My girlfriend and I watched the stage and animated Anastasias back-to-back recently and we agreed it was really obvious how tacked-on Rasputin feels in the latter, as fun a character as he is. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the climax where, right after Anastasia's grounded internal conflict approaches its resolution, Rasputin (who Anastasia's never met before) crashes in so the kid's film can have its big final boss climax with CGI flying horse statues and green magic and the heroine giving the badass one-liner before the bad guy gets sucked into hell by demons after his reliquary's destroyed. It then cuts back to the grounded plot without anyone bringing up the evil lich who destroyed the Pont Alexandre III. Jarring doesn't begin to describe it.
Rasputin's replacement in the stage production, Bolshevik General Gleb, creates a far better climax simply by threatening Anastasia at gunpoint and their conflict + resolution coming from the lasting impacts the revolution had on them both. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd have a climax like that in a 90s American animated kid's film
Rasputin's replacement in the stage production, Bolshevik General Gleb, creates a far better climax simply by threatening Anastasia at gunpoint and their conflict + resolution coming from the lasting impacts the revolution had on them both. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd have a climax like that in a 90s American animated kid's film
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