10 Movie Idiots Who Made Simple Solutions Look IMPOSSIBLE
3. Tangled - You've Already Kidnapped Her, Lying To Her Isn't The Worst Thing You've Done
It’s not always the side we’re rooting for who makes some
questionable decisions. Disney’s 2010 Rapunzel-inspired flick features heroes
who do pretty much everything right – or at least, they do what they believe to
be right. No, Rapunzel and Flynn Ride are not with whom I have a bone to pick.
Mother Gothel, for all her clever, witchy ways, makes a huge blunder almost immediately, and it’s one that almost single-handedly kicks into motion the events of the film.
She kidnaps the King and Queen’s daughter, right? She does this because the child has been bestowed with the gifts of a magic flower Gothel had kept secluded to keep secret the reason for her immortality. The girl goes up to be Rapunzel, her adopted daughter who she keeps locked in a tower “for her own safety”, but who Is bemused by the lantern show she sees in the distance on her birthday each year. It’s this curiosity regarding the lights in the sky which compels her, at the earliest opportunity, to escape the tower and go adventuring. Of course, the lanterns are released by the King and Queen, in memory of their long-lost daughter.
So why didn’t Gothel just give her a different ‘birthday’? Rapunzel was presumably still a baby when the lantern ritual started, and so unlikely to recognise that the date of her birthday had been changed. It’s impossible to say if this would have stunted her curious nature, or prevented her eventual escape, but it still just seems super stupid to me for Gothel to have allowed Rapunzel to make this link between lights and the sky and her birthday. She’s already lied to Rapunzel about her origins for her entire life, so I doubt this would be something that’d really weigh in on her conscience.