Part 9: FINALE In Which Our Hero Nearly Gets His Head Bashed In How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? how it could have been good!

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When we last left our noble heroes, Pocahontas & John Smith's ill-timed making out led to Kocoum getting stabbed, John getting captured and Pocahontas making a determined (*coughoriginalmoviesuckscough*) but unsuccessful plea to save his life.

Thomas runs back to the camp and sounds the alarm, with the only difference being no one is so fucking stupid as to ask “Who got him?” Ratcliffe doesn’t have any silly aside about the gold, he just tells Wiggins “If this is what it takes to get them to wipe out those savages, then so be it!” He’s also very cruel to Thomas for letting John get taken, and reminds Thomas that John risked his life to save him from drowning, and look how Thomas has failed him. Thomas is dejected and humiliated and is being pushed aside by the rest of the crew.

Oh, good. We still get sad Christian Bale eyebrows. For a moment there I was worried.

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Part 8: In Which the Shit Hits the Fan How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? how it could have been good!

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Now that our characters have some comprehensible motivation, conflicts, and a universe whose metaphysics makes sense, let's see what happens to all these forces that have been set in motion...

The scene at the willow tree plays out in roughly the same way, except that it’s in proximity to a plant that actually belongs in Virginia. We cut out Grandmother Willow’s preaching, Percy and Meeko fighting and its painfully obvious allegory, not to mention the godawful “See, once two sides want to fight, nothing can stop them.” (groan…)

Fuck off and die, all of you.

That goes for you too, willow tree in the background!

Instead, Pocahontas & John Smith talk about the political situation and form a plan like mature adults. It goes something like this:

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Part 7: In Which We Develop Some Legitimate Conflict How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? how it could have been good!

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Or, "What Character Development You Can Achieve When You Don't Spend 15% of Your Screenplay On A Dream About A Fucking Compass."

In our previous installments, we've developed a plot device for the language barrier that makes sense, Pocahontas has a legitimate motivation, and she and John Smith have met for the first time...

So, we cut back to the settlers, John is moping as per original, but instead of cutting to Ratcliffe being buffoonish, we have the settlers trying to console themselves with fantastic dreams of the riches they’re going to find and how great it will be to be rich in a big showstopping number in the style of a rowdy sea shanty. John, in the time-honored tradition of Ariel, Simba, and Nala, takes the showstopper as an opportunity to sneak out of the camp.

Like this, but on land.

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Part 6: In Which Our Main Characters Become Interesting How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? how it could have been good!

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Last time, we created a foundation for the rules of magic in this universe, and gave Pocahontas a motivation (and a nose). Now, the English arrive:

The interlude with Ratcliffe, Wiggins, and Smith on shipboard plays out, except that Ratcliffe is more menacing, and while still a greedy bastard is more about bringing this land into properly civilized English hands. Wiggins is the same. He makes a comment about the gold, and Ratcliffe conceals a smile and says something self-justifying and white-man’s-burden-like.

The ship lands and Pocahontas is watching. To keep this consistent, at first she can’t understand what the settlers are saying, and to communicate this to the audience, what we actually hear when we’re watching them tie off the ship from her POV, is that they’re speaking in full-on Old English (i.e., untranslated Beowulf).

No amount of listening with your heart is gonna help you with this motherfucker.

With some trepidation, and not sure if it will work, she tries to cast her spell over them, and is pleased to find that it does and the settlers are again speaking recognizable English, with whatever our little visual cue is for the spell hovering over them. She gives a self-satisfied smile. When John Smith goes up and surveys the landscape, the little scene with Meeko plays out, except the spell visual marker is only over John Smith and not Meeko, who is squeaking as shown, because Smith would notice something’s up if a raccoon were talking!

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Part 5: In Which the Language Thing Makes Sense Now How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? how it could have been good!

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Here we go—plot outline for a version of Pocahontas that (I hope) would actually work! This is not going to be a full screenplay, just a description of the major themes & structure. Would you have made other choices? Then share them in the comments!

Note: I want to share some analysis of why I'm going with these choices, but it was just getting in the way of developing the new narrative. So, I'm hiding any analysis in anchor tag titles: just hover over any words in red if you'd like more detail, and if not, then just read on!

Obligatory digression on historical accuracy: this makes no attempt whatsoever to make it any better. Although they should probably have just changed the names, and set it on the first attempt to build a colony on Roanoke. For the purposes of this outline I’m sticking with the original names, so we all know who I’m talking about.

