She's out of her mind!

Hello, and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric, and I'm here with my brother Torvald, and we've got a great show for you today. I've got a question for you. Who do you think would win in a fight? Cinderella or Belle? Cinderella or Belle? Yeah. Oh, Belle? Yeah. Obviously. Well, why would Belle win? Her movie was made in the 90s, right when Disney was just starting to try to sort of reverse some of their princess tropes. What is she going to do? Read Cinderella to death? That's all she does. So even though Belle has a lot of the same problems as many of the princess characters, she is a little more active of a protagonist. If we're saying that the universes are merged, these two universes exist together, and they just run into each other in universe, which encompasses both universes, Belle would stomp. bell would destroy cinderella because as soon as they start fighting she's got the freaking beast

who would come and just rip cinderella apart and she's got freaking even more importantly guest on who would come no one fights like a stone like he eats he eats so many eggs yeah he just ripped it apart with his teeth well bell also has crazy old maurice who created like a An axe killing machine? Yeah, axe machine. It's true. No, wait, but okay, if these are universe versus universe, I'm wrong. Cinderella, when she has a fairy godmother with actual magic. That's true. That's true. For all we know, she's the woman who cursed the beast, right? Maybe. I mean, might as well be. I mean, or does she have a fairy godmother? What? What are you talking about? You've got a Cinderella theory? Yeah. Color me surprised. I thought we were just here to chit-chat. Well, I have a theory. So we're talking about Disney's Cinderella, a classic film made in 1950. The directors were apparently Clyde Geronimi and Wilfred Jackson.

This is a Geronimi film? Yeah.

Good old Geronimi. Disney is fully aware of the criticism about their princess characters, So we can certainly get into that. I don't want to outright hate on it because this is a very beloved film. Even if you're not Disney, I think that a far superior film is Cinderella 3, which we'll definitely talk about.

Many people may not agree with that. And to that, I say, watch them again. Just watch them like I did back to back one, two and three. And tell me which one is the best. Which one's the most exciting? Who wouldn't agree that number three is the best? I don't think that's a controversial statement. I mean, I think it is, but just because most people don't even know that number three exists. But I mean, it came out in like the golden age of Disney when every movie was a direct VHS sequel and the hits just didn't stop. We'll get to the sequels. But right now, perhaps you could give us a quick synopsis of the age old tale of Cinderella. Basically, she grew up and was happy until her mom died, and her dad remarried, and he married an evil lady with two evil stepdaughters, and then her dad died, and then it was this evil stepmom and the evil stepdaughters basically, you know, exploiting her, making her be their

little personal slave, pretty much. Right. Until one day when she meets her fairy godmother, who helps her go to a ball, she meets a prince, and they get married happily ever after, after he finds out that her foot fits the glass slipper. My Cinderella theory is that Cinderella was delusional, possibly schizophrenic, and she never went to the ball. Okay, but did she get married? Yes, she did. Oh, okay. I'm excited about this. Well, everything did sort of ironically work out for her in the end. But yeah, she never went to the ball. She did get married to the prince. she did her dreams did come true the movie starts with a song cinderella's sleeping she gets woken up by birds what a way to get woken up every morning like i don't know friendly birds pecking right yeah i mean i i think that she's making the best of a bad situation she lives up in a tower probably with birds pooping on her and stuff and she's sort of imagining a better version of this

where the birds are her friends they wake me up in the morning okay okay okay hold on let me let Let me flesh this out for our audience then. It sounds like what you're saying is that she does interact with animals as she does in the movie, but just not in the same way that the movie portrays, that like she is just living among rodents, basically, and she pretends that they're her friends. We are in Cinderella's perspective. It is true that she interacts with animals, but essentially what it is is that she is crawling with vermin. Your theory basically everything stems from the idea that this movie like everything that happened in this movie is centered around like the magic of you know her being able to interact with animals and the magic of her actual fairy godmother doing real magic and you're saying no there's no magic like we live in the world where there's no magic and so we know that everything magic that happened in this movie must be within her mind.

Right, I think this is just a very logical, rational interpretation of this film. And I wanted to point out some of the lyrics of this song, A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. She does say in the very beginning when she's singing, no matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true. Right, but doesn't that fit with both? That also just fits with the regular movie because she's having a hard time and her wish does come true in the end. That doesn't mean she's crazy. No, it fits. I just think one thing that I wanted us to look at is just the fact that no matter how your heart is grieving, what is Cinderella grieving about? She lost both of her parents, hugely traumatic, and now she's just living with her stepfamily who doesn't treat her very well, though I believe they actually treat her better than what we see. I think that she kind of interprets many of these events to be worse than they actually are. But I think that

The death of her father, she was always an imaginative child, as Lady Tremaine says several times, she's an imaginative child. But I think that the death of her father kind of pushed her over the edge, and her psychosis has kind of gotten worse and worse over the years. One of the kind of staples of this movie, which we learned really early on, is that Cinderella not only has befriended all these animals, but she also sews clothes for them. Do you think she's actually sewing clothes for them? Yes, she is actually sewing clothes for the mice. I don't believe that they're necessarily keeping those clothes on or they might be ripping them up, biting them, whatever. But she is actually sewing clothes for the mice. I mean, we know that she likes to anthropomorphize things because one of the first things she does is when the clock chimes, she says, oh, Killjoy, even he orders me around. So we know that she imagines that things are being mean to her

and ordering her around, even if they're actually not. She dresses up mice. She thinks that they can talk to her. The birds that wake her up also have shoes and bandanas. Does she dress up birds as well? I believe that she tries. Now, again, I don't necessarily know that these clothes stay on. But clearly, yes, she does try to catch and dress up her birds, just as she does with the mice. She believes that they talk to her and she imagines them having crazy adventures all the time. This is a coping mechanism, right? Meninism. And someday I'll get this podcasting thing right. I think that day is today. So this is escapism from her hard life. She dreams of having these mice helping her because, of course, she is a sort of slave. And it's her dream to be able to enslave other people and be the one who is in charge, which is, of course, enslaving the mice. It's like an Aquaman situation. They give her a bath.

Right, but what she's imagining is she's imagining herself, essentially, what happens in the end, becoming a princess. She wants to have herself surrounded by loving servants, right? Which is what is happening, right? These mice wake up, they help her get dressed, they polish her shoes, they give her a bath, they bring her her clothes, right? They are kind of waiting on her, you know, doing everything she wants. Kind of. Yeah, exactly. Of course, none of this is happening. She's just imagining herself as a princess using the things that she sees around her. And that's important is that her delusions generally come from whatever she sees around her. So you think she actually saved like a crazed rodent that was stuck in that trap? Yeah. So Jack-Jack finds- Forced clothes on it. Yeah, she did. Okay. So Jack finds Gus or Gus-Gus, however you want to look at it. No, his name is not Gus or Gus-Gus.

It's Octavius. Or Gus for short. Right. Well, because Octavius, if you wouldn't know this as a kid watching this movie, is another form of Augustus, and Gus is short for Augustus. So you're saying Cinderella is like actually quite book smart. Yeah, yeah. Oh, she loves telling stories to herself. She's educated. I mean, you know, her father was a nobleman. She probably had some kind of an education before she got moved up into the tower, you know, and she loves telling stories. And these stories kind of turned into full-blown delusions as she got older. They find Gus in a trap. And the fact that they have mousetraps either means that someone in the house is aware of the problem and trying to fix it. But no one does anything like that except Cinderella. So what I think that means is that Cinderella herself catches these mice so she can dress them up. She is the one who sets those traps. Who else would do it?

