So if I did that thing I usually do and put up a
spoiler warning, would anyone even care?
Like, I’m writing this here in 2015, and Frozen came out in…what, Thanksgiving 2013, or somewhere around
that point? Everyone who wanted to watch
it by now has, yes? So they
know all the twists and turns.
And by extension, those looking for either telling reviews or in-depth
analyses have long since found them. In
a lot of ways, this post is irrelevant; I’m the last guy on earth who’s seen
this movie (who wanted to…but put no effort into trying to watch), so I’m
more or less playing catch-up with the rest of the populace.
Why write it, then? Well, anyone expecting a straight-up review
is better off looking elsewhere; that’s not really my thing. And even if (I assume) others have analyzed
it frame-by-frame, those thoughts and opinions belong to them. What follows are going to be my thoughts and opinions. Not exactly the gospel, I know, but people
seem really invested when I slam Final
Fantasy, so maybe I’m doing something
right.
Enough chatter, then. What do I think of Frozen? Well…
Okay, so let me be clear. Yeah, I like Frozen. I think it’s
good. I’m not in love with it like some
other people, and I don’t think it’s the greatest thing in the universe. But I can see why people think it’s so amazing, and I won’t say they’re wrong for
it. Frozen
has a lot going for it, and I sure am glad it exists, and that I saw it. (We’ll
see how things go with the sequel, though.)
But let’s not kid ourselves here: Frozen has some HUGE flaws. Well, maybe not to the point of requiring THE
CAPS LOCK OF RAGE, but it’s nowhere near flawless. If it didn’t have those problems, then maybe
I would be one of those people who thinks it’s the best movie ever; as-is, I
find myself frustrated because the movie nails so many higher-level elements,
but completely stumbles on the basics.
To put it a different way: I’ve given plenty of movies and games crap
before, and I’d be a hypocrite if I gave one of Disney’s latest a free pass
just because of some pretty princesses.
You know what Frozen
reminds me of, though? Super 8.
I’ll come back to that comparison later, but for
now? Let’s start at the beginning.
The story follows the two princesses of Arendelle,
Elsa and Anna -- the former of which could make Iceman look like a chump. Elsa’s powers are vast and only get stronger
as time passes, but the tradeoff is that she’s not good at controlling them;
little wonder, then, that as a kid she accidentally blasted Anna and put her
life in danger. Horrified by the
experience -- and at the mercy of similarly-scared parents -- Elsa becomes
reclusive and timid in the hopes of keeping everyone safe from her destructive
power. In turn, Anna is stripped of her
memories of Elsa’s powers, and ends up getting locked out by her older sister
for reasons she can’t begin to fathom.
Both of them end up in a bad way when their
parents bite it, and Elsa -- once she becomes of age -- is forced to become the
new queen via a rite of ascension.
Despite that, Elsa’s no more accustomed to her powers -- or human
interaction -- than she was as a kid, so when Anna (who hyper-compensates for
her sister’s coldness) goes for the double-whammy of a sudden engagement and calls Elsa out for being so
antisocial, the new queen lashes out with her ice powers…which goes about as
well as you’d expect at Arendelle’s first big whompin’ ball in God knows how
long. Forced into a panic, Elsa flees
into the night while her powers go haywire and trigger an eternal winter. In turn, Anna decides to saddle up and find
her sister to not only save their home, but rebuild their broken bond.
I’ve said before that the optimal scenario is to
have a cast so good that it’s hard to decide who’s a personal favorite -- and
for the most part, that applies to Frozen. Generally speaking, if they have a name, a
line, or screen time, then I’m all right with them; Kristoff and Sven are cool,
Olaf is full of charm (considering what he could have been, given the precedents), and even the duke of
Weselton has his moments. But the stars
of the show are Elsa and Anna, and they’re pretty much the best Frozen has to offer.
I’m not 100% sure if I’d call either of them “role
models”, because they’re both a little messed up; honestly, they’re more like
cautionary tales than ladies to look up to.
But I’m okay with that, because at the very least they’re characters
with needs, issues, desires, and…well, characters. Like I said, Anna hyper-compensates for her
sister’s isolationist tendencies by being bright and chipper and eager to
socialize -- so of course she jumps
headfirst into a marriage without even knowing the guy she’s engaged to. In a lot of ways, she’s even less capable at mingling with others
than Elsa; the elder sister has tact and poise, while Anna’s something very
near an idiot.
