Tangled (2010 film)/Headscratchers

• Gothel was shown to have some level of cunning during the film, so tell me why she thought covering up a magical plant with an ordinary old sack would successfully keep it hidden?
  • It's not just a sack; it's evidently some kind of box she's covered with greenery in order to keep it blended in. If you were walking through a forest and weren't looking very hard, you probably wouldn't notice it. In any case, it obviously did successfully keep it hidden until she accidentally knocked it over that one time.
• So why didn't Mother Gothel just try to cultivate a whole garden's worth of the Sun Flower?
  • That way she would have been rich, have a massive supply of magic propertied flowers at her disposal, selling them to the local Coronan residents for a high price whilst keeping the original in a secret place for herself and making sure that she was essentially set up for life? Its shown early in the film that she can transfer the plant's magical properties to herself via song. Brew up some magical plant juice, imbue with her magic song, tell the user to sing the song at least once before each drink and she'd never have to worry about poverty again. Where was her business sense?
  • The Sun Flower was created when a drop of the sun landed on the Earth. This is not something Mother Gothel can easily replicate. Presumably the flower does not produce seeds.
• What was Mother Gothel going to do when Rapunzel got old and died? As unseemly as it sounds she should have been happy when Rapunzel met Flynn (a wanted criminal-so with no ties to Corona to make him want to return). If the magic is retained within Rapunzel, what are the odds that she wouldn't pass them on to any unborn child of hers?
  • Somewhere between 1 in 4 and 3 in 4.
  • There's no reason why Rapunzel's hair wouldn't work on her personally. It's the hair that's magic. When it presumably became an issue, she could keep Rapunzel forever young in the same manner. Besides, Gothel was running on desperation in her later years. She hadn't thought that far ahead.
  • Gothel is clearly a selfish Control Freak; introducing a boyfriend/husband into the situation introduces a competitor and threat to Gothel's power and influence over Rapunzel, which increases the chance she loses Rapunzel -- and any children subsequently born to her -- entirely. Best not risk it.
• How did that fragile old woman break into a royal castle?
  • Same way she manages to make herself disappear with a swish of her cloak. In other words, probably a judicious use of stealth, clever conjuring tricks.
  • A quote from Mad Hettie of The Sandman could explain how she could perform that feat without being a witch: "I’m not a bleedin’ witch. But you don’t get to yer two hundred and fiftieth birthday without learning a thing or two."
• The marketing. Disregarding the name change, was it too much trouble to give ANY sort of hint in the advertisements that this is going to be a musical? Much less one in the style of the classic Disney tradition?
  • Since the marketing Disney usually makes for a Disney Princess film didn't turn out well enough for The Princess and the Frog, Disney decided to use Dreamworks Animation' style of marketing, and it worked. It's like Disney said "You're going to steal our ideas? Fine, then we're going to steal your marketing and this is what we've got."
    • Sure, when you think about it all Disney Princess films have songs in them. But your impression of the movie comes strictly from marketing. The trailers didn't show us character's singing songs, and we assumed it was because there was no songs to sing. If it did, they'd want to show them, right? Disney has just given people who don't like musicals the right to complain.
      • Maybe so, but to be entirely fair, there've been how many Disney animated films now? And how many of them have been musicals to some degree, shape or form? CGI or no, it's not as if going to an animated Disney fairy tale movie only to find it's a musical should come as that big a surprise.
      • Actually, a lot of Disney films weren't what you'd imagine as "musicals". They had little to no music. And even if we think of musicals when we think of Disney, we go by what's in the trailers. After all, that's the point of them. To show the contents of the movie, what the plot is, and entice you to see the full thing. If Disney is going to all the trouble of writing music, logically they should show you it in the trailers. Otherwise it's pretty much false advertising.
        • Fair point, except that a lot of Disney Princess movies are musicals. Tangled is a Disney Princess movie, ergo it stands to reason that it would be a musical. Anyway, Disney is hardly the first company to not tell the 100% truth in a trailer...
  • Simple explaination; some people refuse to see musicals because of stigma, not because the musicals aren't their thing. In other words, this gives them the right to complain or change their minds.
  • I recently watched the movie, in early 2012, after seeing it plastered all over places like Tumblr and so on with people saying how great it was. I had absolutely no idea it was musical.
• Armond White's review. I know he's a troll who does this with every movie, but it's kind of too hilarious not to share. He thinks Disney ruined the original moral of the Rapunzel story, but never once says what that is. (Isn't just a typical sexual awakening metaphor?) Rapunzel’s hair length is exaggerated to Shrek-like proportions. He thinks RAPUNZEL'S hair is TOO LONG, guys.
  • Yes, responsible parents ought to read their children the actual fairy tale, complete with the Teen Pregnancy. What a great lesson!
  • Oh, sure, there's no moment where her hair is a nuisance. I mean, it's not like she's been raised to fear people taking her hair, or like brushing it takes forever, or it needs to be braided so it doesn't get stepped on, or it gets caught on branches when she's trying to escape... also, "credibly girlish moment"?
    • Not to mention - the hair is MAGIC. That's the fact that the entire plot revolves around in this version. Magic hair is the only way for it not to be one giant dreadlock anyway...
  • The moral - the woman you call mother isn't. Your parents traded you for beans. Though she raised you, she's being SOOO overprotective. You should totally shack up with the Prince Charming who comes by every few days for Nookie and get pregnant with twins. Of course, don't slip and let Mama know because she'll throw you out and brutalize your paramour. Don't worry, unspecified magic never hinted at before in the story will make everything better. Disney did everything they could to make Gothel's claim on Rapunzel illegitimate and abusive, and you still feel sympathetic when she finds Rapunzel missing.
• Why didn't Mother Gothel move Rapunzel further away from the kingdom? It's apparently about a day's travel on foot, and Rapunzel could see the lanterns easily from the window of the tower.
  • Maybe she still has to regularly go into the kingdom for food and whatnot.
  • For that matter, why doesn't she assign Rapunzel a new name and birthday? The baby would never know the difference, and wouldn't think to associate her birthday with seeing the floating lanterns.
    • Rapunzel was not the name of the missing princess, so she did assign her a new name. She didn't know the kingdom will be releasing lanterns on her birthday and she could just say the lanterns were stars, and could not have predicted Rapunzel would have some sort of psychic connection to them.
      • After Gothel started to see that they were releasing lanterns on Rapunzel's birthday, she could have changed the birthday then. After all, Rapunzel probably wouldn't have remembered what day her Birthday was celebrated on when she was 1-3.
      • From the way that Gothel is sleeping when we first see Young Rapunzel sneaking down to watch the lanterns (and presumably if she'd known about them she'd have intervened a bit more actively to prevent Rapunzel from noticing them), it would suggest that Gothel didn't actually find out about them until much later, presumably at a point when Rapunzel both recognized when her birthday was (so too late to shift it) and associated the lanterns with them.
  • Well you can't just MOVE a perfectly good tower.
  • Mother Gothel was so self-centered it probably never occurred to her that Rapunzel would see the lanterns and make a connection on her birthday--after all, Gothel didn't even recall when Rapunzel had a birthday. Also, at the beginning Rapunzel was sneaking away from bed with mama to see the lanterns. She may not have even mentioned it until she was older, and by then it would be too late to change her birthday.
  • If Gothel had the foresight to build the tower with the window facing the other way, the whole story might never had happened....
    • And this would be a Downer Ending otherwise.
    • She probably didn't build the tower, just left after Rapunzel was asleep so she wouldn't see the floor exit, then blocked up the door when the hair grew long enough to haul her up through the window.
  • It probably took a lot of time and resources to build an entire tower to trap her in, though; probably not the sort of thing you can replicate very often, particularly not when there's a chance that Rapunzel might go a-wandering in the meantime or someone else might come across her.
• Where does Rapunzel hide the satchel the whole time?
  • It just reappears randomly during the lantern scene as if she had been keeping it in plain view the whole time. We don't see the satchel at all between Gothel's campfire visit and the lantern scene.
    • It's inside her hair.
    • I always assumed she hid it in Max's saddle, in a pouch or something.
• Why wasn't there any blood on the blade after Gothel stabbed Flynn? The wound was bloody and the cut on his hand from earlier was red, at least. What difference does blood on a weapon make?
  • Mother Gothel probably had the sword designed so that blood slid off of it to make it easier to clean.
  • I think showing a bloody weapon is considered worse than showing a bit of blood-stained clothing. However it is in fact possible in real life to stab someone without there being a great deal of noticeable blood on the blade, if your strike is precise enough and you withdraw the weapon quickly enough. The blood vessels reflexively constrict after being cut, which lasts for second or two before the response fails and they really start bleeding. If the blade is withdrawn within that time period there will typically be only a faint wet sheen on it. On a blade like Gothel's, which has a dark tint, it wouldn't be easily noticeable as blood on a quick glance.
• How did Gothel know how to activate the flower in the first place and how did the kingdom know of the Sun Flower when Gothel had it hidden?
  • Maybe it was a legendary herb everyone hears about but never sees, because its so rare.
  • While that may explain the song, how does that explain the kingdom knowing of the flower's existence?
  • It could be a legend everyone has heard of; normally they'd disregard it was a fairy tale, but then the Queen got very ill and everyone was desperate enough to try and find it...
  • I don't think she did know how to activate it. She may have just been talking to the plant, and it comes as a song because it is a musical. If you listen to the words of the song, it sounds like an all purpose incantation. Give me back what I lost. Heal me. Turn back time. Seeing as the first line is "Flower, gleam and glow", it's more likely the power activates on "Flower" and does what you want until you finish talking. You could probably say "Flower, make me a sandwich", and a sandwich will appear.
    • Actually, the flower's magic appears to be very specific. It's magic that would relate to the sun - healing, restoring, growing. In fact, the song emphasizes "Change the fate's design", "Make the clock reverse" - the flower has powers of a tiny Reality Warper, the power to restore things to as they were in the past!
• Oh, what time period is this set in? It looks medieval, but there was mention of Mozart, so...
  • It's not medieval. Gothel is dressed from the medieval time period, but she's hundreds of years old and they intentional designed her clothes to be out of date. Rapunzel is dressed similarly different (she really stands out among the villagers.) The kingdom is a little harder to place, since it's a fictional fantasy realm with its own style. Considering they have Mozart, pianos, and clocks, it would make sense for it to be in the late 1700's and the villagers are dressed generically "old-timey" enough not to contradict that.
  • According to the directors, this movie is set in the 1780s. So Mozart would have been around and successful at the time.
    • To be fair, not everywhere automatically upgraded their style of dress to fit the time. Different areas of Europe (it doesn't seem ridiculous to assume the film is set somewhere in Europe) had different styles of dress, some of which were far more "traditionalist" than others, particularly in eastern Europe. If you assume that the film was set in some remote part of the Hapsburg Empire the clothing doesn't look terribly out of place for the period. If on the other hand you think it's somewhere near Vienna...
      • Considering Disney has Rapunzel and (used to have) Flynn Rider hanging out in the Germany section of Epcot, it's safe to say Corona is supposed to be a Germanic kingdom. So it's somewhere around modern-day Germany/ Switzerland, etc.
• So, Rapunzel is able to swing around tree branches suspended by her hair. Wouldn't that hurt? Whenever my hair is pulled, it hurts. It should hurt for her to, considering that her hair is supported her entire body in the air. It happens several other instances, where you think it'd hurt her head for her hair to be pulled like that but she's having a good ol' time.