We think Lady Tremaine is going up to Cinderella's tower and setting a trap. I mean, they also have a house cat. And as far as I understand, like having a house cat was specifically like to get rid of mice. Yeah, no, I mean, Lady Tremaine, I do think, is aware of this mouse problem and she has a cat to take care of it. I don't think she's going into Cinderella's tower and setting up the traps, though. I think that's all Cinderella. Yeah, that's true. No, you're right. Lady Tremaine would not care one bit about mice in Cinderella's tower. You have a really good point there. Just to be clear for our listeners, if you haven't seen Cinderella lately, this tower has literally one room. You go in and there's a staircase that leads all the way to the top and that's where Cinderella's room is. The rest of the tower is barren. There's nothing else in it. It is a detached building with nothing in it except for Cinderella's room at the top.

And it's kind of decrepit. So it seems like nobody cares about this tower. And why would anyone set traps there unless it's Cinderella trying to catch her friend? The only trap we ever see is right in Cinderella's domain. She must have set that trap herself. Right. And so this is really important because when we see Gus in the trap, Gus is naked. So we know this is not a world of anthropomorphic animals. Animals don't normally wear clothes. Cinderella makes little clothes for them and forces them to wear them. Well, no. So you say that this isn't a world with anthropomorphic animals. And I kind of agree. But that makes me wonder, like, the mice talk to Cinderella. The birds don't talk to Cinderella. But they do help Cinderella. The cats and dogs and horses like Bruno and Lucifer, they don't even interact with Cinderella like humans, like the mice and birds do. What's going on here? Is there some sort of like hierarchy in Cinderella's mind?

Like the more of a pest you are, the more human you are? Yeah, well, I think it has more to do with the amount of interaction it has with a human, because that means that her imagination can work less on it. She can't have as many delusions about Lucifer or the dog because of course they're around other humans, right? And so she can't imagine that they're talking because no one else would hear them talking, right? Then her whole delusion would be ruined. Whereas the mice, those are the only ones, no one is going to stop and interact with the mice. So she can kind of imagine them talking to her. And birds, you know, birds, everyone sees birds. So those have a little bit of interaction with humans. So, you know, they just don't talk, but they're still somewhat anthropomorphic. But in Cinderella 2, there are interactions between other people and these mice, namely when Jack-Jack becomes a human and interacts with people.

And then in Cinderella 3, the Prince Charming seems to understand Jack and Gus when they talk to him. In the sequels, yes. I do want to get to the sequels more toward the end and go in chronological order. Okay, but is the theory kind of like exclusive of the sequels? Like we're just looking at Cinderella like as its own movie? No, we will look at all of them. And I believe there is evidence in all of them. But the second movie and the third movie are both stories that are being told. And so they have a lot of fantastical elements in them. Well, now this is interesting because the first Cinderella movie is literally a story being told. As most old Disney movies were for some reason. Like they seem to think it was really cool to start their movie with a book opening. It's just because they were adapted. You'd think they wouldn't want to call attention to that. Now they wouldn't want to call attention to that.

They don't start Frozen with a book opening. Dude, they start it with a big old song about ice. Great. It just goes on for like three minutes. Oh, we're going to do a Frozen episode. Another Frozen episode. Whoa, we just did a Frozen episode. Oh, all right, all right. In this scene, she's like, there's one thing they can't take away from me, my dreams. Well, that's interesting because I don't know if you're going to talk about this but just a few scenes later she is like just absolutely ripping into bruno saying well that's bad you need to get rid of those dreams something that he has no control over like it's like uh so she she's going she's going down to get breakfast ready she meets bruno the dog and she scolds him for dreaming because he was dreaming about catching lucifer even though she literally just said they can't take away my dreams then she tells the dog to learn to get rid of his dreams and i think this is because subconsciously she knows

that her dreams and delusions are not real and she'd be better off getting rid of them there's a part of her that knows she's crazy and is sort of mad at herself for that so she takes out that anger on the dog right yeah it's a projection right but also it's a like a it's like a sure it's a projection, but within a delusion itself because she's freaking talking to a dog. Lots of people talk to their dogs. I know, I know, but I'm saying she doesn't know what it was dreaming about. Do we really think it nodded yes when she's like, did you catch him?

She blames the dog for dreaming about catching and possibly killing Lucifer and then tells him that's bad and he's got to get rid of those dreams or he'll lose his nice warm bed. And I think she is here again projecting her own feelings onto Bruno and may herself be secretly afraid if Lady Tremaine finds out how crazy she is that she might lose her nice warm bed in the tower or she could be referring to the fact that she already lost her nice warm bed in the house and Lady Tremaine might be putting her in the tower because she's like let's get this crazy girl away from my daughters I do want to point out though that like unlike every other character in the movie including the stepfamily, Cinderella is like actually pretty protective of Lucifer. Like she's, she's always telling the animals and people to be nice to Lucifer. She seems to care about him. It's also at this point that she shoos the chickens away so she can feed the chicken food

to the mice, to the pests. Luckily the cat is there doing his job and trying to stop the mice. Okay. And that's the next thing I was going to mention is like, Cinderella's, she's being a She's delivering breakfast to the stepmom and the stepsisters. I want to point out, I thought this was pretty cool. They even foreshadow at this point that she loses her shoes on stairs. Because while she's delivering breakfast to everyone, she's going down the stairs and her shoe comes off and she has to go put it back on. I was like, yeah, that's good attention to detail. Right, yeah. I also think this could be where her brain gets the idea to create this romantic story later on that I was at the ball and I lost my shoe. which as we'll find out spoiler alert doesn't actually happen oh well lucifer the cat he's following her because underneath one of the cups on the tray she's holding is a mouse when he finally

gets his hands on this mouse cinderella chews him out and she's like oh lucifer won't you ever learn and i'm like won't he learn what to catch mice better because this is his job what do you expect him to do not catch mice there was a mouse in anastasia's tea yeah yeah that's disgusting like oh my gosh like it's i'm sorry i didn't i didn't even point that out right i actually ended up in the food in the tea in particular yeah no she straight up delivers on a tray a cup with a mouse in it to anastasia this actually happens and anastasia of course blames her for playing a prank i think that cinderella was playing a prank on it she caught this mouse like 10 minutes ago and put it in anastasia's tea it's true it is the exact putting a shirt on but i will grant it is possible that a mouse just ended up in this teacup the mouse that cinderella caught that morning and somehow cinderella didn't know about it but i think that the far more likely thing is

exactly what anastasia says she put it in my teacup right and then the fact that she yells at lucifer right after for catching that mouse that was bothering anastasia i think kind of tells you whose side she's on right no definitely lady tremaine literally says we don't have time for vicious practical jokes and i think this could be another further little evidence that she's just kind of a crazy person doing weird things every once in a while so they had to move her to the tower where she wouldn't bother her daughter so much. Maybe they shouldn't give her the job as their slave then if she does stuff like this. They're not good people. You know, I'm going to argue they're not quite as bad, but they're still really bad. So then Lady Tremaine gives her a bunch of chores. Now, I think the amount of chores is exaggerated in Cinderella's perspective. Like, you listen to what Lady Tremaine asks her to do.

