YMMV / Tangled (2010)

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For YMMV on Tangled: The Series, see here.

• Accidental Innuendo:
  Rapunzel: I've got a person in my closet!
• Adorkable: Rapunzel has a bit of an overbite, turned in feet, and she lisps when she talks at times, hides in her hair like a cocoon◊ during the song "Mother Knows Best" when afraid. She's a Genki Girl, very pretty, and downright adorably Moe.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Mother Gothel gets a lot of this.
    • Did she only care about Rapunzel's hair and just pretended to be a doting mother, or did she come to genuinely love her in the 18 years she raised her? Rapunzel's hair is more important in the end, but Gothel does small things that make one think twice like her "I love you" "I love you more" "I love you most" game and her surprising Rapunzel by cooking her favorite food. Fans are still debating. However if you pay attention, when she says "I love you most" she kisses her forehead. This could be taken that she loves her hair most. Or she's just that good of an actress to fool the audience with a rather convincing performance. It helps that she happens to have a lot of very subtle hints.
    • Some believe that Gothel's actions are motivated by her fear of dying and not just vanity, even though she's never shown being afraid of dying per se, merely aging. She's shown to be obsessed with youth, constantly checking the mirror for any signs of age or imperfection, has Rapunzel sing for her even when she's the least bit "run-down," and even puts Rapunzel down to compliment her own looks. Even when Eugene cuts Rapunzel's hair, Gothel seems most upset by the irreversible appearance of wrinkles. First thing she does after realizing the hair is gone is to check her reflection in the mirror, and then pull her hood over her face in shame and horror at her withered appearance. While fear of aging is also a very relatable motive, Gothel's complete obsession with it can come across as... a bit petty and shallow.
      Gothel: Rapunzel, look in that mirror. You know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady.
      Rapunzel: [swells with confidence]
      Gothel: Oh look, you're here too! [laughs] I'm just teasing! Stop taking everything so seriously. [leans forward to examine her own features more closely in the mirror]
    • Flynn's opening narration says that Gothel is a witch. Other than activating the magic in the flower, and later Rapunzel's hair, she displays no obvious signs of having powers. She accomplishes lots of her villainy through quick thinking and deception, so it's left open whether she is a witch with milder magic (she had to have figured out how to activate the flower somehow) or just a well-accomplished Badass Normal.
    • In the prologue, Gothel only sneaks into the nursery with the intention of taking Rapunzel's hair, hoping to get the magic that way. It's only when she realizes the hair won't work if it's cut off that she kidnaps the child. A case of Even Evil Has Standards? But on the other hand, it would have been much easier to steal a lock of hair as opposed to kidnapping a princess, plus having to raise and care for her so maybe this is just Pragmatic Villainy. In the novelization, she came with a knife to kill the baby in revenge for losing her flower and only thought of cutting the hair on seeing the golden locks.
    • Why didn't Gothel share the flower's magic with the king and queen? Even if the queen was in no state to walk, Gothel could have sung the incantation with the golden flower in a pot, and she would have won their favor for eternity while keeping her eternal youth. Is she that selfish from years of being alone that she didn't consider being an Opportunistic Bastard? Or did she fear that she could end up losing control over the flower if she revealed its existence to anyone? She does seem to believe that Humans Are Bastards.
  • Near the end, after Rapunzel's hair turns brown, Eugene tells her he has a thing for brunettes. Maybe it's true, or maybe he's being an Unreliable Narrator again and says so to reassure her.
  • Flynn screwing over the Stabbington Bros. comes right after their demand to keep the crown while he scales the cliff made it clear they didn't trust him. Did Flynn unapologetically prove them right, or did he decide to stab them in the back before they could get a chance to do so to him?
• Angst? What Angst?: Rapunzel is emotionally abused for 18 years, and the consequences seem to be over in a few days. At the end of the film, she has realized that her life is a lie, found out that her maternal figure was exploiting her and possibly never loved her at all, and witnessed the Family Unfriendly Deaths of two people close to her (though one of them at least got better). None of this trauma is even mentioned in the epilogue. When she first leaves the tower, Rapunzel clearly has fears about the outside world, however she gets over them quickly. The TV show amends this a little by showing Rapunzel, while still a generally positive person, does have occasional nightmares about Mother Gothel, and when the "Pascal's Story" episode finds her having to return to the tower she lived in with Gothel for 18 years, she is quite shaken.
