Encanto

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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 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 Isabel 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 why 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 Isabel that the man courting her wants five children, hinting that it's a lie. Some of this may be attributed to her resentment that Isabel 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. 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 finshing touch. Abuela promises to be less overbearing,
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.
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.
Happily Married: All the married couples from the Madrigal family.
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.