  • As long as she holds onto it, it won't be pulling on her scalp. There's always some slack in the part of the hair that's attached to her head, so she wouldn't be able to feel it. The same goes for wrapping it around a hook to pull Gothel up the tower.
  • If you look, Rapunzel always anchors or braces her hair before using it. Hence the hook on her balcony. When she uses it to swing, she always firmly grips it about a foot away so the pressure is applied to her arms instead of her head.
  • The only time Rapunzel's hair isn't braced in such a fashion is when Eugene climbs up it to her tower at the end. Then again, Gothel has her tied up, and is totally in her Let's Get Dangerous mode...
• Why isn't the brown lock of hair any longer than when it was cut when Rapunzel was a baby? One might say it was kept trimmed, but it appears to have not grown at all.
  • It probably did grow like normal hair, but Rapunzel likewise kept cutting it like normal hair. Maybe she kept it short enough to be hidden because she didn't like the one lock of brown standing out in a sea of blonde. You may argue it was because of all the brushing the lock went from curly to straight, but isn't it weird that the lock looks like it was just cut? Any cut lock stops looking like it was cut with scissors after a while. And (from my point of you) the lock looked a little shorter than when she was an infant.
    • The length thing can be explained by the fact that her head is bigger now than it was when she was a baby. The hair's likely meant to be the same length, but its relative size has obviously been affected. Also, the non-growing fits with the loss of enchantment on it compared to her other hair. The stunting effect on it only goes away after the rest of her hair has been cut. At least that's my theory.
    • Link please? That sounds fascinating, and I really want to know if that's canon (where) or a fanfiction thing.
  • I seem to remember Rapunzel explicitly stating that her hair won't grow back once cut, since some 'bad men' tried to cut it off when she was a baby. Thankfully, Mother saved her.
    • I'm not the OP, but if you're asking about the hair-growth thing, then I assure you, it's canon. She mentioned it to Flynn around the time she healed his hand. If you're asking about the "Bad men trying to cut off her hair" thing, she says it, but it's false, since Mother Gothel just made that lie up to try and explain the cut hair to her.
    • Thanks, I meant the "Bad men trying ot cut off her hair" part, I just didn't remember when it was- I'll be sure to watch out for that next time I see it!
  • Hold on-The exact line is "When I was a baby, people tried to cut it-they wanted to keep it for themselves. But, once it's cut, it turns brown and loses its power." No mention about the hair being unable to grow anymore-it just can't heal any longer. I'd say she probably trims that one strand, or like mentioned above, that one strand will not grow until all her hair has been cut and lost its power.
    • There's no mention that it won't grow anymore, but it's implied because, well, it hasn't really grown. Rapunzel shows Eugene a really short lock of hair that she and Gothel no had to reason to keep short (why risk cutting more magic hair?) that if they left it alone, should be maybe not as long as the rest of her hair, but just about as long. The idea that it won't grow until the rest is cut is plausible, but unlikely. How would the hair know if the rest has been cut or not, especially since it's not magic anymore?
  • Maybe Mother Gothel cut it in Rapunzel's sleep over the years, just to give Rapunzel another reason to fear the outside world.
    • That... while creepy, makes zero sense. "You're safe as long as you're here with me, Rapunzel. Except from that one guy who sneaks in to cut your lock of brown hair every couple of weeks for whatever weirdo reason. Can't protect you from him. Sorry, pet!"
  • It should be noted that real hair does have a "maximum length": each follicle produces a strand of hair for a certain period of time and at a certain speed (determined by genetics) and then "breaks" it to start growing a new one. That's why wild mammals don't go around with yards of fur dangling from their bodies, and some people can't get waist-length hair no matter how much they grow it out. Rapunzel's hair is naturally short and brown; it's the flower's magic causes it to grow indefinitely.
• Why does Mother Gothel make Rapunzel sing to make her hair glow when she can make it glow by singing to it herself?
  • Why not? If she was doing that everyday, Rapunzel probably would have started copying her anyway.
  • It could have been a way to get Rapunzel psychologically attached to Mother Gothel. Like "Oh my dear, Mommy's so tired and ill and you can make me feel better. Would you like to sing and help Mommy get better?" Sort of like a bonding thing.
    • Well in the old fairy tale I believe, the Witch would ask Rapunzel to sing to her and play a harp (or some sort of instrument) when she came to visit. Kinda like the person above me just said, It was another way to keep Rapunzel attached I guess-as well as I suppose a way for her to relax from her trips. She was an old witch after all. But I suppose this is a way Disney is once again showing their being faithful to the source material.
    • It might also be that the healing/ anti-aging works better and/or lasts longer when Rapunzel herself does the singing.
• So what does Gothel do all day when she's not in the tower? Does she have a job? Where did she get the money to buy Rapunzel stuff?
  • My guess, seduce men for their money. Explains where she got the money for the stuff, and it fits the character well.
    • More likely she would have been a fortune-teller or something similar, since Gothel is fairly explicitly drawn to resemble a Roma/Sinti (more commonly referred to as Gypsy), and, outside of their own society, that was their main stock in trade.
  • More to the point, what in the world does Gothel do with eternity? She's lived for a very long time already by the beginning of the movie, so what kept her from becoming bored? There's a reason there's a trope called "Who Wants to Live Forever?".
    • Possibly tied with the above point about seducing men. One would imagine that someone twisted enough to kidnap and imprison a child for immortality, and later manipulate that child into getting heartbroken and then "rescued" from thugs she hired would have had a really crappy life beforehand. She could have very well been used, abused, and/or neglected, and perhaps taught that her youth and beauty were the only things worthwhile about her. So, she uses the flower to stay young, and uses her beauty to seduce men, because it is the only way she feels like she's worth anything.
• Rapunzel wears no shoes. She is barefoot climbing trees, jumping on rocks, and let's not forget dancing on stones for an entire musical sequence and her feet aren't remotely bruised? Did she use her healing spell in between scenes?
  • Depends, has she never worn shoes? If so than her feet would be incredibly tough and the soles almost leathery and she'd have no problem getting around, but they would also be kind of ugly and possibly scarred, nothing like the pedicured perfect princess we see in the movie.
  • She's never worn shoes, but she's also lived her whole life in a tower with sanded wood floors and (presumably) soft carpets.
    • There are actually only a few carpets in the tower, and the floors are painted stone, not sanded wood. Remember, she's spent 18 years running around on pretty much every surface in that tower, she's either calloused or she simply ignores the little stones and things out of sheer joy at being outside. Also, she doesn't spend up time running around on rough rock, most of it is smooth paving stones or grass, which is much easier on feet.
    • Healing Factor? Since the power is apparently inherent in her now.
• If Rapunzel's tears can bring Flynn back to life, does she still have that power, or was that a one-time thing?
  • It seems that the healing property is just something she has because of the flower. The hair was simply a manifestation of that power. It's possible that any fluid from her body would have similar regenerative properties.
  • Although, there is the whole single drop of sun thing... Maybe that was the end.
  • Note, the magic in her hair died when it was cut. It was growing like the petals of the flower. She's the stem and the magic is still in her.
  • This is from the Tangled Junior Novel: "Desperately, she began to sing. She wanted to bring forth some bit of magic from her shorn hair to save him. But the magic was gone with her hair. Distraught, Rapunzel could not hold back her grief. She wept, cradling Flynn's limp body. A single golden tear fell on his cheek. Flynn stirred. Though she did not know it, Rapunzel did have one last bit of magic left deep inside her, and it was contained in that single golden tear."
    • Whoever wrote that has clearly never read Grimm's version, which is the first written version of Rapunzel. The moral of the story, as far as the Brothers Grimm saw it, was that the magic is inside her all along, and that having it manifest in her hair was simply a result of vanity.
      • In fact the Grimm version did allow Rapunzel's tears to heal the Prince, just less dramatically. He'd lost his eyes to thorns in escaping the witch, but still sought Rapunzel for two years; when they reunited, her tears restored his sight.
      • ...what. The Grimm version never had any hair magic. It was just friggin' long.
      • Yeeeeeeah, the Disney version and Grimm versions are VERY different, and not just in a "let's tone down the sex and violence" kind of way. In the Grimm version, Rapunzel wasn't royalty, the guy who saved her was. Plus he got her knocked up and then wandered around blind for ten years looking for her. The only real similarities are that there's a Girl In A Tower with Rapunzel Hair.
• At the end, what does Rapunzel have to offer as proof to the King and Queen that she's the lost princess? There's no physical evidence, no more magic hair, and the only person who knows the whole story, Mother Gothel, is dead, turned to dust, vanished without a trace. Not to mention she is actually a brunette now, as opposed to a blonde baby.
  • She looks like the queen and she recognised her by her green eyes. Plus why would a brunette come and claim she's the lost princess, unless she's the real princess.
    • Uh, lots of fame, money, and power?
  • I assume witnesses. A LOT of people saw her in the town when she still had her long, blonde hair. Not to mention the thugs and the various guards. And also Maximus.
  • There's also a clear physical resemblance between mother and daughter, and they share a few of the same physical tics (such as their little half-laugh when they see each other again).
• Dear lord, look at what the merchandising did to Maximus!
  • Blasphemy! The most Badass horse in Disney animated canon ever!
  • It's a toy for girls only. Any other toy has Maximus the way he appears in the movie.
    • Is that supposed to imply that girls prefer Maximus as this? Because last time I checked girls love him the way he is.
      • This female troper certainly does, but since I'm also interested in soldiers, I get the feeling I'm not part of this product's target audience.
  • Just think of the label as a typo. The kingdom presumably has more than one white horse, and perhaps the king gave his newly recovered daughter a mare named Maxima as a gift?
  • To be fair, the pink reins and saddle seem like something Rapunzel might do. She has a track record. The hair on the other hand...has no excuse. If it makes anyone feel better, he still manages to look pretty badass in squishy plush form.
    • In plushy form Maximus is effin' metal.
  • Maybe he's supposed to be a hairstyle horse? So girls can re-enact the Hair-cut scene to Maximus and cut HIS mane? My 7-years old goddaughter certainly did so. And afterwards demanded a new saddle and bridle from me for Max. Can't blame her.
• If Rapunzel's hair is magic, why don't her eyebrows and eyelashes glow too? That would of been, in the words of Willow, nifty.
  • Because eyebrows, eyelashes, and ... shorthairs all pretty much grow to a certain length before they fall out naturally anyway. They're a completely different kind of hair than the hair on your head.
  • Only the hair on TOP and BACK of her head is magical. Probably because it's the only hair on the human body with not so limited growth. I mean the eyelashes are forever the same length and the eyebrows can barely grow any longer whatsoever.
    • Because then she'd be Repulsel
• If Mother Gothel was the only one who knew about the flower and its properties... how does Flynn know all this? How is he able to narrate?
  • It's revealed that Rapunzel told him, and presumably was by his side as he was narrating the whole time.
• How exactly did Mother Gothel get out of the tower when Rapunzel was a baby with short(er) hair? The only door was boarded up (of course, to prevent Rapunzel from escaping).
  • Obviously the door was never blocked to begin with, Gothel obiously was locking the door each time she was entering and leaving the tower. When Rapunzel's hair grew long enough for Gothel to use it as a way in and out, she decided to block the door with stones and hide it under flower hedges, so that Rapunzel would be more secure. Flynn upon seeing the tower, decided to climb it, we can only assume he failed to find the door.
• How does Rapunzel know how to swim if she has never left the tower? This is not the type of thing she could have learned without a body of water.