• Applicability: Without context, the reprise of "Mother Knows Best" could easily be taken as a domestic between Gothel and Rapunzel, the cynical mother warning her virginal daughter about the dangers of giving yourself to an unsavoury stranger who, likely as not, only wants one thing from you, which Gothel even subtly implies about him in-universe. Rapunzel's rebellious comeback during the song really drives this home, as does their tearful reconciliation after Flynn breaks her heart. Of course, nothing is as it seems, but the metaphor is a strong one.
• Award Snub: The film didn't get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which was a surprise and sore spot for many given its high acclaim and how animated Disney features almost always secure nominations.^note This is often attributed to the lower number of submissions for the category that year resulting in a shorter nominee list as well as Disney spending more of their campaign energy into their blockbuster hit Toy Story 3.
• Awesome Music:
  • Alan Menken composed the score for this film; the songs may not be up to a Beauty and the Beast (1991) or The Little Mermaid (1989) caliber, but they're still great. "When Will My Life Begin" and its reprise in particular are awesome.
  • The Pub Thugs get a Funny Moments song with "I've Got A Dream".
  • "I See The Light" is absolutely beautiful.
  • Mother Gothel's reprise of "Mother Knows Best" deserves an honorable mention. That song is EPIC. And the first, longer version has a Broadway feel to it. Heck, the quality of every song in this movie could allow the movie to be made into a Broadway play.
  • "Kingdom Dance". This score and the scene that it accompanies is simply wonderful. No dialogue, but the sense of wonder and excitement as Rapunzel and Eugene spend time together in Corona and the dance is amazing.
• Base-Breaking Character: Mother Gothel. With the exception of apologist fans, few will deny that she is a great villain and an uncomfortably accurate depiction of an emotional abuser, but it's that accuracy that turns off some fans who prefer Disney's over-the-top villains over ones who're more realistically (and therefore less entertainingly) evil. Disney having even less entertaining villains in some of their following movies made Gothel better liked by some fans in retrospect since she is not a twist villain to the audience and acts more like a traditional Disney villain than her successors, though it also made other fans blame her for setting a precedent for said successors due to her realism.
• Broken Base: While it was critically acclaimed and is still highly regarded to this day, the film has become somewhat polarising in the years since. Half the base views it as a proper return to form for Disney, and the last time an animated film would contain things like romance, a proper villain and a more typical fairy tale plot - and Mother Gothel, Flynn Rider and Rapunzel herself are popular characters in their own right. The other half however finds the film a little too derivative of Dreamworks, especially in light of the infamous marketing campaign that pushed the film as a Shrek style romp, and fans of traditional 2D animation are a little resentful of this film's success being the reason Disney switched to CGI completely, as well as Rapunzel setting the trend of Disney's 'quirky' heroines among other divisive tropes the movie set for later Disney properties.
• Catharsis Factor: After having witnessed Gothel kidnap a child from her parents for the selfish intent to hoard her magical abilities and then psychologically abuse said child for years on end, both Rapunzel chewing her out for her abuse and her own death are nothing short of satisfaction. This is especially helpful for abuse victims themselves.
• Character Perception Evolution: While she was obviously viewed as a villain by a large number of audiences, thanks to her abduction of Rapunzel, Mother Gothel nevertheless got a fair amount of Draco in Leather Pants when the film was first released, with many fans considering her an imperfect but ultimately well-meaning My Beloved Smother who just wanted to keep her adoptive daughter safe. As time went on, awareness of emotional abuse and gaslighting increased, and Gothel began to be seen as not only one of Disney's most heinous villains, but also one of its darkest and most disturbingly realistic.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Mother Gothel x Frollo for similar motives, while Rapunzel and Quasimodo get paired up as platonic BFF's.
  • Rapunzel is shipped with Young!Once-ler, Megamind, Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon, Jack from Rise of the Guardians, Elsa and Anna from Frozen, and Merida from Brave. The last four are especially prominent in the Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons fandom.
  • Rapunzel also gets shipped with either Princess Fiona or Shrek himself from Shrek.
  • One of particular note is Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Sora meets Rapunzel in Kingdom Hearts III and (as the game retells the events of the movie), Sora shares many moments with her in place of Flynn, to the point that, in the context of the game, some say it would have made more sense to have them together instead.
  • Hans (from Frozen) and Gothel have their fans together. Gothel being at least (physically) in her forties, while Hans is in his early twenties might squick some; however, others enjoy their similarities as Faux Affably Evil villains.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Mother Gothel has quite a committed fanbase, which can get rather over-enthusiastic in either downplaying or defending her actions throughout the movie and giving her sympathetic origins or motives that are based on fan theorising and guesswork rather than what's presented in the movie proper. Even if those motives were true, this is still a character who kidnaps a child, spends 18 years gaslighting and emotionally crippling her and later chains her up and tries to kill her boyfriend, all in a vain and selfish effort to keep the child and her healing powers to herself.