She says, clean the big carpet and the tapestries and the drapes and wash all the windows upstairs and downstairs and do the chimney. And then, of course, the washing and the mending and give Lucifer his bath. There's no way one person could do all those chores in one day. I mean, even like just the chimney alone isn't probably an all-day job, right? I mean, I don't know much about cleaning chimneys aside from Mary Poppins, but it seems like a pretty intense thing. So I agree. It's a lot of stuff that she's given to do, but she's specifically given all this stuff to do as a punishment. So maybe it's supposed to be a little overboard, right? I do believe Lady Tremaine gives her a lot of chores, but I just don't think that it's quite as bad as what Cinderella is interpreting here. Just going back to what I was saying about this family is that they all have issues. No matter what, this is a very dysfunctional family. But I do think it's

important to note, the stepsisters are not specifically mean to only Cinderella. They are just as mean to each other. They're constantly pushing each other and fighting and yelling at each other and even ordering each other around. No, definitely. And that holds true for all the Cinderella movies, which I thought was kind of interesting. The stepsisters don't seem to like each other at all, any more than they like Cinderella. Right, yeah. And I think that if we were, even Lady Tremaine, she yells at Cinderella, but she also yells at Drizelle and Anastasia a lot too. I think if we were seeing this from a more... But at least she wants the best for Drusilla and Anastasia. She doesn't want the best for Cinderella. No, it's true. And she plays favorites. I'm not saying, yeah. I think if we saw this from an omniscient perspective, not from Cinderella's point of view, we would just see a very dysfunctional family

with a lot of issues. Yeah. So the B story of this is not, as you might expect, about say, fleshing out the personality of the prince. No, no. It's about the king and the duke. That prince has no personality. The king has a lot of personality oddly enough i thought the king's personality was pretty interesting though like they picked a really weird personality for him like he just really really really likes kids he just wants kids it's like man i love my kids i wish i had grandkids like the point of being murderous he loves kids not murderous of kids themselves but anyone who's not getting him more kids prevent him from having kids exactly like what an interesting character and especially to give to like a single older man like that's not generally what and and i don't mean this in a creepy way it seems like he genuinely like just wants to you know have a good relationship with his grandkids which don't exist sadly that's kind of interesting what a what a fun weird king

so equally interesting about this king is that he abuses the grand duke he also says that his son has silly romantic ideas and also that he's like kind of lazy and we don't get much more information about the prince beyond those prince charming is not lazy did you see him like swinging around on ropes and fencing at the same time and a very romanticized version of him that in the third movie that is arguably just ripping off prince eric's personality leaping like 40 feet from his horse to a moving boat and swinging around and then sliding down the sails on a knife prince charming's insane for no reason also a deserted boat might i add but we'll get to that this is cinderella three um but with the king it's important here that the duke is absolutely terrified of the king and the king has no problem threatening violence or threatening to kill the duke and also not threatening assaulting actually trying to chop his head off

yes uh so i think that that's going to be important later on that the duke absolutely does not want to get killed by the king when he's having them try on the the shoe uh when they break the shoe he clearly thinks he's about to die and with good reason okay so all the eligible maidens gotta go to the ball because the prince needs to get married right after they get this letter they're all super excited um they all go to get their outfits ready cinderella's like oh me too and they're like no not you you gotta finish all your chores and only if you finish all your chores and get a dress ready then maybe we'll let you come right before the proclamation from the king arrives cinderella is cleaning an uncarpeted floor which i want to point out is not one of the job she was given no i noticed that too now she is uh she is cleaning it very slowly and methodically which i think if she had as many chores as lady tremaine gave her she'd want to

do this a little bit quicker yeah she's singing sing sweet nightingale which of course is what her sisters are singing upstairs now here i believe she is in a bit of a dissociative trans like state this is not the last time this happens to her in this movie yeah i mean there's weird multi-colored bubbles everywhere she sees bubbles each containing another cinderella in a different hue and then all of these many cinderellas start harmonizing to sing one song now i think that this sequence is a deliberate visual hint telling us that cinderella has many facets and many personalities. She is delusional and possibly schizophrenic. These other Cinderella's are not real. And the various facets of her personality are all working together in harmony to try to create a perfect dream world for herself. I don't see what else that scene is trying to tell us. I'm going to ask you to play devil's advocate to your own theory, because I can't possibly think

what that scene is trying to do in the regular interpretation of Cinderella. Why do we have harmonizing multicolored Cinderellas here? I guess if I'm going to take a bash at it, to quote Krista, I guess I would think that the animators just thought this was a good time for a song and they thought it would be nice with some harmony. I don't know. I mean, that's how I would play devil's advocate is in the old Disney system, Walt Disney just wanted cool sequences with songs and they made a lot of money off of their music and they built a lot of their plots around their different songs that they had. And I think they just had this idea. They had a cool sequence for a song, so they put it in. Like, I don't know. Like, why does Dumbo get drunk and see pink elephants and sing a song? Well, but at least he's drunk when it happens. Cinderella's not drunk. Like, what's going on here? I mean, I guess it's just more of the same

in the normal interpretation from the beginning of a dream is a wish your heart makes. They're just saying she's dreamy. She's dreaming of a better life. Okay, she's daydreaming. Right, even while she's, you know, cleaning floors, right? But even then, if that's your best interpretation of it, it's still showing that she's kind of out of it, right? Like she's not really present. No, for sure. Okay. She also has violent outbursts. So she gets mad at the cat for being a cat when he walks around in her dustpan. Then she comes after him with a broom saying, I'm going to have to teach you a lesson, presumably to beat the cat with the broom. And luckily, the messenger shows up at that moment. I mean, that cat did like very deliberately track dirt all over her floor. In her mind. No, a cat just tracked dirt all over the floor. And she interpreted that to be a slight against her, not just an animal being an animal.

She's like, I'm going to beat this cat. It's not the cat's job to keep the floor clean. It's her job to keep the floor clean. And if she hadn't been so daydreamy, then maybe she would have noticed what was happening around her. Yeah, she could have emptied her dustpan before she started scrubbing that floor that she wasn't even asked to scrub when she has a million other chores. It just felt like scrubbing the floor. So then they get the letter. While Cinderella is doing her chores and helping her sisters and stepmom with their dresses, the mice make a dress for Cinderella. If the mice made her dress, and if she's imagining the mice actually doing any of this, then who made her dress? Because she didn't have time to make a dress. Oh, yeah, no. This is a good point. This is a very important point. To set this up, Cinderella has some very fancy items from her mother stashed away. We know she has at least one.

