Disney's "Frozen"

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

On another note, it sounds inflammatory to say, though I don't mean it to be, but Let It Go never really wowed me. My sister was a big theater nut, so I got exposed to musical stuff all the time when I was younger. Let It Go just... sounds like another run-of-the-mill big broadway number, you know? Nothing quite sticks out.

[Kuzu]

The sad thing is, "Let it Go" is a really good song on its own, and could have had a bigger impact on the film than just Elsa running away from her problems instead of facing them. But people just...overplayed the hell out of it and almost seems like they're trying to force its status as one of the greats.

[Soniman]

I really get the impression that a lot of people in this topic seems to have their opinons on Frozen ruined by what other people thought of it rather then looking at the film completely by itself.

 

It's like....enjoying a video game but start to dislike it because other people dislike it....I dunno, im probably totally wrong.

[TearForFear]

There's also the other way around: people who start disliking Let It Go because everyone else likes it to exaggerated levels

 

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

I really get the impression that a lot of people in this topic seems to have their opinons on Frozen ruined by what other people thought of it rather then looking at the film completely by itself.

 

It's like....enjoying a video game but start to dislike it because other people dislike it....I dunno, im probably totally wrong.

 

There's a little of that, of course. There's the somewhat irrational side of it, the "just shut up about X already" kind of response, but then there is a legitimate argument to be had that a thing's reception exceeds its merit. The first stems from a natural reaction to all the buzz about the movie and concerns the fanbase, but the latter is born out of a love for the medium and concerns the work proper.

 

Let's look at it this way. Twilight was super-popular during the aughts, and still kind-of is even after the material has run dry. There is a legitimate argument to be made that Twilight did not deserve its popularity; not because people kept talking about it, not even just because it's poorly written, but because what it says about the medium and what messages it sends to people are downright poisonous. A big voice in a open arena can be disastrous.

 

The reaction to Frozen is, I think I've noted before, similar to my own reaction to The Last of Us. TLoU is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a poor voice, and it looks to pull the medium at large into another rabbit trail where once the potential was endless.

[Nepenthe]

The Lion King on the other hand...I enjoy it and it's got some great moments, but when you really look at the movie it is flawed and very overrated too. For example, how the hell did the Pridelands go all dry and ruined so quickly? It's only been a couple of years, something like that would've realistically happened in 100 years! And I don't really like the song Hakuna Matata either. I used to love it as a kid but now...eh.

Desertification and dry spells actually happen commonly in Africa, to the point that it forces entire migrations of animals to search for grazing elsewhere and in turn effects more stationary predators' eating habits. One can argue that Scar was simply unlucky to take the throne during such a time, but dry periods followed by wet periods aren't some weird thing in Africa and other savanna and tropical climates. Naturally though, the situation is played up for the movie's goal in defining Scar as a despot, which is contextually important to remember in a movie where lions act like people in a kingdom structure- as per its inspiration from Hamlet- and not real lions where the pride would've just dealt with it and not "blamed" any particular individual for the climate.

 

A couple of pages back one user posted a great Tumblr post about Hans' motives and the subtle references to his evil deeds. No, not just in the Love is an Open Door scene but also the moment where Hans tries to kill Elsa by aiming a soldier's crossbow UP at the ice chandelier. Disney should have definitely made it more obvious, I agree, but the subtlety works in some ways.

The story does not frame it like this, or at least it's such "subtle" foreshadowing as to be meaningless due to fridge logic. The corrupt soldier who was attached to the wall was already aiming the crossbow at her. Hans saws this and ran over to redirect the shot, which goes in line with his entire good guy shtick. But if we're supposed to know that Hans is evil after viewing and thus we view this act as an attempt to kill Elsa (he does indeed look up at the chandelier), it raises the question of why would he go through the effort since no one else- not even Elsa- was actually paying attention to the guard in the first place? (And really lucky shot by the way; he managed- during a quick struggle- to hit the one piece of ice that connected the entire thing to the ceiling. With his ninja skills, he could've just made the arrow rebound off of the architecture. Let's not even get into the fact of how fast he would've had to run to actually make it there in time). 

 

Ultimately only Hans saw this going down- the other soldiers looking up when he moved- and again if he was intent on just killing her, he could've stood there innocently and allowed the guy to do his thing, then frame it as tragic treason on the part of that one specific guard and still achieved his goal, instead of making a failed, cheaply-framed risk, realizing his error, taking Elsa all the way back to the kingdom, locking her up and still never actually taking the opportunity to kill her when he had plenty of silent opportunities to do so himself while she sat locked away, only getting down to brass tacks when- surprise surprise- the cryokinetic froze everything to break free. (But of course, had Hans just let her get killed in the castle, the movie'd be over so yay narrative convenience).

At least Scar's plans made more sense, hence why he actually achieved his goal.

 

Yes, I literally put in the Blu-Ray to confirm all of this.

 

Anyways, concerning music...most of the songs do have more of pop Broadway quality to them, like Wicked. And while they are hit and miss (Let it Go and Snowman stand out as great songs) and I agree that we should've had more Nordic folky songs, I think the pacing with these songs and the sound of them was WAY better than Tangled.