  • Some people have been able to swim without having learned before, it's just that most people who think of themselves as being unable to swim are so terrified they panic and sink. Since she didn't have the fear of drowning instilled in her, she could have just kept calm and mimicked what Flynn was doing.
• We never really know how familiar Mother Gothel is to the kingdom of Corona and their King and Queen, so would she recognize the crown that Flynn stole to be that of the Lost Princess? If she DID recognize it, why would she ever take the chance to just hand it over to Rapunzel as a means to test Flynn's feelings for her? Wouldn't she think it would jog Rapunzel's memory and cause her to realize who she is?! That's against her own agenda!
  • Well, the kingdom is only a quick horse ride away from the tower, and is clearly decorated with giant murals of the lost princess wearing the tiara. Plus I'm pretty sure she didn't expect her to have her memories of infanthood jogged back from looking at a flag, plus I bet Rapunzel doesn't even know there was a tiara, much less knowing how it looks like.
    • Plus there's the fact that, for whatever reason, the tiara in the mural doesn't really look like the actual tiara. It almost looks like a bonnet or something--a singler semi-circle of white instead of three large gems.
  • Gothel knows she stole the princess so anything that resembles something royalty will shock her if she finds it in the tower. Such stuff happens.
• Here's something I don't get. Why weren't any of the bar thugs arrested when the guards showed up? I mean, they're thugs, it's kinda obvious that they've done some terrible deeds (like murder, kidnapping), so...why were there no arrests? Apparently they were all just totally ignored.
  • Because what proof was there that they did any crimes besides "they look suspicious"? That is pretty much the definition of prejudice profiling.
    • No, the hook-handed thug had apparently killed someone ("Violence-wise, my hands are not the cleanest", he says as he points to a chalk-outline.) and there's a minstrel chained up in there. And one of the others would like to "quit and be a florist..." Really, I thought it was clear they'd done some illegal stuff.
      • And yet not actual proof. And the guards weren't exactly listening to the song. Besides, did you see them break Eugene out of the prison? I'm pretty sure a handful of guards wouldn't be able to arrest a house full of these guys on the grounds of "They look spooky, there's a guy who plays the accordion in the corner, and they sang a song."
  • None of them were wanted criminals. They were just a bunch of rough looking guys at a bar who, while being unhelpful, were not really doing anything to impede the search for Eugene. Really, arresting them all would have been too much work for no real gain and a large delay in the pursuit of a known criminal who has recently stolen one of the royal crowns.
  • Those guards weren't the most competent examples of the thin blue line out there. They probably would have had their asses kicked if they tried to arrest anyone there who chooses to resist, and they probably knew that. They could have been following the Colon/Nobbs tradition of judicious application of "looking the other way."
    • Not to mention the fact that they were vastly outnumbered. There were only five guards in comparison to all those thugs. The largest of said guards was the Captain, and most of those thugs were bigger than he was. Add that to the fact that they had no evidence against them and they were already searching for someone else, and they could've just decided it wasn't worth the risk (this is one of those situations that makes me suspect the Captain isn't as incompetent as he's often made out to be).
      • Let's be fair, though, you don't exactly have to be a tactical mastermind to realize that not picking fights when you're outnumbered ten-to-one by big burly thugs is a good idea.
    • On the other hand, the pub thugs may have been mercenaries. Not the most moral crowd, but not technically criminals.
• Why did Gothel degenerate after Flynn cut Rapunzel's hair?
  • Both times Rapunzel's hair was cut Gothel was touching it while it was losing its powers. That explains why she began to rapidly age.
• So I have a question. Some people are concerned that the king and his wife stole the flower from Gothel, and that is very bad. But, seriously, how on earth was the King and Queen to know that the flower was hers in the first place? It didn't have a sign that said "Gothel's immortality flower", it wasn't in her garden, it wasn't even hidden - the guards just randomly came across it after Gothel accidently knocked away it's hiding place. Was the flower generally known to belong to a witch? Was the island/place where they found the flower Gothel's home? How?
  • They didn't knew the flower belonged to anyone so it's not stealing if they didn't know it.
• Is it just me who was bugged by the name change? All the Disney classics are named after the fairytales they're based on. It's how we know what they're about. Apparently they wanted to appeal to boys more. But how does changing it from Rapunzel to Tangled make it more boy-friendly? It just makes it look like the annoying film that's trying to be an "edgy" version that spits in the originals face. Plus, if you're the type of guy who wouldn't watch a movie simply because it was named after a chick, why would you be a Disney fan? A majority of their movies are exactly that!
  • Titles such a Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas etc. were made in different times. Times that don't imply to modern times. And that was BEFORE Disney Princess was an official franchise. So they needed a gender-neutral title in order to appeal to the male demographic, after what happened with The Princess and the Frog. The word "princess" in the title is what prevented boys from seeing the movie. So it's no wonder that the movie about the Snow Queen is named Frozen. Verbed Titles seem to work quite well.
• Is anyone else bugged by the fact that Rapunzel knows when her birthday is? Or about birthdays in general? Since it seems like Mother Gothel is always in a state of flux age-wise, I don't see why she would bring it up. Sure, Rapunzel would age normally, but if she didn't know about birthdays, then...she would never know about birthdays! And even if she found out about them in one of her books, or if Mother Gothel let it slip, or something; why on earth would she give Rapunzel her actual birthday! That's giving her way too many pieces of the puzzle at once, and it seems like Mother Gothel is smarter than that. She is a Disney villain after all.
  • Well, maybe Rapunzel was wondering why she grew older when other people didn't. As for why she got the same birthday... Uh... Look at the pretty bunny! Look at the pretty bunny! (Of course, even Disney villains carry around a Villain Ball sometimes... Maybe Gothel gave Rapunzel the birthday as a way of bonding and further making Rapunzel love Gothel?
    • I was under the impression that Gothel gave her the day that she kidnapped her as her birthday. After all, Flynn only says that it's "the lantern thing they do for the princess", and they never explicitly say that it's for her birthday; Rapunzel is the only one who associates it with her birthday. Perhaps she gave her the date she kidnapped her to celebrate her own success (after all, she is pretty vain). She probably didn't expect that the King and Queen would put lanterns into the sky every year, or that Rapunzel would figure out what they were. She is pretty obviously trying to blow it off at the beginning when she says "I distinctly remember: you're birthday was last year".
  • Birthdays are used all the time by parents as a means of controlling little children, especially today. In fact, you can substitute "birthday" with any holiday or special occasion when gifts are given. Haven't you ever been told, "if you be good, you'll get a nice present for [insert occasion]"? Little children are more willing to behave when something desirable or gratifying will be rewarded to them for it. The above poster has it right that Gothel never expected the lanterns or Rapunzel's connections. It doesn't really stop her from trying the methodology behind control through presents, though: she agrees on the three-day trip to get white seashells for Rapunzel's paint in an attempt to get her to forget about the lanterns. And makes hazelnut soup, Rapunzel's favorite... though both times it fails to make an impact. So really, the birthday thing is a moment of Fridge Brilliance that blew up in Gothel's face. As far as the aging thing, Rapunzel isn't bothered by it until she learns she was kidnapped, and it's been explained by other tropers why the healing ritual serves as an important bond for Rapunzel to Gothel.
  • I think Gothel just kept her birthday the same because at first, she didn't think it would matter. The lantern thing probably wasn't very big at first, and hence you couldn't see it from the tower. By the time it did get big enough to see, it was too late for Gothel to change Rapunzel's birthday on her. When Rapunzel sneaks out of bed, she's about five, maybe older? It's possible that Gothel didn't realize you could see the lights from the tower at that point, since she was asleep.
• Why does Rapunzel's hair loses the magic when it's cut? And I don't mean the cut piece, the one that is no longer attached to Rapunzel, but the part that is still attached to her head. Wouldn't the magic keep flowing through her body and into the hair?
  • Maybe most of the power was in the length of her hair, kind of like a rubber band being stretched. Once her hair was cut, the band/power 'snapped back', internalizing her power - that could also be why Rapunzel was able to heal Flynn/Eugene at the end with her tears- Her power was internalized by then. Yeah...
  • The most obvious answer is that it's just how the magic works, but it's not impossible that each strand of hair is a magical circuit that requires a connection to the very end of the strand to function. If you cut the hair, you break the circuit, and magic ceases to flow through it. Perhaps if one were to pluck out a strand, what replaces it would have the same magic, but who knows.
• I don't know if anyone has mention this yet, but how come Mother Gothel was able to bind and gag Rapunzel? I mean Rapunzel seemed strong enough to fight her off, as in evidence of when Rapunzel grabbed Mother Gothel's arm after finding out she was the lost princess. She couldn't break out of the grip until Rapunzel threw her into a mirror. So why all of sudden after that display of strength was Gothel able to do that?
  • She snuck up on her and she had a knife. Gothel is a head taller with more meat on her bones than Rapunzel, I think she lost the mirror incident out of shock that Rapunzel was fighting back.
  • Oh, okay. Thanks for explaining that to me. I was confused at first.
  • That, and the fact that Rapunzel probably would not have given her full effort to resist Gothel as much as Gothel was fighting to restrain her. Even though Rapunzel was willing to fight back, she was likely still not entirely willing to hurt the woman who'd taken care of her for 18 years. Only after Flynn was stabbed before her eyes was Rapunzel really determined to fight Gothel with everything she had.
  • You see, I'm not gonna buy that for two reasons; One. Rapunzel at the time knew that Gothel betrayed her. Knew that Gothel was never her mother, and being the strong and smart young woman that she is, knew she was kidnapped at birth. Add alongside that her incredible proficiency with her hair was prominent and well-defined, and she knew the tower's foyer better than her mother ever could-inciting an incredible home field advantage for the girl--she was a Lady of War with the sweet and gentle natures that are imparted by Hair of Gold. How was she defeated in this instance?
    • Well, remember when Rapunzel reaches out towards her as she stumbles out of the window while aging rapidly? She still cared about her, because Gothel is kind of the only mother she's ever known, despite what she's done. I'm agreeing with all of the theories that Gothel snuck up on her, seeing as Rapunzel's back was turned and the room was dark after she called the woman out. Also, in desperation, Gothel, could've easily been stronger than Rapunzel, or threatened her with her knife or something.
    • I guess Gothel must've just come up behind Rapunzel and knocked her out (they wouldn't be willing to show a girl being knocked out like that), when Rapunzel woke up she was already chained and gagged.
    • Bingo. That's how she got the upper hand in any situation: she intended to stab Flynn as he came out the secret tunnel, she knocked out the Stabbington Brothers from behind, and that's how she stabbed Flynn when he came through the tower. It was her M.O. when it came to dealing with things of a physical nature. Rapunzel was most certainly stronger, if for nothing else than hauling Gothel up the tower for so many years, but she was so convinced by that point that she had made her stand and there was nothing Gothel could do about it that she let her guard down and was knocked out from behind.
    • I was hoping the Blu-Ray might have an extended version of that scene where, after Gothel says "now I'm the bad guy...", we see her picking up Rapunzel's frying pan. No such luck, but that's what I'm going with in my head canon.
• Maximus the horse: Putting aside the question of why he's so smart, he did some nonsensical things:
  • You might wanna give an explanation as to what those things are cuz I didn't see any.
  • After all his attempts to find and capture Flynn, he lets a pretty girl tell him to stop? For all he knew she was his accomplice (in fact he DID see her aiding him to escape at the mine.) Even if only for a day, that seems very unprofessional of him. Now if she had saved Max's life first or something, it would have been more believable.
