Esmeralda, and watch her dance. This is when Frollo gets
his first look at her. And despite his commitment to abstinence for the church, finds himself irresistibly
attracted to her. So he does what any man would do when he falls in love, orders has adopted servant to kidnap her. Only it doesn't go as planned. While he's able to fend
off some vigilantes trying to protect Esmeralda, he's ultimately arrested by Captain Phoebus and his men, and forced to go through
a joke of a trial. I call this trial a joke because in addition to
Quasimodo being deaf, the judge presiding over
his case was also deaf. So the two couldn't even
have a conversation. And when the crowd started to laugh at the ridiculous situation, the judge assumed
Quasimodo was mocking him. So he sentenced him to two hours in the pillory being whipped and ridiculed by the public. Remember how in the movie Quasimodo was tied down during the Festival of Fools and spun around on a platform while the crowd throws fruit at him, and Frollo watches without doing anything to help, the punishment from the court is the book's version of this event. The pillory he's strapped into spins in front of a crowd while he's whipped relentlessly and the citizens of
Paris throw rocks at him. There's even a moment
where Quasimodo sees Frollo and looks to him for help, but his master just turns away to punish him for failing his mission. This is when Esmeralda steps in. She gives the hunchback some water and shortly after, he's released from the pillory. And because this is the first person to have shown him true kindness, Quasimodo pretty much
instantly falls in love. Fast forward two months to Captain Phoebus macking some ladies in the town square in front of Notre Dame. These women are considered
rich and upper-class, and the author makes it a point to say that Phoebus has a hard time engaging in conversation with them without bringing up his
many other conquests involving many other women. because he's so focused on not making himself
look like a douche bag, he doesn't even notice that Esmeralda is dancing nearby. But then one of the women
he's talking to says, "Hey, Phoebus. "Isn't that the girl you
save from being kidnapped?" And then calls her over. The women are all pretty disrespectful and downright insulting to Esmeralda. One of them sneaks a look in her bag and sees that she's carved each letter of Phoebus' name into a piece of wood. She immediately becomes jealous that there might be some competition over the captain's attention. So naturally, she freaks out at Esmeralda, calls her a witch and faints. She runs away out of embarrassment, but Phoebus catches up to her and asks her if she wants to meet with him later that night. And she says, "Yes." If either one of them had looked toward the Notre Dame Cathedral during this conversation, they would have seen Claude Frollo staring down at them in disgust. He's overwhelmingly jealous of the attention Phoebus is getting, so that night he follows the captain when he goes to meet Esmeralda. And after eavesdropping on the conversation where she pledges her
entire soul to Phoebus for the rest of her life, Frollo comes out in a goblin disguise and stabs the captain
repeatedly in the back. Esmeralda faints and when she wakes up, Phoebus' soldiers think she's the one who murdered their captain and arrest her. They take her into custody and torture her until she falsely confesses to the murder. And then she's sentenced to hang in front of Notre Dame. Fast forward a bit to
the day of her execution, she standing on the platform when she sees Captain Phoebus off in the distance. It turns out he survived, but he also thinks that she's the one who stabbed him, so he couldn't care less whether she lives or dies. You know who does care, though? Quasimodo. And just like in the movie, he swings down from Notre Dame to save her and brings her back into the cathedral, which provides sanctuary from the law. The biggest difference between this scene and the movie's is that, at this point, Esmeralda and the hunchback haven't really had a chance to bond outside of when she saved
him from the pillory. So during this couple day period where she has to live with him, she has to build a tolerance to his misshapen and face. There was probably a
nicer way to word that. After a few days, the governing body known as Parliament revokes Esmeralda's rights to sanctuary. And upon hearing this, the gypsy community organizes a gang of men, women, and children to storm the cathedral and help Esmeralda escape the King's men. The problem is Quasimodo doesn't realize that the crowd of people
surrounding Notre Dame are there to help, not hurt, Esmeralda. So he takes it upon himself to defend Esmeralda from
the oncoming attackers who can't even explain to him that they're on the same side and trying to help because he's deaf. During all this chaos, which is keeping Quasimodo busy, Frollo sneaks out of his secret chambers in the cathedral and finds Esmeralda. He tells her that he's
going help her escape and because he was in disguise the night that he stabbed Phoebus, she has no reason not to trust him and follows him outside. This is when he pulls the
rug out from under her. He tells her that he has the power to stop her from being hanged, but he'll only do it if she agrees to marry him. Her response is pretty legit. She doesn't give up her happiness to be with this monster, even though it spells certain death. She not only agrees to be hanged, she demands to be hanged if the alternative is a life with Frollo. Pretty hard not to take that personally, I'm thankful I've never
been rejected like that. So remember that lady I mentioned earlier, Sister Gudule, who had her
baby kidnapped by gypsies? Well, she hates Esmeralda. So Frollo takes her into Gudule's custody to wait for the King's guard that'll take her to be executed, thinking there's no way the woman will set her free. While Gudule is tearing down Esmeralda, berating her and telling her she deserves all the terrible things that have happened to her, she pulls out the one thing that remains from her baby daughter, a satin slipper. Esmeralda is shocked to see this. She reaches into her own bag and pulls out the exact same slipper, revealing that the two
are mother and daughter. Of course, now Gudule doesn't want Esmeralda to die. She tries hiding her daughter, but the King's guard find her and take her to the gallows. Her mother does what she can to protect her daughter and stop her from being ripped
away from her once again. She kicks and screams, and claws at the soldiers, and even bites a chunk
out of one of their hands, but she ends up being accidentally killed while they're fending her off. Back at Notre Dame, Quasimodo successfully
defends the cathedral from the gypsies in a very similar fashion to how we defends it from
the soldiers in the movie. This includes pouring hot molten lead from the rooftops. When he returns to his living quarters, he's terrified to find
that Esmeralda isn't there. He rushes up to the North tower to see Frollo gazing over the balcony and Esmeralda's body
hanging from the scaffold. Of course, Quasimodo freaks out. He picks up Frollo by the neck and after staring into his eyes, throws him off the balcony where he falls to his death. Looking at the mangled bodies of his pseudo-father and Esmeralda, he cries out, "There is
everything I've ever loved!" And collapses to the ground. This fateful night was the last time anyone saw the Hunchback of Notre Dame until a few years later. A grave digger dug up Esmeralda's skeleton and discovered the misshapen skeleton of a hunchback curled around her. And that is how the story ends. I hope you enjoyed it despite it being pretty depressing and my probably pronouncing half the French names wrong. I left out a few details. In the book, Esmeralda also has a pet goat that she taught how to tell time and impersonate politicians. Don't ask me how he impersonate them, I can just confirm that he does. There's also a small storyline involving Frollo's brother
after he's grown up and Frollo turning his back on the church, and studying black magic and alchemy to make Esmeralda fallen in love with him. All in all, it's a pretty weird story, but entertaining nonetheless. If you liked this video and want to help the series grow, make sure to smash that like button so we can reach our goal of 5,000 likes and subscribe with notifications on to see content just like this in your sub box every week. Follow me on social media for behind the scenes updates. I've also got the links to my Patreon and Discord
in the description if you want to check those out as well. And here's a friendly reminder that by gonna audibletrial.com/solo, you can get yourself a free book and make the channel a
little money while you do it. Thank you all so much
for watching, Solo Fam. I want to apologize for
the delay on this video. I meant to have it uploaded last week and I just ended up being busy, and then I got sick and then it was the holiday weekend. I'm gonna do my best to make sure that doesn't happen anymore and keep producing awesome content for you guys. Until next time, my name is John Solo and remember, John shot first.