If I had to raise a complaint, it’s that it feels
like Anna’s a bit too…well, let’s call her “conventional”. Oh, sure, she’s a departure from the usual
Disney princess -- neither the graceful embodiment of purity, nor a stalwart
spitfire -- but at times it felt as if they mashed the “clumsy yet endearing
doofus button” a few times too many.
Walking around in a frozen dress is a pretty good gag, but damned if I
didn’t want to tell that girl to get some common sense.
(Okay, that’s a good one, too.)
So I guess that by the process of elimination,
that makes Elsa the best character -- and I’m okay with that. Her conflict is at the center of the movie,
to the point where she could arguably be the villain (albeit an
accidental/tragic one). She’s the focal
point of Frozen’s ideas and themes,
and struggles because of them. Beyond
that, her basic outline as a character is pretty interesting; I compared her to
Iceman earlier, but it’s more appropriate to think of her as Rogue. She builds walls around herself (literally,
in this case), she has issues with intimacy, and she knows that getting too
close or too out of hand means putting others’ lives in danger.
Her role in the plot may be “nexus of arctic
disaster”, but Elsa still manages to be more than that, and do more than
that. She tries to stay uptight and keep
herself under wraps, but she gets plenty of opportunities to express
herself. She gets to show her emotions
-- happiness, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust, desperation, confusion, and
more. It’s thanks to her freedom as a
character that she manages to transcend being a mass of CG textures. On top of that, she gets to progress through
her arc, realize the error of her ways, and earn her “happily ever after”…even
if that’s by virtue of coming within a hair’s breadth of losing what she cared
about most.
And now, because it wouldn’t be a discussion about
Frozen without it, I present to you the song that everyone (probably) cares
about most:
(Christ, this video has 521 million views. I hope someone was well-compensated for that
song.)
Okay, so…”Let it Go”. Now, I’m sure someone has brought this up
already, but in case they haven’t, I’ll say it plainly: is it just me, or is
that song supremely dark and brutal?
Like, I think I’ve heard somewhere that it’s
supposed to be a symbol of Elsa coming to terms with herself and telling the
world “Here I am!” But the context is
kind of off for that, wouldn’t you say?
Bluster and cheery tones aside, Elsa hasn’t really made any strides toward
being a proud and brave individual; if anything, she’s only cementing herself
as a recluse. She’s being bold, but to
what end? So she can impress the ice
chandeliers she’s got overhead? Plus,
she’s swearing off a kingdom full of innocent people for her false kingdom with a population of one
-- all so she can avoid some awkward conversations.
I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing,
though. She’s owning up to her thoughts
and desires, which just so happen to be pretty bleak -- that is, instead of
working on her faults or accepting responsibilities, she’s shrugging all of
that off to pretend like everything is fine.
It doesn’t make her a villain on the level of, say, Ursula or Scar, but
I can’t think of or listen to “Let it Go” without thinking it should have been
titled “This Is Me Declaring That I’m The Villain”. Boasting about her power, casting off the
shackles of society…she even acts like a smarmy sorceress, as if she’s taken
lessons from Jafar. The sights and
sounds aren’t enough to hide her dark descent -- “dark descent” being relative,
because when she and Anna reunite, all that bluster fades away. The more things change, it seems.
Again, I’m not saying that Elsa/the song having
darker shades is a bad thing…yet. If
anything, it’s welcome -- because it gives the character and the movie some
flavor. I won’t say it’s 100% original,
but it is 100% interesting, regardless of whether or not Disney pushed it. But you know what? Setting that aside, I think that one of Frozen’s greatest strengths isn’t
necessarily the writing; it’s the audiovisual aspect. The sounds and especially the sights help sell the experience, and show why people
shouldn’t write off animation just because “LOL, CARTOONS ARE FOR KIDS”.
Frozen succeeds
on the strength of its expressiveness and the emotions of its characters -- the
pathos, if you want to use fancy-schmancy words. If you don’t care about Elsa and Anna (and
the others, by extension), then you can’t care about the movie. But the movie makes you care, because their
emotions are put front and center. The
two princesses are well-animated and well-designed, and show off what they can
do on a regular basis -- and “what they can do” typically means making damn
sure you know what they’re feeling or how they feel with a split-second
glance. That’s awesome. It’s to the point where I want to stare at a
whole bunch of Frozen GIFs for an
hour. And this is from a 2013 movie; in
a year, or even six months from now, who knows what we’ll get?
