Disney’s Encanto has gone from being a forgotten box office under-performer to the movie everyone is talking about thanks to the record-breaking song We Don’t Talk About Bruno, which has become the first Disney song ever to top both the U.S. and U.K. music charts ever. However, it could have been a very different outcome for the movie if the original version of the character of Bruno has been in the movie rather than the one who is the subject of the number one song of the moment. Encanto co-director Bryan Howard revealed in an interview with Empire magazine revealed that the song didn’t originally feature in the script because the character of Bruno was not only much different but also had a different name.
Everyone has been taken by surprise at the success of many of Encanto’s songs, with the album taking the top spot in numerous charts, and the movie becoming the first Disney film to produce three simultaneous Top Ten hits. Even songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda was shocked that We Don’t Talk About Bruno was the song that broke the movie, considering it too linked to the events of the film to be considered a standalone song. However, if the original plan to call Bruno "Oscar" and have him as a younger character had been put into effect, then we would not have been given the option of talking about Bruno at all. Howard explained:
“It was very difficult, in the early versions, not to let it become a buddy movie between Mirabel and Bruno. He was actually Mirabel’s age at one point. We tried him as kind of a chubbier, funnier uncle who she met earlier in the movie. We thought about how tragic that would be, because he's delivering the truth. He's telling people what's going to happen – but people don't want to hear bad news. [We thought about] him getting this terrible reputation around town, people thinking he's making these things happen and how messed up that would make someone.”
Encanto Is A Movie That Doesn’t Need A Villain and Instead Focuses on A Very Relevant Issue of Family Pressures
Although Encanto was never intended to be a movie that came out during the Covid pandemic, occasionally planets align and things happen that are just right place, right time events. Although the movie spends a good portion of its first act setting up Bruno as a villain, the switch halfway through turns the story into a look at how the pressure of family expectations can lead to personal doubts, mental health issues and cause cracks in a perfectly good family unit, as is metaphorically shown in the movie by the cracks that Mirabel sees in the family home.
Over the last two years, many people have discovered what it means to be without their families, or have been with them much more than they ever expected, and this has led to people discovering in both ways exactly how important family is when all is said and done. The decision to change the character of Bruno has helped create a movie that, with attention drawn to it by its catchy soundtrack, is now a very timely reminder of what it means to be part of a family and how every family member has their place.