The Swan Princess Review

I want to start off by saying: I love this movie.

It’s got everything you want in an animated film: songs, talking animals, evil sorcerers, evil sorcerers henchwoman, handsome princes, idiot sidekicks, beautiful AND smart princesses, weird ungodly monsters, and weird unnecessary dance numbers that must’ve driven the animation crew nuts.

The Swan Princess is based on the Swan Lake ballet (it might be obvious to you but I just learned this yesterday, okay?) and I didn’t realize how many different endings are possible for the ballet.

The Swan Lake's story has at least five general conclusions. Some are happy, but most are completely fucked up and I would not take my child to see any of them.

The prince defeats the wizard and saves the Swan Princess,

the prince is defeated and the wizard gets the Swan Princess,

the prince and the wizard kill each other,

the prince accidentally kills the Swan Princess, or

the prince and the Swan Princess choose to die together to escape the wizard's curse. This final alternate ending usually has one of two outcomes -- their self-sacrifice proves their undying love for each other, which breaks the spell and they transcend to Heaven, or the prince also becomes a swan and the two lovers fly away together.

Okay, so there’s only one happy ending option. The rest are pretty bad. Really bad. Why is this play a hit with that many terrible endings? My god.

It’s basically Romeo and Juliet. I’ve only seen Swan Lake once in my life and it was some Barbie version my cousin forced me to watch while I babysat one time and I honestly don’t remember a lot of it. I didn’t see Black Swan with Natalie Portman (don’t make that face, there are people on the planet that don’t want to see her orgasm and become a literal human-bird hybrid) but I do know that movie has a tragic ending.

Swan Princess has such a unique quality to it that really sets it apart. I’ve done some voice over auditions and it can be hard to pull off an emotion without the ability to physically express it; but the actors in this movie do manage to make you feel happiness, pain, frustration, and guilt just with their voice. If you could only listen to the film, it would be enough for you to understand what’s happening.

It also features a kind of rare plot point for the two lovers, Princess Odette and Prince Derek; they grew up together. Every summer their parents would bring them together in the hopes they’d fall in love and get married to merge their two kingdoms.

Obviously, the montage of them spending many summers together, they argue and fight and trick each other. They don’t want to be forced together. But then they meet one last time and they fall in love, yeah its a weird scene. It does not fit the tone they have presented at all. Derek finds her stunningly gorgeous and wants to get married right away. She is willing but when he can’t think of another reason to marry her other than her beauty, she leaves with her father.

Derek doesn’t think before he speaks or acts throughout the film, a pretty common modern day man if you ask me.

Odette is beautiful, smart, witty, and resourceful; especially when she gets kidnapped and turned into a swan by the villain.

Rothbart is the evil sorcerer and he’s kind of fantastic. He’s exactly how you imagine a Medieval English evil nobleman. Plus his song that he sings towards the end is my favorite in the whole movie.

This movie has six sequels. Yeah, six. Way too many. They were all straight to video, which is for the best because this movie didn’t have a great release.

While this movie has many flaws, too many to count but not as many as the first season of Family Guy, we’ll move on to my personal favorite aspect of this film: animation.

This was the very last picture to use ALL hand drawn animation by cell and background use. It came out in 1994 but animation began in 1990. Disney began using computer assisted animation in the 1980’s while they were making the Little Mermaid. When several animators left Disney Animation Studios, they went on to create some of the darkest and in depth animated films that I’ve ever seen. Richard Rich is one of them, and he was the director of the Swan Princess. Don Bluth will probably be more familiar to you since he created Secret of Nimh, Anastasia, Pebble and the Penguin, An American Tail, and so many more.

The amount of dedication hand-drawn animation requires is very intense and very detail-oriented. Normally with Princess animated films, the color palettes are soft and complimentary with the corresponding love interest. With this film, that’s not the case. Instead of each character having their signature colors, they all have the same colors but in just different shades. To me that signifies a true interest to maintain accuracy to the time frame their referencing and to unify the characters. The villain sticks to black, reds, greens, and some gold; as does his accomplice.

The side/background characters are kind of the exception to the rule because even if they're on the 'good guys' side, they might be wearing black and red which typically symbolizes a villain. One thing that all animation films shares, no matter who makes them, a villain will be featured in one of the following colors: purple, red, green (usually lime), and black. They also most of the time have a dramtic cape that they twirl around a lot. Like RuPaul leaving a stage.

There’s also something so satisfying about seeing the way the magic in the film is expressed. It’s like ASMR when you watch Odette transform, with the combination of the glittering magic and the beautiful music that accompanies it; that’s just true magic on its own.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.