Descendants: Wicked Wonderland has the same content concerns as previous entries—mainly some magical elements and a couple sly references to crude words. And while it does tell a story of forgiveness and redemption, it also offers a subjective “follow your heart” message that gives no true guidance.
The first rule of time travel: Cover your tracks.
That’s exactly what Red and Chloe failed to do.
You see, the two girls are descendants of the Queen of Hearts and Cinderella, respectively. And when the Queen of Hearts decided she’d be pleased with chopping off Cinderella’s head, Red and Chloe, with the power of a time-traveling pocket watch, went to the past. While there, they altered the event that set the high school-aged Queen of Hearts on her path towards villainy, and then they jumped back to the present. (See Descendants: The Rise of Red for more details.)
It worked. The Queen of Hearts is now a good queen, and Red is now a hero kid (HK) rather than a villain kid (VK). Of course, the change came with some new life updates, too.
No. 1, it turns out that simple manipulation resulted in Red gaining a sister—Pink.
No. 2, Red and Chloe’s friend, the HK Max (grandson of the Mad Hatter) is nowa VK—and not just any VK, but the son of the kingdom of Auradon’s most infamous villain yet: Maddox.
How’d that happen? Wasn’t Maddox one of the good guys?
It turns out, as Red and Chloe jumped from the past back into the present, Maddox saw them. And from that moment, he became obsessed with finding that time-traveling pocket watch. No one believed Maddox when he told them what he saw. They called him insane.
He became insane.
And when Red and Chloe return, his many inventions notify him that the pocket watch has entered the realm.
Now, he’ll do whatever it takes to get it—starting by taking all of Wonderland captive.
The children of villains are given chances to show that they aren’t as villainous as their parents—most notably, Max, the son of Maddox, who has been turned into a VK because of Red and Chloe’s manipulation of the past. Max hopes to help Red and Chloe to take down his father and show that he’s not on board with the man’s wicked ways.
Likewise, Red, who was once a VK but is now an HK, grapples with feeling caught between worlds. She still makes some selfish moves, but she’s also more understanding toward the VKs who join their adventure. Moreover, Red eventually apologizes to everyone she’s hurt by the movie’s end—including to Max, who got the worst of it all.
[Spoiler Warning] Now, Max has the worst wake-up call of all. As stated, he’s pitted against his villainous father—but his father is only villainous because Red and Chloe unwittingly changed his destiny. When Max inevitably discovers this, he’s understandably extremely upset: He had a good relationship with his father, and Red and Chloe took that from him. This comes to a head as Max attempts to steal the pocket watch to travel back and revert the past. But after a change of heart, Max chooses to allow the new present to stand, forgiving the girls and hoping that they’ll be able to rehabilitate his father into a good man.
As in other Descendants movies, magic plays a key part in the story—after all, the characters are all based on fairy tales.
The aftermath of using a time-travelling pocket watch sets off the events of the story. The Queen of Hearts sends out magical playing cards which poof into guards. Maddox brews potions and constructs items with magical effects. For instance, one construction has the ability to turn people tiny. The Fairy Godmother hangs around, too, but she does little spellcasting. A mirror acts as a portal to another location.
A magical bangle seemingly influences its wearer to embrace the villainous side of herself (and it dons her in “evil-looking” makeup and clothes to boot).
Someone gets called a witch. Chessy, the descendant of the Cheshire cat, poofs in and out of corporealness. Someone sits in a meditation pose. There’s a reference to the prodigal son.
There’s certainly a spiritual implication to how Red and Chloe’s time-traveling antics cause Pink to exist, but the movie doesn’t dwell on that, so neither will we.
Red starts a relationship with Luis Madrigal, and the two sing a song about having feelings for each other.
Characters face general peril, though we never see blood or death. The worst we see, in fact, is when a few characters get catapulted through the air by traps—or when part of a statue falls on someone, leaving them trapped underneath it. They narrowly avoid worse fates, however, such as a man-eating flower. Red, Chloe and others also fight off a group of shadowy flamingo monsters that dissipate into wisps when hit hard enough.
We hear three phrases that allude to cruder words: “What the fluff,” “bad witch” and “what in the hat” are all uttered. Otherwise, no actual crude language is used.
Red and friends eat one of the magical cookies from Alice in Wonderland, causing them to grow in size. Maddox sprays a gas that knocks some guards unconscious.
We hear a variety of song lyrics that boil down to a message of making up your own morality. For instance, we hear “throw out the rules/follow your heart and trust that it knows,” “there’s a truth inside your heart, go with it” and “why second-guess when it feels so right.”
Through lyrics like these, the movie advocates for creating your own personal “truth,” a message that could be potentially harmful to children who choose to follow the advice.
At one point, instead of talking through (and potentially resolving) her problems with Red, Chloe chooses to stay silent, prolonging her own anger and pumping up the dramatics.
What does one do when his or her actions directly change the course of another person’s life?
Eh, maybe don’t ask Red or Chloe that.
Their actions in Descendants: The Rise of Red directly result in Maddox Hatter turning villainous—changing him from the kinder man they once knew. The solution, of course, is to take this new villain down, which is all well and good. But there’s something a little slimy here that the most they can do for Maddox’s son, whom they robbed of a good father, is offer a shrugging “sorry.”
Am I thinking too hard about a movie that’s ultimately rated TV-G? Yeah. I know I am. But that’s a pretty terrible end result, don’t you think?
Descendants: Wicked Wonderland is about as heavy on content as previous installments. By that, I mean it contains fairy tale magic and the occasional sly allusion to a cruder word. The violence is tame, and a romantic story stays clean for kids. There’s even a nice thing or two about our parents’ legacies not defining who we are (a recurring theme of the Descendants series).
What is a bit eyebrow-raising, however, is a recurring message in song lyrics about finding truth “inside your heart” based on what feels “right.” Again, I know this is a Disney movie, and so its creators probably didn’t think too long on that message beyond “heart good because love,” but that’s still a pretty terrible message to be giving to children—to “throw out the rules” and simply trust that your heart knows where to go.
The Bible has a whole book of Judges that’ll tell you why that’s bad advice. I mean, wasn’t the movie’s main villain, Maddox, just doing what he felt was right in his own heart?
Ah well.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
