Dude this is like 2 years late, but I’ve been thinking about this recently for some reason…
In the first Mamma Mia, Donna freely admits that she was a hoe back in the day. She uses the terms, “stupid and reckless”, but you know, it was the 70s and she was just into the whole freedom… of everything. And that’s totally cool.
Then Mamma Mia 2 comes along and they’re trying to “save” her character somehow. Like she only bangs Harry because he complains about being a Virg- not like there’s anything wrong with that, but the movie sure enforces that myth. Donna feels so bad, because it’s obviously such a terrible thing, that she has pity-sex with him. In the aftermath, it’s obvious she didn’t even enjoy herself. Then, when she bangs Bill, it’s only because she’s sad about Sam, and Bill has been also low-key pressuring her the whole time (kinda like Harry). The only time she’s truly enjoying herself is when she’s with Sam, her true love.
Well, why was it so bad if she made the choice to have fun with all three? That was the whole backstory of her character and the premise of the, “Hey why not all three of them just be your dad, Sophie, because even though I love Sam, I obviously still like Bill and Harry enough that I’m cool with any of them being your dad.”
I guess they were trying to make Donna more relatable somehow, but they just ended up stripping away her freedom. Like I’m not saying I understand her lifestyle, but she was the decision-maker, the doer (pun-intended), and she was writing her own story. From a character standpoint, she was driving the action (again, pun-intended), not just letting circumstances and people push her around.
Speaking of “trying to make her relatable”, they had her be like valedictorian or something at Oxford just to prove she was super smart??? Like we know she’s smart, she runs a huge hotel in a foreign country by herself. She’s good.
And I don’t get why, for her introduction, we didn’t have her and the Dynamos touring around Europe (because they had posters for Pete’s sake, they had to be semi-big at least). We got some weird song at her graduation and a little bicycle ride and that’s all we see of the Donna and the Dynamos? It made it look like some dorky little school garage band.
Let’s just say that instead, when we start on Donna’s backstory, we open with a mini-montage of Donna and the Dynamos performing, then they have to put the whole band thing on hold for some reason. Maybe Tanya’s getting married to her first (but not only) husband, or Rosie gets invited to do some cooking thing after a fluke where she realizes she’s good at it, or Donna, being totally in character, gets bored after a few years of doing the whole band thing. Maybe Donna, with getting a bit older and her friends starting to find other facets, is like, “You know, I’m gonna find out what I want too.”
Cool. She sets off on her own adventure and randomly and by her choice, has a wild summer with Sam, Bill, and Harry. Then, you know, decides to stay on the island because she likes it so much (just like she does in the real sequel.
I haven’t thought about Sophie’s part of the sequel or the current events that are going on, I haven’t been thinking about Mamma Mia 2 that much. Thinking about it now I guess I would have made it about Sophie travelling around the world with Sky (because that’s what she left the island to do) and then at the end of the movie deciding to go back, that she really does want to be on the island after all. Then her and Donna’s storylines could be much more parallel than just being pregnant. Although Sophie bringing it full circle and having a third generation kid on the island would be cool too.
I don’t know if I would have Donna be dead. I was alright with it, but, like everybody else said, why take the biggest power player, our very own Meryl Streep, out of most of it? I dunno, a living Donna singing to Sophie and her new baby at the end might not have had as much weight, but ehhh. Again, I haven’t thought much about that aspect. I just know Donna’s a hoe, that that’s okay, and taking away her agency (that’s the word I was looking for, agency!) didn’t help her character, neither did taking away the Dynomos. We never got to see them perform in their prime which was sucky.
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That was my rant about sequel movies for this week. I liked the Frozen 2 sequel and I guess I just haven’t liked any others. Oof. Also I just wanted to add again that I’m not an expert on anything, this is just the stuff that I think about for some reason and I’m just throwing it out there because I got nothing more important to say.