Loved the movie, Anastasia growing up, but in hindsight its blatant broke-man propoganda

So my favorite Don Bluth movie has always been Anastasia. For the longest time I was completely obsessed with it (and still am tbh. The ending scene with it's closing score always fucks me up emotionally 😭). When I was in college, I splurged a bunch of my allowance on collector's edition picture books so I could scan all the illustrations. I even saw the Broadway musical.

But in hindsight, watching the movie after discovering FDS has has me with a knot in my stomach that grows more and more heavy over the course of it. Like the love interest Dimitri is a broke ass grifter who spends the entirety of the movie lying to Anya (she only even finds out that he was playing her for a sucker when she overhears him being chewed out by the grand duchess for his scrotery)

Then he has a crisis of conscience once he realizes Anya really is the lost princess and helps reconcile her with her grandma. And you know it's a "legit" crisis because he turns down the reward money for her return. And that's supposedly what makes Anya decide to walk away from her royal lifestyle and abandon the female family members she spent the whole film longing to reunite with, along with her grandmother's sizeable inheritance. All for a guy who she knows for a fact doesn't even have a penny to his name. Like that there is some cosmic level Pickme shit.

Like I'm sorry, but realistically speaking it's VERY unlikely that Anya is going to have a happy future with this man. Honestly imo it would have made more sense pragmatically for Anya to have gone after Dimitri if he HAD taken the money. At least then she'd have had the security of knowing he could provide for her. Instead she's headed back to Russia (right before Stalin comes to power I might add) with a broke ass lvm whose ego will most likely never allow him to ever forget that his girlfriend massively settled for his ass and will come to resent her charity for serving as a constant reminder of how pathetic he objectively is. Like this is why you don't settle for guys you objectively know you can do better than. Because they know d*mn well that they'd never in a million years have managed to snag you if you had even a modicum of self respect, and having demonstrated that you dont respect yourself to them, they will feel zero obligation to respect you either. Like it is not a matter of if but when Dimitri decides to cheat on Anya and tries to frame his infidelity as her own fault because "its not like she didn't knew what she was signing up for when she married a no-good-scoundrel who we both know she deserved better than😤"

"Oh but they'll get through all the hard times with the power of love! " Yeah love isnt going to put food on the table or cover living expenses. Nor will it change the bitter reality that Anya wouldn't have to endure this kind of poverty at all, if she'd only valued herself a little more.

I mean I still love the movie, but I can't help but feel like it sends a really really harmful message to young girls that "love" is worth demeaning yourself and foregoing the comfort of a financially stable life.