History Headscratchers / TheHunchbackOfNotreDame

Here's something that's bugged [[{{Ronnie}} me]] about the DisneyAnimatedCanon adaptation- [[AdaptationDistillation Fidelity to the novel be damned]], Phoebus always came off to me as a walking studio note to add a straight man love interest. He contributes absolutely nil to the story that couldn't be done by other people- Esmeralda could've easily called sanctuary on her own, and even his rallying of the people was originally Clopin's big moment- and turns the ending into an EsotericHappyEnding. Seems to me, the story would be much better off without the extraneous character.
* And Esmeralda could have gotten together with ''Quasimodo'', instead of the 'studly' blonde guy. Way to totally undermine your 'look beyond the surface' theme there, Disney, just pair the two sexy people up and leave the deformed guy heartbroken.
** Who says people ''have'' to go by "inner beauty" by itself? Esmeralda treated Quasi with respect, and didn't treat him like a hideous monster, but even the nicest of people usually aren't attracted to guys with giant growths on their foreheads. What kind of "happy ending" would leave two people together just because one feels obligated by guilt and gratitude to be with the other, despite a lack of physical attraction?
** I think the Phoebus/Esmeralda pairing was fine. He loved her for her beauty, wits, fighting abilities, and desire of justice. She loved him back for these things too.
** And also, 1) the act of letting Phoebus and Esmeralda be together shows Quasi is a strong person, and reflects nicely on him, and 2) the "don't judge people on looks" aesop includes "don't grudge pretty people" just as much as "don't hate ugly people". [[{{CompletelyMissingThePoint}} Duh]].
** Quasi puts Esmeralda on a pedestal- he thinks she's perfect- and Frollo sees her as an object. Pheobus was the only man who treated her like a person.
** Quasi isn't old enough for Esmeralda, or indeed for romance. He's been emotionally stunted: he's caught at a preteen level. Didn't any of you pay any attention during "A Guy Like You"? As annoying as that song is, it expresses what's going on in Quasimodo's mind at that moment. '''Paris is on fire'''. Frollo's gone around the bend. Who knows how many people have died already? What's Quasimodo thinking? Is he thinking, "What's happened to my master?" Is he thinking, "Is there anything I can do to fix this?" Is he thinking, "God is punishing me for my sins"? No. He's thinking what a twelve-year-old child in the throes of his first crush would think. First, "Is '''My Girl''' okay?" And second, "Does she just ''like'' me -- does she just want to be friends -- or does she really '''like''' me?" The other people of Paris are no more real to him than his little painted wooden figurines. He's not ready for romance. He's not old enough.
** Why didn't they use Gringoire then? He's a comical nice guy in the original version, albeit cowardly. He's a poet; romantic scenes are just easier. Why'd they leave him out?
** It is important to the story that Quasi does not get Esmeralda. A major point of the story is comparin Quasimodo and Frollo; "Who is the monster and who is the man." It's an important point that Quasi and Frollo both want Esmeralda and can't have her. What makes one of them a monster and the other a man is how they react to this. Which one is strong enough to let her go, and still be her friend, and which one simply decides "if I can't have her then no one can."
** You aren't the only one. There's quite amount of FridgeLogic that really ''really'' makes Esmerelda seem like...a complete bitch.

Quasi loved her because she was the first female, (and the first human, for that matter,) who didn't treat him like crap. I'm not sure that this is enough for a relationship.
** Well you could also consider that Disney [[spoiler:let him live at the end unlike the book]] as well as the fact that he was [[spoiler:free of Frollo]], able to leave the Cathedral without fear, and had Esmeralda and Phoebus as friends. Plus he gets a girl in the sequel.
* But if they made Phoebus a romantic straight man for commercial reasons, why was he was completely ignored by the marketing, which focused on Quasimodo, Esmeralda and the gargoyles?

Not the movie itself, but the suprisingly common Frollo/Esmeralda shipping. No... Just NO!
* It makes a ''lot'' more sense if it's in context to the book, where Frollo's definitely more of a JerkassWoobie than a CompleteMonster. Can't argue about the movie, though.