    • Well, he is a pretty smart horse - maybe he unconsciously recognized her as the lost princess? (There are mosaics of her in the town after all, and her eye color is pretty distinctive).
    • If Max had realized Rapunzel was the princess, I think he would have obsessed with telling of bringing her to the King and Queen instead of letting her gallivant around town with a thief.
    • Looking at this from a human point of view for a second (or perhaps a horse with clearly anthropomorphized traits, rather), he wouldn't be the first guy to let himself get swayed by a pretty girl acting nice to him.
  • Why did Max ask the thugs for help? He barely saw them, and again, only knew they helped Flynn escape -- he never saw them get all chummy with Rapunzel. Why believe they would help? In fact, how was he able to explain the situation to them ("Rapunzel is in danger, so is Flynn, you must rescue him from being hung so he can save her.") Kinda complicated to say for a non-talking animal without even hands! Oh and who came up with the rescue plan, was it Max? (He might know the castle's layout and guard schedule, but again, how could he explain all of that?
    • The second part of that (the way he explains it) probably can be explained by Rule of Cool, the first part? He needed some people for help, so he probably went to the only other people he thought would be able to assist Flynn, seeing them as antiguards, if you will.
    • Not sure about the second part either, but the first part is fairly easy to explain. Max knew, because he found the secret passage in the Snuggly Duckling, that Flynn had been there, and the fact the thugs didn't show it to the guards showed they were helping Flynn. He then later later learns Flynn and Rapunzel are traveling together. Ergo, when Flynn and Rapunzel are both in trouble, he goes to the thugs he knew helped Flynn, assuming that once they rescued him, he in turn would rescue Rapunzel. How did he tell them Flynn was in trouble? There were wanted posters of Flynn in the bar. Grabbing one and waving it around while looking panicked and frantically gesturing toward the door would get the point across, and once they understood they could have followed him to Corona--where, once Max had gotten them past the watch, and they learned Flynn was in jail, the thugs figured out a plan? Maybe some of them had been in jail before so knew the layout, or they spent some time skulking and listening to the guards' plans and order of the watch; we don't know how long it took Gothel to get Rapunzel to the tower, after all.
    • My vote is that Ulf the mime translated whatever Max was saying. With mime.
    • Yes that is the definite answer you are awesome!
  • It's also possible that Flynn is making up all the stuff about Maximus, since he seems to be a bit of an Unreliable Narrator. Plus did you forget that Rapunzel and Pascal can communicate with each other without difficulties. If that can happen, anything can happen.
    • Max might be a smart horse, but he's still a horse, which means he doesn't think like a human. There might be something of a Shout-Out to the Unicorn/Virgin dynamic going on, where Max simply can't resist any request from Rapunzel, or perhaps the apple she offered him is like crack to him....
      • Rapunzel never gave Max any apples. Eugene gave him some before the boat scene.
• Flynn cutting Rapunzel's hair: This bothers a lot of people because, well, why didn't he let Rapunzel cure him and then cut her hair? Note he did it in one thrust with a shard of glass so it was rather easy! The only explanation I can think of is that he was afraid Gothel would stab her afterwards (which would make sense of when he says "you would die" to her.) Note also that Flynn had no way to know Gothel would age to death instantly as a result.
  • Keep in mind, Rapunzel PROMISED Mother Gothel that if she was allowed to heal Flynn, she'd go with Gothel and never try to escape again. Rapunzel keeps her promises, remember? So Flynn begs her not to heal him, since it would mean she'd be dooming herself. Rapunzel was willing to make the sacrifice, so Flynn returned the favor, fixing it so Rapunzel couldn't keep up her end of the bargain, freeing her from her promise to Gothel. Gothel drying up into dust was just bonus (it's quite unlikely that Flynn knew that would happen, though it's possible he might have guessed that it could be possible).
  • Here are your points, but I decided to split them up so there'd be no wall of text. XD

1. 1. 1. Why didn't he let Rapunzel cure him and then cut her hair? With the way that Gothel was dragging Rapunzel away, who was he supposed to know that he'd even have time to cut her hair after he was healed. It was a bit of a Heroic Sacrifice on his part -- he just wanted her to be happy.

• • • Even if Gothel escaped afterwards with Rapunzel (note she had chained Flynn to a wall) surviving to rescue her later is a better plan than dying after cutting her hair (again: what if Gothel killed her out of spite?) Oh and remember, Maximus was down there and he knew it, he would have helped Rapunzel the moment they got out of the tower.
      • Yes, but you also have to remember what's happening to Flynn right at that moment -- he is dying, and here's a chance to save the one he loves -- to do one good thing before death in a way. Yes maybe it could happen, but does Flynn know that? Also, it would mean the movie would be even longer, and much as I loved it, if the ending had been so bloated with that sort of thing... I bet people would be on here complaining about the ending. ^_~

1. 1. 1. He wasn't afraid that Gothel would kill her afterwards -- he knows Rapunzel's worth as a healer (and as a person), and he probably heard Rapunzel when she said to Gothel that she "wouldn't sing anymore" (slightly paraphrased, sorry), and guessed that Gothel wanted Rapunzel for her healing capabilities.

• • • Once she no longer had those powers, she would be worthless to Gothel. And considering she just stabbed him, I'd be worried about Rapunzel's safety then too. Sorry, I meant "He wasn't afraid that Gothel would kill her afterwards if she still had her magical hair properties. Imagine if Gothel did stab Rapunzel, and Rapunzel refused to heal herself? That would not be good...

1. 1. 1. Flynn saw how happy Rapunzel was at being outside, at seeing all the sights, and being with all the people. However Rapunzel then promised to give all of that away to save him. If you see Rapunzel as a flower, her whole life she's survived in this tower -- then she went outside and really grew and er.. Blossomed. Now Rapunzel's volunteering to stay locked away again? He probably meant it metaphorically -- she wouldn't literally die, just metaphorically.

• • • It's OK, this is what most people thought, in fact it probably was what the moviemakers wanted the audience to think, that for Rapunzel life as a slave to Gothel would be worse than death. It's just that there are so many other obvious options -= cutting the hair after being healed, letting Maximus save her, escaping the tower and then searching for her with help from everybody in the kingdom, etc. -- that the sacrifice comes across as unnecessary (except for Rule of Drama of course.)
    • No. See above. Rapunzel PROMISED. Flynn knows Rapunzel will always keep promises. That means that if Flynn allows Rapunzel to heal him, then Rapunzel will stay with Gothel forever. If he tried to rescue her after, she would refuse. If anyone else tried to rescue her after, she would refuse. Because that is what she promised. As for cutting the hair after, that changes nothing, as the promise would still stand, because Rapunzel would have already healed Flynn. About the only way Rapunzel could have been freed from the promise at that point would be for someone to kill Gothel. But heroes in these sorts of stories simply don't deliberately contemplate murder, even of fully deserving villains. And even in this case, it's quite possible that Rapunzel would still be bound by the promise (perhaps to stay and tend Gothel's grave, for all time), because she promised to stay with Gothel "forever", no strings attached. Furthermore, at that point, Flynn might not even have known whether or not Gothel was killable at all, thanks to the flower's magic. As far as he knew at that point, she's an immortal who's lived for centuries. (All this is on the presumption that Flynn could not possibly have known that cutting the hair would actually kill Gothel right then and there.)
    • It looks like a possibility until you remember that Gothel is right there in the tower still. As some people above have pointed out, was it even a possibility for Flynn to cut Rapunzel's hair after being healed? Maybe there was - but did Flynn know that? For all he knew Gothel was going to drag Rapunzel away the microsecond she was done singing, meaning that if Flynn wanted to save her he had to act fast - before he could be healed.
    • Rule of Drama, everybody. Rule of Drama.
  • Honestly, the thing that bugs me the most about Flynn cutting Rapunzel's hair for her is that he did it without permission or communication, effectively ruining all the agency that the narrative had built up for Rapunzel up til then. It would have been a much lovelier demonstration of Rapunzel's strength and grit if she'd cut it herself. It's justified, but still a little annoying.
    • All agency? Some, sure (a very, very small bit), but all? Rapunzel's strength and grit has already been established, when she made her promise to Gothel, if not well before. No more demonstration on that point is required. (And if Rapunzel cut her own hair, it means she's letting Flynn die AND possibly deliberately murdering Gothel (there's a much higher possibility that Rapunzel would have known what cutting her hair would mean to Gothel than Flynn would) in order for herself to be free. How's that for Character Development? And it would be hardly any better if Flynn asked first and Rapunzel said yes.) But Flynn's Character Development had to this point NOT been completed -- he's still the selfish thief. He's started showing concern for others, but he has not to this point sacrificed anything for another, yet. He has to make this sacrifice to complete his development and prove himself deserving of Rapunzel's love.
    • The potential point of that scene was to show what Rapunzel and Flynn's love for each other meant. It's a series of Heroic Sacrifices on both their parts- Rapunzel gets to show how much she'd sacrifice for Flynn (being locked away, never fighting again) and Flynn gets to show how much he'd sacrifice (dying^[1]). Maybe Flynn should have asked if it was alright to cut her hair, but in this context, Flynn cutting her hair was less of a 'control' mechanism and more of a 'rescue'--his life in exchange for hers.
    • It's my opinion that he cut her hair before she could heal him at least partially because he thought he wasn't good enough for her. He had seen how much she loved the world, and how much she dreamed, and since he had never had a dream like hers or seen the world as she had, he decided she deserved someone who did.
  • I thought he did it because he didn't want her to think he abuses her power, like Gothel did. To illustrate with an example: I did well in school and borrowed other people my homework for them to copy. A friend of mine who rarely did her homework refused to borrow it from me though, even if I offered her. Why? Because she didn't want me to feel as if she was just using me. And that's how I took this scene.
• The rising water in a cave scene. Where exactly was the AIR going? It actually looked like the water was going to stop rising for a second, then it resumed. There really REALLY didn't look like there were any cracks in the rock or anything where air could escape.
  • Maybe some of the rocks had microscopic cracks between them? After all, it is rather hard to contain air when you are putting things together versus when you have one thing. It's like lincoln logs versus a balloon (sort of). The lincoln logs (legos?) can be rather close together - closer then would allow a human being to travel through them, but still enough space for air.
  • There are always cracks in rock and ground like that. If the ground directly above isn't the bottom of a lake or ocean, then there must be enough small spaces for things like rainwater and air to move through.
• I was just watching "Mother Knows Best" on Youtube (again) and I just found something that bugs me in that scene. Gothel is deliberately making the tower appear ominous and dark to fit her means of keeping Rapunzel in the tower by fear, but what bugs me is that is - well, she actually uses a spotlight to focus on her during the last bit of her Villain Song. Where on earth did she get that from? The setting is quasi-1700s, and there is no way that Gothel might have any knowledge of that, and it's impossible to manufacture a spotlight in a closed tower.
  • She could always use burning magnesium ^[2] with a mirror to focus it. Really any light source could be used, she just needs enough focus^[3].
  • I think we could use a trope called "Song and Story segregation" - you'll notice that in a lot of musicals, they go through rather elaborate dances and songs only to never mention them again or never pull out those strange abilities, how a bunch of cast members who you previously saw dancing seem to vanish from existence, and how the architecture of the set almost never matches the stuff that happens during the broadway musical number. I always imagined that the songs don't actually happen in story; but they're more of how the character(s) imagine a particular scene, exaggerating certain things. In this case, Gothel was probably just mentioning what a cruel world was, being a bit dramatic to get her point across to the rebellious teen, but Rapunzel was just exaggerating what Gothel was actually doing.
