Disney movies are designed to be rewatched over and over again.
When you really dig into them, though, you might notice that they often end with a few
dangling and intriguing questions that are never fully answered, from nonsensical world-building
to some very uncomfortable romantic implications.
Even if you've never seen Disney's Aladdin, you probably know how the whole Genie thing
works.
Once the title character's big blue buddy is released from the lamp, he tells Aladdin
that he will grant any three wishes, with only a simple trio of limitations.
"I can't kill anybody so don’t ask.
Rule number 2: I can’t make anybody fall in love with anybody else."
His final rule is that he can't resurrect the dead, but then goes on to say that it's
not impossible, it's just that he doesn't like to do it.
Not only does that imply that he's done it before, doesn't it mean that Genie could break
the rules if he wanted, and he just chooses not to?
There's some evidence later in the film that the Genie has a lot more wiggle room than
he is letting on.
Aladdin's first wish is to be a prince, but the Genie never really grants this wish at
all.
Aladdin doesn't get a kingdom to rule or in his case, a principality.
His "Prince Ali" shtick is merely a ruse,
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your ruse.
Your cunning attempt to trick me.”
and when that ruse is discovered, it turns out that royal credentials weren't really
necessary for a marriage to Jasmine.
When Jafar wishes to be Sultan, he actually gets to rule Agrabah, but all Aladdin gets
is a parade.
At one point, the Genie tells Aladdin that he can't save Aladdin's life unless Aladdin
uses a wish, but at another point, Al tricks the genie into granting a wish for free, because
he never technically uses the words "I wish."
That means the Genie can use his phenomenal cosmic powers even outside of actual wish-granting.
We never learn for certain how much flexibility the Genie has in wish granting, but those
three rules certainly aren't the whole story.
101 Dalmatians is a certified canine classic, but there's a seemingly vital question at
the heart of the film that it never really bothers to answer.
Why is Cruella de Vil hanging around with Roger and Anita to begin with?
If you have a vague recollection that maybe Cruella was Anita's boss or something, you're
wrong.
That's how it works in the 1996 live-action remake, where Anita is a fashion designer
working for Cruella, but in the original 1961 film, she's just an old friend from Anita's
school days.
The two characters seem to hate everything about each other, to the point where Roger
and Anita straight up write a mean song about how much she sucks, so what is either of them
getting out of this friendship?
One advantage of living in the pre-Facebook era of the '60s was that once you got out
of school, you never had to keep in touch with your old classmates and their criticisms
of your life choices.
"Anita, don't be ridiculous, you can’t possibly afford to keep them, you can scarcely afford
to feed yourselves."
Anita's life seems like the result of some weird Faustian bargain.
On the one hand, you will have a hundred adorable puppies and never have to worry about money
again, but on the other hand, that one person you hated most from high school will be hanging
around your house all the time, and you can never ever get rid of them.
When Buzz Lightyear first arrives in Andy's room in Toy Story, there's something different
about him.
Unlike the other toys, who are happy with their roles as Andy's playthings, Buzz doesn't
think of himself as a toy at all.
He thinks he's the real Buzz Lightyear, stranded on an alien planet after crashing his "spaceship,"
which is actually just the box he came in.
For most of the movie, this is handled pretty consistently.
For instance, Buzz doesn't want to open his helmet, in case the atmosphere is toxic.
He thinks he has a real laser gun in his arm.
He even believes he can fly, which turns out to be pretty dangerous..
"YOU ARE A TOY!"
But if Buzz really believes that he's a Space Ranger, why does he freeze when humans are
around?
Fixing his spaceship seems to be beyond Buzz's capabilities, so why not make contact with
this friendly giant to get help fixing his spaceship?
It might just be that Buzz thinks it's a good idea to do what the native life forms of this
strange bedroom planet do whenever a creature roughly a hundred times their size walks in,
just in case Andy's not quite as friendly as he seems.
Or maybe, somewhere in his tiny plastic chest, Buzz knows the truth all along.
He feels an instinctual need to freeze around humans, but can't understand why he's doing
it, and perhaps even makes excuses for it later.
It's a shame that the movie never explores this angle, because we would have loved to
see Buzz deal with the cognitive dissonance of not believing he is a toy, while on another
level not being able to resist behaving like one.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may contain a magic mirror, a shapeshifting evil queen,
and a princesses who talks to animals, but the most fantastical thing in this setting
has to be the strange work ethic of the seven dwarfs.
In "Heigh Ho," the dwarfs sing about their work in the mine, claiming that they're swinging
their pickaxes for 12-hour shifts and digging up literal cart-loads of diamonds, rubies,
and other precious gemstones.
Given this, you'd imagine they'd be pretty wealthy, and yet they're practically living
on top of each other in a single shoddy cabin with one bedroom.
One of the other things they mention in the song is that they enjoy what they do, so maybe
the dwarfs are just working for the joy of work.
After all, when they finish up at the end of each day, they just toss their gems into
a vault, lock the door, and then hang up the key on a hook... right outside the door.
This could imply that they just don't care.
