ABBY REVIEWS FROZEN
Posted on September 7th, 2014.
Yes, I’m late in adding my thoughts about this movie. Here they are, though, in a nice, long ramble:
So I watched this months ago and fell in love with it for a while. My love for it has been a bit tempered since then. For those of you who somehow don’t know what this movie is about (and I feel like that applies to no one, thanks to how big it blew up), Frozen is Disney’s musical adaption of The Snow Queen.
…Except it isn’t, really. It would be more accurate to say that Frozen was loosely inspired by The Snow Queen in that you can see tiny similarities if you squint at it. Which is a shame, because The Snow Queen is a wonderful story and you’d think Disney would have done a much better job with adapting it, considering how long this film was in the works (around twenty years!).
Let’s go over some of the criticisms I have of the film first. For one thing, there’s how loose of an adaptation it is. I try not to judge adaptations by their fidelity to the source material if I can, because adaptations can tell their own stories and highlight portions of the source material that are relevant to modern issues. However, Frozen is trying very hard to be a self-aware, feminist film, so with that in mind, some of the changes were not in good form.
For one thing, The Snow Queen has, for the most part, a female cast. The male friend of the protagonist - a friend, let me stress - is the one who is spirited away and needs to be rescued. This cast should have been the same in the film. Instead, Frozen focuses on two sisters and gives its main protagonist two love interests. Given what the film did with those love interests, I can see what they were going for, but I can’t approve of the change. If you want to tell a feminist story and subvert True Love tropes, there were other ways that could have been done while still keeping the cast more or less intact. Keep the kindly witch, keep the Lapp woman and the Finn woman, keep the princess who refused to marry unintelligent princes (that could have been part of Anna or Elsa’s subplots, since they couldn’t be peasants for some reason)! Hell, make Kristoff into the Robber Girl! That’s the role they decided he should fill, after all. They could also keep her as Anna’s love interest, because why not? God forbid we finally have a gay Disney princess. Can’t have the children getting the idea in their heads that queer love can be true love, right? It would admittedly take some rewriting to make the twist of the film not imply that queer love isn’t true love, since it subverted romantic love being the only kind of true love that exists, but it could be done.
The gutting of the original cast is my biggest complaint, but not my only one. To summarize them quickly:
1.) Despite Olaf representing the girls’ childhoods and Elsa’s love for Anna, he broke the tone of the film and was redundant. Sven was a more than adequate source of comic relief. His interactions with Kristoff were easily the funniest parts of the film.
2.) The trolls, being a hold-over from original drafts of the script, were unnecessary and also killed the movie’s tone. The king and queen could have found the answer to Elsa’s ice powers in the book about magic that we see in the beginning of the film. The book could have been consulted to find a remedy for Anna’s frozen heart, too. OR YOU KNOW, WE COULD JUST HAVE THE KINDLY WITCH OR THE LAPP OR FINN WOMEN BE CONSULTED INSTEAD! Anna could have forgotten about Elsa’s ice powers from a combination of being a young child and suffering a head injury, both of which would make her memories hazy. Plus, if she did think about them as an adolescent, she could just assume that she imagined them. BAM PROBLEM SOLVED! IT TOOK ME TWO MINUTES, DISNEY, WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE?
3.) Where is the magic mirror of Satan the Troll King? I don’t understand why it wasn’t included (unless you subscribe to the theory that Hans is meant to represent it by being a mirror to people, reflecting what they expect of him, BUT STILL, A MAGIC MIRROR IS COOL, COME ON). You know, that mirror - or rather, the broken shards of it, which get into people’s eyes and hearts, making them see only ugliness and thinking the worst of everything - would have worked as a source of Elsa’s depression, anxiety, and ice powers all rolled into one. She’s meant to represent Kai anyway, so why not? Also, you can cure Anna through fem!Kristoff’s kiss and Elsa’s “curse” through Anna’s tears of love for her sister. That would work just as well and be more daring, writing-wise.
4.) The sisters themselves. Elsa should have been the protagonist. I know that Disney wanted to make her the antagonist originally, but when that changed, they should have gone all the way with it. Her story and characterization are much more compelling than her sister’s, to the point where Anna seems self-centered and shallow. We start the film proper with Elsa singing about her anxiety over her coronation and accidentally revealing her powers. Anna sings about how excited she is for the coronation, because apparently she barely sees anyone in the castle and doesn’t go into town because…why? I never got the sense that anyone was locking her up - no one stopped her when she left the castle, at least - so it seems like she could have left at any time. She also wants to find a boyfriend. She is a teenager, so her desires are understandable, but they feel superficial when you put them next to Elsa's more serious problems.
