I decided to add an article to this wall since no one posts articles on here that often. This is only something I noticed in the films and this is not saying I do not love Derek as a character. I really do love Derek, he's flawed and makes mistakes but always fixes them. For a brief time, I hated him for this but he's human and now I'm starting to like him again. The reoccurring theme that I've noticed in these movies is that Derek always seems to start the problems indirectly and that they give him the stereotypical persona "that all men mess up all the time". No doubt it's the villains that always create the problems but I feel like in every movie Derek contributes to it. Here are some examples:



Exhibit A: The Swan Princess
We all know the famous line "What else is there?" by Derek. It's his memorable how to offend women in less than five syllables moment. It makes Derek seem like the kind of guy that only cares about how a woman looks and not how she is on the inside. This is one of the biggest reasons I have a hard time loving Derek. By saying this, Derek makes Odette feel like he doesn't love her for the right reasons and she leaves, leading to the problem of the story. Can I just love Rogers' face after Derek says that quote?




Exhibit B: The Swan Princess II: Escape from Castle Mountain
In this film, Derek is depicted as the guy that gets to attached to work and forgets what is really important. I mean he ignores his wife and his mother's fiftieth birthday!(I can't believe she is only fifty, she looks more like sixty) He also keeps telling his wife that she can't go with him, when she clearly proved at the beginning of the movie that she can be helpful to bring along. So when Derek has to leave the palace in search of his mother that left because everyone forgets her birthday, Derek tells Odette to stay put once again. After this Odette starts to wonder where the man she fell in love with went and soon enough she gets captured. Realizing she has to go save Derek she turns back into a swan again and the conflict of the movie starts.




Exhibit C: The Swan Princess: The Mystery of the Enchanted Treasure
Yet another bad male stereotype is portrayed by Derek in this film. I can't really describe the stereotype he portrays in this movie. It's kind of like a guy who can't get rid of a hobby or thinks that he knows best, I'm not really sure. Derek decides to hold on to the forbidden arts in case they ever need it in this movie. Odette tells him it's a bad idea but he holds on to them and the villain in this movie, Zelda then goes on to create conflict in this movie that wouldn't have occurred if Derek hadn't kept the forbidden arts.




Now don't get me wrong, Derek is a good character with good intentions and always finds a way to fix the problem by the end of the movie. I know that without conflict there is no movie, I just wish that the producers of the films didn't make Derek seem like the bad guy in every movie. I might be the only one that thinks like this but I would love to know what everyone else thinks about this. One other point I would like to make is that every film in the series end the same way. There's a happy yay for Odette moment. A silly happy moment and then Derek says something very sweet and romantic to Odette.