She has a dress. Now, I think this is important because the Tremains were a wealthy family. They say that Lady Tremaine wasted all of Cinderella's father's wealth after he died. But clearly, Cinderella has managed to stash away at least a few things of her mother's. She also has a rather large chest of sewing supplies. It's got a lock and a keyhole on it, and it's filled with sewing stuff. And she imagines for herself a world where wouldn't it be cool if while I did my chores, the mice made my dress? Even though, I want to point out, the mice do not sew. Cinderella sews clothes for them. This is the first time, even if you take this story at face value, this is the first time the mice have ever sown anything. That we've seen. And they just do it perfectly? But you could say that she sewed for them and then taught them to sew. I guess maybe she's teaching her mice how to sew. But whatever, it doesn't matter because that's all.

Obviously, that's not real. Okay. So she does her chores. She imagines the mice are doing it for her. Leave the sewing to the women. You go get some trimming. You go get the trimming. Do you think that a line like that would fly today? No, of course not. Now, the mice are not sewing anything for her, but it is a comforting delusion that she can imagine while she's doing her chores. The stepsisters hand Cinderella a bunch of laundry to do. Right after she leaves, they throw the sash and the beads on the ground and say how much they hate them. And then we get a sequence where the mice steal these items. But I think that Cinderella really just found those in the pile of clothes. She makes up a story that like, oh, how did I get these? Well, my sisters clearly must hate them. So I'll just use them for my dress. Maybe mice gave them to me. I don't know. You're saying that probably she just put on her mom's dress.

She stole some stuff from her sisters and stepmom and called it a day. She's like, all right, this is what I'm wearing. Yeah, exactly. With a sequence where they steal the beads, I always loved that part where Jacques or Jack-Jack is acting like he's so busy, like just snipping off those random buttons. Oh, yeah. Just doing something totally stupid. He's engrossed in it. It's like, oh, you know, this is so important. Just stacking up this file of buttons. No, Jacques-Jack, he's good at distracting that cat. That's his main job. And boy, he does it well. Okay, so when we see the mice making the dress, there are some inexplicable things that tell us this is a fantasy beyond just mice making a dress, which is already pretty fantastic. Now, notice how the dress kind of puts itself together. When the birds tie the bow, it just ties itself up magically. The birds didn't do it. And when the mice cut the excess ribbon at the bow, they don't cut it very well.

And the excess ribbon just kind of magically like curls up into itself and then just disappears. So it's just a nice ball. So Cinderella goes upstairs and I would just like at one point she has accepted she's not going because she had no time to make her dress. I mean, so she's literally sitting in her room trying to convince herself how boring and dull the ball would be while actually convincing herself of the exact opposite. And this is when suddenly she turns around and everything she dreamed actually happened. Her mice did make her a dress. And also that's the theme of the movie. Like overtly, the theme is if you dream it, it will happen. But I think what's happening here is that she convinces herself that, oh, the ball would be so awesome. And then she turns around. She sees all the stuff, which like just her mother's dress and all the things she stole from her sisters. And she's like, wait, I can do this.

I can throw all this together really quick. It's going to be beautiful. And then she convinces herself she's wearing a nice dress when really she's coming down wearing like rags and an old dress and stolen beads and a stolen sash. If we just leave off that last part where she convinces herself that it's a nice dress, everything you said up until that point was just canon. Like it's how the movie is. Kind of like a wish fulfillment thing. Like either way you look at it, that's all it is. I'm going to take it even a step further. And I'm going to say that Cinderella actually does very quickly try to alter her mom's dress. And I think that it doesn't go well, even though she convinces herself it does. And she comes down wearing rags because she quickly tried to alter her dress. Now, her sisters make fun of her for it. And in her mind, she interprets this as them ripping it apart with their words.

Yeah, they don't literally rip it apart. It's a metaphor. Their words allow her. Well, it's because their words force her to see it for how it is. So when she says those words, it's suddenly ripped apart. She's like, they ripped it apart. Ooh, that's pretty good. So all of a sudden their words make her realize, oh, I'm just wearing a bunch of rags I threw together really quick. I mangled my mom's dress. Aw. So her sisters do literally say, she stole my sash, she stole my beads, confirming my earlier theory, you know, that she did. Yeah, well, she did. And then also just like when she comes downstairs, no one is surprised about her dress and the inexplicability of it. Drizella opens her mouth in a sort of shocked and disgusted look, but that could easily be her being like, what is Cinderella wearing? Those rats. The surprise is the option. And when her stepmother asks, doesn't she look good?

Drizella's like, no, I don't think so. And then Drizella, you know, Drizella's being honest there and then that's when she notices the beads. Never at any point, we have no confirmation from another character aside from Cinderella. Well, and our own eyes. Yeah, and our own eyes. But, you know, that she's actually wearing a beautiful dress. everyone who looks at her says that it is not beautiful. Hold on. You're saying that the things you're seeing and hearing aren't the things you're seeing and hearing? You look down and the dress isn't there at all. The dress isn't popcorn. It's at this point that she, in my opinion, becomes like the most not sane of the entire movie, even in the regular interpretation where like she just like goes and walks away and is crying to herself and saying like, oh no, it isn't true. It's just no use. No use at all. I can't believe not anymore. There's nothing left to believe in. Nothing. Who's she talking to and what's she

saying? Like she's, she's almost responding to the music that like the, the voices in the music that's playing right now but what are you doing cinderella this is where she starts to imagine a completely fictional version of events where she actually gets to go to the ball right well this is where the movie goes crazy and like whoa magic like not just talking mice but actual magic and some benevolent god-like woman who just wants the best for cinderella like what is a fairy god what's she doing here why hasn't she helped cinderella before like why did she suddenly show up out of nowhere just just now why couldn't she have like brought cinderella's mom back from the dead she clearly has the power like we know what her wand can do from cinderella 3 and as we've already talked about when cinderella goes into these delusional phases she just imagines things around her so what does she do she's literally just looking around being like what

could be my salvation oh a pumpkin maybe that could be a carriage yeah that dog could be a horse and and just listen to the nonsense words of the song bibbidi-bobbidi-boo like what have you got like are these not the ravings of an insane mind that has snapped or just a fun song for kids it's a fun song for kids no this is clearly they're trying to tell us she's insane like she has literally snapped here and she's just like alakazoo de mental aru like you have to take it in context and comparatively it's like really really similar to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, right? Which was written and filmed near the same time. Yeah, yeah. But I do think that there's more evidence. When you're telling someone about a dream you had, a lot of times it sounds really stupid. So just imagine, what if Cinderella, like she's trying to explain this fantasy. She's like, so I had a bunch of horses, but they were actually my mice.

And then the person she's telling is like, what? So who was your driver? And she's like, well, the driver was my horse. Oh yeah, the driver was the horse, you're right. The mice were my horses and my driver was my horse. And someone hearing this might ask, oh, so wait, but the mice before they turned in to horses were wearing clothes? Was that because of the fairy godmother? And she'd be like, oh no, I had dressed them up like that previously. Sounds like a pretty lunatic story. She's a lunatic. Yeah. So her stepfamily goes to the ball and they see someone at the ball who possibly resembles Cinderella, who the prince dances with. I don't know if I'm cutting ahead here, but do you think Cinderella went to the ball? No, absolutely not. She's just she's crazy in the backyard. She never went to the ball. Now, I think that this is 100 percent supported by the movie because they're looking at this person who the prince is dancing with and all of them are being like, who is that?

