Maybe you can help us.
We’ve been out to the movies the last two nights. Tonight we went to see The Day After Tomorrow, since within six to eight weeks six to eight days six to eight hours, Someone in the family wouldn’t be able to catch it on the big screen (and I can assure you that there wouldn’t be much point to watch it on a small screen). We just barely made it in time for the show, on account of circumstances I won’t go into just now. Short answer: as Margaret herself said, “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” She liked it, I thought that it was, well, not as bad as I thought it would be.
But we need help figuring out Shrek 2, which Margaret and Pippa and I saw together last night, and which we all enjoyed immensely. We were trying to untangle the plot over dinner tonight, though, and that’s where we ran into questions. {CAUTION: Spoilers in the extended entry!}
So, let’s work on this. Fiona seems to have been destined for a certain amount of time to meet and marry Prince Charming (hence, the diary). That “destiny” seems to have been arranged by the Fairy Godmother, who has power over the King/Father; she enabled his happiness, she threatens, and she can take it away. Does that mean that she set him free from being a frog to marry Queen Lillian? If so, was the marriage of his daughter a precondition for transforming him to a king? If that’s the case, then presumably Fairy Godmother gave him a package deal including guranteed birth of a daughter (evidently as only child) and her own giving birth to a son. But it gets more complicated than that, since not only is Chraming destined to marry Fiona, but he has to rescue her from the dragon in order so to do; and one reason she's stuck with the dragon is her peculiar condition (is that genetic, from her father’s froggiosity, or a causally distinct curse from the Fairy?); so the peculiar condition must have been part of the Fairy Godmother’s plan as well.
At which point, one may well wonder why the Fairy Godmother didn’t just destine Fiona to be happy, and Charming to win her heart; that doesn’t seem any more complicated than the baroque tangle of circumstances that determined the plot.
Don’t misunderstand — none of this really bothered us during the movie, and it mayhave enhanced the air of suspense (sicne nothing really was making much sense). We just looked back and wondered how on earth the backstory could possibly work out.
Posted by AKMA at July 1, 2004 10:52 PM | TrackBackI think what you need to study is Pratchett's theory of Narrative Causality. Witches Abroad states it most clearly:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061020613/epeusepigone-20
(use 'look inside' if you don't have a copy to hand - it's explained in the prologue)
Posted by: Kevin Marks at July 2, 2004 12:26 AMThe fairy godmother did it with the candlestick in the library! Well, actually, thats fairly close. The fairy godmother helped the king become a true king (aka no longer a frog) to help win his future wives heart.
She then demanded that the King give her some position of power but him being the typical arragont person, he said no. Because of that the Fairy godmother cursed his daughter to become an ogre and then, for the daughters "happiness" locked her in the tower. The only way she could be freed (by the Fairy Godmothers manipulation) was by the kiss of her one true love...supposed to be Charming.
She then made the king agree that the prince would be Charming, and when he found her they'd get married. Otherwise the Fairy godmother would spill the beans about the king being a Frog and take away her gift of him being a human.
Because, in the end, the King goes against his word he becomes a Frog again.
That was my take on the whole situation. If it doesn't make sense I apologize. Its hard to write up a summary while learning about Logogens and Cohorts for Natural Language Processing :)
Posted by: Chris at July 2, 2004 11:17 AM