This Troper cannot be the only one who was wondering about this, but...what was with Hugo and his interest toward Djali? Did he think Djali was a girl [[PutABowOnHerHead because of the earring]]? [[HoYay Does he swing that way]]? Is he just screwing with the goat's mind? It's never explained, and there doesn't seem to be a reason why Hugo does this aside from RuleOfFunny. Even then, this Troper doesn't get it.
* Djali is a goat. Hugo has little horns like a goat. Maybe he thinks he is a goat also? Or that Djali is a... whatever the hell Hugo is.
** If you want a disturbing thought, combine this with the 'the gargoyles are figments of Quasi's imagination' thing. Apparently Quasimodo is into interspecies slash?
*** Well, being locked in a belltower all your life and being sexually and religiously oppressed can do weird things to a person...

Okay, this is an odd one, but it's bothered this troper's historical awareness: At one point Frollo bars the miller and his family inside the mill and orders Phoebus to set the place on fire. Phoebus refuses. ''Why?'' You or I would never do such a thing, of course -- but you and I have the privilege of living in a place and time where setting a place of business afire with the business owner and his family barred inside is generally considered a Bad Thing. Phoebus does not share this privilege. Phoebus, in fact, lives in a time where such actions were an expected aspect of soldiering. "We know enough if we know we're the King's subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us" -- ''I was only following orders'' really was all the excuse you needed. Civilian deaths, rapes, "naked infants spitted upon pikes" were all regrettable but expected side effects of fifteenth-century warfare. So why does Phoebus refuse to set the mill on fire? ''It's not like he's never done anything like that before.''
* Same troper: It's also important to remember that in this time, people believed in a microinterventionist God -- one who placed every human being in his or her proper station in life. If you were a lord, it was because ''God'' had put you there -- specifically wanted ''you'' to be subject to your overlord and the king, and wanted your subjects to be under you. A commoner was someone ''God'' had made a commoner: if you were a peasant, it was because He had placed everyone else in a position of authority over you, and wanted you to be in authority only over your own wife and children. Defying your overlord was tantamount to defying the Almighty. By refusing a direct order from Frollo -- whom GOD has placed in authority over him -- Phoebus is in effect spitting in God's face.
** It's a Disney movie, don't think too hard about it. But it's not out of character for Phoebus to do that, he's already been established as a nice guy who shows sympathy for people he's really not "supposed to". Like Esmeralda. It's not unheard of for people to rebel against the prevailing mindset of the time, anyway.
** If no one had ever questioned authority, we'd still be living like they did in the movie. Pheobus recognized the miller's situation as humans suffering at the hands of humans, and had the mindset to feel it was wrong.

In regards to Esmerelda's character, Frollo goes on an obsessed-driven rampage to find her. She even hears him say "Find the girl. If you have to burn the city to the ground so be it." She knew he was talking about her and that many peoples' homes would be destroyed, so why didn't she turn herself in? It's obviously not an easy choice to hand yourself over to the authorities (especially to Frollo), but all those peoples' homes could have been spared had she been noble enough to reveal herself.
* You said it yourself - it's not an easy choice, and Esmerelda is still just a young girl. It's been some time since I've seen the film, so I can't remember if Esmerelda thinks Frollo wants to kill her at that point, or knows he just wants to force her to marry him, but either way it would take a heroic amount of courage to hand yourself over to someone like that.
** Force her to marry him? Yeah thats....what he wanted to do with her....marry her...right.
*** Exactly. Though Frollo wasn't technically clergy, he was still in a position that forbade marriage (I believe, anyway), so Esmeralda had to know ''exactly'' what his intentions were. Turning yourself over to someone you know is going to rape you, especially as a sixteen-year-old girl...that takes more than nobility, I think. You'd need sainthood for that.
** I don't care how powerful Frollo supposedly is, more than a few higher-ups would have a hell of a lot to say if he actually tried to ''burn the city down''. There's simply no way he has the kind of clout that could let him get away with torching ''Paris'' so he could find some girl he wanted to bone. Even the king probably couldn't have got away with that and lived. People tend to get pissy when their homes get burnt down, and he'd have a lot of people out for his blood.
*** I think "burn the city to the ground" was hyperbole; he meant "burn as many houses as you have to". The houses burned would be those of gypsies, beggars and thieves, and the higher-ups wouldn't really care if they got pissy.
*** The court of miracles was the hiding place of thieves and gypsies, as far as I understand ans beggars were probably there, too, if they weren´t busy begging because they have no home.
** Seeing Frollos actions with the bakery that Phoebus didn´t want to burn and they only got out because of his interference and nobody else was as helping as Phoebus, I guess Frollo actually killed more than a dozen random families. You could see that a big part of the city was literaly burning. I am really bugged why the people needed Phoebus to clarify in the climax that when Frollo sets your houses on fire for no real reason he is evil. In reality the city would have gone V for Vendetta-style right before Quasis lovesong with the senseless references to the future, hanged Frollo like Ludwig XIV and everything would have been solved.
* And another thing, turning herself in would not necessarily be the right thing to do either; if Frollo was willing to burn down a whole city to get to one girl, then turning herself in would have been appeasement. People like Frollo should be confronted, rather than given what they want.