Have you seen her before? And Lady Tremaine is like, no, I've never seen her. And Lady Tremaine is not stupid. She could recognize her own stepdaughter. And the fairy godmother gave her clothes, but didn't change her appearance. She put her hair up slightly. I don't know. I mean, like, the prince is not dancing with Cinderella. That is the only logical explanation here. Otherwise, Lady Tremaine would know exactly who it was. He's dancing with some other lady who came to the ball. And that totally checks out. That makes perfect logical sense. Okay. Except that Cinderella, did she observe these events or? No, no, no. Many of the events at the ball are not Cinderella's imagination. Specifically any scene that the step family is in. They actually went to the ball and they saw the prince dancing with someone. And while I do believe that Cinderella is in the backyard imagining she went to the ball,

I think the scenes that are her imagination are like the, so this is love scene, you know, where they're all alone and all that. like yeah she's imagining oh i went to the ball i fell in love with the prince we stared at each other didn't say a word to each other and all of a sudden they said nothing not a word and like that so this is love i'm like really like this prince's ball all about this prince returning from somewhere like i don't know was he in a war who knows but this whole ball is to like celebrate his return and you really think he can just walk out to the garden and be completely 100 alone No, not likely. Like there'd be people all over lining up to talk to him and dance with him. Like this is his party. It doesn't make any sense that all of a sudden there's not a soul around them. Yeah, and I think just further evidence that of course Cinderella was in her backyard just imagining that she went to the ball

is the fact that, well, what makes everything disappear? That clock that woke her up in the beginning that she was yelling at for taking away her dreams. Yeah, I hit that clock. Yeah, he's so bossy. Like that clock, it wakes her up. And so in her fantasy, the reason when all her delusions disappear is just because of the clock. She wakes up. So you're saying she fell asleep in the backyard and actually doubled it up. Yeah, she's just laying on that bench thing she was crying on. She fell asleep. Well, that makes perfect sense, actually. I mean, yeah, she literally did like fall asleep and then all of a sudden was sleeping on her fairy godmother's lap. Right. And then the clock strikes midnight, which, of course, that would be the one that would, you know, wake you up the most because, of course, it has to strike 12 times. And so, you know, it strikes and eventually she wakes up because of the noise. And oh, man, none of it was real.

Okay. But so one big problem, the theory is going to be the slipper, right? Even if you take the story at face value, and the slipper was some magical thing, why does it not disappear when the clock strikes midnight? Yeah, that's true. what i believe is i believe that cinderella actually does have a glass slipper okay and it probably was one of her mom's heirlooms and maybe what an heirloom that's pretty crazy well she had her mom's dress like i don't know maybe that night she was going through all her mom's stuff and she happened to find this glass slipper oh definitely i can buy that she has heirlooms from her mom that's just a really weird thing for anyone to have is a glass slipper it is it is a weird thing i'll give you that but i do think that cinderella actually does have a glass slipper yeah no i mean i'm not i'm not saying this is evidence against your theory because it's no weirder for her mom

to have it than for her fairy godmother to create it like this is a weird thing in general yes they send out a royal decree well the prince basically says whoever wears the slipper i'll marry and his dad is like how do you hear that he'll marry anyone let's try this on everyone and they send out a royal decree a quest to find the woman who fits that slipper um which i thought was pretty cool that like the dad so quickly and so eloquently summed up just the utter idiocy of what his son had proposed to do and was just like yeah let's roll with it my son just said something stupid that's gonna get him married like i love that disney didn't like even in the 50s didn't beat around the bush with that one and they were just like yeah this prince is dumb like he literally just vowed to marry whoever wears a shoe like the duke even says like there could be more than one woman that fits this shoe in the kingdom and the dad's like who cares we'll just have him marry

whoever and of course cinderella 3 does a really good job making fun of that too the duke at the end he says and if the woman fits this shoe then the prince will propose to her and will spend all of his resources in wooing her and even beg her to marry him and i was like hey that's kind of kind of cool they weren't like she will be forced to marry him they were like he's gonna try and win her over good for him i guess but when cinderella and her family find out about this they're all like oh i gotta get ready and they start piling clothes on her while she is just straight up insane like she has gone into a dissociative state where she's she's about to marry a prince this is the best thing that ever eyes are glazed over and she's just like got this weird smile on her face and like yeah you could argue that uh i don't know maybe these old male disney writers were like yeah women just are they're so lovestruck that you know it's not even

that it's if you're gonna watch it the way it's meant to be okay it's not the way it's meant to But the way that most people interpret it, you would just say that like this poor girl is a slave and she just saw her ticket to freedom and a life of luxury. Right. So she has every right to be super happy. Like at this point, she doesn't see anything her stepmother or stepsisters can do to stop it. So she doesn't care anymore. She's just like, they're coming. It's going to fit my foot. I win. Right. OK. But like she moseys away in like a strange stupor, just like humming and talking to herself. And Lady Tremaine, I think, rightfully realizes that we will never impress the Duke if he sees this crazy child running around the place. Time to lock her up. Like a crazy person. So she locks her up in the tower, which I'm not saying is the right thing to do, but it is one solution to her problem. Yeah, it's like Harry Potter 2, where he's deranged.

He drops cakes on people.

Well, we should do one where Dobby didn't exist. Like everything else in Harry Potter is true. Just Dobby didn't exist. That could be interesting.

So her stepmother is going to lock her in the tower. Now, I think this is important. When it actually matters, the mice are not able to warn her of information that she doesn't have. The mice keep trying to tell her, Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella. and she's just like in her weird days and then her stepmom locks her in the tower yeah that's true and of course this is because the mice aren't really talking to her they only have information that she has well okay one thing I just want to say and this isn't about your theory this is just about the movie in general what in the world is wrong with Lady Tremaine with Cinderella's stepmother like is she stupid like as soon as she realized that the prince wants to marry Cinderella she should have been like She could straight up capitalize on that. And cozying up to Cinderella. Like Cinderella should have become her favorite daughter from that point on.

Because why wouldn't she take advantage of this situation? Like is she just dumb? Is she a complete idiot? She's getting exactly what she wants. Her daughter is about to marry the prince. She knows what a servile pushover Cinderella is. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. It makes no sense. And if you're trying to define Lady Tremaine, who I believe is actually a very great villain. Oh, yeah. Especially when she gets a magic wand. Well, but one thing about her is that she seems very smart and intelligent. And she's a bit of a, she's an opportunist. She's a social climber. She married this noble man to get his money. And now she's trying to marry the prince to get his money. It makes no sense that she wouldn't capitalize on the Cinderella thing. You know, that's, oh, Cinderella danced with the prince. Unless she knows. Cinderella didn't dance with the prince. I was there. That wasn't Cinderella.

