The Original Story of Tangled Was Crazy

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]A massive number of scenes and concepts were cut from the movie Tangled, and most of them would have completely changed the movie. Today, I've gathered every single deletion, cut character, or major change that went into the movie.

[00:00:13]And there are plenty you've probably never seen. Let's go back to 1996.

[00:00:19]Disney animator Glenn Keane, the man who gave us Ariel's flowing red hair, the beast is roared, and Aladdin swagger, was wrapping up production on Tarzan when a story grabbed him. Rapunzel, not the princess in the tower story you might be thinking of. The original brother's grim version of Rapunzel is, well, kind of dark. The witch is a genuine monster. The prince ends up getting blinded by thorns, and Rapunzel gets exiled into the wilderness. It's actually quite brutal. But Keane wasn't drawn to it despite that darkness. He was actually drawn to it because of it.

[00:00:55]He pitched the idea to then Disney CEO Michael Eisner in 2001. And originally, Eisner loved it. But he had one condition. It had to be made in computer animation, not classic handdrawn 2D. The problem was that Keane was a 2D animator. He thought CG animation would never live up to the standard of traditional animation, which sometimes I do agree with. I kind of wish they both would still be around. But rather than just complain, he literally came together with a bunch of animators to decide and show that both of them could exist in the same world. So with that, the project officially begun, and it was simply called Rapunzel, and it was going to be dark. But then Shrek happened. In 2001, DreamWorks released Shrek and the movie made almost $500 million worldwide. It was a cultural phenomenon and it made fun of Disney fairy tales to Disney's face and audiences ate it up, which made Disney executives panic. If audiences wanted fractured fairy tales, meta humor, and modern references, Disney was going to give them exactly that. Eisner ended up ordering Keen to retool the Rapunzel project to be more like Shrek. So with that, the story got very weird. The new version was officially announced in October 2003 under the title Rapunzel Unbraided. It was about an evil witch named Lucradia who is so sick of fairy tale happy endings that she cast a spell dragging two modern teenagers from San Francisco into the fairy tale world. The girl named Cla, fashion obsessed, short hair, absolutely not a princess, gets magically transformed into Rapunzel. And the boy, a stocky pizza delivery guy named Vince, gets turned into the prince. And the real Rapunzel, gets turned into a squirrel, while the real prince, a character named B, turns into a basset hound. I told you it was crazy.

[00:02:45]I told you that things were going to get weird. And voice actors were already getting cast as well with Reese Witherspoon set to voice Claire. But Glenn Keane was not happy. He would later say in interviews, "It was a fun, wonderful, witty version." and we had a couple of great writers, but in my heart of hearts, I believe there was something much more sincere and genuine to get out of the story. He wanted the dark fairy tale that he envisioned from Brothers Grim to be a reality. And for a long time, it felt like he wasn't going to get it. In January 2006, Rapunzel Unbreaded was officially shut down.

[00:03:19]Disney was cutting costs, slashing projects, and this one happened to get the axe. But then everything changed one week later. Disney acquired Pixar and Pixar's leadership at Catm and John Lacader at the time took over all of Walt Disney animation studios and one of their very first decisions they made was to bring Rapunzel back from the dead.

[00:03:39]However, this time King got exactly what he wanted. They stripped away San Francisco. They dumped Clare and Vince and they retired the squirrel princess.

[00:03:48]They wanted the darkness back. The new version, simply called Rapunzel, was described by those who worked on it as closer in tone to The Hunchback of Notream than the movie we actually know today. It was a more dark, dramatic, and visually stunning fairy tale. And all the characters were completely different. There was a character called Bastion. Before there was Flynn Ryder, the charming wisecracking thief who narrates the movie with a smirk. There was Bastion. And Bastion was a lot more complicated. He was described as being of Romania descent, darker in appearance, more ethnically diverse than Flynn's cleancut charisma. Like Flynn, however, he was a thief, but where Flynn is funny and self-aware, Bastion was deeply charming in a more serious way.

[00:04:28]Described as being a bit like Aladdin and Jack Sparrow mixed, that would have been kind of interesting to see.

