Encanto

Encanto is a 2021 Disney film, the sixtieth work in the Disney Animated Canon. It features music created by Lin-Manuel Miranda and stars Stephanie Beatriz as the protagonist Mirabel.

A family in Colombia has magical gifts, that a miracle candle bestowed upon them after their patriarch pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to rescue his wife and children from bandits. Their house represents the magic and their family bond. Each member of the family has a door that revealed their powers on a special birthday. Abuela Alma, a widow and the current matriarch, has the family Madrigal use their gifts to benefit the village. She is dismissive and condescending towards Mirabel, her granddaughter whose door vanished when she was a child.

Mirabel tries not to care about her lack of gifts, hoping to find her place in the world as an ordinary girl. The day of the latest gift ceremony, she notices cracks in the wall. They vanish when she tries to show the family, but she overhears Abuela worrying about them. The magic may be fading, and Mirabel has to figure out why.

Tropes used in Encanto include:

Abusive Mom: Abuela is not that nice to her children or grandchildren that refuse to fit the mold of perfection. Bruno became an outcast because people didn't like his predictions, and the Madrigals treat Mirabel as an outsider under Abuela's influence, with Isabela treating her little sister as a Doom Magnet and blaming her for every little problem gone wrong. Mirabel hits her Rage Breaking Point and calls out Abuela for this in the climax, how nothing is good enough for her.
Adult Fear:
- Watching your husband die in front of you, as he futilely tries to protect you and your infant kids. More so that despite Abuela telling it as a take of great heroism, the ending reveals that this event was traumatic for Abuela and shaped her worldview about the miracle.
- Among the many fears that Luisa sings about in "Surface Pressure," she's terrified that losing her gifts will mean not just losing her worth, but also the ability to protect people in her family. She sings about how she needs to protect Mirabel from everything.
- The climax features La Casita crumbling with the family still inside. Most of them make it out intact, with Bruno being forced to leave the walls, but Mirabel attempts to rescue the candle and the debris hits her. While the dying house protects her from any life-threatening injuries, her parents find Mirabel dazed and covered in rubble. She wanders off while they run to get help and order her not to move. Everyone starts a search party for her that lasts through the whole night.
Big Sister Instinct: Deconstructed with Luisa in "Surface Pressure". She lies to Mirabel, her little sister, that she's feeling fine and not worried about the magic, while her eye twitches. Mirabel gives her space to vent about the pressure to always perform, and how she has to literally hold up the family's weight.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Dolores has a few moments of this, being catty and outing to the neighborhood kids that Mirabel has no gifts. She tells Mirabel that she heard nothing wrong and that she's crazy for talking about cracks in the wall, and smirks when telling Isabela that the man courting her wants five children, hinting that it's a lie. Some of this may be attributed to her resentment that Isabela is entering an arranged marriage with the man that she loves and Bruno predicted this when she was a child, but it was still bitchy of her to out the prophecy that Mirabel is standing in front of a crumbling La Casita at said dinner. Unlike Abuela, Dolores doesn't apologize to Mirabel for her indirect bullying.
Bittersweet Ending: Thanks to Abuela refusing to see that she's a toxic grandparent, Mirabel calls her out, and this snapped family bond causes La Casita to collapse and the miracle to end. Mirabel then wanders off in a daze after she spent La Casita's last moments trying to rescue the candle, worrying her family to no end and filling Abuela with remorseful guilt. Abuela tracks her down, apologizes to Mirabel for the way she treated her granddaughter, and relates the real story of how her husband died. Bruno then reveals himself for the first time in a decade, thinking that Abuela is attacking Mirabel, and is surprised when a remorseful Abuela hugs him instead. He mends ties with his family slowly, though that's going to be a long road regarding his mental health. The neighbors help rebuild La Casita out of thanks for all the help the Madrigals gave them over the years, and the magic returns when Mirabel adds the doorknob as a finishing touch. Abuela promises to be less overbearing, as Isabela tells Mariano that Dolores likes him, setting the two up instead.
Disposable Fiancé: Reconstructed with Mariano. He seems nice enough while being smitten with Isabela, and most of the villagers would be thrilled to marry a Madrigal given their powers, but Abuela is arranging the match while making it look like it's Isabela's choice. They've only spent time together during formal events, under strict parental supervision. As a result, Isabela doesn't really know him, apart from what Dolores tells her, he might be more in love with the idea of Isabela rather than the reality, and Dolores may be trolling her when saying Mariano wants five kids because she is in love with Mariano and Bruno said the love of her life would be in love with someone else. Eventually, Isabela realizes that she was never given a choice about the matter because defying Abuela's will was never an option, and that she doesn't want to marry Mariano. She gains the courage to turn him down after the villagers rebuild La Casita, but tells him it's Nothing Personal while saying that Dolores likes him. Dolores takes the opportunity to properly introduce herself to Mariano, and he at least seems willing to get to know Isabela's cousin.