I didn't recognize her. Cinderella's acting straight up crazy. the grand duke is coming no i mean that's the only way this makes sense because like literally all she wants from like the midpoint of the movie on is for one of her daughters to marry the prince that's all she wants and what do you know she's gonna get it like she is literally gonna get it doesn't matter even if cinderella doesn't like her she would still get all the money that's just the law right and she would get like the the connections and the life of luxury like if she wants her biological daughters to marry well too this is the best way to make it happen right like there's no better way to get into the higher up crowd than by having your stepdaughter marry the freaking prince yeah there are a lot of things about lady tremaine that i don't think make sense here toward the end but i do think they make more sense with my theory absolutely yeah cinderella's

got to escape the tower well but importantly cinderella does escape the tower how could she have escaped the tower if those mice didn't get the key for her oh did the mice get the key to her wait hey did you remember the mice like handing a key to her did you see that shot uh i mean they came up the stairs with the key oh yeah we we never ever see the mice hand cinderella a key there is actually no visual evidence we have by golly you're right that those mice gave a key to cinderella that got her out of that tower so you're saying she just had a spare and remembered it there's a lot going on here the cat that supposedly the mice are fighting the cat outside cinderella's just going crazy he's imagining things but like there's forks and lit candles and glasses and plates shattering i think what's happening here is cinderella is just having a fit right yeah like she's just breaking stuff um fair enough and the stepmother puts the key in her

pocket she pats it we know that's where the key is because the mice don't exist dude the mice have like x-ray vision right then in her delusion yeah the mice have x-ray vision they bring the key up to her and then we see them starting to push the key under the door in the next shot cinderella is just coming downstairs we never actually see her get the key now i will say that obviously it seems like oh this key thing is going to throw a wrench in my theory yeah maybe a little bit but um i don't think so because we know she has a giant chest in her room with a big lock on the front she has a key now Torvald we lived in a house that had old-fashioned keyholes like this like how hard is it to find a key that can work in another lock like they're all very similar no they're real similar and those old keys like they only had to like hook on to one or two tumblers to actually make the make the lock move so it's it's not it's not particularly hard to just kind of even if the

keys the wrong size just kind of wiggle it around and it will open right yeah when when we were kids we lived in a house that had old-fashioned keyholes like the kind that you can actually look through and like spy on people on the other side and we wanted to see if they would lock so we literally went like we walked a block away to an antique store and bought a ring of antique keys and hey we found one that worked that same kind of key is like still used like in modern houses in a lot of europe like my house has those locks in every door and as far as i can tell it's the exact same key like there's just a standard inside your house key that is used in every single lock it's they don't change it like it's you could use more they're more like privacy locks well yeah it's it's just so instead of building like a latch like with a knob into the door you just have a key that you put in it's it's very believable the key to that trunk could have been used to open the door

or maybe just in her fit she just you know pushed the door down who knows we know that there is at least one key in her room because she had to have something to open that chest so it's possible that could work well and i have one more question to ask you so you say like silverware is flying around things are breaking why did that cup just walk away from guska yeah no i know maybe because i'm out of here an insane woman is just like going crazy imagining like a cat fighting rats outside her door i don't know why yeah the cup walks away from lucifer for a minute and then he just grabs it back and catches a mouse with it it like pops up and then like it walks away it's out of there yeah she accidentally anthropomorphized the wrong thing in that moment she forgot what she was focusing on no that that exact scene where that cup walks away from gus gus was always my favorite part of the entire movie so i was like what's that cup

walking around what's wrong with that cup gets up and walks away and lucifer's like hey get back here i was gonna use you to catch a mouse dude do you want to talk about lucifer at this point that poor poor cat uh i mean i think i already covered it in your interpretation does he meet his fate here or did she just imagine that do you think she like grabbed the cat and chucked it out the window like i wouldn't she wouldn't put it past she may have no she may have i don't know or maybe bruno came up like she did call for bruno so it's possible he came upstairs and chased the cat out the window i don't know i like the throwing cats out the window theory better you know she's mad yes she got out she had her own key freaking cat i'm gonna throw it out the window now i'm gonna go talk to the duke yeah i'm gonna put on that slipper marry a prince he's gonna love me forever yeah so downstairs they're trying to fit the shoe onto the stepsisters

but oh no their feet are too big yep and it doesn't fit on either of them and i'm just like why does the stepmother say oh your grace i'm frightfully sorry it shan't happen again but she says it in like a tone of voice as though she has some sort of plan when she doesn't at this point she has failed no she's trying to save face at this point her daughters have embarrassed her so she wants to separate herself from them she's trying to save face she's apologizing on their behalf yeah and when uh cinderella comes downstairs she's like oh no like what could be more embarrassing than what just happened with my two daughters oh no my crazy daughter is coming yeah oh geez oh poor lady tremaine this is a bad day for lady tremaine so she's trying to save face cover for it she's like yeah oh that's that's she's just a very imaginative child that's cinderella the things that were happening well the stepsisters were trying the shoes on were

utterly insane and definitely were imagined by cinderella like this is her thinking about how it's going down there without her yeah my disgusting sisters would probably just be kicking that random guy in the face that bellboy like climbs up on them and starts hammering the shoe onto their giant ugly feet like this is what she thinks is happening because like there's no way okay so another big criticism that you might have of my theory is like oh but the shoe fit no it didn't she never tried on the shoe yeah her own shoe fit that she already had so but she never tried on the shoe well in this case you think lady tremaine tripped the duke like she did in the movie yes lady tremaine did trip the duke so she's like okay the duke clearly wants to try this shoe on my crazy daughter it's not gonna fit it's not her shoe she wasn't at the ball but i don't know maybe i think that lady tremaine was trying to help her out here she's like maybe

if i break the shoe we can be like oh but it probably would have fit like she doesn't have much many options left for her but she let her other daughters try the shoe on why wouldn't she let Cinderella in this case she struck out once she struck out twice she's like I'm not gonna get strike three the only way I win here is if I prevent them from trying to try this shoe on another one of my daughters and then maybe we can like say oh it probably would have fit I don't know yeah but like man risky move by by the stepmother because boy she knows how important that shoe is and she's just gonna break it like but as it turned out it wasn't even a risky move because like the duke doesn't get mad at lady tremaine he's just like oh man the king's gonna kill me and the duke i think it's important is afraid for his life at this point yeah yeah he doesn't care who knows if that shoe actually matched the other shoe like sure they look

similar but if you compared them would they really match i don't know it doesn't matter the duke's like okay i my glass slipper broke there's another one right here and it fits this random woman let's just take her back to the castle no definitely like that's how it happened either way you look at this movie like that duke was just gonna take anyone who fit that shoe anyway and then it broke but this girl has a shoe so we'll take her right like he didn't care but you you think that she actually went back to the castle and married the prince you think he wasn't like yes who the heck is this this is another girl i danced with get rid of her she's crazy like you don't think he called her out well i guess not i mean you know what he said he doesn't seem to be very smart we already pointed that out right but in cinderella 3 when the wrong girl shows up he does call her out and they're like but you said right right and he's like sorry maybe

they get married you could also say oh that's in her imagination but i think there's a fun irony that like this crazy girl who just had her own shoe ended up her dreams actually did come true right like she was right like all her delusioning and imagining it actually worked in the end and she got to marry the prince and that that you know that's still a cool story no it was fun and i mean there's a lot about this movie that just doesn't really like make sense like why are there talking mice why doesn't the stepmom just kind of roll with it when she realizes she's got a huge win on her hands like so this theory fixes a lot of that it's interesting one criticism that older disney princess films often face is that their princess protagonists are not very active protagonists they tend to be saved and rescued by other people and things constantly and they don't actually do anything and i would say that as a kid i never really noticed this going back