It always bugged me, when Frollo talks to Phoebus at the Palace of Justice regarding the Court of Miracles, how he slams the block down upside down.
* It was to emphasize crushing the bugs underneath. They'd clearly gotten along just fine with the block right-side up, so... ''wham''.
** Indeed; obviously the geometry of having the block right-side up wouldn't have killed as many at a time, or else the bugs wouldn't have gotten there in the first place. Though this troper wasn't even aware it was slammed upside down until others pointed it out.
** That bugs me too! And then he just LEAVES it like that!?

Why didn't the priest raise Quasi himself? If the priest had raised Quasi, then Quasi would have been known as a nice choir boy, and not the "mysterious bell ringer." When Quasi asked about his looks, the priest would have given Quasi a nice explanation involving inner beauty and God, and Quasi wouldn't think of himself as a monster. Quasi would also have known the truth about his mother--or at least, he'd know that she didn't abandon him. And he'd probably have a much nicer name, one that doesn't mean "Half formed."
* And even if the priest did have to let Frollo raise Quasimodo, to save Frollo's soul or whatever, couldn't the priest at least check on them regularly, to make sure that Frollo was doing a decent job? Couldn't he still have had some kind of friendship with the boy, so Quasi's only company wouldn't be his morbid stepfather Frollo?
** Like one person in the Wild Mass Guessing suggested, the archdeacon probably only cared about the reputation of the Notre Dame church, and less so of the plight of the gypsies. By letting Frollo do what he wanted with Quasi, he got rid of having the blood of an infant staining Notre Dame's reputation as well as a free bellringer. He didn't care what Frollo did to Quasi as long as he didn't have to deal with it.
*** Could have had something to do with him already having his hands full, and he probably thought Frollo at LEAST had the decency to not abuse the child.

And one other thing that bugs me about the priest. At the beginning of the film, when Quasimodo is a baby, the priest is an older, gray-haired, balding man. Twenty years later, when the rest of the movie takes place, the priest looks exactly the same. Why? Why has he not aged a day in twenty years? Medicine wasn't that good, in those days. I can accept that maybe the priest just went gray at an early age. But why hasn't he lost more hair and gained more wrinkles?
* HollywoodOld. If he was say, 55 at the start and had gone gray and had a few wrinkles and was 75 at the end he would not look ''that'' different.
* Plus, according to the commentary he did visibly age. You can see more wrinkles, I believe.
* Pretty sure his hair is a much lighter shade of gray, too. Actually, this Troper would say that at the beginning it was dark grey, whereas in the twenty years later part, it was more white. Which is a good indication that he has aged considerably.

** Its a Disney movie. You could argue that the Cathedrial should've been occupied by MORE than just Frollo and dear Quasi, yet wasn't. And why did a judge live in a cathedrial? Was that place just abandoned or something? Where were the other priests? Wouldn't they have something to say about a hunchback living in their place?

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Why didn't the priest raise Quasi himelsf? If the priest had raised Quasi, then Quasi would have been known as a nice choir boy, and not the "mysterious bell ringer." When Quasi asked about his looks, the priest would have given Quasi a nice explanation involving inner beauty and God, and Quasi wouldn't think of himself as a monster. Quasi would also have known the truth about his mother--or at least, he'd know that she didn't abandon him. And he'd probably have a much nicer name, one that doesn't mean "Half formed."

**** But we're not talking about the book; we're talking about the movie, which actually ''shows'' Quasi's parents (and has very, very little to do with the book, seeing as it's an animated family comedy).