    • That trope is called Musical World Hypotheses.
  • Dude, witch here. Illusion magic.
    • Gothel isn't a witch in this version.
  • Because it's not a spotlight. At least, not as we would define it in the modern era. Gothel just opened up the window in the top of the tower. It's a narrow point of sunlight coming down the centre of the tower, which would give the same effect; she closed it at the start of "Mother Knows Best" and could easily have opened it again off-screen.
• Rapunzel was the beloved princess/future queen and Flynn was a criminal with no family who just barely escaped being executed for his crimes. Where does he get off making Rapunzel wait several years before he proposes to her? It makes more sense that an engagement would be arranged immediately according to the fairytale convention of the one rescues the princess being the one to marry her but that the marriage would take place later. It does NOT make sense that he would wait so long before declaring his intention to marry her. It's not like he'd be her only potential suitor or that he had any better choices or that they didn't love each other. To me, there doesn't seem to be any reason that two people in their position wouldn't state their intentions clearly before the king or someone else took the option out of their hands.
  • So? They dated a while to get to know each other better. It's also possible that the king offered Rapunzel other marriage offers and she said "No." The king didn't seem like the kind of guy who would force a marriage on the daughter who was stolen from him for years.
  • It was revealed that Flynn was just kidding about the whole "after asking me for many, many, many years, I finally said yes" thing. Plus when I hear "many, many, many years" I think decades, not years. Since it was revealed that Eugene proposed to her and we're not given a time period, it's highly possible he proposed to her, not long time after the princess was returned.
    • Flynn Rider. Unreliable Narrator. Likes to exaggerate. That's all the explanation anyone needs.
  • I saw it as Disney trying to subvert their tradition of Fourth Date Marriages, which has been criticized in the past.
  • Did you miss the entire point of the ending? Flynn was lying. It was Rapunzel who finally said yes. Plus with the announcement of Tangled Ever After which focuses on their wedding, it's clear they're not much/barely any older than they were in the film.

Flynn: But I know what the big question is? Did Rapunzel and I ever get married? Well I am happy to say after years and years of asking, I finally said yes.
Rapunzel: Eugene...
Flynn: Okay, okay. I asked her.

• Why didn't Flynn get a trial? What the hell kind of wonderful kingdom is this? That could have been pretty damn useful in telling the royal family "Hey, I found your lost kid and I can prove it!"
  • He doesn't know he found the lost princess. Only Rapunzel knew she was the lost princess.
• During Gothel's Villain Song, she says the line "And you're gettin' kind chubby, but I say that 'cause I love ya!" Since this is set in the 1700's this was long before the rise of cheap, processed food. Having a fat wife was the "trophy wife" of that era because her husband was wealthy enough to afford all that food. So, Gothel calling Rapunzel "a little chubby" should actually be quite the compliment! Eh, chalk it up to Values Dissonance...
  • Actually this could be a case of Fridge Brilliance -- Gothel is deliberatly misinterpreting the norms of 'beauty' to further make Rapunzel rely on her. After all, if she's not pretty in the outside world (according to her mother and who else would she trust the most?) then that's one more strike against the 'outside' world.
  • I doubt this was intended but I saw it as a link to the original tale where Rapunzel asks Gothel why she no longer fits into her dresses as she does not know she's pregnant.
    • That makes sense In-Universe, but let's face it, would Disney execs really know that? They were probably just imposing a modern sense of beauty where it doesn't make sense.
      • Are you saying that Disney execs don't do their research and don't know that? Just because they make "kid's movies" doesn't mean they don't know about the more adult version of what they adapt.
    • Take this, then close your eyes for the reprise when Gothel recites, "This is why he's here! Don't let him deceive you! Give it to him, watch, you'll see!" and try to forget it's about a crown. Not too subtle it becomes, eh?
  • Or it was a case of Fridge Brilliance. While most of the times, bigger women were considered more desirable, sometimes, "thin was in". (In the late middle ages, I think.) Gothel is a couple of centuries old. Perhaps she spent most of her youth during that time?
• Not really about the movie, as much as it is the fandom: Would people find Gothel so sympathetic if she were a man? I'm sorry, but I don't see why everybody sees her as so sympathetic. Her relationship with Rapunzel is complex, but it IS captive and captor. Since both Gothel and Rapunzel are female, people just brush it off and say that Gothel really loved her, but imagine the entire movie was exactly the same except Gothel was a man: Kidnapping Rapunzel, keeping her captive and using her hair for eternal youth, telling her that everyone outside is evil and the only safe place is with him, having outbursts when she wants to leave, panicking when she leaves, etc. Remind you of anything? Gothel isn't seeming so sympathetic now, is she?
  • Okay.
    • I agree completely. This leathering-pantsing has to stop. Gothel is not a good person and she brought what happened to her on herself at the end. She had every chance to come forward with how to work the flower, could have become Rapunzel's maid at the castle, or just let the matter drop. She had every opportunity to redeem herself and didn't take it.
    • If she were a man, then she would basically be Frollo with a more sympathetic motive. And she would be just as sympathetic, because of that motive. The sympathy comes from the motive and is unaffected by her actions. People have to stop assuming that finding Gothel sympathetic is the same as excusing her actions. Her actions make her a villain. Her motives make her sympathetic. The two are separate issues.
      • Except that her motive is being a selfish bitch and keeping herself young forever. She never tries to help anyone or heal anyone with the flower or Rapunzel EXCEPT herself. We never, not once see her do anything selfless for someone else. Everything she does for Rapunzel is so she feels comfortable inside and never dares step outside.
      • Her motive for the first 100 years would have been selfishly keeping herself young. At this time she was just hiding the flower, and not actively harming anyone. Selfish, sure? Complete Monster? No. Her motive after the first 100 years (ie the time of the story) was staying alive. Fear of death (excruciatingly, agonizing, painful death, at that) is something many people can sympathize with. The dynamic is rather parallel to a Faustian bargain. At first, it's a seemingly small temptation, (not noble, but no one's hurt, right, so what's the harm?), but then the character digs herself deeper and deeper, until, at least in her mind, she's trapped, required to do ever more horrible things to keep the status quo, but unable to face the terrifying consequences of breaking that status quo. Now the Draco in Leather Pants crowd who think Gothel is actually justified in her actions, are, quite frankly, nuts. But others can see sympathetic aspects to Gothel's character without denying her villainhood. It's a "there but for the grace of god go I" kind of sympathy.
      • Agree with the above premise. I personally could care less about the gender aspect of fictional characters, it's their personalities that matter to me. However, I can say I prefer her as a woman, because if Gothel were male (or worse, they both were), fans would ship them.
  • Is Gothel really terrified of dying, though, or just getting old and ugly?
    • Note that when Rapunzel's hair gets cut, the first thing Gothel does is run to look at her reflection, and then cover her face.
  • I don't think she would be as sympathetic if she were a man, but for different reasons: I think that what makes Gothel sympathetic is that she reminds many people of their own mothers (and I don't think it would work as well with fathers), usage of magical hair aside. "You're getting a little chubby", "Stay home, the world outside is a dangerous place", "Listen to you mother, mother knows best", "Oh, so YOU know best now? Fine, do as you like", "I told you so", and many, many other things. Not to mention that she appears to give her all the freedom she wants at home. She makes her favourite food, she allows her to paint and agrees to go on three-day-trips to get her colour. Whether these are hints that she loves her is obviously debatable, but it makes her more sympathetic, and it's probably why she comes across as a terrifying villain. For example, Cinderella's stepmother obviously disliked her, and while she was very cruel, she wasn't really an ambiguous character at all.
    • Let's be honest, though, 'all the freedom she wants at home' isn't exactly saying much when 'home' is a couple of rooms at the top of a tall tower the girl's never going to leave.
    • But remember, Gothel didn't have to "mother" her at all. If all she really cared about was Rapunzel's hair, then she could have just kept her chained up in the tower all day, fed her just enough to stay alive, and visited only as often as she had to to stay young. It would certainly have been less work for her in the long run, and it woud have ensured that Rapunzel never escaped. The fact that she spent time teaching Rapunzel to walk and talk and let her pursue hobbies and spent money on her and cooked her favorite foods indicates some kind of love, even if it is twisted and abusive.
    • To cast a more cynical light on this, however, Gothel is clearly savvy enough to realize you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Sure, Gothel could have just gone the easy route and chained Rapunzel up all her life -- if she wanted Rapunzel to grow up hating her and no doubt seek any opportunity to escape, kill Gothel or even die just to spite her. Raise her as a daughter who loves you and who you 'love' in return, however, and you get her to stay of her own free will... as well as plenty of opportunity to reinforce what a big bad world it is and how you really should stick with Mummy forever. And so long as she's kept happy and content with a few hobbies, since she's in the tower all day might as well get her to do all the cooking, cleaning and generally do all the housework... all in all, with a bit more effort, Gothel gets a much better deal if she keeps Rapunzel on-side than she would if all she had was a miserable chained up prisoner with long hair who loathed her; it's not hard to argue that her 'love' is actually closer to enlightened self-interest or even outright selfishness than genuine feeling. And even if it is, just because Gothel's not a Complete Monster doesn't mean her 'love' makes her worthy of sympathy or regard; she's still overall toxic and abusive. Love isn't always a good or sympathetic thing.
    • Ah, but this assumes that Rapunzel would even know of an outside world to escape to in a case like this. If Gothel was lazy and cruel enough to keep her chained up and uneducated, then she certainly wouldn't have bothered to tell her anything about the kingdom. As long as she kept her away from the window, or obstructed it in some way, Rapunzel would have no idea that there was a world outside the tower at all. Hell, after all the years of little to no mental or sensory stimulation, she might not even have a high enough IQ for it to occur to her to escape. And as long as Gothel didn't actively hurt her when she visited, what does Rapunzel have to compare to? She might think that living like this was perfectly normal, even healthy. That's not to say that selfishness and fear didn't decide most of Gothel's actions, and it didn't escape this troper's notice that most terms of endearment were directed to Rapunzel's hair, rather than the girl herself. This troper never meant to argue that Gothel deserves sympathy or somehow isn't a villain, although perhaps her first post was hastily constructed and unclear. She just meant to say that Gothel does love Rapunzel, albeit in an abusive and manipulative way. It almost seems like Gothel thinks she loves Rapunzel because she gives her nice things and provides her with a pretty good standard of living, and doesn't really understand what true, unconditional love is.
    • Maybe, but the above point remains; the fact that Gothel isn't a Complete Monster who is willing to raise a child in barely human conditions doesn't mean she actually loves Rapunzel in any meaningful sense, though. After all, if our standards for 'loving mother figure' are 'someone who doesn't chain a child up in a dungeon and intentionally inflect mental impairment upon them in order to control them', then those are some pretty low standards. She might think she does, but just because she doesn't throw Rapunzel in a dungeon for all her life doesn't mean she loves her.
• Another interesting aspect of Gothel's leatherpantsing worth asking: Would she have been as sympathetic if she had not been portrayed by Donna Murphy and her incredible singing voice? There seems to be a significant chunk of the fandom of many works for whom admiration of an actor spills over into identification with the character, rewarding stellar work by the actor with sympathy for the character. It seems that most, if not all Draco in Leather Pants characters in film are portrayed by actors who did incredible jobs, or, in fiction, written incredibly well by the author(s).
