I Saw Tangled and It Was SciFi

We all know the story of Rapunzel.  I even know the original version that is much more violent.  I have never thought of it as science fiction, but Disney's movie Tangled may have changed that.  Warning, here there be spoilers.

I finally got around to watching this.  I was on a father/daughter date with my youngest (the oldest is mad because she wanted to see it too), and I kind of wanted to see something else.  Boy was I mistaken.  It might be my new favorite Disney Princess movie.  Tangle was very good and very funny. 

On the way home, as my daughter was nodding off, I came to the conclusion that Tangled was a scifi movie.  "A drop of the sun" falls from the sky and up blooms a "magical" flower.  The flower makes the witch young and is found and harvested to save the life of the pregnant queen.  The queen is healed but the baby is born with a head full of blond hair (king and queen are dark headed).  Turns out the hair is "magical as well."  You have to sing to the hair to make it heal.  If the hair is cut, it dies and the hair still attached the the head turns brown. 

A drop of the sun is obviously a meteorite with a seed of a otherworldly flower.  Singing to the flower makes it happy and it then releases some sort of rejuvenating radiation.  When the flower is turned to tea, the organism living in the flower's DNA is released and embeds itself in the fetus of the queen.  Rapunzel has a symbiotic organism that lives inside her.  I guess the alien symbiote needs its own oxygen or it uses photosynthesis to live as it expresses itself through the hair.  As these tendrils are cut the whole branch dies.  When all of Rapunzel's hair is cut the organism can no longer exist.  It dies, but with its remaining strength forces some healing essence through a tear drop. 

Want more proof?  The hair grabs and lets go of things.  It is able to move on its own.  Usually only when Rapunzel wants it too.  So the symbiote is acting in concert with Rapunzel's wishes.  A side effect of the symbiote would be Rapunzel's ability to talk to chameleons. 

Sure the movie takes place in the fantasy kingdoms of Happily Ever After, but that does not change the fact that it is a scifi movie.  Arthur C. Clarke said it best, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  What the characters see as magic is really just an alien organism.

In closing,  Tangled is a great movie whether  it is SciFi or not.  It is clever and funny and just a whole lot of fun.  Disney hit a home run on this one.  I would suggest going to see this one and you don't even have to have a kid with you.