The Nutcracker in 3D, also known as The Nutcracker: The Untold Story on DVD, is the 2010 film version of the classic story and ballet directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Nathan Lane and Elle Fanning.
As per the original story, young Mary receives a nutcracker doll from her uncle come Christmas Eve, which turns out to be a young prince who was turned into a doll by the evil Rat King when his army overthrew his kingdom. Now the Rat King and his army have the prince's subjects underfoot, all the while burning toys in a bid to blot out the sun with the resultant smoke, in hopes of making the world safe for ratkind forever.
Naturally, it's up to our heroes to stop them — even as Mary's quest is hobbled by the rest of her family's disbelief that it isn't All Just a Dream she's having.
This film provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: Clara and Fritz have their names changed to Mary and Max respectively.
- Adaptation Species Change: The Mouse King is now a Rat King, probably because rats are seen as less cute than mice.
- All Just a Dream: The film ends with a Or Was It a Dream? as Mary meets Uncle Albert’s new neighbour Nicholas Charles who looks a lot like the nutcracker prince.
- A Mischief of Mice: The rats in the film are portrayed as overtly villainous, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, except for the brief mention the the Rat King is more intelligent than he gives himself credit for.
- An Asskicking Christmas: The film's climax features a physical battle between the children/toys and the rats within the factory, as well as bike chases through the sewers involving machine guns.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Max since he is basically Fritz from the book and the ballet.
- Ass Pull: In-Universe. The Rat King expounds on the joys of his evil empire.Rat King: "An empire that will last... (pulling number out of ass) a THOOOOOUSAND YEARS!".
- Bad People Abuse Animals: As part of his Establishing Character Moment, the Rat King electrocutes his own pet shark at the end of his Villain Song.
- "Balls" Gag: Yes, in a film featuring Nazi and Holocaust imagery, there's still time for Gielgud to cry out in pain, "my bananas!" after the Rat King falls unconscious and somehow hits his head into Gielgud's... well, like he said, his "bananas".
- Big Bad: The Rat King, leader of the rat army who wants to take over the world.
- Blatant Lies: Mary tells Frau Eva the noise in her bedroom was her pillows combusting (and not NC coming to life).
- Book Ends: The film starts and ends at a skating rink in Vienna.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Uncle Albert delivers a few monologues directly at the camera.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Rat King, especially during "Ratification", afterwards he takes pictures of crying children to "Spanish Dance".
- Dark Reprise: If you listen closely, "The Lights Go Out" has a similar melody to Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Reed Flutes," albeit in a minor key in some parts. Needless to say, "Dance of the Reed Flutes" was not originally about Nazi rat men plotting to fill the world with darkness.
- Darker and Edgier: Hoo boy. There are Nazi allegories, a character’s is briefly decapitated and the nutcracker almost gets incinerated.
- Double Entendre: Gielgud makes a "Balls" Gag when his crotch is hit, remarking "ooh, my bananas!" and moaning.
- Dull Surprise: Let's just say that Elle Fanning's acting could charitably be described as... restrained.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Mary and just about every other human in the film is frightened by the rodents... understandable, considering the nightmare fuel aspect of CGI-generated giant teeth, enhanced ugliness and sharp claws.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles: The film is aesthetically beautiful and incorporates copious amounts of glitter and sparkles, particularly in scenes with the Snow Fairy, who wears a gown fashioned out of silver foil that glitters brilliantly when she moves. The intro credits also feature sparkly rainbow traditional ornaments.
- Fantastic Racism: The rats are portrayed as racist dictators against the living toys in the film, committing a sort of genocide against toys by forcing children to give them up, only to then burn them (the toys are living beings in the film, not inanimate objects). Likewise, the toys and humans are racist towards the rats and treat them as stupid, uneducated and dirty (with the exception of Mary, who fears the rats but doesn't hate them).
- Gonk: The Rat Queen as she appears as a human with a rat’s face.
- Gorgeous Period Dress: Several of the characters sport this since the film is set in The Roaring '20s.
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative: It's heavily implied that Mary's uncle Albert is Albert Einstein.
- Hostile Terraforming: Downplayed. The rats are burning toys to dim the sky so the surface world is more suitable for them.
- Irony:
- Considering the Nazis compared "undesirables" (especially Jews) to rats, the infamous "Ratzis" are pretty ironic indeed.
- On a similar note, a couple of the Rat King's songs are pretty jazzy, even though the Nazis hated jazz.
- It's All About Me: Mary is quite full of herself and mean to her little brother, Max. Despite Uncle Albert bringing the dollhouse and nutcracker for both children, Mary refers to the nutcracker doll as "my nutcracker" and she is constantly slapping Max's hands away or pushing him away whenever he even tries to touch a toy in the house. Mary even has a "not like other girls"-type song number in which she describes being lonely and ignored for her imaginative beliefs, and when the Snow Fairy refers to Mary as "special and unique", Mary gets a bizarrely wide, eerie grin on her face.