  • Well, yeah. A good performance/good writing adds a lot of depth to a character, and depth can lead to sympathy.
• Remember when Eugene was tossed high into the air and ended up falling onto the horse? Wouldn't that have hurt the equipment a little?
  • It's an animated movie, not a live-action movie. There's a trope called Toon Physics, which is how cartoon characters like Goofy survive.
  • Pretty much the same can be said for the horse not breaking it's spine with that impact (or breaking his legs on any number of other occasions).
• When Mother Gothel gives Rapunzel the satchel, how is she able to carry it around all day without Flynn noticing? Did she leave it in one spot and then come back for it when they got on the boat?
  • Maybe.
  • Hammerspace. Or maybe she hid it in her hair!
  • At the campsite, she hid it in a tree stump. The next morning Max shows up. I think she probably hid it in his saddle.
  • In the boat scene, there isn't enough space in the small boat for either Rapunzel to hide the satchel, or for Eugene to hide the two lanterns he suddenly produces, where the other would not have noticed. Hammerspace indeed. (Barring two separate secret compartments in the hull, one of which Eugene knew about but Rapunzel didn't, and one Rapunzel knew about but Eugene didn't...)
    • He could've grabbed two lanterns that were already floating nearby and a shot showing that was not included in the film.
    • Or they could have been collapsing lanterns like they have for some Chinese festivals.
• In the end, Maximus is made in charge of the guards and supposedly, crime "dissappears" overnight. However, he is clearly seen taking a bribe from one of the guards and apparently stole all the apples in the kingdom as well.
  • Ah -- but that's the good thing about horses -- you can only bribe them with apples! (And by it being your birthday and being a beautiful young lady, but I digress). Do you really think that Max would let himself be apple!bribed by people he trusted, even just a little bit? As for the other part, well, you saw how Max reacted when Flynn told him that he had bought "most of" the apples, right? It's more likely that Max is paid in apples, rather than stealing them^[4].
  • I saw the decreasing crime rate having something to do with Flynn's change of attitude as well as Maximus's position...
    • Flynn was responsible for all the crime in the kingdom? (Or perhaps, in reparation for his prior crimes, or in exchange for a pardon for them, he had to help the kingdom fight crime, as some version of community service? At the least he should have had inside info on people, places, etc that the authorities would find useful....)
      • And let's not forget that most of the professional criminals hung out at the Snuggly Duckling and are now more or less reformed. Add in the Stabbington Brothers being in jail and most all of the professionals seem to be accounted for. Really, all Max had to do was keep petty crimes down.
• Rapunzel's hair seems to vary in length throughout the movie, but it is almost never shown to be much longer than the height of the tower (there's some slack when she lets down her hair to people, but not that much). So how does she rappel down the side of the tower, ending up a little way off the ground? To do this, her hair would have to be looped over the hook at the top, making it twice as long as the tower is high.
  • From what I can tell from this video, she loops it around the hook in a loose knot, then slides down her hair. Then we get the Foot Focus and she pulls it off the hook at that point, so when the camera goes back to her, her hair is on the ground.
  • Looking closely at the video makes the problem even worse. Her hair reaches all the way to the ground. As she slides she seems to be combining the down-going and up-going hair rope into a single rope (without it gaining any thickness). She stops herself just a few feet above the ground, and now her hair is looped up to the tower and back down. It is more than twice as long as the tower is high.
  • Hair is naturally elastic. Healthy hair when dry can stretch up to 20% of the original length without breaking; wet hair has 50% elasticity. Would it really be a stretch to say Rapunzel's magic hair has ultra elasticity?
  • Officially, her hair is 70 feet long, but the creators have said they deliberately made her hair different lengths in different scenes. In some, she can carry her hair in a bundle in her arms. In others, her and Eugene have to carry her hair in equally large bundles. Not to mention that it gets tied up in a 5-foot braid that doesn't break her neck.
    • The creators had a hard enough modeling her hair, so in scenes where shorter or longer hair would be more convenient, they went with that. If they had kept it sctrictly at one length it wouldn've turned into an even bigger bitch to animate.
  • The hair is magic. Deal with it.
• What exactly happens to all those damn lanterns every year? Is there some sort of clean-up or is there a field somewhere with them all just sort've there.
  • I would guess they all eventually fall into the surrounding water (so it's less of a fire hazard) and some poor guy has to go around and fish 'em out the next morning.
  • Being mostly made of paper, lots of them would probably get waterlogged, sink, and rapidly decay.
    • The metal rings wouldn't decay though.
• So... her hair is the length of a tower. No amount of braiding would make it to just above her ankle.
  • The girls braided her hair into several braids that were put together to make one giant braid at the end.
• Did anyone else notice that absolutely no one in the film but Rapunzel had blonde hair? Wouldn't this have been kind of a giveaway as to who she was, seeing as the only other blondie was the princess?
  • As both the king and queen have brown hair, it could be expected that Rapunzel's hair will turn brown when she's older, rather than staying blond. After all, it happens in Real Life, so...
  • They probably won't accuse every blonde girl that walks in of being the princess. It's likely that blonde hair is just very rare in the area, not completely nonexistent, maybe blonde travellers from other places pass by from time to time.
  • We also didn't see absolutely every person in the kingdom, only a fairly small handful (even in the crowd scenes, we probably only see a drop in the water of the local population); there's probably plenty of blondes, they just didn't make it into shot. In a meta-sense, having no other blonde characters appear means that Rapunzel stands out a lot more than she otherwise would; this isn't to necessarily suggest that she's the only blonde for miles around.
• Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the thugs of the Snuggling Duckling having stereotypically feminine interests automatically qualifies them for Ambiguously Gay? What, can men not be interested in collecting ceramic unicorns without being homosexual now?
  • The sexual orientation of the thugs never crossed this troper's mind, before. I believe that Disney was trying to create a comedic contrast, rather than any kind of statement on homosexuality. A hardened thug who loves knitting has a better impact and creates more of a vivid image than one who dreams of being, say, a blacksmith...
  • Playing with stereotypes like that is a pretty common Disney thing lately (or at least on the Disney channel). I think the only one who was intended to be ambiguously gay was the interior designer.
• Speaking of the thugs, the whole "I Have A Dream" song sequence actually only mentions four dreams: the hook-hander dreams of being a pianist, the stinker dreams of being a lover, of course Rapunzel dreams of seeing lanterns and Flynn of aptly accented riches - but all the other thugs have hobbies, not dreams per se. Knitting and baking and collecting ceramic figures aren't exactly dreams, are they?
  • Because the song needed more rhymes?
  • While I'm not sure about the ceramic unicorns, it seemed that most of the thugs wanted to do those hobbies professionally. It's mentioned one of them wants to be a florist.
    • Ceramic unicorns: Gotta Catch Em All.
  • You could say he dreams of collecting all the ceramic unicorns.
    • I got the impression that the song was saying "We'd LIKE to do these things in public, but being thugs and all, who'd take us seriously?"
  • Or possibly they want to be the best at what they do?
• Gothel's fate: It's a case of "What Could Have Been" for me. It seems like Gothel just got driven by her irrational fear of aging to kidnap Rapunzel rather than actual malice and she eventually grew to love Rapunzel, in her own twisted way. I mean, it's easy to say that her parenting methods are as a result of her living alone for decades. And they could have had it at the end where Gothel, after using the flower for god knows how long, learned to come to terms with her mortality (let's face it, that's a wholesome lesson right there, if not for the kids, then at the very least for the elderly/terminally-ill viewers) and with it the strength to let Rapunzel go.
  • Gothel didn't love Rapunzel that much. Think about it this way: I love you (Mother Gothel to Rapunzel), I love you more (Rapunzel to Mother Gothel, and evidently true), I love you most (Mother Gothel to Rapunzel's hair). Seriously, watch the video the first time she does it. "I love you" is delivered to Rapunzel, but she's not even looking at her for "I love you most". And no, her parenting methods are not the result of bad people skills. Look at her interactions with the Stabbington Brothers. She has spectacular people skills.
  • In addition to the above, Gothel is also a classic example of an emotional abuser. Let's see; she's passive-aggressive and emotionally manipulative, and uses guilt and fear to control Rapunzel; notice how she's quick to play the victim whenever they have an argument and very obviously works to make Rapunzel afraid of the outside world and how she's unsuited for it. This is balanced with the occasional treat, such as hazelnut soup or the paint supplies she agrees to get Rapunzel for her birthday (and note how she makes a big deal of it as well; another common tactic is to play the martyr in order to hold it over the victim and get them to feel guilty for not 'appreciating' them). Most of her interactions with Rapunzel involve her criticizing, undermining, ridiculing and patronising the girl, mostly in the form of condescending 'jokes' or 'concern'; nearly everything she says is designed to somehow chip away at Rapunzel's self-confidence and self-esteem, or establish how much she depends on Gothel. She isolates Rapunzel from the outside world, and from family and friends; most obviously through the tower, but also by reiterating how Rapunzel is unsuited for the outside world, how she'll never survive out there, how she needs to stay in the tower for her own good. Plus, it seems like she uses Rapunzel as a bit of a slave, or at least a servant; there's the singing, obviously, but it also seems that Rapunzel does most-if-not-all of the cooking, cleaning, housework, etc. And even if Gothel did genuinely care for Rapunzel, fact is she's not Rapunzel's real mother and has no right to have her or her love; if she genuinely loved Rapunzel she'd do what was both right and best for the girl, and return her to her real family. The fact she doesn't suggests that even her 'love', if indeed it exists, is based more on selfishness and a desire to control Rapunzel than any genuine feeling. Fact is, any sympathetic motives are more than outweighed by the fact that Gothel is a controlling, abusive and outright toxic presence in Rapunzel's life.
    • Pretty much all this. Many of the "nice" things she does for Rapunzel aren't because she truly loves her, but just ways to make her (Gothel) seem like a good guy. Abusers in real life do it all the time, "I've done all these nice things for you, that's proof that I love you!". It's also pretty notable where Mother Gothel makes a big deal about getting the seashell paints: "Oh, it's just such a long trip!". She puts it that way because it makes her appear selfless so Rapunzel would be less likely to try and rebel.
• Flynn does pick up a rather big Idiot Ball just prior to the stabbing scene. While it's a Shout-Out to the source material, given what Flynn knew or suspected at that point about Gothel, Rapunzel, and their relationship, it really wasn't very prudent for him to announce his presence by calling out to Rapunzel to let down her hair. Especially considering that he previously got into the tower without climbing Rapunzel's hair. If he had kept his wits about him, he should have looked for signs (discreetly) at the tower's base of two people leaving recently (Maximus would have been helpful here), and then tried to sneak into the tower in secret, perhaps at night.
  • He was terrified for Rapunzel. People in that sort of situation generally aren't very rational.
  • Maybe he was so worried for Rapunzel on that second visit that he couldn't get the Intersect to flash.
  • Actually, the Stabbington brother only tells him that the 'old lady' was the one to tell him about Rapunzel's hair. There's no way Flynn could have connected the old lady to Mother Gothel. After all, why would he think her mother, who he only knows about through Rapunzel, would tell anyone about her magic hair after apparently going through so much trouble to protect her? During the campfire scene, Rapunzel even tells him that people tried to take her hair and use it for themselves because that's the story Gothel told her to keep her in the tower. At that point, all Flynn knows is that someone else must have seen Rapunzel, realized it was the same girl as the baby with magic hair, and rides off to warn her. That it turned out to be her own mother who was exploiting her was not something Flynn could have foreseen.