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: While Mirabel doesn't say this outright, she has an annoyed expression whenever an outsider expresses sympathy or tries to make her feel better about having powers. Granted, the neighborhood kids are Innocently Insensitive about the fact that she has no gifts, and a local florist gives her a basket on the house called "The Not Special Special" in an attempt to make Mirabel feel better about her failed ceremony.
Early Teen Hero: Mirabelle's age is given as around fifteen. That puts her in the upper limit of the demographic -- making her less relatable to young children -- although her conflict and interactions with her family restore some of that relatability.
Generational Trauma: Encanto puts this on full display for most of the movie. Abuela Alma witnessed bandits murdering her husband who attempted to protect her and their triplets, along with a group of refugees. When the miracle happened-- an ever-burning candle caused the mountains to rise and dispel the bandits while creating a safe haven for the survivors, and giving magic to Abuela's children-- Abuela became convinced that the best way to respect the miracle was to make her children useful. Unknowingly, her demand for perfectionism and rigidity causes her to alienate her powerless granddaughter Mirabel who tearfully pinpoints at her Rage Breaking Point that she will never be good enough for Abuela. That's not even going into how she inadvertently turned her son Bruno into the town's pariah who opts to hide in la Casita walls to mend the cracks and protect Mirabel from one of his prophecies, has driven her other granddaughter Luisa to a near-breakdown with how Luisa feels she needs to literally carry the house's burdens on her back, and treats Isabela as the golden child who must never get her hands dirty despite an affinity for plants. It takes la Casita crumbling as Mirabel finally calls out Abuela for her toxicity for Abuela to acknowledge the trauma of seeing her husband die in front of her and reconcile with her granddaughter after a dazed Mirabel wanders from the rubble.
Go Mad From the Isolation: Poor Bruno is still a nice guy, but visibly undernourished and overworked hiding in La Casita's walls for ten years. He ran away after his last prophecy showed Mirabel standing in front of La Casita and knew that it would turn Mirabel into more of a scapegoat than she already is, but didn't want to leave his family to rot. He reveals to Mirabel that he has been entertaining himself by creating soap operas starring the rats.
Good Parents: Julieta and Agustín Madrigal try to mitigate the favoritism that Abuela lavishes on Isabela while isolating Mirabel, with Julieta always having words of advice and healing food for Mirabel. At a crucial moment, Agustín has a completely protective and reasonable response to finding out that Mirabel unearthed a prophecy that shows her in front of a crumbling La Casita: tells her in a whisper that they need to hide it since there's an important dinner in a few minutes and they will talk about it when they have a moment of privacy. Of course Dolores hears and opens her big mouth at the important dinner with Mariano; when Abuela tries to chide Agustín for hiding the prophecy, he calls her out by saying that he was protecting his daughter, like every parent should. The blow hits Abuela, but doesn't register until Mirabel nearly dies in the climax.
Happily Married: All the married couples from the Madrigal family, and it ends up being inadvertently a plot point. Mirabel notices the cracks around the same time that Abuela arranges a marriage for Isabela, and Isabela eventually reveals that she doesn't want to marry the guy despite him being a good match and smitten with her.
Innocently Insensitive: If a character isn't dismissive towards Maribel for being ordinary, expect this trope instead:
- Mirabel tries to dissuade the kids when they keep asking what her gifts are, and running away from them. Dolores and Abuela drop the bomb that Mirabel never got a gift, as Mirabel is trying to be more tactful. The kids then say insensitively that Mirabel must be so sad and they feel bad for her. Mirabel tells them there is no shame in being ordinary when she is a Madrigal, while hiding her annoyance.
- The local florist delivers a gift to Mirabel since it's time for the next ceremony, and he was worried that she would be reminded of her own botched ceremony where her door disappeared. She appreciates the gesture, but not how he reveals that he called it "The Not-Special Special" because there is "nothing special" about her. Mirabel tucks it into the nursery before trying to help with the ceremony preparations.
- Played for Drama and justified with the way that Luisa treats Mirabel before and during "Surface Pressure," when she tries to lie that nothing is wrong. Most of the song features her leaping into danger or rescuing Mirabel from dire situations, and singing how she doesn't know who or what she would be if she couldn't use her powers. Part of it is that Mirabel is the youngest sister and has no gift to protect her, but Luisa makes it clear she'd be terrified if there was a day that she wouldn't be able to rescue Mirabel from grave danger. Sure enough, her fears come to life in the climax when La Casita collapses with Mirabel inside it, and Luisa can't activate her waning powers to rescue her.
Misplaced Retribution:
