“Eager to discover the truth about his late father, King Derek and Queen Odette set off on an epic adventure. As newly appointed members of the Council of Crowns, Derek and Odette begin to “smoke out” the true story. But an attempt on their lives drives them undercover, where they pose as the Barrymores, world-famous traveling magicians. With the help of Rogers, Scully, and the animals, Derek and Odette piece the mystery together, only to have it all unravel. Will they ever know the truth about King Max?”
– Swan Princess Official website
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below…)
Well here we are folks, at the end of a journey I thought would somehow never end. September 2023 marks the release of the last Swan Princess movie, and I can honestly say I’m a bit bummed! The Swan Princess series was a staple of my movie nights. My viewing group quickly became acquainted with the particular brand of goofiness the CGI Swan Princess sequels had, and it was always an exiting day when a new movie was on the viewing roster. In the series’ heyday they were putting out a new Swan Princess movie every year and a half or so, and I always appreciated knowing that a new addition to my movie collection was just around the corner. So it’s legitimately a little sad to know that myself and my viewing party won’t have that experience anymore!
The final movie in the series focuses on Derek and Odette as they try to uncover the mystery of what happened to Derek’s father, King Max. Max had seemingly perished under vague circumstances in the flashback sequence in the 11th film, so even before the trailer for the 12th movie was released it was pretty obvious that the plot was going to revolve around the mystery of what happened. But true to form, while you might have a rough estimate of what the Swan Princess series will do, you are always surprised by the exact choices they make.
Derek and Odette, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decide that the best way to investigate what happened to Max is to disguise themselves as world-famous magicians and interview/spy on various members of the Council of Kings, who Derek and Odette believe are involved in what happened to Max. You’d think that just posing as normal people would attract less attention, but that’s what you would do if the goal was to actually be sneaky and solve a mystery (And not if you were primarily focused on trying to think of silly things for Derek and Odette to get up to). It’s also a little weird to see Derek and Odette’s ‘disguise’ just being a pair of barely there domino masks, especially when we’ve established Lord Rogers has hyper-realistic full face masks that they could’ve used. They even use far better disguises later on in the film, why couldn’t we have gotten similar disguises earlier?
The answer is of course, because they didn’t want Derek and Odette to be unrecognizeable for the majority of their last film, but then why write into the plot the need for them to adopt a disguse in the first place? Ya’ll are the ones making the movie, you don’t have to put in story beats that don’t mesh well with the goals of the film.
There’s also this whole thing about how the hotel manager that is renting a room to Derek and Odette is the huge town gossip, so she keeps spying on them and spreading news about them in her tabloids. You’d think after Derek and Odette realise she’s doing this they’d opt to get a new room somewhere else? Nope! They continue to stay at the hotel, which results in the manager finding out their real identities and blabbing it around town. So then we need to spend precious screentime having Derek and Odette prove to the Council that they are the magicians they claim to be. It’s an alright premise for a song, but it takes up valuable screen time that could’ve been used to make the resolution of the mystery feel a lot less rushed.
After spending most of the film thinking that one council member conspired against Max, it turns out it was a completely different King behind the plot (King Ivan, who was a guy I had pegged as a potential bad guy purely because he seemed too nice in the last film… That might say something about me as a person, but hey I was right!).
Anyways, in another baffling move for this film, Derek and Odette decide to engineer a very contrived confession from King Ivan, where they pretend to be Max’s ghost and scare Ivan into confessing (Which is overheard by the other council members thanks to a very convenient microphone). I don’t mind the idea of this overheard confession, even if it’s a really overdone trope… but Derek and Odette are literally wearing paper masks of the ‘Ghosts’ during this scene. You’re really telling me that they couldn’t have put together something a bit fancier for this? Especially since they’ve been disguised as magicians the entire movie, you mean to tell me they couldn’t have pulled off the infamous Pepper’s Ghost illusion?
And on that note, I’m so mad that they didn’t make an excuse to turn Odette into a swan one last time in the series… they could’ve fit it in so easily, just have it be a small part of their magic act as they’re performing to the council, dagnabbit!
