credit: Trolls World Tour
Trolls World Tour is the second installment of the Trolls franchise. In the first film, we knew who the Trolls were and their plight for safety, which had a load of setbacks. After having their enemies’ desire to eat them dissipated, the Trolls were no longer in danger of being someone’s main course in this movie. Instead, the struggle came from the Trolls’ music tastes, as they acted as if their preference was superior to that of others.
The film was released on April 2020. If we look back to that date, we would realize that that month was at the beginning months of the pandemic. It is where the lockdowns and quarantines began to take place. Yes, now that the world seemed to be recovering now, back on that day, people were not advised to go to theatres, so not a lot of people watched it. So today, we will analyze the movie’s plot and messages to see if it was a good movie.
Disclaimer: This analysis is fully subjective and is from the ideas of the author.
credit: Trolls World Tour
The movie is about polarizing music preferences
The movie revolved around the idea of the music tastes of every Troll. Each music genre had its own “tribes” that integrated that music type into its lifestyles. There are six main genres, represented by six strings symbolizing them – Techno, Funk, Classical, Country, Hard Rock, and Pop. Poppy came from the last tribe.
Queen Barb, the film’s main antagonist, sought to unite all of the Trolls under the Rock tribe. She kept on harassing Queen Poppy into surrendering the Pop string to her. She even summoned bounty hunters from minor tribes such as Reggaeton and K-Pop (I don’t know why this is a different tribe from Pop) to find Poppy and retrieve the string from her.
Now, it appeared in the movie that music was some sort of a religion where it was the followers’ job to “convert” those who were not currently following it. If it were not a religion to which everyone must be converted, it was a country that was at war with other countries over their conflicting ideologies. For me, this was a great and clever way of putting this subliminal message into a children’s film without it being too gruesome, political, or serious.
There were (at least) two characters who tried to unite the Trolls under one musical tribe. The first one is the pretty obvious antagonist and was actively trying to do so on pretty much the movie’s run time. The second one was mentioned by Prince D, citing that before, some Pop trolls tried to convert their Funk kingdom to Pop.
credit: Trolls World Tour
The ending was both chilling and disappointing
Near the end, Queen Barb was successful (for that part) in obtaining all six strings representing each tribe of music. The Trolls, now under the banner of Rock, turned into zombie-like creatures. This is the representation of what would happen if everyone was subjected to a singular ideology.
In real life, people who follow a single ideology tend to become blind fools; they just follow what was told to them without even putting a thought into it. The zombie scene showed how “dead” the world would be if everyone became like that – unthinking, unmoving, unalive. The movie called everyone to recognize each other’s identity and beliefs. We should not try to impose what we believe in on everyone. As great a unified world would be, the lack of diversity is what would kill it. This message is beautifully-concealed inside a children’s movie. One wouldn’t just expect to encounter real-life problems sewn into animated movies.
I will admit I loved that ending part. However, there was a disappointing bit to the ending as well. After Poppy destroyed the strings, killing music in its entirety, the Trolls all turned gray. The heart of one character began beating in the rhythm of his music tribe. It passed on the message that music is inside of us as much as our identity is inside of us. It was a bit underwhelming in a way that if that was the case all along, why did the movie even bother introducing the story of the strings?
Also, where were these musical references in the first movie?
In conclusion, this second addition to the Trolls franchise was a great addition and worth the watch. One had to watch between the lines to fully appreciate it.
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