[00:04:34]Character designer Jyn Kim, who would later work on Moana and Big Hero 6, created a whole set of designs for Bastion. You can see in the concept art that he shares some facial structure with Flynn, but he reads entirely different. He's rougher, more weathered, the kind of guy who looks like he's been through some things. But here's where it gets interesting. In this darker version of the story, Rapunzel was terrified of the outside world. Mother Goth had done her job a little too well. Rapunzel wasn't yearning to escape, counting down a days, dreaming of lanterns. She was genuinely scared. So Bastion spent the majority of the film, twothirds of it to be exact, in the tower slowly winning Rapunzel's trust. She didn't leave until the very last act. Compare that to the final version we ended up getting where Rapunzel leaves the tower in the first 20 minutes of the movie. Definitely would have been a lot different. In this version, Rapunzel also barely spoke.

[00:05:24]Having spent her whole childhood isolated with only Gothal for minimum company, she had become nearly mute. a complete 180 from the Rapunzel we ended up getting who was bubbly carrying around a frying pan. There was also no Pascal, no Chameleon Companion, no Maximus the horse because Maximus originally became the Basset Hound.

[00:05:42]Definitely super interesting. I mean, imagine a movie without Maximus. It just doesn't make sense. Now, let's talk about Mother Gothal because she originally was completely different as well. In the darker Rapunzel version, Gothal was supposed to genuinely fool us, the audience members. She looked softer and more like someone you might actually believe was a loving mother.

[00:06:01]The idea was that audiences would spend the first part of the film genuinely unsure if she was actually good. And only over time would the sinister edge begin to creep in. She was described as being more psychologically terrifying, which might have been more scarier for kids. And then there was Griffle. In the darker Rapunzel, there was an actual crime lord pulling strings from the shadows. Griffle was the villain Bastion worked for. A man who had been deliberately keeping the Kingdom of Corona in a state of war ever since Rapunzel's kidnapping. He was exploiting the chaos and profiting from the grief of an entire kingdom. I mean, literally waging war because the princess was gone is a completely darker version of a movie that we didn't see. I mean, that is a political level that Disney usually doesn't touch. And there was also a scrapped ally character for Bastion, a black man named Xavier, who would eventually get reused and reimagined in the Tangled the Series animated show years later. See how that always comes back around? There's always some kind of piece of deleted content that they use in future projects. I love it. But then something terrible happened that changed the whole direction of this original script. In 2008, Glenn Keane suffered a heart attack. He ended up stepping back from directing Rapunzel. So then instep directors Byron Howard and Nathan Go fresh off Disney's Bolt and ready to take over Tangled and with them stepping in the film shifted completely. Bastion was cut and Flynn Ryder was created. The slowb burn hunchback of Notre Dame dark tone gave way to something lighter, more funny and more general. Keen stayed on as an animation director and executive producer and famously would draw directly on animators computer screens frame by frame to ensure everything felt as he'd always envisioned. But his dark story was completely gone. The film that came out in 2010, the one that made $600 million worldwide and became one of Disney's biggest hits in years, was not the film Glenn Keane set out to make 14 years earlier. It also ended up costing $260 million to make the final version, which was one of the most expensive animated films of all time. And with all this information, the title also ended up changing. When Princess and the Frog came out in 2009, Disney had hoped for a massive hit. The film was actually critically adored, but it underperformed at the box office, and Disney executives became convinced of one very specific reason. Boys weren't going to see it, and the marketers blamed it on the title. So, with Rapunzel locked and loaded for a 2010 release, Disney made the call. They changed the title to market to everyone and emphasized the male lead over Rapunzel. The film became known as Tangled. And during all this, the teaser trailers show things that were completely not in the movie at all.

[00:08:41]With early trailers actually showing Rapunzel's hair moving on its own, similar to Medusa, that concept was eventually dropped for the final film.

[00:08:49]And Flynn Ryder as well as Rapunzel changed dramatically during this time.