• Fan Nickname: Originally titled Rapunzel and sometimes identified as being the Disney version of Rapunzel as such.
• Fanon:
  • Fanfic writers tend to have Rapunzel call Eugene by his former assumed name of Flynn Rider affectionately, instead of using his real name. Tangled: The Series debunks this fanon as Rapunzel just uses "Eugene".
  • Fanfic writers almost always referred to Rapunzel's parents as "Thomas" and "Primrose" until Tangled: The Series revealed their names to be Frederic and Arianna.
  • Mother Gothel's first name is speculated to be Esther.
  • Elsa and Anna from Frozen being Rapunzel's younger cousins is popular with both fandoms. Fans differ on whether Anna's and Elsa's father or their mother is related to Rapunzel's mother, though most lean on their mother. There's further support for this in the fact that as revealed in Tangled: The Series, Rapunzel's mother's name is Arianna. Frozen II debunked the latter part, revealing that Anna and Elsa's mother was in fact a tribeswoman of the Northuldra people rather than of royal blood.
  • Gothel has a fear of aging and dying. This is despite, as mentioned above, the movie implies her fears are instead due to vanity.
  • A fan theory is that Gothel suffered Death By Rapid Aging because she was touching the hair as it lost its powers - thereby suffering the opposite effect of touching it while it's healing.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Concept art for Rapunzel (most prominently in production artist Claire Keane's early character drafts) shows her with a simpler light-green dress, which is loved by certain fan sectors for feeling more unique compared to her purple dress in the movie. It's quite common for fan-made merch and cosplays to feature the concept art outfit, or at least a green variant of Rapunzel's canon ensemble.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Hans from Frozen is usually cited as the start of Disney's twist villains, but many detractors of the trend cite Mother Gothel as the original. She's clearly not a completely good person, but it's not clear if she is genuinely overprotective of Rapunzel or not until the tail end of the film. Many Disney fans and critics dislike the toned-down twist villains commonplace in the 2010s and prefer the campy, Obviously Evil villains of previous films. However, unlike Hans whose twist comes out of left field, Gothel is made more Obviously Evil and it's more for Rapunzel rather than the audience to see her true nature.
  • Rapunzel debuted a new protagonist mold for Disney, with her being a lead who demonstrated several "adorkable" traits. This direction was praised for setting her apart from more poised or serious predecessor protagonists, and for fitting the story of a girl with an abusive guardian and no social experience to really train her. However, the success of the film and Rapunzel led to her "adorkable" traits being mirrored in protagonists like Anna, Moana, and Mirabel before widely hitting the point of audience fatigue with Asha. Rapunzel and Anna had story-based reasons for the traits, and Moana and Mirabel still had enough Hidden Depths and/or Character Development to make them feel distinct. Asha, on the other hand, has been criticized for being "adorkable" for the sake of it and for lacking other traits that sets her apart from her predecessors. At that point, many audience members began critiquing the "adorkable" approach and calling for change in Disney's character writing after finding the formula oversaturated, over-emphasized, stale, and detrimental to the sincerity of the storytelling.
• Genius Bonus: Hook Hand dreams of becoming a concert pianist even though he is missing a hand. Silly, right? Tell that to the one-armed concert pianists Paul Wittgenstein and Siegfried Rapp. The former even commissioned none other than Maurice Ravel to write an entire piano concerto designed for one hand.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This movie was very popular with people of all ages in India, of all places, due to the uncanny coincidence that Rapunzel's "See The Light" song reminds many Indian people of Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Mother Gothel's abusive treatment of Rapunzel becomes even harsher in the third season of Tangled: The Series. Turns out that Gothel had a biological daughter of her own whom she treated like a slave, only to abandon her in favor of Rapunzel. It's even more harsh if you believe that Gothel started to genuinely care for Rapunzel like a daughter, once you realize that she had tossed aside her actual daughter. Ouch.
  • Gothel's emotionally abusive treatment of Rapunzel might be even more uncomfortable to watch when you read about how Mandy Moore's marriage to Ryan Adams deteriorated.
  • Rapunzel tells Flynn that she will never break a promise she made. Come Tangled: The Series, Rapunzel fails to keep a promise to Varian to save his father, leading to his Start of Darkness that damaged the two's friendship until Season 3.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Vladimir, a big buff man, having a collection of ceramic unicorns will likely make people think of Bronies. ^note It should be noted that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic came out just over a month before Tangled did, however, the Brony fandom was still in its beginning stages of development and was relatively under-known when the movie was released, making this scene even more hilarious, especially given the Production Lead Time.