So that’s a lot of praise to throw a movie’s way,
and in all fairness there’s more I could say to support it (I could talk about
Kristoff more, but this post is gonna be long enough). But like I said at the start, Frozen is not the perfect movie. And on top of that, it’s a frustrating
movie. Okay, sure, no movie is without
sin -- as
others have proven on a regular basis -- but I feel like this movie came so
close to being everything I could ever want, yet got hamstrung on some of the
simplest things. Things that could’ve
been fixed with a couple of changes here and there.
It seems as if there are too many shortcuts --
ways to tie everything into a nice little bow.
And I’m not talking about “where did Elsa get her ice powers from?” (For the record, I’m fine with that; she can
have her magic, and the story can progress.)
I’m talking about how some of the details in this movie, or lack
thereof, take a lot of punch out of everything that follows. Based
on what
I’ve read, my interpretation of Elsa as the villain has some grounding --
to the point where I want to say they didn’t go far enough.
And with that in mind? Let me say this to start: Frozen is a metal, brutal movie…but it’s not brutal enough.
For the record?
The movie more or less starts with young Anna getting headshot by her
sister and brought to death’s door. Elsa
has to shoulder the burden of being a walking disaster zone, and then has her
worst fears -- being outed and feared for her powers -- come to life. Olaf the snowman gets impaled…and then one of
the duke’s men comes within inches of getting impaled by Elsa. Speaking of which, Elsa very nearly goes for
the kill when she’s pushed into a corner, itself preceded by two guys eager to
shoot her dead.
Anna’s party gets rushed by a snow golem who’s
awakened to the joys of murder. Anna
herself takes another lethal ice
blast and starts freezing from the inside out -- which not only leads to her
getting locked in a cold room, but walking through a blizzard, while dying, in search of the people she
cares about most. And that’s overlooking
the fact that Arendelle is in the middle of an eternal winter -- despite being
in the summer -- which means failing crops, a lack of resources, and conditions
that only go from bad to worse.
Also, Arendelle is supposed to be based on the
Norwegian landscape/culture, which only magnifies how metal everything is. Or…should be.
Far be it from me, the guy who’s practically been
on a one-man crusade against everything “dark and gritty”, to say that a Disney
movie of all things needs to be more dark and gritty. But honestly, this is one of those cases
where injecting some of that darkness would work wonders. Don’t get me wrong, Frozen takes some pretty bold steps; there are some images in this
movie that are downright haunting. Maybe
that’s why I feel like it’d be better served if it went even further.
I don’t fully buy into the idea that Elsa isn’t
the villain of the movie -- because even if rewrites made her into an
anti-heroic figure, she still slots into that role pretty well (almost in a way
that makes those rewrites moot). Okay,
she doesn’t go out of her way to hurt anyone or actively make lives worse for
her gain -- barring her attack on a couple of gunmen -- but her inaction is
just as harmful, if not more so. I feel
like the movie could have gone to some really interesting places if it played
to that idea. It’d mean a lot for Elsa,
but even more for Anna; she’d have to talk down her sister and bring her back
to the light…or fail and let her kin fall into the darkness.
Holy shit. Anna and Elsa are pretty much Dante and
Vergil. That’s amazing.
But anyway --
Seriously, Elsa even does the slick-my-hair-back
thing. All she needs is a katana and
super speed.
But anyway, my problems with Frozen don’t stop with the issue of Elsa’s villainy. It’s as if the movie is playing while wearing
shackles; that is, it has to bend the narrative it wants and needs so it can be safer and easier to
swallow. That, in turn, leads to some
instances so contrived it threatened to make Jurassic World look airtight.
People have brought this up before, and I have to bring it up now: what
the hell were Elsa’s parents and the trolls thinking? Who would ever agree to take away Anna’s
memories because of one bad experience, especially if knowing what Elsa could
do might one day be the difference between life and death?
More to the point, why would the princesses’
parents create a situation and environment where mental and emotional
repression was standard fare? Sure, they
died before they could impart any every lesson, but the way things play
out, it’s as if they broke Elsa before she even got the chance to learn for
herself how to mingle with people, how to have faith in herself, and how to
respect (and control) her power
instead of fear it. Meanwhile, Anna ends up getting shafted because no one’s
explaining all this to her, and leaving her to her devices so she can get warped into someone who’s
desperate for love, attention, and a good friend. I don’t understand what the plan was, so I’m
willing to assume they just got parenting tips from Pa Kent.
