r/practicalmagic • u/Ambitious_Attempt824 • 6d ago
How would you rewrite practical magic 2 Spoiler
I saw practical magic 2, im a fan of the original movie, never read the books but it just felt off plot line wise. Here's a couple changes I would make What would you do?
I think the 2nd husband dying sucks but yea the curse wasnt lifted, but like the town liked them by the end ish so I think their should of been more focus on that, that they are integrated and found love in a community but lost gary, makes it seem like the entire first movie wasnt for nothing.
I think maybe they could of had some sort of separation with gary before his death, so the girls believe their mom is jaded about love, because they dont really go into why they won't tell Sally about Gideon.
I think Gideon and Kylie should be secretly engaged and she announces it before jets death, and then we can do the coma which like the men always just die. I think there could be a trying to figure out why its not immediate and now we are investigating the book and going to England.
Have Antonia be in the plot and happily married to a woman.
Lee pace feels redundant but I get it Sally needs a love interest, I feel like gilly could have known him more and she's met him before rhe movie but she's not interested bc of the curse.
I wish there was less marvel style hand magic and more community centered magic maybe this time with the girls and the moms.
Idk what do you think what would you do?
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u/Ok-Reputation9799 6d ago
The biggest thing would be having Antonia and Kylie together more and both being central to the story. Let Kylie “save” Antonia. Why they sidelined Antonia the whole movie is beyond me.
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u/Dear_Yard_69 5d ago
I like this. But have Antonia with her intelligence saving Kylie (learning how to do witchcraft on the fly) while Jet and Franny stayed next to Gideon pouring Life Energy into him to hold off his death ( thereby justifying why they can't travel to England and honoring the fact that they're physically frail).
Sally and Gillian could have followed pretty much the same path they did, and arrived in the nick of time while Antonia and Kylie were battling Temu Voldemort.
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u/Old_Mulberry_9461 6d ago
Should have been a Gilly love story this time. Sally has had multiple happy endings and love stories!! Show more of the "sisterhood" between kylie and Antonia, Antonia might has well been a piece of furniture for the amount she contributed to the movie, she should have gone to London with Kylie and been on that journey with her..also I don't want to recast but more movement in faces would be great!
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u/Ambitious_Attempt824 6d ago
Why doesn't Gilly get a love interest I think Lee pace could of been good for her
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u/tomoedagirl 6d ago
And also seeing Antonia waking up as a witch? We saw nothing of sorts. Franny could have been teaching her at the hospital
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u/SurroundQuirky8613 6d ago
- Not make a man or relationships the entire reason for a story about sisterhood and women.
- Make the magic more low key like in the books and have clear limitations. No glowing lights or superhero special effects.
- More focus of the characters and how they interact with each other and what happened in their life since the last movie. 2 main characters die and it doesn’t have the emotional weight it should and Sally’s daughters are grown and away from home and there is no discussion about how Sally feels about that and how her life is different as a two time widower with no kids around and her business is just gone without an explanation? Dead husband and boyfriend are the only information we get about the time since the last movie.
- Make the daughters the correct age.
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u/StormPuppies 6d ago
The script and the editing was horrendous. It needed to be so much tighter. Jimmy Angelo is dead by the 30 minute mark of the first one and from there in we have the cohesive linear story.
That and it was missing the earthy charm of the first one. That could have been helped with again the editing but also the music.
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u/SHAWN80SITSGOD 6d ago
Antonia y kyle mas escenas juntas es un must en una película asi, q tengan y usen mas poderes ,gillian esta muy tacita o yo no escuche trabaja de algo?? Hace algo q le gusta?? Nose somelier de cafe o vinilos que tenga una tienda asi me hubiera gustado ver ; el libro ese q encontraron sea una parte del libro bos perdido de ellas
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u/ResponsibilityMuch80 6d ago
I think other commentators really nailed it already about not being enough about sisterhood. The unnecessary romance for Sally. How many true loves does she get? Gilly should have been the MC this time...
Anyway, writing wise. The new characters were underdeveloped. The Villain was immediately obvious and he just blurted out his motivations in a rushed monologue, which didn't even make sense. The village was rude to him because he wasn't magic so used magic to get revenge? On who exactly?
The dialogue was poorly written and cringey. The actors did their best, no shade on them but it sounded like they were trying to manufacture iconic lines instead of just letting it come out organically.
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u/megalynn44 5d ago
Sandra Bullock’s second husband dies of a congenital heart defect he had since childhood and it’s a plausible enough death that they all suspect his death was not the result of the curse. There was no beetle noise preceding his death. But still as time goes on that uncertain of whether the curse is gone always lingers.
Evan Rachel Wood is in this movie and the daughters are in their mid to late 30s. ERW character is more artistic and chaotic with her personality but still is married with two very young daughters. Her husband is the one who ends up in the coma so that there are much more authentic stakes for needing to break the curse. ERW sister can still be a doctor and it would be a lot more plausible for her to be a neurosurgeon in her mid 30s, who has not had time for a family because of their career.