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Part 4: Why Do We Still Have So Many Gloves?! How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? the good, the bad, and the ugly

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Here are my final 6 problems with the structure and themes of this movie.

13. Don’t listen with your heart. Try to pump blood with your ears. Everyone makes fun of this little bit of lampshading (warning, link goes to TV Tropes!) in every Pocahontas review ever, and that’s because it’s fucking ridiculous.

True fact: there is literally nothing too ridiculous to be found on Etsy.

Who understands English and when in this movie? Ostensibly, Pocahontas understands English when she starts to listen to her heart. Except that before that, John Smith made a joke about eating hardtack and she clearly giggled at it. That makes no kinds of sense. Next we have all the scenes where everyone who has not listened with their heart and is not Pocahontas can understand all the other characters…which is every single scene that has a person from both sides in it!

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Part 3: The Gloves Are Coming Off! How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? the good, the bad, and the ugly

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So, in our last review we covered the first six unforgivable sins that damn this movie, so today let's do six more!

7. There is no indication whatsoever that Powhatan would not be sympathetic to Pocahontas and John had he found out what actually happened. Yes, Powhatan is a little stern and rather a stick-in-the-mud, but he comes off as a kindly father who is primarily motivated by Pocahontas’s well-being. If he found out Kocoum was ignoring her clearly stated pleas to leave John alone, would he have defended that behavior for a second? Moreover, in the fight scene Kocoum quite violently throws Pocahontas to the ground. Everything we’ve seen of Powhatan as a father says that if he heard about that he’d respond to Kocoum’s death with “Good riddance, fuck that bastard.”

Yeah, this happens. Why does everyone just forget about it for the entire fucking rest of the movie?!

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Part 2: ...Then Come Sit By Me! How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? the good, the bad, and the ugly

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In Part 1: If you don't have anything nice to say..., I started off with what made this deeply flawed film worthy of attention and critique.

Well, with that out of the way, let’s get into the much longer and not-at-all ordered list of things I just can’t stand about Pocahontas:

Disclaimer: this is not going to be yet another retread of all the historical inaccuracies in the film—although that is glaringly obvious in the film and our reactions to it. Rather, borrowing from Nostalgia Critic’s ideas in his "Is it Right to Nitpick?" video, I’m going to look at all the reasons why the film doesn’t seduce us to overlook the historical accuracies, in much the same way we easily do with Mulan or Aladdin. So, these are going to be the story problems, the things that leave us feeling emotionally unfulfilled by the movie, that we then rationalize with our intellectual knowledge that the movie is historically inaccurate, and the things that render it all the more racially insensitive through its well-meaning, ignorant clunkiness.

1. Sad to say, the main thing that’s a problem with Pocahontas is Pocahontas. This isn’t something that occurred to me when nine-year-old me saw it for the first time, and frankly the other gaping plot holes below bothered me even more when I watched it as an adult. But I couldn’t shake the fact that I had to agree with every reviewer who said she was dull, even though it’s rather hard to articulate why: she whitewater rafts, she jumps off cliffs, she challenges others’ values and assumptions and stands up for her beliefs. I mean, she *should* be interesting…but she isn’t. I’ve come to feel this has to do with a lack of motivation. She really has no character arc. What does she want? Not to settle down, whatever that means. So she falls for someone adventurous but then, with no explanation or story development or internal turmoil, she assumes a role as a stabilizer among her people.

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Part 1: If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say... How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pocahontas? the good, the bad, and the ugly

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Aaah, Pocahontas… I have such a conflicted relationship with this movie. Even as a nine-year-old I remember being taken aback by how I just didn't like it as much as I wanted to. And yet something about it just morbidly draws me in. It's like the Uncanny Valley of Disney Renaissance films. It's not just that it's bad. But there’s something fascinating about its badness. It has been quite strangely difficult to put my finger on what it is that makes it not work as well as the rest of the Disney Renaissance films, but I think I’ve finally articulated it for myself. If it were simply irredeemably bad, then I would just hate it and move on. There’s something about it that makes it so close to being good and yet so far that makes me obsessively want to fix it. So first I guess I should look at what I do like about it, and what makes it interesting for me even if it ultimately falls very flat.

So without further ado, the good things about Disney's Pocahontas:

1. It’s simply a gorgeous film. The depth and character of the animation, the rich color palette, the beautiful sensitivity with which it is rendered, at least visually—even though thematically it certainly isn't realized with anything near the same sense of sophistication.

I will put up with all kinds of plot holes for this visual design.

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