[00:08:54]Flynn actually originally, after being this macho looking dude as Bastion, originally turned into a character from concept art that looked exactly like Kristoff from Frozen. But they didn't think the Kristoff look worked for Flynn Ryder. So, they ended up asking a bunch of real life women and animators about what they thought was the most attractive features for a man.

[00:09:15]Literally, it goes down in history as the hot guy meeting at Disney Animation Studios. So, they ended up pulling all these different things that women liked on men and ended up putting it all into Flynn and made him one of the most beautiful men to ever exist in a Disney movie. I mean, imagine a story where Flynn doesn't look like he does now.

[00:09:33]Like, it's interesting to see these concept arts where he looks like Kristoff before Kristoff was a thing.

[00:09:38]And Rapunzel also changed. At one point, she wore a green dress as well as having a more darker twist with almost shooting Flynn Ryder with a crossbow instead of hitting him with a frying pan.

[00:09:49]Definitely would have been a darker twist to the story, but the Blu-ray and DVD release of Tangled also had a bunch of deleted scenes that never made it to the final film. The first one was titled the story book openings. The film that we got opens with Flynn Ryder narrating in voice over, but the original opening was a classic storybook sequence with pages turning, illustrated fairy tale imagery, and the kind of opening that feels like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. And the voice narrating this wasn't Flynn's at all. It was Mother Gothal. Two different versions of this storybook opening were developed and animated. They were ultimately dropped because the directors felt Flynn's narration was fresher, more unexpected, and set the tone for his character right out of the gate. But there is something about hearing Mother Gothol narrate the story of Rapunzel's kidnapping from her perspective. It's actually kind of brilliant.

[00:10:38]>> But their happiness was short-lived.

[00:10:43]>> For a vengeful mother Goth broke into the castle, stole the child, and vanished deep into the forest.

[00:10:50]>> The second deletita scene was titled The Jonty Moose. The Snuggly Duckling, the pub full of massive, scaryl lookinging rascals, was originally called the Jonty Moose. In the deleted scene, instead of breaking into song, the thugs recited poetry. Dark, gruff-looking men sitting around a pub, passionately reading verses aloud. It's a fascinating concept. It makes just as much emotional sense as the song that we ended up getting. But once Alan Menin came in and wrote I've Got a Dream, the scene transformed completely. The Jy goose was reimagined as the snuggly duckling and the poetry was replaced by the show tunes. Either version of this pub would have definitely showed what this was all about and having a deep more emotional impact to the movie with these rough guys having more of a sentimental side to them. The third delete scene was titled chemistry develops. After the pub scene, there was a deleted snippet of the thugs giving Rapunzel and Flynn a sendoff, loading them into a wagon headed down the road. The thugs wave warmly at Rapunzel as she waves back.

[00:11:47]And then Flynn turns the wave and every single thug shoots him a look of pure icy contempt. It's a small moment, a throwaway gag, but it perfectly captures the bond Rapunzel built instantly with these strange men versus Flynn, who still had to earn his place. The scene was ultimately cut for pacing, but we do see glimpses of this in the final version with the thugs not really agreeing with Flynn's dream. There was a fourth deleted scene titled Viger the Visionary, and this one is one of the most fascinating of all the deleted scenes. After leaving the Snuggly Duckling, Rapunzel and Flynn were supposed to encounter a fortune teller's caravan. Inside, introduced with great theatrical fanfare by a woman named Madam Canardist, was a psychic monkey in a tiny tuxedo and a top hat. And his name was Vigor the Visionary. Yeah, that's right. They were about to have a monkey and a top hat in a Tangled movie.

[00:12:35]Kind of interesting. Vigor didn't speak.

[00:12:37]He actually read faces. And in the scene, he studies Flynn's face and delivers a fortune.

[00:12:43]>> A symbol of untold wealth and beauty will be attained.

[00:12:47]>> Ah, now you're talking.

[00:12:49]>> And then slip through your grasp as you reach the end of your rope.

[00:12:52]>> What?