You might be wondering what the heck King Ivan’s plan was. Well, we find out that King Ivan coordinated with the pirates to kidnap and stage Max’s murder (Remember when this series wasn’t afraid to kill off parents?). The Pirates sailed to the edge of this odd cursed island from which no one ever escapes, put Max in a rowboat, and let the tides carry him to the island where the curse prevented him from leaving. Then the Pirate’s were free to stage the sinking of his boat, placing Max’s journal on the wreckage for the other council members to find.
That journal is another baffling part of this movie. It turns out that King Ivan had paid a tavern owner to forge a journal entry about Max meeting with the pirates, to try and make it seem like Max was collaborating with them. From what we were led to believe in the previous film, Max tried to meet with the pirates to try and reach a truce with them, and was attacked and killed for it. This film tries to spin it as an act of treachery, that by meeting with the pirates Max was somehow ‘working’ with them. There was nothing wrong with how this situation was presented in the previous film. Max trying and failing to reason with the Pirates fit well with the character we saw established for Max: That he was a King who tried to see the good in everyone and would put himself in danger to try and mediate between hostile parties. It also made sense why the other council members wanted to cover things up, because they wanted to spare Max’s reputation the embarassment of having been too naive for his own good. So I really don’t get why this film felt the need to retcon all that. It’s another instance of the movie not knowing how to best use it’s time.
Getting back to the forged journal, when did Ivan have time to do this? How did he get Max’s journal in the first place? The Pirates left the journal behind on the wreckage, so they had to have it before Max was put on their ship. So Ivan stole the journal, paid the tavern owner to forge the entry, then kidnapped Max and handed him and the journal over to the pirates?
I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, and the brilliant part of those stories is that while you don’t always understand the signifiance of evidence/plot points, they are always presented to the reader. The dots are still there, whether or not you connect them is up to your own powers of observation and deduction. Regarding Swan Princess 12, if they really wanted us to be able to follow the thread of the potential forgery all they had to do was include some small throwaway line in the previous film where Max says he’s looking for his misplaced journal. It doesn’t have to be a big in-your-face moment, just something subtle that in hindsight makes you go “ooooh, that’s because Ivan had stolen it!”. Heck, we didn’t even learn Max kept a journal until it’s found on the wreckage.
ANYWAYS, once the mystery is uncovered and King Ivan is outed as a murderous traitor, Derek decides he has to sail to the cursed island, even though it means he’ll be trapped there too, to try and bring his Dad back. Interesting they do acknowledge ever so briefly the likelihood that Max is dead, as Derek mentions how his dad “Deserves to be buried in his own kingdom”. But of course, the series would never end on such a sombre note. Instead Derek sails to the cursed island, crashes on it’s rocks and nearly drowns… only to be saved by Max himself! Not only has Max somehow survived 25 years alone on what looks to be a barren rocky island, but for some reason Derek reuiniting with his Dad breaks the curse on the island? So now they’re all free to head home together, and the series ends with Max returning home, reuiniting with Uberta, and meeting Odette. For some reason we never get to see Max meet his granddaughter Alise, because Alise and Lucas are conspiciously absent from the film despite being the main protagonists of a good few movies in the sequel series. No idea why they were ignored like this, given that it was the last possible time in the series we could’ve seen them.
I figured that they’d have this plot thread of Max returning home as soon as I realised the 12th film would revolve around the mystery of what happened to him… but the resolution happens far too quickly. How did Max survive all this time? Why did the curse break? Also, just the presense of this mysterious island as a plot convenience as to why Max hasn’t returned home after all this time… it’s just so sloppy. And I mean, that’s great for me, as a lover of terrible Princess movies I love all this bad writing and strange story decisions… but this movie could have been good, a well written ending to a series that would’ve given fans a decent send off.
As is my nature, this film got me thinking about what I would have done if I was handed the reigns to this story, so here’s my proposed rewrite of the film:
Max mets with the pirates, a meeting that was arranged by King Ivan. Maybe Ivan comes to Max in secret, claiming that he also believes in Max’s idea that the pirates could still be reasoned with, and that he’s arranged for them to meet together to see if a truce could be formed. He would of course, swear Max to secrecy about his involvement, and so that explains why Max doesn’t mention him in the journal entry. Or heck, maybe he does, and that’s the real reason why King Ivan later offers to hold onto the journal after discovering it on the wreckage.
