MovieChat Forums > Encanto (2021) Discussion > What was the point of this movie?

What was the point of this movie?


So we have elite Family of privileged people who have everything without trying. Like kings and princesses nasically. And all peasants in village adore them and bow.

And one is being sad that she doesnt have superpowers. Then somehow they start losing their magic powers and go into panic mode about it. Then lose it. Then their servant-peasant people from town come and rebuild their huge mansion. Then magic superpowers reappears and elite privileged family is all happy again....

Such confused message. Why did we had to sit and watch it? Literally nothing happened and there was no conflict. Just rich people losing power over poor people. I wished them to become normal again and stay that way. So they would get rid of their God complex. But nope. Superpowers came back.

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Wow, it is clear that you didn't understand this story at all!

So we have elite Family of privileged people who have everything without trying.

They got their magic only after the grandparents had to flee their home with new-born triplets.
Then the grandfather was murdered before his family's eyes.
Of course, the three babies were too young to remember any of this happening.
But it put their mother through a trauma, that we can hardly even imagine.
Her way of dealing with this trauma was putting an extreme pressure on her children and grandchildren.
And in the end, her zeal for perfection makes several family members suffer emotionally.
Bruno decides to go into hiding to keep his mother from possibly getting the idea that she has to hurt Mirabel.
Mirabel becomes unhappy because she didn't get a gift and thus understandably feels left out in her own family.
Isabela is actually prepared to marry a man she doesn't love just to please her grandmother.
Luisa has to work all the time without breaks and doesn't feel that she's worth anything without super strength.

And all peasants in village adore them and bow.

You seem to forget that the Madrigals help them with everything from healing injuries to moving buildings.
Besides, it is clear that the villagers don't adore Bruno.

Then their servant-peasant people from town come and rebuild their huge mansion.

They were not their servants!
They help the Madrigals with re-building their house because they had helped them every day for fifty years.

Such confused message. Why did we had to sit and watch it?

So I guess that good movies are wasted on some people.

Literally nothing happened and there was no conflict.

But how is healing your family and even finding your missing uncle after ten years "nothing"?
And how is finally getting through to your grandmother and making her see her mistakes "no conflict"?
I guess I have to assume that you wanted more action scenes or something.
But I happen to like that this story is more character-driven than that.

Just rich people losing power over poor people.

I don't believe that it was ever implied that the Madrigals are richer than anybody else in the village.
I don't believe that they really have any power over the villagers either.

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They HAVE power over villagers. LOL. Villagers feel obligated to them because Elite Family behaved like gods and "fixes" everything for people including healing and moving stuff. So villagers feel like they own it to Family and that without their Gods everything will fall apart. So of course they all adore them, come to their Gift Door Opening Ceremony for kids and then rebuild their house.

If Family would have no Special Powers and be ordinary - no one would care about them. So yeah - Family basically owns those peasants. If they would stop worship Family and ignore it - Family would stop healing them and move stuff.

Madrigals live in their huge house with clear land around. Villagers live in ordinary houses. Yes, Family IS RICH.

None of the stuff in the movie makes sense. But the facts are that we have privileged family with superpowers who like it that way and have panic when magic starts disappearing. Because they had to live like ordinary people. Because they used to be Special Elite people.

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When does it say that the villagers are obligated to do anything?
They are just helping the Madrigals like good neighbors will help you in a time of need.

And I don't believe that you understand how painful these special powers can be.
Bruno was actually hated by the villagers because of his powers and was glad to not use them for ten years.
Pepa will cause bad weather even indoors if she's upset and at least once even caused a hurricane.
Dolores's ears will hurt even from relatively small sounds in a way, that we can hardly imagine.
And as much as Luisa and Isabela kept up a happy facade, they were both suffering under pressure.

You seem to forget that the Madrigals live in a magic house.
It is not big because the they have a lot of money, because I don't think that money even exists in the Encanto.
So I don't see why you would call them "rich".

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...Yet they went into panic mode when they discovered they can lose those powers....

Because power corrupts you. No matter how you "suffer" having powers - you dont want to lose them.

Grandma knew that. She wanted to keep power no matter what. And only accepted defeat when family lost power.

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When did they go into panic mode over losing their powers?
I don't remember that happening.

And no, the message of the story is not "power corrupts".
Because that is not what it is about.
It is about how a trauma made Abuela miss her children's and grandchildren's emotional needs.
Even so, it is not like she wanted to keep the magic for selfish reasons.
What was important to her was making sure that her family would never be homeless or defenseless again.
But I don't think that anyone really understood that before she explained what she had gone through to Mirabel.

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Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and grandma was corrupted to the point where she was ready to banish a child for THE SECOND TIME.

She disgraced the memory and sacrifice of her husband.

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Nobody has denied that Abuela made a lot of mistakes, but she didn't banish any child.
It is made clear that Bruno went into hiding for ten years by his own choice.
True, he wouldn't have done that if people hadn't always thought the worst of him.
But it was his own choice nonetheless.

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To me it is clear that the OP understood the movie, and I have the same opinion.

Even though I enjoyed the movie, I agree that it was too much "privileged family being privileged". It's like there couldn't be a happy ending without them remaining some super gods. Why couldn't they accept that they would be "normals" like the rest of the peasents in the village? Talk about first world problems.

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Except I don't think that the Madrigals were that "privileged" at all.
It is true that they were the leading family of the Encanto and had the biggest house in the town.
However, they spent fifty years trying to live up to Abuela's high expectations until they suffered emotionally.
And also, they had to work for the community all the time and not the other way around.
Which makes it really weird that the OP referred to the villagers as their "servant-peasant people".
Also, the pressure to always be at service gave Bruno and Luisa in particular a lot of emotional pain.
Isabela seemed to be an "entitled princess" until it was revealed that she almost agreed to a loveless marriage.
Mirabel who didnt have a gift felt as if she was worthless to Abuela and became desperate to prove herself.
And it seems like Pepa and Dolores also felt a lot of drawbacks from their powers...

And as for them getting the magic back, it would have been weirder if it hadn't ended that way.
It is not explained yet where the miracle came from, except it started after their father's/grandfather's sacrifice.
And a good theory is that Pedro somehow gave his children and grandchildren (except Mirabel) their powers.
And if that is true, it would have sucked if their gifts from their late father and grandfather never returned.
They can't be blamed for that Abuela was traumatized and blind to her mistakes until she had another shock.
However, it would have been just too much if Mirabel had gotten a gift too at the same time.
So I'm glad that the writers didn't go that route...

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It's little more than a money-maker and designed to pander to Latinos (which often fails, by the way).

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Guess what?
I don't believe that all of this movie's fans are Latinos.

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Why do you not believe that Latina are not the target audience?

Because this is the ambiguous, butt-heart, excessively immature internet, I will elaborate: why is a movie about Latin culture not mainly targeting Latin audiences? i know that
you have your reasons. i'm asking for them.

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Why wouldn't a movie be made for audiences from all over the world just because it's about Latinos?

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To prepare America for its black future.

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Most of the characters in this movie aren't black, so I don't get what you mean.

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Because black + white parents make brown children.

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Maybe, but how is that a problem?

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Exactly, you'll be as successful as all the other majority brown countries.

Nothing to worry about.

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