#spring unsprung

Everyone sit down and buckle in, this is not going to be a positive post. I just finished watching Descendants: Wicked Wonderland about an hour or so ago, so the feelings are still fresh. There will be very open spoilers about the plot of the movie, so anyone who was not watched this movie do not read this post.

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...Alright, I'm going to assume you've watched the movie and/or don't care about spoilers! You've been warned!

Descendants: Wicked Wonderland is such a painfully obvious rip-off of the Wonderland-centered specials (Spring Unsprung and Way Too Wonderland) of Ever After High that it's not even a joke.

There were a lot of fandom "jokes" about how Red and Chloe were Disney's attempts to replicate Lizzie and Darling from EAH. Chloe being the more obvious example as being a blue-coded female character that sought to be more of a warrior and knight in comparison to a damsel in distress, which was Darling's entire focus from her introduction. The same goes with their introduction of Maddox Hatter, with some comparing him to Maddie of EAH.

And if anyone thinks that was enough evidence, I'm about to give you a treasure trove of evidence. There is no exaggeration or over-emphasis on any examples. These are actual scenes and plot points from the movie that are directly taken from the EAH specials.

Just for reference, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland shall be referred to as DWW, while Spring Unsprung is EAH:SU and Way Too Wonderland is EAH:WTW

DWW as a whole is very similar to the premise of EAH:WTW. A group of students find themselves in Wonderland after the Queen of Heart's safety is threatened, with her daughter being one of the main characters. The Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat's children also make features along with non-Wonderland characters joining the fight. There's a betrayal from within the student group and a rush of corrupt power, and the threat of a friendship being broken, before the world is saved.

DWW starts off with a narration and focus on the Cheshire Cat's daughter, Chessy, and it becomes apparent that she is serving as the underlying antagonist of the story. She is the one siding with Maddox Hatter in his pursuit to find the stop-watch and take over Wonderland, nudging him on during his scheming. To me, this is very reflective of the Cheshire Cat's antagonistic role in EAH:SU. Both iterations have limited screen-time, but serve as the catalysts to each version's plot line.

There are so many scenes blatantly stolen from EAH:WTW and used in DWW.

The magical cards/scroll warning the Queen of Heart's daughters (Lizzie and Red + Pink, respectively) of her looming threat

Maddox stealing the Queen of Hearts' cards and using them against her is like Courtly using the face-morphing card against the Queen

The entire sequence of falling down the rabbit holes into Wonderland, moreso from a design point rather than a sequence of events

Also the set design of DWW Wonderland in comparison to EAH:WTW as they explore the landscapes

The most glaring example of a stolen scene is the chess battle between Red's group and Maddox's spell-summons. It is without a doubt the exact same scene from EAH:WTW where Raven had to use her friends as chess pieces. She plays the game wrong, her pieces are launched away, and when she's reminded the rules don't apply, she turns it into a dance battle. And in DWW, Red plays the game, loses one of her friends as a piece, and it conveniently turns into a musical number where they are dance-battling with the chess pieces.

We then return to Cheesy purposely meddling with Red's group and causing them to hear/see things that are not true. To me, this reminds me of how the Cheshire Cat in EAH:SU used the riddles book to curse a number of students with the Topsy Turvy spell. She purposely causes a lot of in-fighting in the friend groups and does it all for her amusement.

I've already seen people enjoying Chloe's villain arc and her getting to be a villain kid for a moment, even though it was just because of the evil bracelet. Meanwhile all I saw was Raven signing the Storybook of Legends and succumbing to her destined powers and villainy. Not just that, but a scene-for-scene rehashing of Aubrey becoming a villain and possessed by Maleficent's scepter! They stole from their own franchise! How do you even do that?

Of course the movie reaches its finale by having Red confront Evil!Chloe and snapping her out of her evil possession. Apple snapping Raven out of *her* evil possession anyone? I know the line "This isn't you!" has been used in other stuff but it's very coincidental considering how much that scene has become a joke for EAH fans. It's also ironic that both evil arcs are very quickly erased and happen at similar ending points of their respective films.

It's been said for a long time that Descendants was the reason that Ever After High lost any chances of coming back, and may have been the final blow before its cancellation. Plenty of fans, including myself, have compared the two franchises and have shown favoritism for EAH. So for Disney to obviously take ideas from a franchise they killed and used them in such bad ways is really upsetting as an EAH fan.

On the bright side, it's been fun seeing a revival of EAH because of DWW. The crossover edits are fun to watch, but it's also ironic considering EAH came well before Descendants.

I am just disappointed in how EAH fans have been left with nothing but it's clear how the source material had a lot to offer. Between the expansive lore from the Shannon Hale books, the great worldbuilding established in the web-series, the story developments in the specials, and then of course how good EAH was that Descendants had to steal and badly scrub off the serial number. Add grave-robbing to the list of Descendants' felonies.

walk animations' sprites from spring fairest

Idle sprites from the spring fairest game

I’ve evolved,, maybe too far