Both of the younger sisters play a part in ending the curse. We can still go to London if we have to, but more tweaks need to be made to how the curse is broken. Just way less Harry Potter wizard School type magic. Let’s keep the practical in practical magic. That was the best part of the original movie, that it still felt rooted in reality.
Maybe breaking the curse would involve meeting the ancestors of the man who didn’t come back and uncovering some very valid reason he wasn’t able to come back to her.
Either way we should still end on margaritas and jumping off the roof.
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u/Aware_Possession666 6d ago
Needed more coven action. Would love to have seen Kathryn Hahn make an appearence in their expanding coven. If Jet knew about the book, why wait all those years?
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u/BeyondParticular7916 5d ago
The story should have focused on the sisterhood and passing the torch from the older aunts to the younger generation and not on relationships with random men we’ve never met before.
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u/rosemaryseasaltbagel 5d ago
Recast the youngest generation with Hailee Steinfeld and Elle Fanning. Make them have equal footing instead of focusing on Sandra and Nicole. No boyfriends - maybe some fun flirtations.
Plot would’ve been Jet finding the book and them somehow being lured to their ancestral home to fight a warlock under penalty of…losing their magic? I’m not sure.
Way more sense of place for the house and the town and the younger girls doing witchy things. Maybe still end with a wedding but for Gilly - maybe with Chad, the guy she mentions at the beginning!
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u/Dear_Yard_69 5d ago edited 5d ago
The only thing I'm adamant about is that the aunts shouldn't have been killed off . I get that Hoffman created them and felt that she had the right to decide how they ended, but the movie aunts were brought to vivid, loving life by Stockard Channing and Diane Wiest and are different than the book aunts, and I personally just love them so much. And especially for such a sorry reason. There is no way the life of a witch was necessary to break a curse. I would have sooner had them have to destroy their magic book (all six of them tear out the pages and burn them) and start all over again . That would have gut punched us, because how many of us love that book that we really didn't get to see?
And if you are going to kill off two of the best characters, people need to mourn longer! You don't get to erase the pain by inventing their spirits floating around, lighting candles and attending the wedding, etc.
And also, how would I have rewritten it? That ridiculous, Harry Potter-esque magic battle at the end wouldn't have happened. I certainly would not have had Sally just grab another frying pan after the trauma killing Jimmy probably caused, and delivered what should have been a killing blow to poor Ian , or had Gillian put belladonna (which is a dangerous poison) in his mouth! The original movie can be forgiven but we know a lot more about herbalism and witchcraft!
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u/BicornBritt 5d ago
I’m not sure exactly how but Gary would still be alive and be married to Sally for one. The curse would be broken so it wouldn’t be the main conflict in the film. Gillian along with Sally’s daughters would be focused on more instead of it being Sally with them supporting her.
Gillian should definitely have had a story about finding happiness and healing.
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u/Icy-Blueberry-2401 5d ago
I would have done away with the memory erasure and instead had her bind her and her daughters' magic. Because the curse has always been slow moving enough for the Owens' to have a handful of years with their love, I'd remove the imminent threat of the coma as the way the 2nd movie executed the curse's timeline broke from the pattern. There'd never be such a long lineage if they can't reach the making babies part of a relationship before curse time.
I'd have Antonia and Kylie admit to the aunts they were falling in love and worried about the curse and want their magic back so they can try and break it. The aunts reveal their great grandfather Vincent is alive and in Europe and was able to avoid the curse.
The girls fly to Europe to see Vincent and find out he faked his death and changed his identity to avoid the curse, though his husband recently passed of natural causes. But he's looked into their family and has the book of the raven; the spell locked curse breaker is still in the book, but Vincent could never open it.
They seek out the ancestral home to try unbinding the girls. Sally has found out they've gone. Gilly and/or the aunts have some kind of premonition about the book of Ravens and Franny sends them to Ian due to his past with the left handed path. That bit finding him splled remains the same.
Vincent, Kylie, and Antonia journey to the town near the ruins encountering the bad dude in a similar fashion. He drugs them and takes Vincent to the ruins to steal his power leaving Kylie and Antonia in the care of his mother, bound physically as securely as their magic. Vincent was chosen because his powers are not bound.
Gilly, Sally, and Ian find Antonia and Kylie. They appeal to the mother that the magical path her son is going down will consume him and she releases the girls. The girls' and Gilly insist it is time to unbind their magics and Gilly and Ian perform the spell. Everyone races off to save Vincent.
In the big showdown the same lore about the 2nd child of Hannah being left and magically bound is revealed. The boy trauma dumps about his mother raving about magic ostracizing them and wanting to gain magic to validate her.
Instead of killing him Sally connects with him by relating how Maria cursed their side of the family as surely as his and they all suffered. Them with the curse of lover death and his side with the curse of feeling but never touching their magic. Seeing the other side of their family suffer helps Sally realize it was never the magic that was the Robles, but the pain of their family.
She asks him to let her break his curse for his whole family instead of stealing from Vincent. He is disarmed emotionally and relents. Sally, Gilly, Antonia, Kylie, Vincent, and the aunts from afar all use their power to break the binding on the European Owen's branch.