    • On the other hand, he also knows that Gothel is 'over-protective' and that Rapunzel clearly feels at the very least somewhat ambiguous about returning, thus suggesting a not-entirely healthy or pleasant living arrangement; it's a bit of a mental leap to connect 'old lady' to 'Rapunzel's mother', true, but not an insurmountably impossible one.
  • He was also worried that Rapunzel hated him at the time. He woke up tied to a boat after leaving Rapunzel with the crown, so he knew it would have looked like he was ditching her. He probably figured that barging into her home after that wouldn't be the best way to ingratiate himself to her.
• The opening narration. While they show on screen the events that Flynn is talking about, it probably would have worked a lot better if they had just shown what was going on instead. It sort of breaks Suspension of Disbelief.
  • Lemme put it this way on how people would react: "Why did that flower just grow? Why does singing to it make you young? The queen's about to have a baby, and a flower is the only way to give birth?".
  • "Show, don't tell" is too often assumed to be the only worthwhile means of telling a story, when in fact sometimes it's best just to outright tell, especially in the case of a fairytale story like this. It explains the magical elements (the 'sun' flower, it's healing properties) as well as the scenario quickly and allows the plot to take off right away. Without the "storybook" opening narration, I know I for one would have been lost. (And in fact, the Show, Don't Tell page you linked pointed out that the best times to just "tell" rather than show are, you guessed it, when you're summarizing a long period of time.)
• Why are the toys basically using Character Derailment on Rapunzel? Her main thing was getting out of the tower so she could see the lights, but I've seen ads for the toys that say she was "imagining her very own true love". Where did that come from?
  • The same reason My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic toy sets made Princess Celestia pink and gave Applejack pink and blue hats. Whoever was marketing the toys probably assumed that girls would want something "girly" rather than something close to the actual source material. There's also a decent chance that retailers may have refused to sell the toys if they weren't "girly" enough, just like with the Pony example.
• Sooo... stealing merits the death penalty in this kingdom? Granted, it was the king's missing daughter's crown they stole, but still seems a bit extreme.
  • He was a well known, WANTED thief before he took the kingdom's crown to its rightful owner (on accident, sure, but still, the rightful owner).
  • Fair enough, but even for repeated thievery the death penalty stills seems a bit over the top. What happened to imprisonment? Community service? (Speaking tongue in cheek for the last one, but still.)
  • Besides, it was the 18th century. I'm not an expert on the laws of the time, but I bet the death penalty was aplied to a lot more crimes back then than today.
  • Imprisonment for normal criminals is actually a very recent development. Historically, most sentences for crimes were things that were carried out in short order. Dungeons were for people that the Lord had reason to want to keep around. Moreover, this was well before the whole "All men are created equal" thing. Kings and Queens weren't normal human beings, and committing crimes against them personally carried *very* harsh sentences. Realistically, a nice clean hanging would probably be much better than someone who broke into the royal palace and stole a crown could expect.
    • Depended on the country and the application (some countries had effectively institutionalised commuting death sentences for the lesser cases into convict colonization), but overall: yes.
• Toward the end where Flynn intimidates the twins into telling him where Rapunzel is. How does he respond so well to "the old lady"? He's never even seen Gothel, and her rapid aging was an unlikely topic conversation through his adventures with Rapunzel.
  • True, but he knew from Rapunzel's freak out that she had a very controlling mother... So it wasn't a major leap of logic for him to presume that the "old lady" who had told the brothers about Rapunzel's powers to be aforementioned Control Freak.
  • Who else besides Rapunzel's "mother" knew she had magical hair?
  • Just finished watching it before typing this, there was no evidence to suggest he KNEW who this old lady was. His immediate response was to yell that Rapunzel is in trouble. Given the story she had told him earlier about others wanting to use her hair, he must have concluded that if someone knew about Rapunzel's secret and told the twins about it, that old lady must have been trying to get Rapunzel for herself, if the twins currently didn't have Rapunzel with them.
• If Rapunzel has never had any outside interaction with the world, let alone with a person of the opposite sex, how would Rapunzel know that Flynn liked her when she says to Gothel "I think he likes me"?
  • Woman's intuition.
  • Damn, that's one hell of a woman's intuition. Then how does she know to embrace in a kiss, when she has no idea what a kiss is, or what it means? No amount of intuition will help there.
    • She could have read about it in one of her books.
    • She only has three books (botany, geology and a cook book). Although it does bring up a conundrum as to whether or not Rapunzel is aware about reproduction. As for knowing how to kiss... maybe she practiced with Pascal?
      • She could have read about it in one of Gothel's books. Imagine her leaving some smutty romance novel lying around...
    • Had Rapunzel been among the first people, she would have been one to pioneer kissing. And...well, Gothel did give her some hobbies. She might have gone through the standard "what's happening to my body?" and Gothel picked up some books rather than explain?
    • Also, where's it said that she has no idea what kissing is? Considering how far Gothel went to convince Rapunzel that she was her mother, it's unlikely that she never gave her an 'affectionate' motherly kiss at some point, and it's not really that difficult a concept to pick up; you put your lips to someone else's cheek / lips etc if you want to show affection to them. Kissing romantically, of course, at least initially she clearly hasn't got a clue -- notice how when she first kisses Eugene at the end, it's a kind of chaste lips-to-lips smooch that two kids might do, and he's the one who turns it into a more romantic kiss -- but that doesn't mean she doesn't have any clue what kissing is at all or what it means as a concept.
  • He's nice to her and doesn't put her down nearly as much as her loving mother does. Considering how little personal interaction she's had, she'd likely interpret any kindness this way.
  • She may not know, she just wants to believe it.
• Okay, let's assume for one second that Gothel's plan actually works and she manages to hide Rapunzel during her whole life. But Rapunzel is bound to die someday; even if her hair is magical, she's not. What was Gothel planning on doing, then?
  • There's no reason to think the magic of the hair wouldn't work on Rapunzel herself in the same way it worked on Gothel, restoring her youth when she got old enough to need it.
• Just to be sure, is Rapunzel going to be stuck with a shaggy head of brown hair for the rest of her life? It's shown that the part that was cut never grew again, but then again, she still had plenty of hair left to make up for it. Now that she has no magic in her hair, will it grow out properly or stay the same length?
  • It'll probably stay the same length, based on the cut piece and that the ending seems to take place a while after he cuts it and it doesn't seem to have grown at all.
    • Or it might begin to grow as her body - and especially her hair - begins to adapt to not having a piece of concentrated magic in it (the ending doesn't seem to take place that long after it was cut, so a short delay to the natural growth should give enough margin of error - the time from cut to ending doesn't have to be more than a few days) - hard to say, really.
    • I haven't seen it in a while but isn't the part where you see her with brown hair after Flynn says that "After years of asking and asking and asking I finally said yes", showing that it's sort of a "*blank* years later" epilouge? Her hair definately would of grown at least a few inches after a few years.
    • Actually, when you see her with brown hair is during the week-long party to celebrate her return.
• If cutting the hair took away its effects on Gothel why didn't it make Rapunzel's mother sick again and unheal Flynn's cut?
  • As someone else said above, de-aging is very unnatural. Healing sickness/wounds, however, is. Maybe the flower speeds up natural processes to heal people?
  • Plus, Gothel's use of the hair was for purely selfish reasons. Rapunzel's father used it to heal his wife and save his unborn child and Rapunzel used it to heal Flynn, without his asking. Hey, if the thing is magic in the first place, who's to say it can't distinguish between right and wrong?
  • Gothel was holding the hair at the time, which is why she aged so quickly. Flynn wasn't, and the queen wasn't even in the same room.
• If Gothel had told the king and queen about how to sing to the flower to use it would the queen (and possibly Rapunzel) be permanently healed or would she need to use the flower regularly like Gothel does?
  • My guess is once, because once you heal from a sickness, you don't go back to being sick, whereas people constantly age.
• Okay, so Rapunzel is essentially a "walking Fountain of Youth" for Mother Gothel, right? Except that Rapunzel clearly still ages...so what would've happened if Rapunzel got old and died?
  • This has already been discussed not too long ago, as seen in the comments above.
• If Gothel really wanted to keep Rapunzel ignorant, why didn't she just not educate her at all, leaving her an airheaded bimbo who can't count to 2?
  • Well she only had three books in that place, and other than chess (which younger kids can learn to play and she was playing against an animal) I don't remember anything that would suggest she was paticularly smart, so maybe she did keep her from learning most of the stuff and just taught her enough that she wouldn't end up killing herself in some stupid way. Or she may have been trying to do that but she taught herself to read and read how to play chess.
    • She mentioned being able to chart stars. That requires a certain degree of intelligence, alone. It's also never said that those were the only books she had, just the only one she happened to be reading that day. People back then (commoners at least) generally didn't do much reading to begin with unless they were scribes or librarians or other professions that required them to open a book. Gothel was at least smart enough to know that invisible mental abuse and love would be enough to keep Rapunzel by her side. If Gothel had been cruel or neglectful to her, Rapunzel would have found a way out of it somehow. This also proves that perhaps Gothel wasn't completely and totally twisted - I guess she didn't want her stolen daughter to be sitting around the tower all day like a stone, knowing nothing else but that hair song.
    • They were the only ones on the shelf and she rereads them later instead of just reading new ones.
  • Non-sexual bride grooming anyone?
  • She can read so she could do Gothel's taxes. That or Gothel wanted a good way to keep her distracted/occupied so she would sit quietly at home with a book instead of throwing herself out the window or wearing out the floorboards.
  • If Gothel hadn't given Rapunzel anything to stimulate/ distract Rapunzel with, she would have ran out on her years ago. It also gives her more guilt trip ammo. "I give you all these wonderful things to do, and you still want to leave me?"
  • Entertainment and stimulation. If Rapunzel was constantly bored, she probably would've been more willing to leave the tower and explore.
• So, we're supposed to believe the king and queen are just and fair when they've enacted a law making theft punishable by death?
  • In certain countries you could be executed for a wide variety of reasons, including petty theft, well into the 19th century. The death penalty was probably a law the king and queen inherited from a predecessor anyway. Plus, not only did Flynn steal from royalty, he already had a criminal record, as evidenced by the wanted poster running gag. Even if anyone had asked the king's opinion before ordering Flynn's execution (we don't know if they did), he would have noticed that Flynn was an infamous criminal and determined that he was a threat to the peace. On top of all that, he stole the princess's tiara, which is clearly an extremely sore spot for the royal couple considering her disappearance brings them to tears almost 18 years after the fact.
    • Yes, but we're given no evidence the criminal record contains anything but theft, plus if the current rulers did inherent the law they're now in a position to change it. I guess "just and fair" is subject to relativity to the times, but keeping around a law that makes it so you can be sentenced to death for theft--even if said theft is from royalty--makes it kind of hard for me to see the King and Queen as decent people.
  • It's not just that he stole from the royal family, he stole one of the precious few souveniers that they have of their missing daughter. That's just low.
  • It probably also depends on how much he's stolen. If he's stolen millions and billions worth, well... that might be pretty death worthy depending on your perspective.
• Gothel has a secret entrance into the tower that Rapunzel apparently doesn't know about, which is why Rapunzel lets down her hair every time to let Gothel up. But it stands to reason that Rapunzel's hair wasn't always long enough to let down in that manner, so did Gothel use the secret entrance back then? Of course, Rapunzel would have been very young, and it'd be inadvisable to leave her alone for long periods of time. OK... how did Rapunzel find the secret entrance at the end? It stands to reason that's the only way that she and Eugene could have left the tower after Rapunzel's hair was cut and Gothel died.