  • Mother Gothel frequently sighs about Rapunzel making her "the bad guy". Once Upon a Time, also produced by Disney, would in fact have a villainous Rapunzel in the same season as Mother Gothel.
  • During "I've Got a Dream", Hook Hand states that his sneer is so nasty, "it could curdle dairy." It looks like The Amazing World of Gumball took some inspiration with "The Worst", when Gumball and Darwin give a literal Death Glare to a sentient milk carton and cause them to expire.
• I Am Not Shazam: Some kids think that Rapunzel's name is "Tangled".
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: The ship of Rapunzel and Eugene is called "New Dream," after his Dying Declaration of Love, "You were my new dream."
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Mother Gothel has been shipped with not only Frollo and Hans, as mentioned in Crossover Ship, but has also been shipped with Eugene, and even Rapunzel.
• Love to Hate: Mother Gothel is incredibly manipulative and emotionally abusive, and an attempted murderer to boot, but her bouncy Villain Song and charming Faux Affably Evil persona prevent her from being unlikable.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This image◊ of Flynn with several swords pointing at him has become a popular reaction image used for Fandom Heresy.
  • This. Essentially a wordplay on "tanglad", the Filipino word for lemongrass.
  • The scene in which Flynn holds up his own wanted poster and says "They just can't get my nose right." is often the subject of redraws featuring characters from other media, especially ones who canonically have comically incorrect wanted posters.
• Moe: Rapunzel. Just look at her! Especially when she laughs. She's more cute than beautiful, and even has a little overbite and a lisp that adds to her cuteness rather than subtracts. Additionally, part of the way through Gothel's Villain Song, "Mother Knows Best" features Rapunzel huddled up in a small fort made of her own hair◊. It is quite possibly one of the most adorable things in the entire movie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Depending on your view, Gothel may have crossed it when she kidnapped an infant girl to maintain her own youth. After kidnapping her, she abused her emotionally to control her. It worked so well that Rapunzel freaked out once she sat a foot outside the tower. If that isn't bad enough, she killed Rapunzel's boyfriend in front of her eyes and immediately blamed Rapunzel for his death (thankfully, he got better).
• Older Than They Think:
  • Several elements in this franchise have first debuted in Barbie as Rapunzel, such as Rapunzel being a painter and wearing purple/gold clothes, Gothel being an emotionally abusive parental figure, and Rapunzel being a kidnapped princess.
  • The 1984 Faerie Tale Theatre adaptation of the tale also portrays the Witch as a realistic abusive parental figure.
  • This was not Mandy Moore's first time voicing a heroine in an animated Disney film. That honor goes to Nita in Brother Bear 2.
  • While it may not be in the original tale, Gothel is not the first Disney villain to stab the hero from behind before falling off a tower to their death before the heroine brings her lover back from death while crying over him (thanks to the involvement of a magic flower).
• Paranoia Fuel: Your mother doesn't love you. She spends her time breaking your spirit and disguising it as fun "teasing", pointing out You Are Fat and have no survival skills. Then you find out you can survive in the world and tell her, and she proceeds to say your friends are an Opportunistic Bastard lot that only care about what you can offer them. In fact, she's not even your real mother. She's a woman who kidnapped you as a baby and raised you to be completely dependent on her. And she's willing to break your heart and kill your friends to control you. Love you, mom!
• Porting Disaster: For the Windows release of the video game, that is. Apparently the porting house responsible for converting the original Wii version didn't have the foresight to take children into account when it comes to the control scheme — only the second player can use the controller, leaving the little kid who so wanted to play as her favourite Disney Princess to be forced into getting acquainted with the finer points of WASD on a keyboard.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Mother Gothel is a quite accurate depiction of real-life Abusive Parents in what is otherwise the adaptation of a classic fairytale; several of her actions wouldn't be out of place coming from a caring parent, but she also keeps Rapunzel inside the tower by making the world outside sound scary and discouraging her from thinking for herself.
• Refrain from Assuming: The Tear Heals/Healing Incantation/Spell Song gets the most, which is also sometimes referred to as "Flower Gleam and Glow".