Max meets with the pirates, who on the orders of King Ivan attack and attempt to kill Max. Max manages to escape, but his boat is destroyed thanks to some barrels of gunpowder being ignited during the fight with the pirates. Max is injured in the blast, is blown overboard, and falls unconcious, waking up on some lonely shore with amnesia. Maybe in the fight he grabbed onto a bit of the Pirate’s clothes, which he still has clenched in his fist when he wakes up. With no other clue to his identity, Max assumes he was a pirate (Adopting some pirate mannerisms to boot).
Years ago by, and eventually Max is found by Derek and Odette. Now, full disclosure, but I can’t think of how you’d get them to Max without it being a bit convenient. Maybe they get shipwrecked in a storm, and happen to wash up on the same island as Max? Whatever it takes, have them find Max early in the film… only again, Max doesn’t remember anyone. Derek’s attempts to jog his Dad’s memory fails, and Max doesn’t believe Derek when he says they’re Father and son.
Regardless, Max goes back with Derek and Odette to the mainland, purely so he can get off the island. Of course when King Ivan see’s Max has returned, he’s secretly terrified that Max’s memory may come back and Ivan will be revealed as the mastermind behind Max’s attempted murder. So while Derek is trying to jog his Dad’s memory and the amnesiac Max is trying to forge a new life for himself on the mainland, King Ivan is attempting to secretly kill off Max.
I think having Max with amnesia would give all the characters some time to figure out how to react to the idea of Max coming back into their lives. Here’s this man who they all thought was dead, how do they feel about him coming back? Especially when he’s not acting like the man they remember. How does Derek feel when he sees his Dad, who he only has good memories of, angrily shoo him away and deny that he’s his Father? Heck, maybe over the course of the film Max starts to warm up to Derek in spite of Derek making a bit of a nuisance trying to convince Max he has amnesia. Maybe Max starts thinking that… well maybe the idea of being Derek’s Dad isn’t so bad?
And as mentioned you can still have the mystery of “What happened to Max” be there… but this time the revelation that there is a mystery is also something the characters get to discover. Who’s behind the attacks on the amnesiac Max? Why would they be targeting him when all he wants is to be left alone?
What this would build towards is, of course, a grand conclusion where King Ivan’s trechary is revealed, and more importantly when Max’s memory is restored. Picture this, Ivan and Derek are fighting and Derek draws his bow but realises he’s out of arrows!
BUT THEN, Max, memory fully restored, performs the “Catch and Fire” routine with Derek, allowing Derek to defeat his Father’s would-be-killer with the very game his Dad taught him as a kid. The film draws to a close, with Max fully reuinited with his family. Maybe things are still a bit messy, but you get the impression that they’ll all figure it out together… we just won’t be there to see it.
I am of course, incredibly biased to my own idea of how the story could’ve been, but I really do feel like all of the above could’ve been a really enjoyable film. Imagine all the interesting character moments we could’ve had between Derek and Max… a Son and his Father who even without amnesia, don’t know each other. I also would’ve loved to have seen some acknowledgement of the “Will they, won’t they” they had between Uberta and Rogers that the CGI sequels loved to dip into. How does Max coming back affect their relationship? The actual 12th movie kinda sidesteps around that, aside from a quick line where Max thanks Rogers for being Uberta’s “Companion” all these years. But Rogers wasn’t just Uberta’s companion, heck remember when they confessed their love and almost got married? Imagine if they had a moment like in the 9th film where Prince Lee gave up his love for Alise, but this time it’s Rogers telling Uberta that he accepts that she wants to be with Max, and he’ll be okay if she does. I think it could’ve been a very bittersweet moment between the two of them that would’ve easily closed the book on their relationship, which would’ve been leagues better then how this film just… ignores that it was something they wrote into previous entrants in the series.
If nothing else, I’m grateful for all the interesting thought exercises this film, and the rest of the Swan Princess series, has given me over the years. I love being able to play pretend Script Doctor and come up with these alternative takes on movies. It was always particularily fun to pretend re-write the Swan Princess movies, because the sequels always had some bit of good in them, something that you could polish into a better movie if you had the luxury of hindsight and no time or budget limitations like I do.
At the first of turning this into a much longer blog post I’ll think I’ll end it here. Pour one out for the Swan Princess series folks, it was a bumpy ride but that’s what made it so interesting.
Bad Princess Movies 
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