and looking at some of these movies it's it is absolutely true it is true i mean like i watched the little mermaid again recently and i guess i had in my mind some like version of events where eric is riding off on that boat and ariel has to swim after him and stop the wedding she didn't do anything flounder pulls her to that boat she does nothing she does nothing scuttle wrecks the wedding eric does some stuff and we gotta talk about this because he's a freaking badass eric is so cool he's like he's like i don't care that there's a magnificent giant octopus woman ruining my day i'm gonna freaking take her out he's like oh she created a whirlpool i'll just jump to the bottom of it commandeer this sunken boat and pilot it directly into her heart all by myself like he's like the most heroic disney hero after a movie of being like a bland nothing he's just like no no this this giant octopus lady this magical woman will not ruin my day

geez good gosh he's so cool i'm gonna play back that soundbite on a loop to build up my self-esteem if you think Eric is so cool Eric is so cool Eric is so cool wow I mean other than Prince Eric like you can you can also criticize the Disney princes right like Prince Charming in Snow White has no personality Prince Charming in Cinderella has no personality and the same name Prince Philip in Sleeping Beauty was the first time they tried to give their prince a little bit of personality and he kind of works a little bit for the first half but then in the second half he has no personality do you think this is where like the the trope arises from that like disney princesses are basically made like tailor-made for a guy and that's their whole purpose and they fall for the first guy they meet and that's their entire purpose in life yeah i don't know exactly i mean i guess well because that would imply that the fantasy is for guys which it is not no it's it's teaching

girls what to do is what it's doing right like the the whole thing is that it's saying hey girls this is your lot in life yeah and i actually wanted to talk about this a little because i think it's an interesting subject like like you said maybe this is like them teaching you know young girls your lot in life but i also don't think they were doing it nefariously i think they just actually no that's actually what they thought in life i agree but i mean in that case you could say it is nefarious right like it's systemic nefariousness but i would also say that There are films are made for many different reasons, but one of those reasons is wish fulfillment, right? And there are different kinds of wish fulfillment fantasies. And I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a wish fulfillment fantasy where like you're in a bad situation and someone just comes and saves you. Like there's nothing wrong with that wish fulfillment fantasy.

And a lot of these Disney princess movies, they work. They're still fun movies to watch. What's wrong is if that's the only kind of movie that you're getting, and then you start kind of feeling like that is exactly, you shouldn't be active in your own life. But there is also on the flip side, there's the other wish fulfillment fantasy that gets pushed at a lot of young boys, which is that you got to be a total hero, you know, like He-Man, and you just got to constantly be saving people. I kind of think that if that's all you're getting, too, that can also not necessarily be a healthy thing to be growing up with, constantly having like a hero complex and feeling like either that you always got to be the hero or constantly feeling inadequate because you're not like a total cool hero. Even looking at The Little Mermaid, like, as I was saying, like, Flounder pulls her to the ship. Like, Ariel does nothing.

And I don't think she's a bad character. I actually think she's an interesting and fun character. And that's why people like her. But, like, who's the protagonist of that movie if you're measuring protagonist by how active you are? It's Sebastian. Yeah, he is. He's the total protagonist. Like, why make a movie called The Little Mermaid about a little mermaid and then make it about a crab? And don't get me wrong, I love Sebastian. He's a great character. He's really cool and extremely good at his job, which is being a composer.

I love his story. I love that he's been given this next to impossible task by the king. And he's freaking screwed if he doesn't keep watch on this poor young woman. And his only skill is that he can compose music. And boy, does he use that. He's, oh my gosh, he's so good. My theory, I think, does help to improve Cinderella in this way. Because what does Cinderella do at face value in this movie? Nothing. She doesn't even talk to the guy she falls in love with. And then when the mice's actions fail, not even her own actions, the mice actions fail, a fairy godmother shows up to fix everything magically. And then at the very end, the mice get her out of the room, right? Like, she does nothing. But if you, if all that was in her imagination, she still doesn't do a lot. But I feel like she's a slightly more active protagonist. Yeah, I mean, definitely. All right, cool. Do you want to talk about Cinderella 2 and 3?

I don't have much to say about Cinderella 2. So Cinderella 2 is just three stories. And how do they fit into my theory? I think for the most part, they don't. I think at least the first two are just someone's imagined stories that they made up. What are the stories in Cinderella 2? Oh no, Jack-Jack is a human. So what? It doesn't matter. What I love about the Jack is a human story is that that cat straight up does not care what size jacket and that's actually a recurring theme even in the third one is cats don't care what size they are they will kill those mice regardless of the size difference and like man they're lucky lucifer never got his hands on them in the first one as like a full-size cat because as a minuscule cat he just he destroys them he mops the way more powerful than he ever was man lucifer all right so cinderella 2 does have one story that i like where anastasia falls in

love anastasia being one of the stepsisters and i like this because it came at a later time i think probably in the 90s where they were like hey you know what even if you're not super good looking you're a human too oh okay which i think is i think that is a good message well and i i agree with that and i think it was also cool that they wanted to like expand the universe and be like hey you know these side characters they're also characters and let's see what's going on with them and i think that uh they saw the second movie they realized the third story about anastasia was the best one with the most potential yeah and they were like let's make that into a full movie which is what cinderella 3 is dude that bigger came back at the end of the third movie there's like a picture with her in the baker there there are a few strange things about cinderella too why did lady tremaine bring her cat to the market i don't know she's like lucifer doesn't want to

come with her she's like lucifer and he's like no and she's like lucifer he's like fine and he's just wandering around the market well noble one brings her cat i really like in cinderella too how we do see things from Anastasia's point of view. And she says to Cinderella while she's crying, she's like, what do you know? You're beautiful. It's always been easy for you. And then of course, Cinderella's like, that's not how I remember it. Well, and it supports your theory that Cinderella was a little more free than she thought, right? This sister seemed to think of her as an equal or maybe even a better than her, right? Exactly, yeah. Like, I just think that it shows that if you saw this story from a different person's point of view, they weren't quite so evil to each other and they were just a dysfunctional family. And then I do think that there's an interesting meta story here about a bunch of writers and animators and artists

who were put in a room by Disney and told to come up with some sort of story. And so they just randomly were like, I don't know, we've got a bunch of story ideas. Why don't we just run around making those stories? Which of course is the meta story in Cinderella 2 of the mice just like running around crazy trying to randomly paint these stories onto pages and get this dumb anthology out. So you're saying the mice in the overarching narration of the movie are the writers. That's kind of cool. I like that way of looking at it. So now we can move on to Cinderella 3. Absolutely, jaw-droppingly the best Cinderella movie. So good. Like, I remembered it being good, but then I rewatched it. I'm like, this isn't just good. This is amazing. And this may be the greatest of the Disney sequels from that era. Cinderella 3 is amazing, but what does it have on Forte and his relationship with the Beast? I know, well, see, that's the main thing that it keeps me from.