  • A couple people have theorized that Gothel snuck out through that entrance when Rapunzel was sleeping, at least until her hair was long enough. As for how they got out at the end, they could have either looked for the secret entrance (since Gothel getting in on her own made it clear there had to be one), or they could have climbed down some other way (like how Flynn/Eugene originally got up).
  • Even if they didn't find the secret entrance, there's still large amounts of extremely long hair inside the tower (Gothel doesn't take it with her when she falls). Okay, it's not magical anymore, but worst-case scenario it'd still probably do as a serviceable rope.
  • After she stabs Flynn, Gothel has the secret entrance open and is trying to drag Rapunzel down it. I assumed after that it was pretty obvious to them how to get out.
• Just how old was Rapunzel when she was kidnapped? She had to be at least a couple months if she could have her eyes open. Oh, and all that hair would have taken at least a little while to grow. Subconscious memories aside, the age could help with the Suspension of Disbelief on No Infantile Amnesia making more sense than the 1 day indicated by the current entry on that trope page.
  • No Infantile Amnesia, I'll give you that one but, keeping her eyes open? The hell are you talking about? Humans aren't born with their eyes shut. Newborns are perfectly capable of keeping their eyes open when awake. Hair- It's MAGIC. And babies are usually born with some hair, and sometimes even a lot of hair that they may or may not lose.
  • Ok, so before I wrote this, I was unaware that infants can see almost immediately from birth. Sorry about that. And I suppose then for everything else you could always say A magic flower did it. I guess when you look at fairy tales you don't come for realism.
• Is it just me, or could Gothel have avoided this entire thing by saying, "Sure, I'll take you to see the lanterns this ONE time, but that's all we can risk. And we'll need to hide your hair so nobody notices it." I mean, Flynn took her to see the lanterns and gallivated all over town with her in broadass daylight and no one figured out who she was. One more mother and daughter in the throng of people in town for the celebration wouldn't have made anyone blink twice.
  • Yep, and she could also have avoided the entire thing by not flipping out at Rapunzel and actually giving her a chance to reveal that she had Flynn stuffed in her wardrobe early on in the movie. Which would have been very bad for Flynn, no doubt. With regards to taking Rapunzel to see the lanterns, though, Gothel was completely paranoid about anyone even finding out that Rapunzel existed at all, so even if no one would have had any way of guessing that there was anything out of the ordinary about her (aside from her incredibly long hair, which is bound to kind of stick in the memory even after it's all braided up), Gothel didn't want anyone so much as laying eyes on her. That, and if she takes Rapunzel out for a nice evening to see the floating lanterns, that kind of undermines her whole "the world outside your tower is a horrible, scary, dangerous place" line.
  • She also didn't want to give Rapunzel a taste of the outside world, because she knew she'd get hooked.
  • Mother Gothel was an extremely paranoid character. When Rapunzel went out with Flynn nobody recognized her as the lost princess, but Mother Gothel had no way of knowing that no one would recognize Rapunzel. Better to be safe than sorry, Mother Gothel wasn't going to allow even the slightest chance for risk.
• Why in the credits does it call Zachary Levi's character Flynn Rider, when halfway through the movie, it reveals "Flynn's" real name is Eugene Fitzherbert? Don't you think they could at least put that in parenthesis since by the end of the movie, he even says he started going by Eugene again? Why permanently state in the credits that Zachary played Flynn rather than Eugene?
  • Name recognition. Flynn is the name he goes by for the majority of the film. At a glance, you know who this guy is playing. You say Eugene, it takes longer for the brain to draw the connection. Not much longer, mind you, but enough that it detracts from the reading.
  • I kinda wish they'd listed it as Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert, though.
• How come Rapunzel's hair glows for so long when they go under water, despite all the other times it's done it, it stops the minute she stops singing? It doesn't even start glowing until after she stops singing, and then stays glowy for long enough for them to escape.
  • Notice that depending on how fast Rapunzel sings, her hair shines that quickly. Hence how she could do a speed sing for "mother" at the beginning, and a nice slow mood sing for Eugene when she was healing his hand later. My guess is, she was just singing nice and slowly while she was underwater to herself, giving them enough time to remove the rocks, and fall out to their safety. Perhaps it was also Rule of Drama in terms of it not lighting up immediately.
  • Plus she was only singing to create light. Her intentions may have some affect on exactly how the magic turns out.
• Why do people (including me) think the eyebrows on Spirit in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron look weird, but Max's look fine to them?
  • Spirit's 2D and Max is 3D. It might have something to do with it.
  • Plus, Spirit is supposed to have more "realistic" body proportions, whereas Max is intended to look cartoonish. Putting eyebrows on a more "realistic" horse gives kind of an Uncanny Valley feel.
• Rapunzel is shown to be resourceful and more than capable of defending herself if needs be. So how did Mother Gothel, clearly aged and probably less physically powerful than her, manage to restrain her, gag her and tie her up at the end of the film?
  • Simple--we never really saw any evidence that Gothel wasn't able to take down Rapunzel. She doesn't do much physically over the course of the film. Sure, she played the part of the old lady sometimes, but that was just for show so Rapunzel would feel sorry for her poor old mother.
    • Not to mention, Rapunzel would probably be hesitant to fight against the one who raised her, even if she was revealed to be a Complete Monster.
  • She probably just came up behind Rapunzel and knocked her out with her own frying pan.
• What happened to Rapunzel's frying pan? she had it at the campfire, and then it just disappears from the movie. Did she just forget it? Wouldn't something like that really have helped in a fight with the Stabbington Brothers?
  • It was probably in the boat, and I seriously doubt she could have knocked them out.
• OK, its been over a year since Tangled has been released in theaters. There has been an Ice Show, a sequel short, the Disney Princess line, etc. So I feel the need to ask: why is Tangled much more publicly popular than The Princess and the Frog? Did changing the name from "Rapunzel" to "Tangled" really make more boys see the film, thus increasing the demographic? Do people assume that because it's CGI animation, it is more of a "family film", not a "kids film?" Are people just racist? This troper enjoys both films equally; one has flaws where the other doesn't, and vice versa. This wouldn't even be asked if the next Disney fairytale, The Snow Queen (now officially known as "Frozen") didn't seem to be following the pattern that Tangled started (e.g., ambiguous, one-word title; CGI animation, etc.) Disney is almost ashamed of The Princess and the Frog, and this troper really doesn't see why.
  • Tangled was a phenomenal hit. If something does well, it only makes sense to use it as a model for the next production. I don't think Disney is ashamed of the Princess and the Frog, it just didn't do well enough to get this kind of treatment.
  • Also, since Tiana is Disney's first African-american princess, the merchandising for that is going to continue for a long time, so in some ways, P&TF will live on forever. I guess though that like the above poster mentions, when your movies have a difference in the hundreds of millions worldwide, perhaps you might get a little more visual pizzazz in comparison (though I think Princess and the Frog does have a few extra things to its name also).
• Maybe this is just really obvious to everyone else and that's why no one else has asked, but given that Rapunzel didn't know about the secret entrance, how exactly was she planning on getting back inside the tower after seeing the lanterns, since she couldn't exactly let down her hair to let herself back up?
  • Well, Eugene had gotten up into the tower, hadn't he? So maybe she was assuming she could get up the same way. Or she found his arrows, and figured that she could send an arrow and a rope over the top of the pole where she balances her hair, than climb up that way.
• Why is Rapunzel required to sing the incantation once the flower's power is inside her? She was still a baby when she was kidnapped, so surely Gothel must have sung it until Rapunzel developed full speech?
  • She didn't have to, as demonstrated at the beginning of the film. As noted above, it's just another method that Gothel uses to keep Rapunzel under thumb.
• Let's see the "When Will My Life Begin" number. Rapunzel states that she starts her day at 7:00 am. She cleans the tower in 15 minutes and then she starts to do her insanely long list of activities. In the next scene, Flynn steals the crown, according to him, at 8:00 in the morning. Does that mean that Rapunzel reads three books, paints, plays guitar, knits, cookes, paints again, has lunch, makes puzzles, plays darts, bakes, makes paper maché masks, dances ballet, plays chess, makes pottery, ventriloquism, candle making, stretching, scketching, climbs her hair, makes a dress for Pascal, rereads the three books, paints once more and brushes her 70-feet hair... IN LESS THAN 45 MINUTES?
  • This troper imagines it takes a few hours to get from the Kingdom to the castle, plus Rapunzel was narrating what she did every single day. It could still be midday when Flynn arrives.
  • Although 45 minutes is a stretch, a lot of these activities could probably be done fairly quickly, especially if they were done every day. If you clean the house every day, there's not going to be a lot of mess for you to have to deal with, and so.
  • Also, the scene change doesn't necessarily mean that Flynn stealing the crown comes afterwards, it could be happening at around the same time.
  • Maybe the song takes place on the previous day.
• So, if Gothel decided to raise Rapunzel as her own daughter and not a prisoner or slave, why did she have a dagger in her nightstand? Where did the chain and manacles come from?
  • Mother Gothel was extremely paranoid that someone would come and try to kidnap Rapunzel, it makes perfect sense for her to have a weapon. She was also paranoid about Rapunzel trying to leave on her own; she did her best to keep Rapunzel in the tower but she's obviously not above using force if she has to. Physical restraint was a last resort.
• When Gothel realised that Rapunzel was falling for Flynn, why didn't she instead tell Rapunzel that she would let Flynn stay with Rapunzel if she agrees to return back to the tower immediately? With the lack of company Rapunzel has, it's very likely she's going to rather having her crush around for years to come than see the lights for one measly night. And it's not like Rapunzel would have any reason at this point to think Flynn wouldn't have agreed. So if Gothel asked and Flynn said no, Rapunzel would be heart broken, realise "mother is right", Gothel would be all motherly and supportive and then take Rapunzel back to the tower. If Flynn had said yes, Gothel could probably have Flynn around for maybe a few days, then ask Flynn to go out with her on the pretence needing help to collect food for Rapunzel and then kill him when he's not looking. She'd only have to tell Rapunzel some BS story that "as soon I turned my back he immediately dashed off after the first pretty girl he saw, I'm so sorry about this dear" and Rapunzel wouldn't be the wiser.
  • That only works if Rapunzel wants to stay, and she really doesn't. Flynn represented the outside world to her. Asking him to stay put kinda invalidates that whole idea.
    • Especially considering the paranoia Mother Gothel would have that Flynn would try to betray her, either killing Mother Gothel or helping Rapunzel run off again. Rapunzel said she would never fight Mother Gothel if she let Flynn live... But Flynn never made such a promise.
• The current merchandise and artwork featuring Rapunzel wearing shoes. Why?
  • The live actresses for Rapunzel at the Disney theme parks wears shoes, probably because walking barefoot on concrete grounds is a liability and/or extremely uncomfortable. The merchandising just follows suit. Conversely, the people in charge of the merchandise dislike bare feet.

1. ↑ note, in this context I sincerely believe that the two sacrifices are, in fact, identical as far as 'how much you are willing to go, I'm not intending to imply that Flynn's is "more sacrificial" or anything
2. ↑ Granted, I think it wasn't really 'discovered' until the early 1800's, but this is a fantasy world so...
3. ↑ And parabolic (concave) mirrors have been described since around the tenth century IIRC so it's possible she could have one...
4. ↑ that is to say, that was my interpretation, so you may disagree of course. ^_~