When it comes to movies, there’s a big difference between how they are originally thought out and how they end up on the big screen, which leaves plenty of room for all those plot holes, including these 11 glaring plot holes in Disney’s Tangled.
It goes like this. Someone comes up with a movie idea, then a screenplay is written, and then it is rewritten. They film the movie and during the shooting, extra changes come up. Then it’s time for putting the movie together and, if following the screenplay, it ends up being 5 hours long, so cuts need to be made and, most often than not, plot holes emerge. Sometimes they’re the size of a football and sometimes they’re the size of a football field. For the big ones don’t forget to check magical plot holes in Harry Potter.
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This time around, however, we’re talking about Tangled, the animation movie done by Disney. It should be a bit easier with it being an animation, right? Well, not really. It seems that even if they’re drawn and not filmed in the Hollywood studios, there are still issues.
By definition, a plot hole is a logical inconsistency within the story; they’re illogical or impossible events, scenes that contradict the earlier storyline. So, even if this is a fairy tale we’re talking about, it doesn’t mean everything goes.
We’re going to ignore the fact that there’s a talking horse, we’re going to ignore the fact that Rapunzel’s hair is impossibly long and the existence of magical flowers, but we’re not going to ignore the rest of the issues. So, if you haven’t yet seen Tangled (and really, what have you been waiting for?) beware of the many spoilers ahead as we look into 11 glaring plot holes in Disney’s Tangled.
11. Good guesser?
The Royal family goes upon finding a magical flower that is unique. There’s no other like it, and there has never been one. Yet, Mother Gothel sure knows about it and sure knows how to make it work by singing a song to it. And it’s not just any song, it’s the RIGHT song to make it give its power to her and keep her young forever. How did she figure out what to sing and which combination was the right one? No one could have taught her; no one could have told her what to say.
10. Are you deaf?
So, Gothel sneaks into the castle, climbs through the balcony (at her age, nonetheless), sings to the child to activate the pretty hair, and no one hears her. I mean, no one hears her. The parents are right there, and everyone knows parents don’t sleep like the dead with a child in the room. That aside, she was singing! Did she need a parade marching behind her to make herself heard? Yeah, that idea doesn’t hold water.
9. Worst. Guards. Ever
I hope someone fired all the guards and got new ones because those that were employed did a lousy job. Since Gothel had been away from her magic flower for a while she was quite the old lady. Yet, she managed to sneak her way undetected to the castle, climbed the wall, snuck in through the balcony, kidnapped the little kid and got away with it. No one stopped her. If that doesn’t mean someone needs to lose their job, I don’t know what does.
8. The tower
There’s a time jump, and we see Rapunzel throwing her long locks out the balcony to help raise Gothel up. Now, I don’t care who you are, it’s still going to take a few years to let that hair grow that long. That means that for at least until Rapunzel was… let’s say 7 or 8 years old, she wouldn’t have had hair long enough to reach the ground. So how did Gothel visit her? We later see there’s a hidden door that allows the witch to reach the higher levels of the tower, so perhaps she used those before, right? Well, wouldn’t Rapunzel remember Gothel coming to visit her through the secret door and use it to escape the high tower and explore the world around it at the very least?
7. Tangled?
The movie might be named Tangled, but there’s nothing tangled about Rapunzel’s hair. That girl has hair that goes on and on and on and yet, when she moves around the tower, it never catches on furniture. Then, when she leaves on her adventure with Ryder, it never tangles in the trees, bushes and whatever else lies on the floor of the woods. What’s more, it doesn’t even get dirty. There are no leaves, debris, twigs and so on caught in her hair, which is not really believable.
As if the producers remembered that Rapunzel has yards of hair behind her, her hair does start tangling in things once she reaches the kingdom of her parents. It’s only then that someone else steps on her hair, and she looks disheveled. That’s not how hair works, even if it’s magical.
6. Surviving the flood
At one point, as the basset hound of a horse Maximus tries to catch Eugene after sniffing around for half a movie, he kicks down a dam, releasing the waters. The massive flood is survived by our unlikely duo by hiding in a mine shaft. They are flooded, but her magical hair lights up and shows them the way to freedom. Nor surprising since this is a Disney movie, but no one dies. We’re going to let this one slide, though.
5. Birthday lanterns
That which must be the worst kidnapper in the history of kidnappers, as bad as this sounds. She stole the kid and instead of making up a different birthday date, she gives her the real one, the day when the king and queen launch thousands of lanterns as a way to maybe signal their daughter so she can find her way home. We’re going to let it slide that she only had maybe one birthday at the castle and that she’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes to figure things out.
4. The light bulb moment
At one point in the movie, after visiting the city and seeing the murals with the king and queen holding a blue-eyed blond baby, as well as all those Sun Flowers, etched to various items across the kingdom, she puts two and two together. But it’s not like it starts with a hunch. Noooo, they had to go the extra step and introduce a scene where Rapunzel gets a flashback to her time at the castle.
Considering she was a little over a year when she was taken, given the lanterns rising on her birthday, the chances of her having any kind of long lasting memories from that age are… minimal, to say the least. While it’s likely that at 18 you’ll remember bits and pieces from your early childhood, one’s memories won’t go that far down the line.
3. Reverse stabbing
So Rapunzel ends up back in the tower with Gothel, who chains her up. Eugene and Maximus are now allies, with the horse even helping the thief escape his prison at the castle. They charge towards the hidden tower to save the girl, and nothing goes according to plan.
As you’d expect, once Eugene is up in the tower he’s in danger. Gothel charges him and stabs him in the back because of course she’s hide her intent and choose not to face him. The surprise comes in the next scenes where he’s clutching his chest, and Rapunzel tries to sooth him. Since the wound was, technically, on his back, how come they’re tending to his chest? Did the knife poke straight through him? Unlikely. What is likely, however, is that this makes it on the list of 11 glaring plot holes in Disney’s Tangled.
2. The rude chop
Eugene makes the executive decision that Rapunzel is not free as long as her magical hair is attached to her head, so he cuts it with a mirror shard. Without asking her first, without wondering if she wants the same thing or not, without asking himself what would happen with the girl once her kidnapper no longer has a use for her, he cuts her hair.
What’s more, her hair had healing powers prior to being cut, and he’s wounded, so why did he cut it before she could tend to his stab wound? Surely, it couldn’t have taken long for her to fix him right up.
1. That’s not how it works
This one is the biggest plot hole of them all for Tangled and it’s closely related to the one above. So, Rapunzel’s hair gets cut, and the magic is gone. Gothel turns back into an old hag in a nanosecond, but Eugene’s hand doesn’t split back in half even though it was the same magic that fixed him up.
What’s more, her hair turns to brown. All her hair. That just doesn’t make sense. In the first few minutes of the movie we see Gothel cutting a small strand of hair and immediately the golden color drains away, which is why she decides to kidnap the girl.
That scene, along with this one, doesn’t make sense from a logical standpoint. The magical powers of her hair should come from her roots, which means that the remaining hair on her head should have stayed blonde. Alas, she turns into a brunette that her parents somehow recognize many years after getting kidnapped. That’s a wrap on the 11 glaring plot holes in Disney’s Tangled.