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • There are those who see the King's taking of the flower and destroying it by making it into a tea as selfish, since it takes away the flower's ability to heal from everyone but the Queen and her unborn child. But the King's actions are of course prompted by trying to prevent his wife and unborn daughter (and only future successor to the Crown) from dying. In a similar vein, some argue that the King and Queen caused the entire movie's problems by destroying the flower rather than using it as intended (i.e., singing the healing song); but the King and Queen never knew the flower could be used that way, let alone of Gothel's existence. Flynn's surprised and shocked reaction when he first sees Rapunzel's magic in-action indicates that the flower's way of working is not common knowledge. There's also the fact that Gothel decided simply to sneak into the palace and kidnap Rapunzel without saying a word (unlike the original story, where she actually asks/demands to have baby Rapunzel's from her father, and only takes the baby when she is denied). The King and the Queen weren't even given a chance to make amends for the flower.
  • In various fanfics, the Captain of the Guard turns from a relatively well-meaning (if not very competent) soldier to a sadistic asshole who kidnaps Rapunzel solely to spite Flynn.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: When the film was first released, the animation was praised for being able to perfectly emulate the look and feel of Disney's older hand-drawn films in a 3D medium. Over a decade later, when that animation style has become the norm for Disney films, younger viewers may not find Tangled's animation that special.
• Signature Song: "I See the Light" and "Mother Knows Best" are the most well-known songs from the movie.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Although it is coming from a place of manipulation and insincerity, Mother Gothel's condemnation of the world, for many viewers, doesn't stray too far from truth. Though of all the characters in the movie, Mother Gothel herself is the only one who matches this particular description:
    Mother Gothel: The world is dark, and selfish, and cruel. If it finds even the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it.
  • When she catches up with Rapunzel outside the tower, her words probably sound familiar to anyone who's been worried that their child was getting mixed up in the wrong crowd. What's more, Gothel is right that Flynn is only staying with Rapunzel until she gives him the satchel with the tiara: initially, she didn't anticipate that Flynn would stop caring about it and hand the satchel over to the Stabbington Brothers as an apology for getting them arrested.
    Rapunzel: ... I even met someone!
    Mother Gothel: Yes, the wanted thief, I'm so proud.
• Tainted by the Preview: When the first trailer hit theaters, many people were put off since there was so much focus on Flynn and so little on Rapunzel when the movie was clearly about her. There was also how slapstick and Shrek-like it seemed (or the movie title being Tangled). The strong week-to-week holds of the film spoke volumes about the terrific word-of-mouth from those who did see it. And them continuously playing P!nk's "Trouble" through promotion, when it wasn't part of the original soundtrack to begin with.
• Tear Dryer: At the end, Flynn gets stabbed by Gothel and cuts Rapunzel's hair so she no longer has to be a slave at the cost of him dying. Then Rapunzel starts crying over him, and it turns out she still has just enough magic to revive him via Swiss-Army Tears so that they can continue being together.
• Theme Pairing: Rapunzel and Mavis from Hotel Transylvania (2012) are both girls isolated from the real world by their overprotective parents and therefore are very eager to go and explore it. Golden Blond and Jet Black has them as the main pairing.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Big Nose Thug. His part in "I've Got A Dream" when he describes all his less than flattering physical attributes is a Lampshade Hanging of this trope — especially the part where he sings about a girl loving him.
  • Shorty Thug. He's the only thug who doesn't look physically intimidating, due to him being, well, short, small and very old. He also wears wings in several scenes which make him seem like Cupid (coincidentally, the cap Big Nose wears on his head also reminds of Cupid's wings!), otherwise wears nothing but a loin cloth, and repeatedly blows kisses directly to the viewer.
  • This is the overall aesthetic of the hand-drawn visuals in the credits sequence. Most of the characters are much less attractive than they are in the actual movie — Flynn is downgraded from roguishly handsome to just plain roguish, Rapunzel becomes freckle-faced and homely, the Snuggly Duckling thugs look even uglier than they did originally, Max is oddly hairy, and the Guards are just plain hideous — but somehow they still look quite endearing just the same.
• Win Back the Crowd: Tangled finished the job that Disney started with The Princess and the Frog for being relevant in the animation industry once again, outside of Pixar's shadow. Both critics and audiences loved it, and it became Disney's second highest grossing film ever at the time of its release.
• The Woobie:
  • Rapunzel. Kidnapped from her birth parents as an infant by a woman who only cared about her because her magic hair kept her young. And during those eighteen years, Gothel emotionally and psychologically abused Rapunzel into fearing the outside world. By the end she's an Iron Woobie.
  • Queen Arianna and King Frederic. After Arianna barely survived her life-threatening pregnancy, the infant daughter was kidnapped right before their eyes. They spent the next eighteen years in emotional turmoil, wondering if their only child was alive or dead.