It brings up the question of --
You know, Elsa could probably use her ice powers
to create Summoned Swords. She could
even have them spin around her and look like a big snowflake.
It brings up the question of nature versus
nurture, and I find myself wishing that the movie played more toward the
former. The parents push their daughters
to become warped idealizations of princesses as well as people, but did they
really need that push? Imagine what it
would be like if Elsa became the person she did because she warped herself --
because she rationalized everything to the point where she thought she had to
be alone…until she reached the breaking
point and went to extremes. That’d make
for some pretty potent stuff, and the contrivance of her parents’ meddling
would be less of an issue.
Also, I’m not going to say that the movie needed
less humor (there’s the right amount of it, courtesy of guys like Olaf), but I
feel as if the song ratio was off. It’s
not as if I hated any of the songs, so it’s not an issue of content or quality;
it’s the frequency that gets to me. Some
of them advance the plot and our understanding of characters, which is good,
but others feel like they’re just there because “there hasn’t been a song in a
while”. Did Olaf really need a song of
his own, especially when it brings up things no snowman should ever know? Did the trolls really need a song when the
entire purpose of the visit to the trolls is to keep Anna from dying? It’s a real flow-killer, basically. That might not be an issue for some, but,
well, it’s been a hot minute since my last experience with a musical. Except for that time when The Producers was on.
But my biggest issue --
Seriously, guys.
Anna and Elsa have their big clash in an isolated tower, and Elsa “wins”
after she inflicts a grievous wound on Anna’s heart. This is literally Devil May Cry 3.
But my biggest issue is -- you guessed it --
Hans. He’s the guy Anna gets engaged to
within hours of meeting him, the guy who handles affairs in Arendelle when she
searches for Elsa, and the guy who turns out to be the real villain. And…well, I don’t buy it for a single second. Okay, sure, the hints are there in
retrospect/a second viewing. And if
we’re being honest, I knew going in that Hans was a bad guy. But I didn’t have the context for his
villainy until I watched the movie -- and what I saw doesn’t tell me “this guy
is a sociopath who’s been manipulating everyone to usurp power”.
My interpretation is that everything up to the big
reveal -- to Hans suddenly dropping the act and trying to give Ratigan a run
for his money -- has the Southern Isles’ thirteenth son as a noble forced into
a bad situation instead of a schemer who plays everyone like a fiddle. I mean, he starts off as a nice guy who
matches Anna’s awkwardness on a regular basis.
When he gives orders in Arendelle, he makes sure that the people have blankets
and warmth. He specifically keeps the
duke’s gunmen from going for the kill, and even talks Elsa down from
murder. Does that sound like the sort of
person who would gloat about how evil and victorious he is, and leave Anna to
die in such a sloppy-ass way? Did the
movie seriously need someone to go “just according to keikaku”?
As far as I’m concerned --
You know, Anna has more reddish colors in her
design, is much friendlier, is kind of a goof-off, and gets really excited
about parties. The evidence is piling up
here.
As far as I’m concerned, Hans’ turnaround was a mistake. I’m not saying that to devalue or ignore the
clues that he’s not what he seems -- and I’m not saying that he couldn’t have
been a villain, either. He only needed
to be the right kind of villain. Think
about it: Hans was in the perfect position to have seen what Elsa’s power
wrought. The snow queen started an
eternal winter after one little temper tantrum, and he had to pick up the
pieces. He tried to do the noble, responsible,
and even altruistic thing time and time again, and he saw firsthand how close
Elsa came to crossing the line. And even
beyond that, it’s not as if he could count on Anna to be a responsible leader;
she ran off and put the first guy she saw in charge, and didn’t even put on a
sweater.
Let’s face it: Hans
had a point. The princesses weren’t
ready to take the throne, and one of them came within days of plunging it into
a new ice age. He didn’t need to kill
them, but he had a right to try and make a course correction. Really, I can imagine how to make him work
better: instead of pinning him as this incredibly evil person deep down, let
him try to do the right thing at the cost of the princesses’ happiness (and
thus the audience’s bond with them).
Hans recognizes that he has to do some awful things in order to help out
the people in need, but does it anyway -- because even if it’s wrong on a
personal level, and even if he’ll have to stain his hands red, the end will
justify the means. Elsa’s already in a
gray area, so why couldn’t Hans be? Why
make him into the villain (and so
late into the movie, no less) when he could have been a villain for the sake of a good cause?
