By: Ava Rogha
I bet you’re familiar with the concept of the Nutcracker during Christmas.
This concept has been turned into a ballet, a Barbie original and now a Disney original!
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) tells the story of main protagonist Clara (Mackenzie Foy) and her family on Christmas Eve.
Ever since her mother’s death, Clara has been struggling to move forward with her life, and Christmas is very difficult to celebrate that year! However, her dad has a couple of surprise presents in store for Clara and her siblings, Fritz and Louise, on behalf of their mother.
While the other kids receive beautiful presents, Clara receives a locked silver egg without a key to open it. As she’s extremely eager to find out what’s hiding in it, she joins her family to a Christmas Eve party to speak to a family friend called Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), who is the only person who could possibly know what’s hiding in the egg.
"There are some journeys you have to go on alone."
Drosselmeyer has hidden some presents for the kids to open, but for some reason, Clara struggles to find her present. Finally, when she finds a little note with her name on it, she roams the location of the event looking for her gift.
Now, this is where it gets weird. On a hunt for the present, she accidentally falls into an alternate world…just like Narnia, where Lucy walks into a closet to a magical world!
At the entry point, she meets a nutcracker also known as “The Captain” (Jayden Fowora-Knight). After Clara explains to The Captain that she’s looking for the key to the egg, he joins her to the Fourth Realm to find it. But as she walks further into the Fourth Realm, she learns more about a secret kingdom where Marie Stahlbaum, Clara’s mother, used to be the ruler.
Naturally, when three representers of this kingdom find out Marie’s dead, they start obeying Clara and they expect her to save them from “Mother Ginger”, who is presented as the villain of the story.
Apparently, they are at war with the “Land of Amusements” also known as the “Fourth Realm”.
"You’re every inch your mother’s daughter."
A very polite and sweet presenter of the Fourth Realm called "The Sugar Plum Fairy" (Keira Knightley) explains to Clara that it was in fact the girl’s mother who invented this alternate world, and that the people living in the Fourth Realm all used to be toys, which were turned into humans through a machine. Unfortunately, the machine was locked, which made it impossible for The Sugar Plum Fairy to turn her toy soldiers into human beings to defeat Mother Ginger.
With no hesitation, Clara goes on a hunt for the key to the machine, which happens to work on her egg as well! She is disappointed to see that the egg’s actual function is pretty useless, (which I don’t want to spoil). However, she manages to help The Sugar Plum Fairy to get the machine going, which helps her build an empire of soldiers to defeat Mother Ginger.
When The Sugar Plum Fairy gains some power of the Fourth Realm, she turns into the villain of the story! Shocking, right? I mean, how can a woman so sweet be the actual villain?
"Welcome to our world. The land of snowflakes. The land of flowers. And the land of sweets. But in the fourth realm, this is where our troubles began. Mother Ginger started this war. I hope you'll be the one to finish it."
This is where Clara has to use her intelligence in order to save the Fourth Realm! She is the daughter of Queen Marie after all, and the kingdom’s future is in her hands…until she finally manages to defeat The Sugar Plum Fairy and escapes this alternate world she was thrown into!
As you can tell, the plot is twisted and pretty difficult to fathom. I would suggest viewers to watch it more than once to understand it fully.
It is a pretty slow-paced movie, until it’s not…I can assure you that the story started to become confusing to me ever since Clara stepped into the alternate world. There are so many different nicknames to remember as well as people to keep tap on!
"She's going to destroy everything my mother created."
I highly suggest this movie to people with a lot of patience and curiosity!
And of course, being a fan of Disney surely helps.
But I wouldn’t consider this to be one of my favorite Disney works. It’s a fun and interesting live-action Disney movie, but not something that I would personally revisit anytime soon.
But just like any other Disney movie, this one has plenty of positive sides to it as well! Mackenzie Foy does a great job portraying Clara Stahlbaum, and the American actress’ imitation of an English accent is spot on. I also love the idea behind this movie and the Christmassy vibe, but I wish it was executed differently.
However, if you have some extra time and want to fast-forward to Christmas, then try The Nutcracker and The Four Realms, you might end up loving it!
Comments