* In the movie, just who exactly gave Judge Frollo so much power that he can literally <i>burn down Paris</i> for the sake of finding a single Gypsy woman, with very little to justify it except a vague accusation that she's a witch? Last I checked, 15th century France had a King who would probably have some major questions to ask of anyone ransacking his capital for the sake of his own lust.

* After Frollo attempts to have Phoebus executed, Phoebus steals a horse, ridest to the bridge at least some hundreds meters from the start, gets shot and falls to the river. Immediately after he submerges that spot begins to get showered with arrows by soldiers from directly above . How the hell did they manage to get there in a matter of seconds and even bring the old man Frollo with them? Did they teleport?

** If no one had ever questioned authority, we'd still be living like they did in the movie. Pheobus recognized the miller's situation as humans suffering at the hands of humans, and had the minset to feel it was wrong.

Why didn't the priest raise Quasi himelsf? If the priest had raised Quasi, then Quasi would have been known as a nice choir boy, and not the "mysterious bell ringer." When Quasi asked about his looks, the priest would have given Quasi a nice explination involving inner beauty and God, and Quasi wouldn't think of himself as a monster. Quasi would also have known the truth about his mother--or at least, he'd know that she didn't abandon him. And he'd probably have a much nicer name, one that doesn't mean "Half formed."
* And even the priest did have to let Frollo raise Quasimodo, to save Frollo's soul or whatever, couldn't the priest at least check on them regularly, to make sure that Frollo was doing a decent job? Couldn't he still have had some kind of friendship with the boy, so Quasi's only company wouldn't be his morbid stepfather Frollo?

And one other thing that bugs me about the priest. At the begining of the film, when Quasimodo is a baby, the priest is an older, gray-haired, balding man. Twentey years later, when the rest of the movie takes place, the priest looks exactly the same. Why? Why has he not aged a day in twentey years? Medicine wasn't that good, in those days. I can accept that maybe the priest just went gray at an early age. But why hasn't he lost more hair and gained more wrinkles?
* HollywoodOld. If he was say, 55 at the start and had gone grey and had a few wrinkles and was 75 at the end he would not look ''that'' different.

According to WordOfGod, the three gargoyles, Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, are really the manifestations of Quasimodo's inner voices. However, they appear to move around independently at various moments.

Furthermore, the film is set in the 1700s or before. At one point, Laverne sends a flock of birds into the air, calling out "Fly, my pretties!" in homage to the Wicked Witch sending out the flying monkeys in 1939's classic ''TheWizardOfOz'' movie. Also Hugo, at one point, makes machine gun noises while spitting rocks.

If it is Quasimodo's inner voices that bring the trio to life, and Quasimodo lives in the 18th century or before, before machine guns were invented or even the original L. Frank Baum book of The Wizard of Oz was written, then how can the gargoyles make references to them? The gargoyles shouldn't have any knowledge that Quasimodo shouldn't have...

With some 'comic' characters in Disney, anachronisms make sense, as it's implied that Merlin of ''TheSwordInTheStone'' or the Disney/{{Aladdin}} Genie can either time travel or see into the future. But Quasimodo, as far as we know, is not capable of doing either, and therefore neither should the gargoyles. Unless they're not really his inner voices and are, instead, comparable to the singing frog in Warner Bros.'s classic 'One Froggy Evening': they're really what they appear to be to the protagonist ... but ONLY to the protagonist. To everyone else, they're just run-of-the-mill (ordinary statues, an ordinary frog).

**This Troper thinks it's probably the latter idea (the singing frog), and the anachronistic humor is simply Disney's attempt to cash in on the Genie. This Troper also has a lot of things that bug her about this movie. For instance, how did all that molten lead get cleared out of the streets in what looks like minutes or a couple hours at the most?
***Well, the story IS being told by Clopin, so it's possible he's the one who's telling has the gargoyles attack. As for how the move around: It's been showed Quasimodo is quite strong, how do you think he managed that? By ringing bells and carring gargoyles!
***This Troper doesn't remember where he heard it, but he did hear once that the gargoyles were, in fact, Quasimodo's guardian angels.
**** Also, if they are in fact just figments, how the hell did Djali see Hugo make the kissing face at him?
***** Djali's just a goat. Maybe he just didn't know better and began seeing things when he saw Hugo's human-like face.

Random Troper: Okay, this is a long one, but this has always bugged me about the DisneyAnimatedCanon adaptation.