For my final passion blog post, I decided that I would talk about and analyze my most favorite character from Encanto. Antonio is the youngest of the entire Madrigal family. He is the youngest son of Pepa and Felix Madrigal and the younger brother of Dolores and Camilo Madrigal.
At the beginning of the film, the family is preparing for Antonio’s door ceremony. The door ceremony is the ceremony in which on a child’s birthday, once they are of a certain age, they go to a door in the home that Casita made magically appear with Abuela, touch the candle, and then touch the door to find out what power they will receive in order to improve both the family and the town that they live in.
Antonio is so precious throughout the film. It is discovered in the beginning that he shared a room with Mirabel until he received his door and got his own room. Antonio’s age is never explicitly stated, but using inferencing as well as context clues, I have estimated him to be about six or seven years old. From the beginning, Antonio had a lot of pressure placed on him by not only the family, but the town as well. The talk of the entire town is how the door ceremony will go that night. A lot of people say that the last one was such a disappointment. Once again, using context clues through the dialogue, it can only be assumed that the last door ceremony was that of Mirabel’s, where she became the only Madrigal child or grandchild to not receive a gift.
After the opening musical number, Antonio is nowhere to be found, and everyone is very stressed about this, as they cannot do anything without the star of the day. Pepa is especially stressed, and a scene is added in where Felix tells her “you have a cloud” as a dark grey cloud appears over her head. Mirabel leaves the scene, and places a wrapped gift box on the floor in front of the bed. She teases him by saying “this present will self destruct in three… two” which is when Antonio promptly reached out and drags the present under the bed.
Mirabel smiles as she crawls to lay underneath the bed with a very pouty Antonio. He reveals to her that he is worried about not receiving a gift and disappointing the family when she asks him what’s wrong. Mirabel is very understanding and hugs him, and gives him an amazing pep talk, letting him know that it does not matter whether or not he receives a gift because he is amazing either way.
Antonio’s gift ceremony goes amazing, and he receives the power to talk to and understand animals. After his door ceremony, he is not seen again until later on in the film, when Mirabel encounters Bruno in the walls of the house. Bruno is telling Mirabel that he does not want to have another vision, and then adds on “besides I need a big open space anyway.” This is when Antonio comes in and says “you can use my room!” When they give him a look of confusion, he explains “the rats told me where you were.” Then he proceeds to look at his pet jaguar and say “don’t eat those” as Parce is prepared to eat two of Bruno’s rats whole.
Antonio is such an amazing, full of life, child and it’s so refreshing to see. He is also non judgmental, and many will say that it is because he is only a kid, however if you have ever been around kids, you know that this isn’t true, because kids are much meaner than adults are. Antonio was the only one in the family to never judge Bruno or Mirabel, even though he grew up hearing basic horror stories about Bruno, his parents and siblings even sang an entire diss track about Bruno. However, Antonio is just so full of love and life, he is truly a light in the Madrigal family. That is why he is one of my top three favorite characters in the film.
This was so fun to read! It’s nice to see a child have emotions outside of happiness in a Disney movie. Personally, I feel like a lot of Disney movies label kids with one emotion and that becomes their personality trait. For example, in Finding Nemo, Nemo was labeled as anxious and (to me at least) didn’t have much development outside of this. Back to Encanto, Antonio sounds like a genuine kid, even when his family may be quick to judge. Overall, great job!
Being able to make judgements based on the facts, as compared to narratives, is a very important skill people can learn. This is apparent through your analysis of Antonio. The atmosphere that Antonio gave to the movie an extra layer that made it much better.
You did a great job with this analysis and all of the previous entries. It’s great to see how you not only appreciated the character, but added an in depth analysis and room for speculation in regards to his age. I’m glad you ended this set of posts with a really positive entry!
Antonio is one of my favorite characters to. I like how you talked about how he wasn’t in the opening number. I never noticed that myself. When elaborated on like that it seems like an important detail that plays into his anxiety about his gift. Great analysis!