What's worse, though, is that they are both so damned polite to each other. Anna had to bury their parents alone. She was shut out of Elsa’s life for no apparent reason. She should resent the hell out of her sister for that. She should think the worst of Elsa. She should struggle with the revelation that Elsa’s ice powers are why Elsa avoided people. She should wonder if it's be dangerous for her to being going after her. And Elsa should have resented the fact that Anna had the kind of life she wanted. Anna had freedom and didn’t have to fear hurting those she loved. She didn’t lose her innocence to a “curse.” There are even cut songs that hinted at those feelings. Why not keep them in as a part of the story? That would have made the story more emotionally authentic and the climax more cathartic.
5.) The music. My first time through the movie, I was begging them to stop singing. Over subsequent watches, some of the songs grew on me, but I still can’t force myself through others. Now I think these songs are all least well-put together, but they are not anywhere near as good as the songs in Renaissance Disney films, so the comparison to them doesn’t make sense to me. I know other people loved the soundtrack, though, so that’s why it’s last on my list.
I think that touches on my biggest problems with the movie. Now to talk about what I enjoyed about the movie and think are its greatest strengths: the characters of Elsa and Hans and the subversion of the True Love’s Kiss.
1.) Elsa is, in short, one of the most beautiful characters Disney has ever made. I don’t mean that in the sense of how she looks, either. While it’s not explicitly stated, Elsa - thanks to the stress caused by accidentally hurting her sister, having to hide her ice powers, and being separated from other people - appears to have intense self-esteem issues and problems with anxiety and depression. When her powers - a part of herself that she fears and that she fears that no one else will understand - are exposed, she retreats from the conflict rather than face the judgement of other people. When she realizes she no longer has to hide who she is, she revels in it. She says “fuck it all!” to everything she left behind and makes a place for herself. It is the one moment in the movie where she is truly selfish (honestly, she probably should have lashed out more, since she is alarmingly selfless the rest of the time). Now is this a good choice on her part? Not really. But coming to that realization is a part of her character arc: she goes from striving to be perfect for other people, while denying herself and her needs; to denying the needs of others to attend to herself; to realizing that she messed up by doing that and reaching a middle ground where she can be herself, while also caring about the needs of other people. Simba went through the same process. Unlike Simba, though, I think Elsa resonates more with people. Anyone who is insecure - particularly people who are neurodivergent or queer - would find her and her arc moving. If the film had focused on her more, it would have been more powerful. Perhaps Frozen’s inevitable sequel will do that.
2.) Hans is also fascinating. For most of the film, he is Anna’s love interest and seems to be a good guy, until we hit the third act. Anna, at that point, is slowly freezing to death thanks to being struck in the heart by Elsa’s ice powers. She needs an act of True Love to save her. So she goes to Hans, expecting a True Love’s Kiss…and he denies it: “Oh Anna…if only there was someone who loved you.” This line and the revelation that Hans is the opposite of who he pretended to be, taking advantage of Anna’s naivety and planning to murder Elsa for the throne, is a punch to the gut. Elsa was right to be wary of him and to shoot down Anna’s desire to marry someone she’s only known a day. It’s a horrible twist, but it’s an important lesson for children (and some adults, for that matter) to learn. People aren’t always who they say they are. People may try to take advantage of you and use you for their own ends. So be careful with who you trust and get to know someone before giving them your heart. And don’t romanticize romance to the point where you lose your common sense.
3.) The subversion of the True Love’s Kiss is also great. When Hans denies Anna, Anna turns to Kristoff instead. Now Anna and Kristoff loving each other isn’t that much better than the alternative. They’ve also only just met. But there is much more sincerity to their interactions, so it’s plausible that their kiss would break Anna’s curse. Just as they’re running towards each other, though, Anna sees Hans about to kill Elsa. She throws herself in the way and freezes solid, deflecting Hans and his sword. All hope seems lost for Anna…but as Elsa cries over her, Anna’s heart (like Kai’s) and the rest of her thaws. Those mutual acts of sisterly love qualify as an act of true love, so Anna and the day is saved. It’s a refreshing change from the message that true love can only be romantic in nature, which has been Disney's approach in the past.
Overall, I liked Frozen, especially the points I described above. The movie has flaws, though, both as an adaptation and as a stand-alone film. It’s worth a watch, as it’s one of the better Disney films in recent years, but it’s not the masterpiece people are describing it as.