[00:12:53]>> That ends up being foreshadowing for Flynn's death scene. Then Viger turns to Rapunzel and he's visibly shocked at what he sees and the scene cuts before he can say anything, hinting that he saw that she was the lost princess. All this existed in a deleted scene about a monkey. It's kind of crazy. The directors end up pulling the scene, saying it disrupted the film's pacing in that section, but they liked Vigor enough that he appears briefly in the film's end credits during Something That I Want. And years later, Viger and Madame Canard were fully realized and given their own episode in the animated series of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, where Viger's fortuneelling abilities are treated as genuinely real, and his ancient origins tie into the show's mythology. Apparently, he's over a thousand years old. That monkey has seen some things. But there was also songs that were cut from the movie entirely.

[00:13:40]Before Alan Menin came on board, a songwriter named Chris Curtis was attached to the project during the Rapunzel Unbraided era. He actually put demos of two songs on his website titled Are There Girls in the World Like Me and All That I've Done for You? Written for that bizarre Shrekified version of the story. Obviously, neither of these made it to the film because it was completely scrapped. When Alan Menin took over and wrote the actual soundtrack, two songs from Tangle had extended versions with longer cuts that were kept off for the theatrical release. The first one was during When Will My Life Begin with a full reprise cut from the film, one where Rapunzel sings about how she should be grateful for what she has even while wanting more. It added a layer of guilt and conflict to her character that the final film doesn't quite explore.

[00:14:24]The second was during Mother Knows Best, which had an entire additional verse that was partially animated before being scrapped. You can actually hear the extended version on the Blu-ray bonus features, where the extra verse digs deeper into Gothal's manipulation, making her case more elaborate, more layered, and more insidious. Both of these cuts make the characters more complex, which they ended up trimming down for pacing and runtime. But man, does it always annoy me when things like this get trimmed down because it cuts things that you kind of wish were left there. Like, who cares about the runtime? But once everything was finally settled, the deleted scenes were cut, the characters were designed to fit what they wanted to envision, and the pacing was perfect, there was casting choices that almost happened. In the final version of the movie, the voice of Rapunzel is Mandy Moore. But the road to get there was kind of wild. During the Rapunzel unbraided era, as I mentioned before, Reese Witherspoon was set to play Claire. And so, when the movie got reimagined, there were auditions. And among those who read for Rapunzel was actually Kristen Bell and Idena Menzel.

[00:15:22]Both who were actually passed over.

[00:15:25]However, both of their audition tapes were saved. And both of them later became the leads of Frozen. It was so cool to hear those, you know, behindthe-scenes stories. Man, Eden Espinosa also auditioned for Rapunzel and was later cast as Cassandra, the villain of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure.

[00:15:41]They do say the Disney universe is connected, and it seems to be in more ways than one. So, here's the thing about Tangled. The movie we got is beautiful. It's warm, funny, and emotionally resonant. And the lantern sequence is one of the most visually stunning things Disney has ever put out on the screen, in my opinion. But behind all of this was a 14-year journey of the film dying and being brought back to life. A film that started as a dark fairy tale got turned into a Shrek knockoff, then got shut down and reborn into something gothic until finally transformed one final time into an adventure comedy that made $600 million.

[00:16:16]Unfortunately, Glen King never got to make his dark gothic tale from 1996. But somewhere in all the deleted files, concept arts, and shelf storyboards of Walt Disney Animation archives, there's a version of Rapunzel that most people will never see. A story about a mute girl, a Romanian thief named Bastion, a war profiteering villain named Grafal, and a genuinely frightening mother Gothal. To me, sounds like a completely different movie. And that's because it was. And honestly, part of me wishes they would make it. So, there you have it. Every deleted concept, idea, and change they made in Tangled. Do you think they should have kept Bastion over Flynn Ryder? Do you think Flynn Ryder should have looked like Kristoff? Do you think a Rapunzel with a crossbow would have been more interesting than a frying pan? Let me know your guys' thoughts down in the comments below. And if you guys enjoyed this video, subscribe, check out this video or this playlist.

[00:17:08]And I'm, Josh Batty will see you guys over there. Bye-bye.