Forte is the greatest Disney villain. See, Belle's Enchanted Christmas is great, and we should maybe do a theory on it sometime. And Forte is amazing. But one thing that brings it down a little is that one line where the Beast says, you can stay there until you rot. I'm like, whoa, Beast. You are officially irredeemable. Like, there's no way the end of the original Beauty and the Beast works anymore. You're not going to leave her to rot. Like, literally, you just starve to death in your dungeon. Yeah, but I've always thought of the Beast as pretty irredeemable. Because she went to get a tree. She wasn't even escaping, and he knows that. No, he knows it. He's just that controlling. All right, we're not talking about Bell's Enchanted Christmas. I believe that Cinderella 3 is a story that Anastasia is telling. Okay. I think the one part that is maybe true to life is that at the beginning, the stepsisters are doing dishes and they mention that Cinderella

has never invited them to a ball or even for tea. First of all, it shows that they believe that their relationship with Cinderella is different from what Cinderella believed their relationship to be. Yeah, well, maybe they shouldn't have freaking locked her in that tower when the prince's duke came to visit. That was Lady Tremaine's doing, not theirs, right? Well, why don't you talk us through it? What's the plot of Cinderella 3? What's going on? Anastasia finds out that Cinderella has a magical fairy godmother. With a magic wand. And she steals the wand and she gives it to Lady Tremaine and Lady Tremaine rewinds time. Probably she should have rewound it a little further, but unfortunately she rewinds to when the shoe didn't fit. And you can tell that the writers had to jump through a few hoops there. We're like, wait, we can't rewind it too far because then none of this will make any sense.

What point do we rewind this to? Well, in the whole movie, Cinderella should not remember the life that she's trying to get back and doesn't at the end, you know, because they're like, what life? Nope. Also, she's fighting so hard to get back this life that she doesn't know existed. Right. She just knows that she danced with him and she likes him. Yeah. So, yeah, they rewind time and then they use magic to make it so the shoe fits Anastasia. And then Anastasia is going to get married to the prince. And then Cinderella, in what is just an amazing critique of the original movie, becomes one of the most active protagonist Disney princesses ever. She goes to town. Goes and impersonates a servant and does all kinds of crazy things to try to get back the life she feels is hers. It's sort of Anastasia who, in a way, saves the day because she's going to get married to the prince. She is now Cinderella.

She's been transformed into Cinderella. And she's going to get married to the prince. And she says, I do not want to marry you because she wants true love. She doesn't want to just marry this guy because Lady Tremaine is telling her to. And then the real Cinderella shows up. And most importantly, they do not undo the movie. It is canonically how Cinderella happened now. Yes, that is true. Cinderella happened with the stepsisters fitting the shoe and Cinderella going on a crazy quest to win the prince's love anyway. And getting trapped in an insanely crazy evil pumpkin. Oh yeah, that pumpkin was crazy. And that dude Lucifer went off the rails when he got to pilot that pumpkin. At the end, this fairy godmother is like, would you like to go back to your former lives? And they say, what former lives? And the fairy godmother says, oh, never mind, because, of course, they don't remember what didn't happen to them.

And with that line, they reset the classic beloved Disney canon of Cinderella forever. In terms of canon, some of Cinderella 1 exists. None of Cinderella 2 exists, except that there is evidence to show that actually Cinderella 2 happened after Cinderella 3. Yeah, it might have. Because Cinderella 2 has that story about Anastasia meets and falls in love with a random baker. And then at the end of Cinderella 3, you can see that there is a portrait on the wall of Anastasia meeting that baker. Yeah. So that might have happened after Cinderella 3. Well, and it kind of makes sense because in Cinderella 2, Cinderella seems to have a much better relationship with Anastasia than she did in Cinderella 1. And the only way she could have got that relationship is from Cinderella 3 with Anastasia kind of, you know, taking her aside and helping her in the end. But what doesn't make any sense, even in that version of events, is that they seem pretty cool with Lady Tremaine and Drizella just like living normal lives and not being in jail.

Which is why I believe that the bulk of Cinderella 3 is a story that Anastasia is telling. I think that maybe Anastasia wants to become a writer and she's just writing a fun story where she gets to be the hero. she's telling all this. It's all from her point of view, then. How does she know about the talking mice and Jack-Jack and Gus-Gus? Like, what's going on there? I personally believe that before Cinderella's dad died, that these three siblings did live together and play together. And it's possible that Cinderella always had these kind of stories she would tell about a mouse named Jack-Jack and Gus and a fairy godmother. And that's how Anastasia knew about all of these elements. I think that a lot of Cinderella's giant entourage of anthropomorphic mice grew as she became more and more crazy as she got older because when Anastasia is telling the story in Cinderella 3, only Gus and Jack-Jack could exist.

Gus-Gus couldn't have existed before that because we know that she caught him in Cinderella. Or do we? Uh-oh. Mice die a lot. Maybe she gets a new Gus-Gus every couple years. She gets a new fat mouse. She's like, okay, this one's Octavius. I'm going to put up a shirt that's way too small for even him on him. And this is the new Gus Gus. Okay, I get it. So she replaces Gus Gus every few years and also Jack. And probably Jack. But I also love that the writers make fun of the original movie in many ways. But when the king is questioning Prince Charming about what happened, he's like, wait, so birds are talking to you. mice are talking he's like don't be silly the birds didn't talk to me just the mice because as in the original the birds don't talk just the mice yeah come on okay why not i don't know another reason that i think that this is anastasia's invented story notice how drisella is portrayed as just an absolute disgusting pig yeah like even more so than in the first two

But also an idiot. Like, she's stupid. Right. I feel like this is how you would talk about your sister in a story. She's like, yeah, then Drizella was stupid. She just started pigging out on all that food. But then I have to ask you, why does she write Cinderella as, like you said, the most active female protagonist that has ever existed in Disney, right? I think that she's telling this story after the fact, right? She's making up this story after she and Cinderella already have kind of a relationship because Cinderella helped her get together with that baker. And so I don't think she wants to portray Cinderella as bad or evil because now she kind of gets Cinderella, they're buddies. And also, like, she is straight up the princess. Yeah, Cinderella's a princess. But also they have a clever nod here that I think is them just sort of low-key confirming my theory from the first movie, which is the prince at one point says,

Well, it's official. I've lost my mind. First, I was hijacked by birds, and now I'm talking to imaginary mice. He literally says, imaginary mice. Yeah, imaginary mice. It's true. Those are his exact words. Like Cinderella, she seems so refined and cool. So to see her actually getting kind of messy, going on an adventure, doing stupid voice, pretending to be a maid to sneak around her stepmother. I mean, how stupid is she that she thinks she can just walk around in the same room as her stepmother and not be recognized? Come on, Cinderella. She's your mom. She knows who you are. Well, I mean, maybe that's further evidence that it wasn't Cinderella the ball. right because we know right away in this that doesn't really work exactly because you know i'm saying it's a story that anastasia's telling but yeah lady tremaine recognizes her right away even when she's doing a funny voice oh yeah that funny voice would have tricked anyone so anyway i mean

that pretty much wraps up my theory i don't have too much to say about the sequels but man if you haven't seen cinderella 3 go watch cinderella 3 i mean you can skip cinderella Go watch Cinderella One as well. And, I mean, let us know if you buy our theory. Watch the film. I'm glad you listened to our theory. Music for this episode was provided by Christine. If you like our podcast, you can rate or subscribe on wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, give us a review. And also, we're on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter at Popcorn Isn't Real. If nothing else, remember, the popcorn isn't real.

*crickets*