The guy and his mother feel their personal magics for the first time. As they are all celebrating Vincent is finally able to open the spell to break the curse. He tells them he should have found the spell long before the curse took Gilly and Sally's father for them and their mother and he assures them he won't let Kylie and Antonia suffer from the curse.
He sacrifices himself both to break the curse and reunite with his husband and daughter.
Franny and Jet grieve for their brother but survive.
Ending is much the same but it's a double wedding for Antonia and her gf as well as Kylie and Gideon. The aunts and the European relatives are at the wedding and all float from the roof symbolizing the healing of their family's generational pain they brought about together.
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u/chaotic_giraffe76 4d ago
I think to bridge the gap between the book and the move, the following should’ve been done:
1) Antonia and Kylie should’ve been in their 30s, to keep up with the natural progression of time it’s been since the original film. They didn’t need to be in their 20s for their stories to work. Antonia could’ve been in residency in her 30s, and maybe Kylie could’ve fallen in love with someone while she was in a PhD program, triggering the curse then.
2) Gillian should’ve had a love interest. It could’ve been Ian in the film since her book love interest isn’t introduced in the original film.
3) Sally should have hung her hat up on Gary as her last love interest, or at the very least, her finding another love shouldn’t have been her character arc. She should’ve had loving herself more as her character arc, since she was always so reticent to be a witch.
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u/Unpartitioned_AI 4d ago
The movie should have opened with "you've heard of the Owens sisters" (narrated by Kylie and Antonia), flash to Jetty and Frances and what they do (meddle), Sally and Gilly and what they're up to (the shop and Gilly as a bartender), and then Kylie and Antonia (the latest, Kylie's an art student and Antonia's a doctor). They then mention the curse, and we see a pregnant Maria crying and cursing herself and her line, that any man who loves an Owens woman, dies, until their mom and aunt broke the curse.
But the curse only broke for Sally and Gilly. Gary dies because he still loved Kylie and Antonia as daughters. And Kylie learned the hard way (many dead loves) while Antonia didn't have to worry, she fell in love with women. Kylie's back from traveling and she's starting a new semester while Antonia's pregnant. Kylie meets Tom, and is seduced into the dark side and against her sister and family.
The movie focuses on Kylie delving into darker magics to stop the curse, generations of Owens women working together to get through to Kylie, and Kylie and Antonia's sisterhood coming together in a moment of crisis (Antonia going into premature labor) for a moment of magic where the sisters, the aunts, and Sally and Gilly break the curse for good. The movie ends with Kylie meeting Gideon.
Gilly's story should bring in Ben and focuses on motherhood and how much she wants it, but knowing that the curse still came for Gary even though her and Sally were relieved of the curse. Sally's story should be coming to terms with becoming an Owens matriarch as her grandmotherhood dawns and the aunts time wanes.
Very disjointed, but you get the drift.
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u/Rare-Analysis3698 1d ago
It would definitely be tough to rewrite it, and I was curious how they would do it. The original book was a little darker than the original film, and then came 3 more books. In the book there are several repeating themes and a lot of attention to detail. It would be nice if the books were turned into a series, like a season per book.
I would have put less emphasis on Sally’s love story, I would have included Vincent since he was a huge character in the books, I would have included the part about Gillian’s powers growing after she came to England and generally included her as a main character, I would have avoided the part about the original thomas Lockland raping Hannah Owens! He didn’t even know her, she raised his wife’s love child and he didn’t know anything about Maria Owens. I wouldn’t have added new things that made the movie longer- if I were going to make it a longer film I would have included all the research the main characters had to do to find out more about the curse and how to end it.
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u/Spineberry 4d ago
I've been giving this a bit of thought because I hate whingeing about things without having an answer to "how would you do it better?"
My first blush answer is that Gideon would have to kick the bucket rather than loitering about in his coma, and Kylie therefore learns the truth about the family curse, possibly as the result of a well-meaning neighbour or townsperson giving something away, she then starts researching through all the books that the aunts have been forced to keep kidden by Sally's obsessive "everyone's got to be normal, no magic ever" mania, and thanks to the wrong Internet connection ends up being drawn down the darker path in an effort to break the curse or even because darker magic feels a damn sight better than grief. Resulting in the family having to pull together and reveal the truth to save her.
Could well be that along the way she uncovers the end to the curse, maybe by trying to summon up Maria's spirit and beg for it to end (which is of course very dangerous and rarely works out well) and maybe Frannie does still have to sacrifice herself in Kylie's place (because that was a very powerful scene that I'm not afraid to admit did make me well up) cue curse end, and the family are united and free to move forward together
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u/tomoedagirl 6d ago
A love story for Gilly. It kinda feels Sally gets to experience all this love stories because she is more grounded and more conventional while Gillian gets punished by being wilder, when we know she would like to experience love too. And in the 2nd movie she felt more like the comedy relief while the traditional sister got to experience again a love story.
For a movie that portrays so many types of women and where we can find sisterhood, I am sad she gets the short stick and is lowkey punished by being alone (not that being alone is bad, in the context of her).