I feel like --
So if Hans is a traitor out for his own gain,
would that make him Frozen’s version
of Arkham? (Or, worst-case scenario, a
secret asshole like DmC’s Vergil
Vorgil?) Also, since Anna beats him with
a punch to the face, does that mean she’s a Beowulf specialist?
I feel like Frozen
held itself back for no reason.
Sure, rewrites happened, and it was important to be mindful of the
demographics, but this movie is already bleak as shit. Did they seriously think that people wouldn’t
be able to handle it if there was no mustache-twirling baddie in the
midst? Maybe so. Either that, or behind-the-scenes issues left
the crew with no time or resources, so they had to rush to meet deadlines. That’d be a good explanation for why Elsa
manages to perfectly control her powers and restore the summer once she
realizes that “the power of love” is the key.
Oooof. I’m an optimist, but even I have a hard time
swallowing that much.
I guess you could say that Frozen is a pretty uneven movie, then. It does a LOT of things right, no question,
but much like Elsa, it seems like it’s afraid of the power it wields. It could have been more than what it is, but
chickened out so it could play things safe -- bank on contrivances and
conventions to see it through to the end.
I hate that that’s how things played out; given that, maybe the best
thing it can do for now is get that
sequel. Maybe then, the crew will have
enough time to take the story further than the original ever could.
But even so --
Man, how hype would it be if Elsa went “Might
controls everything” in the sequel? AND LOOK! SHE'S DOING THE SLICK-BACK-MY HAIR THING!
But even so, I can’t bring myself to hate Frozen.
I still like it -- maybe not as much as I would have hoped, but it still
had an impact on me. It’s left me with a
lot of questions I don’t necessarily need answers to -- things that get me thinking
about the movie, my writing, and more.
Is Elsa the sort of person who would
cross the line if pressed? How far
is she, or anyone, willing to go to get what they want? What does it mean to protect someone? What does it mean to nurture someone? Are ideals ultimately as destructive as they
are unattainable? Are defensive
mechanisms, in whatever form they take, really there to protect others? Or are they just ways for people to protect
themselves? And at what cost?
I wish I could be one of the people blown away by Frozen (and to be fair, I think it’s
still strong overall). But you know
what? My opinion doesn’t necessarily
matter here. What’s important isn’t
necessarily that Frozen is the
perfect movie, but that Frozen is an
example of what a movie can be. It’s
shown people what can be done, be they humble fans or executives watching from
on high. The impact they’ve felt is
real, and can’t be taken away because someone pointed out plot holes. Those moved by “Let it Go” have every right
to be moved, because they pulled something precious and meaningful from what
could have been an hours-long parade of sparkles and makeup.
That’s the clincher. And that brings me back to Super 8.
Super 8 is
another movie I like -- but I barely made it out of the movie theater before I
took umbrage with some of the plot issues.
(For starters, I have my doubts that a train would turn into a whirling
maelstrom of hellfire after a collision with a single truck.) There were things in there that just didn’t
work, and things that I would have liked to see removed. Why?
Because for all the things in there that annoyed me, there were things
that I loved. The idea of a bunch of
pals getting together to make a movie -- combined with the interpersonal
struggles shown at length -- made for something a million times stronger than
quasi-Cloverfield.
Super 8
had heart -- and Frozen has heart,
too. The logos leg of the story may be a
pile of sawdust, but it stands solely on the strength of its pathos. I cared about Elsa, Anna, and all the
rest. I still do, arguably. I care about the cast, the world, the ideas,
and pretty much everything in between. I
can and will overlook the problems, because it’s the duty of the story to
compensate for its weaknesses with its strengths. That’s a failing point a lot of stuff has
these days, Jurassic World well among
them; the plot in that movie was dumb as hell, and had nothing else to fall
back on. Comparatively, Frozen’s plot is also kind of dumb, but
I’m invited to overlook that by the sheer force of its conviction.
For all its faults, I believe in Frozen -- just as it believed in
itself. And that’s exactly why I’m
putting it somewhere around HERE on my SmartChart™:
And that’ll do it for now. See you guys next --
Capcom, is it too much to ask for a Devil May Cry/Frozen crossover? I want to do sick ice combos with Elsa! Icicle Helm Splitters! Frigid Volcanoes! A Lunar Phase in Heels! Can you give that to me? Please?
Pretty please? I’d forgive you
for Resident Evil 6!
No? Fine,
you win. I guess I’ll just go play Devil May Cry 4. Wonder how it holds up?
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