- Isabela tends to blame Mirabel for things going wrong, because Mirabel is the only one who doesn't have powers in the family and Abuela encourages this mindset. Case in point: the dinner with Mariano goes wrong because of Dolores opening her big mouth at the worst time about Mirabel finding a prophecy of her standing in front of the crumbling La Casita. When Mirabel tries to go to talk to her older sister, hoping to subvert this fate and trusting Bruno's new prophecy that hugging Isabela will fix the cracks in La Casita, Isabela tells Mirabel it was her fault that the dinner went wrong. After at first trying to be the better person, Mirabel loses her temper and calls out Isabela for her spoiled attitude, saying that of course the golden child of the family that Abuela loves unconditionally must have such a terrible life. And one ruined dinner doesn't mean she'll be single forever, as Mariano would still marry her due to being the "perfect" Madrigal. Isabela then blurts out she doesn't want to marry Mariano. There's a Template:Beat, as it sinks in for both sisters that Isabela was really angry about the expectations that she has to fill to maintain her golden child status, with Mirabel being an easy scapegoat, and she didn't realize she was miserable until the fight with Mirabel. She then creates new plants out of this rage, that allow her proper catharsis since they aren't neat flowers, and she lets go of her unreasonable anger towards Mirabel.
- Just as Isabela and Mirabel patch things up, Abuela comes across them reconciling while Isabela is covered in different types of colored pollen, and starts yelling at Mirabel for being a bad influence on Isabela and causing trouble with the prophecy of Mirabel causing La Casita's fall being inevitable. This is despite the fact that it wasn't Mirabel who disrupted the dinner-- Dolores did with her big mouth and Mirabel was trying to rush the dinner to ensure that Dolores wouldn't blab about the prophecy she found. Isabela has a silent Jerkass Realization on seeing how she's been treating her little sister and learned it from Abuela, and Mirabel snaps. She calls out Abuela for putting impossible standards not just on her but on everyone in the family, how it led to Bruno running away and living malnourished in the walls. No matter how much Mirabel would try, she would never please her grandmother and would always be a target of her scorn. Abuela comes to realize that Mirabel is right, that her standards were causing the cracks in the wall, when the house collapses around them.
No Antagonist: This is an unusual Disney movie in that there is no outright evil villain. Abuela is certainly an antagonist, but Obliviously Evil who mends her ways when she realizes that she nearly got Mirabel killed with her emotional abuse. While Bruno is a figure shrouded in mystery whose prophecies spelled doom and gloom, we find out he's a sweet guy that happened to have a sucky gift and a big heart.
Only Sane Man:
- Agustín due to being married into the family out of love and not out of politics proves to be this, despite being accident-prone. At a crucial moment, he shows that he is not afraid of Abuela when calling her out for how she treats Maribel and expects him to throw his daughter to the wolves because of the prophecy that she found.
- Julieta is the only Madrigal with a gift not weighed down by it with mood swings or expectations. Granted, healing people with good food and the fact that she loves cooking helps a lot.
Rashomon Style: Three different characters recall Pepa's wedding: Pepa herself, her husband Felix, and Bruno. Felix starts to wax poetically about how it was the perfect day and his wife was so beautiful. Pepa interrupts to remind Felix that it's her story, and reveals that she was working hard to make sure the weather was perfect. Bruno then told her, "It looks like rain," causing her to freak out and cause a thunderstorm. She got mad at Bruno and believed he did it on purpose to mess with his sister. Bruno reveals that while Pepa's account was true, she got the intentions wrong: he saw that she was a bundle of nerves and thought a little joke would lighten up the situation.
You Can't Fight Fate: A reconstructed example with Bruno's predictions. He became the pariah because all his predictions came true, and they were negative stuff like the priest going bald or a woman's goldfish in a bowl dying. Pepa holds a grudge against Bruno for saying, "It looks like rain" to her on her wedding day, causing her to freak out from nerves and bring in a thunderstorm. When we actually meet Bruno, he explains he never meant to hurt anyone and was only joking to Pepa to help her get over her nerves. Many of his predictions were actually inevitable due to human nature: people go bald over time, and keeping a goldfish in a bowl that small will kill it. While Bruno spends ten years mending the cracks in La Casita, after seeing the prophecy that Mirabel would be standing in front of the falling house, he only delays the inevitable blowout when Abuela yells at Mirabel for cheering Isabela up after the disastrous dinner with Mariano, and Mirabel can no longer tolerate her grandmother's bullying. Mirabel does try to subvert this prophecy by asking Bruno to cast one that will provide the answer on how to fix the cracks: while she isn't thrilled that it involves making up with Isabela, who has always been a bully to Mirabel and the perfect child, she agrees to at least try. The reason why Mirabel's actions don't fix the cracks is because Abuela steamrolls her attempts to let Isabela try something for herself rather than conform to perfection. It does, however, reveal the cause of the cracks is Abuela's emotional abuse hurting everyone in the family by demanding perfection. The house falling and Mirabel nearly dying in the collapse give Abuela the wakeup call of what she's been doing.