Alternatively, the dwarfs simply might not know that diamonds are valuable, which might
be why we see Dopey literally throwing sub-standard rubies in the trash.
Their house is a mess, and there's an entire song about how they don't know how to clean
themselves, so it's safe to assume that no one ever taught them about finances.
Or maybe there's some unseen boss.
Someone gave them their shoddy house and taught them how to build elaborate glass coffins
in exchange for working in the mine all day for free.
As presented in the film, the plot of Monsters, Inc. is mostly comedy.
A little girl from the human world nicknamed Boo ends up in the fantastical city of Monstropolis,
becoming the pet of two monsters named Mike and Sully, who are more afraid of her than
she is of them.
This seems like a recipe for family-friendly fish out of water antics, and that's mostly
what we get, from the perspective of our main characters.
However, if the viewpoint had stayed in the human world, the film would have quickly switched
genres once Boo's parents discovered she was missing.
There's basically an entire second movie here, a crime thriller complete with crying parents,
police reports, search parties, and possibly even nationwide media coverage after Boo vanishes
with no explanation into a parallel dimension.
Perhaps even more interesting, however, would be what happens next.
When Boo returns to her bedroom in the middle of the night as mysteriously as she vanished,
what would be the reaction of her family and their community?
Would Boo's family now be accused of faking the whole thing?
Would her parents be able to return to life as it once was, or would they suspect the
truth about the monsters that live in the closet?
At the end of Monsters, Inc., when Sully returns to Boo's room so that he can visit her again,
is Boo's mom waiting just off-screen with a baseball bat?
Now that's a sequel we'd like to see.
Of all the romances in Disney films, there are few more purely adorable than The Lion
King's pairing of Simba and Nala.
If you want to keep thinking about it that way, maybe skip ahead a little bit, because
things are about to get real uncomfortable real quick.
Okay, are all the normal people gone?
Just the weirdos left?
Good, because here's a news flash: Simba and Nala are probably related.
Let's start with their mothers, Sarabi and Sarafina.
For real lions, all the lionesses in a pride are typically related.
If that's the case here, then Simba and Nala are probably at least second cousins.
It gets even worse when you think about their dads.
Again, in a real lion pride, all the cubs are typically offspring of the same two or
three males.
In The Lion King, there are two males: Mufasa and Scar.
Since the entire plot of the movie revolves around Scar and Mufasa being brothers, the
best Simba and Nala can hope for is cousins, and they might be as close as half-siblings.
This whole line-of-succession thing just got way more complicated.
"Long live the king."
Once upon a time, the world of The Incredibles was full of superheroes, but then the government
forced them all to retire.
Now they are monitored by the National Supers Agency, which both makes sure that they aren't
using their powers in public, and also helps relocate them if their identities are ever
exposed.
One hero who has gotten to know the Agency quite well is Bob Parr, formerly known as
Mr. Incredible.
Because he can't resist the siren song of returning to superheroics every now and then,
Parr and his family have been relocated and given new identities by the Agency multiple
times.
Eventually, Parr is given an opportunity to feel like a hero again when a mysterious billionaire
hires him to disable his renegade robot.
It later turns out that this robot isn't a renegade at all.
Parr's mysterious boss built it, and others like it, for the sole purpose of killing superheroes,
and it's already racked up a body count of fifteen supers before it goes after the Parrs.
So, quick question: if the only job of an entire government agency is to monitor retired
superheroes, did nobody notice that 15 of them had gone missing?
Seriously, if you lose track of a guy who can shoot lasers out of his eyes, that's troubling
for a whole lot of reasons, and if more retired heroes start vanishing, you should really
start letting people know.
Then again, given how frequently Bob's has to be relocated, maybe someone in the Agency
figured that Bob having a mysterious disappearance wouldn't be the end of the world.
At least it would cut down on the amount of paperwork they had to do.
Some Disney movies raise a few questions.
Beauty and the Beast raises so many that we don't even know where to begin.
Why does no one in Belle's town know about the Beast's castle?
Wasn't he just their ruler a few years ago?
Is everything in the castle a former person?
We see the all of the dishes and even the silverware dancing.
Did they used to be people?
If so, did the castle not have spoons before?
The Beast is 20 years old (a fact that's central to the plot), and Lumiere says during "Be
Our Guest" that they've been cursed for ten years.
Does that mean the prince was just ten when he was cursed?
How much of a jerk do you have to be to put a curse on a ten-year-old?
And why curse his servants?
They didn't do anything wrong.
Speaking of ages, how old is Chip?
He seems younger than ten.
Did he stop maturing when he was cursed?
Would he actually be a teenager now if he wasn't a cup, or did Mrs. Potts give birth
to him while she was a teapot?
If so, who's his father?
Can the furniture-people have kids?!
"This is impossible"
"I know it is… but here we are."
Okay, to be fair, the 2017 remake tried to answer a few of these questions, but in some
ways, that resulted in a movie that was way talkier and less fun.
The original Beauty and the Beast is great, and Disney movies in general are great, in
part because they have so many weird loose threads like this.
After all, after you watch a movie a hundred times, isn't it nice to still have a few questions?
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.