- Karma Houdini: While their regime is toppled, the Rat King and his mother the Rat Queen escape by transforming into rats and running into the sewers.
- Modest Royalty: Despite his high status, the Rat King is usually seen wearing a dark blue Nehru suit.
- Mood Whiplash: The Movie. This film takes the Nutcracker story... and combines it with Holocaust imagery, but with a pretty shoddy execution; it's too dark to be considered whimsical, but it's also too dumb and awkwardly written to be taken seriously, resulting in a complete tonal mess.
- Mouse Trap: At one point Max, after disobeying the Rat King and refusing to publicly break toys, is stored in a giant human-sized mouse trap serving as a jail cell of sorts.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Rat King and his army of "Ratzis", who even operate toy crematoria!
- Pimped-Out Dress: Max burns a Snow Fairy Christmas ornament's dress, prompting Mary to repair it with tinfoil. The real Snow Fairy later comes to life, wearing Mary's dress, which features enormous layers of silver and platinum that glitter and sparkle in the ambient lighting.
- Putting on the Reich: The rats have uniform that reassemble Nazi uniforms, including the signature helmet shape for soldiers, the high collar uniforms for higher officers, and even some Pickelhaubes among top-ranking rats. The Rat King even proclaims that his empire will last a thousand years.
- Rat King: The film's main villain is quite literally perhaps the best example of this - not only is "Rat King" his apparent name, but he is an anthropomorphic rat with large teeth he can conceal and then bring out to monstrous proportions. He also wants to rule the world after his kind have been shunned from society for so long.
- Rat Men: The Rat King has numerous henchmen, who are all anthropomorphic rats in Nazi attire. He also, strangely, has a trashy anthropomorphic rat mother (the Rat Queen) who wears multiple coloured wigs and has an Italian-American accent.
- Resourceful Rodent: The one likeable quality about the Rat King is that he underestimates his own intelligence; he can build flying machines, professionally dance, take photography, quote Shakespeare and speak Latin, among other things.
- Rewritten Pop Version: One of the film's major selling points was that the ballet's timeless score would have new lyrics by Tim Rice.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: The Rat People in the film are human-sized, thus as adults towering over Mary and NC. During moments of hiding, the rats reduce themselves to the size and appearance of ordinary sewer rats.
- Sociopathic Hero:
- The Nutcracker Prince, or "N.C." as he prefers to be called, is almost at once extremely rude to Mary for the sake of hurrying his mission, snapping at her for complimenting his hat, getting angry when she calls him a "nutcracker", destroying pillows in her room, refusing to give her any time to get dressed, and mocking his comrades, especially Sticks, whom he refers to as "the most unreliable person I've ever met".
- N.C. orders his comrades to push the Rat King out of the open hatch on a helicopter, which would lead both the Rat King and probably Gielgud as well to a very brutal, nasty death.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The Rat King gets the band to play upbeat music while the rats burn toys and he takes photos of the crying children.
- Steampunk: Only applies to the rat machinery and architecture such as the helicopter and for a very dark example, the factory that burns toys.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: There are moments where it becomes apparent verbally and visually that the Rat People are discriminated against, made to live in the sewers, and are considered stupid and dirty. A strangely poignant scene arises where the Rat King woefully quotes Shakespeare and Mary compliments him for being "not unintelligent... for a rat." The Rat King perceives the comment as her being condescending, unable to realize that Mary was actually complimenting him.
- Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: The film plays around with this trope quite a bit. At some moments the Rat King is fun, eccentric, a talented dancer, an intellectual and an interesting character to view. At other times, he's decapitating a character's head and burning living creatures in a giant crematorium.
- Thousand-Year Reign: The Rat King proclaims that his evil empire will last a thousand years.
- Token Black Friend: Sticks, a Black doll portrayed as a Jamaican stereotype, is this to Gielgud and Tinker. While Gielgud and Tinker seem to like Sticks, Sticks still bears the brunt of most of the insults and abuse in the film, and is the least-developed character out of the 3 dollhouse toys. Adding to this trope, Sticks has a sassy attitude and a thick accent, although perhaps slightly subverted in that his race is never mentioned or verbally spoken of by any of the characters. The only thing distinctive about Sticks is that he plays the drums; he mainly exists for comedy relief and to serve as a sidekick for N.C., the (white) Nutcracker Prince.
- Villain Song: The Rat King has "The Lights Go Out," in which he sings about how he hates humans and light and wants to take over the world.
- Wicked Cultured: The Rat King proves to have a large and elegant vocabulary in "The Lights Go Out," even speaking in Latin for one line. At one point Mary even throws the villain a compliment (while they're both waiting to board an elevator), stating, "you're not unintelligent... for a rat", to which the Rat King rolls his eyes and replies, "oh, please."
- You Dirty Rat!: The bad guys are rats... and Nazi analogues. At one point a man even shouts verbally to the Rat King, "you'll never be nothin' but a dirty RAT!", which the Rat King responds to by grabbing the man's neck and slamming his head down on a tabletop to crack a walnut.
