WCRfan126 | ➤you're the only friend i got {tangled fan casting || mep part} @WCRfan126 | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 14 hours ago
If you’re coming into the description to wonder where I got live action footage of Rapunzel’s tower, the answer is Once Upon a Time. I had to dig through season 7 for this footage and died a little bit while doing it.

So I decided to finally dip my toe into the world of LA crossovers, fan cast videos, whatever you wanna call them! I’ve always wanted to try to edit one of these and my friend Sophie (DreamingWithDragons) gave me the PERFECT excuse as a kicking off point. Essentially her idea for the MEP was to make our own Disney live action remake, fancasting to our desires and we were not allowed to use actors who had been previously casted in the role. Only props! Now I’m of the belief that animated movies are constructed in a way specific to the medium and should not break out of that BUT for the sake of a fun exercise I decided to indulge with MY favorite animated movie of all time: Tangled.

This was an interesting challenge because I wanted this to stay true to the movie’s message and heart while also changing it to better fit the medium. So instead of a musical romantic comedy, I went with a fantasy romantic drama. Very much in the same vibes of Ever After or Ophelia, the movies I in fact used for this.

Before getting to the story I’ll talk about my casting decisions a bit. Eugene/Flynn was a no-brainer. Eoin Macken, specifically his role as Gwaine in Merlin, is just too perfect. He has the heart, the bastard criminal energy, the overly flirtyness. Picking anyone else would’ve been a CRIME. Gothel came pretty easy too because Anjelica Houston’s role as the Baroness in Ever After is very similar to Gothel in a lot of ways. However when I made that decision I completely forgot that she actually VOICED GOTHEL in the Barbie Rapunzel movie. So Hollywood already said this was perfect casting because she played the damn role! So if you were wondering where that audio of her saying “Rapunzel” came from, it’s from that lol. I had to take advantage of that dialogue (which already sounded similar to the opening of Mother Knows Best Reprise!). And then lastly was Rapunzel, who I definitely struggled with. There’s so many actresses in period settings with long blonde hair, it was more that I had too many options to choose from and I’m VERY unfamiliar with that genre of film. I stumbled upon this Ophelia film starring Daisy Ridley and her very long hair and kinda positive fun energy and also the fact that I really didn’t wanna go through 50 million films made me go for her. I honestly was doubting my own decision but then I started playing with the concept and editing with it and GOD it worked better than I could’ve imagined. She has that perfect isolated, naive, but light-hearted spirit that works perfectly for Rapunzel, or at least an iteration of the character.

So here’s how I did the story:
Rapunzel is someone born with magic powers and is kidnapped as a baby by Mother Gothel, but does not know that. The first big difference here is that I didn’t wanna edit glowing hair SO Rapunzel is kinda the embodiment of sunlight now and can summon it at every whim. I didn’t figure out Gothel’s reasonings for kidnapping her since the eternal youth thing wouldn’t work here but it would still be related to Rapunzel’s magic in some way. While Gothel was away on a trip, an outlaw banished from the kingdom of Corona, going by the name of Flynn, takes shelter in the tower having nowhere to go, thinking it was completely empty. He’s about to leave when he discovers Rapunzel there, but she actually begs him to stay, hating being alone anytime Gothel goes away. When Flynn discovers Rapunzel’s desires to see the world, he encourages her to leave. She says she will, but only if he comes with her. The two of them go on a roadtrip, to where Rapunzel discovers that Flynn is loved by his fellow outlaws, and his joyous and party energy ends up breaking her out of her shell a bit. Similarly, Rapunzel’s genuine kindness and sincerity is appreciated by Flynn, as he feels everyone he’s ever known fakes it and has never truly cared about him as a person, just his status as a famous outlaw. The two of them grow a connection through feeling like, for the first time in their lives, they’re being seen and heard and loved by someone else, and reveal secrets to each other know one else knows.

There was a lot here I didn’t add that I wanted to. I was gonna show Eugene being banished and more of the ruffians. I was also gonna show more romantic scenes and I wanted to show Eugene’s initial death scene (Gwaine has a lot of options in that regard). But I decided, for the sake of time, keep it to developmental parts of the characters and some of the more important scenes. Anyways I’ll stop my rambling here. Enjoy!