Tangled was done by Alan Menken, who is known for doing some amazing Disney songs during the 90's Disney era but i think he went to the FUBAR convention when he made the songs in Tangled because only one of them is really any good and catchy! Also, there's a lot less songs and it's super jarring when a character suddenly bursts into song when we haven't had one in the entire movie since half an hour ago. When Will My Life Begin is a crappy Hannah Montana pop song, Mother Knows Best is awesome, WWMLB reprise is epic Broadway but seems out of place, I've Got a Dream is forgettable, Mother Knows Best reprise is nothing special and I See the Light is a nice song but is it really memorable? Are you going to be humming it all day? Does it have the same power and emotion as Let it Go? Hell no!

I... don't really know why we're talking about Tangled as I don't remember mentioning it in my original post as far as the soundtrack is concerned. I will admit it's not as catchy as Frozen's, but I don't consider this a net negative. It still benefits from Alan Menken's Broadway touch and a reserved song count, because each song is more significant in a narrative context which is the point of a musical: to use spontaneous singing as a narrative framing device. In that regard, every song on Tangled's soundtrack has more purpose for being there than the ice song, Open Door, In Summer, and the trolls' song, so I find Tangled's soundtrack structurally better as a whole. If it were me, the only songs for Frozen would've been Snowman, First Time (that placement next to Snowman though, ugh), and Let It Go, with some reprises for good measure. The movie could literally still function well as a musical story with just these three songs.

 

I also didn't find it any song less jarring than the lead-ups to any of Frozen's songs, the big one being the First Time reprise in the castle where the audience groaned and chuckled at yet another tenuously-important song interruption when Anna- in mid-fucking-sentence- burst into singing.

 

I highly, HIGHLY doubt Zootopia will be a musical. The next Disney musical movie is going to be Giants which isn't coming out until late 2016, same year as Zootopia in fact!

I got my facts wrong then. I could've sworn I read somewhere that there would be musical interludes.

[Kuzu]

I really get the impression that a lot of people in this topic seems to have their opinons on Frozen ruined by what other people thought of it rather then looking at the film completely by itself.

It's like....enjoying a video game but start to dislike it because other people dislike it....I dunno, im probably totally wrong.

It's more like people coming to realize it's reputation is almost completely unwarranted by both the film's own flaws, and the themes arguably being done better in previous Disney films.

But yea, the more you hear how awesome something is, the less inclined you are to agree. It may seem "wrong" to some people, but you can only hear "X is awesome" before you get tired of it.

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[azoo]

Let it Go seems to lack creativity to me. The poppier, overstuffed and manufactured-ish sound of the soundtrack to Frozen is only emphasized by how the whole first half of the movie felt ultra-rushed just to fit Let it Go in at directly 30 minutes (you know, the song everyone came to the theater for, might as well get them to it instead of telling a well-paced story), and.. well...

 

 

Let it Go is one of these kind of songs. Granted, Can You Feel the Love Tonight is in there too and that's true, but something about Let it Go makes it seem much more blatant. Maybe because Disney Channel's Demi Lovato wrote it. :v

[Kuzu]

We call those Award Bait songs on Tvtropes.

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[Nepenthe]

I really get the impression that a lot of people in this topic seems to have their opinons on Frozen ruined by what other people thought of it rather then looking at the film completely by itself.

 

It's like....enjoying a video game but start to dislike it because other people dislike it....I dunno, im probably totally wrong.

 

Cultural phenomena do not happen in a vacuum, and it's unreasonable to expect someone who has been consciously and subconsciously completely inundated with constant reinforcement of this film's quality, to not have their expectations colored by any dissonance between the hype and their honest feelings. Frozen is not simply just a movie. There is its marketing to consider- in everything from actual ads to merchandise to songs playing on the store radio- there is the near-inescapable fan culture to consider, there is overwhelming film culture to consider- what its box office success means for Disney musicals and animated films going forward, there are gender and ethnic concerns to consider, and many many more. All of these things exist and will prey on one's personal thresholds, e.g., a person who doesn't like musicals is going to be more likely to snap at someone spontaneously singing Let It Go, and they'll be quicker and meaner about it than a person who likes musicals in that same situation. All of these facets of Frozen exist beyond its individual frames and sound bytes.

 

And let me be clear, Frozen fans did not escape any of this either. It would be impossible to. You tell me something's as good as Beauty and the Beast before I've seen it and you will cloud my judgement to some degree due to the comparison being something I can relate to, not because I can confirm it. And if my objectivity is lessened, I may like it more than I might have otherwise if that comparison didn't exist. And if other people around me like it, then I may want to share in that social circle and thus focus on the good qualities even more. There's nothing really wrong with this when it swings both ways. But we'd do well to remember that marketing and social reinforcement are really good at coloring people's perceptions of the media as time goes on, hence why many fans are coming down from their hype as the backlash has inevitably set in. No one is immune to any of it, so again, it's not really fair nor helpful to note that people are now protesting partly in response to the broader culture instead of just the film and only the film itself.

[Meta77]

I felt the movie was just overrated. it really had no  depth to it like disney movies of old. Would it have done as well if it were in 2d. Doubtful. But movies like Aladdin and the lion king at least developed their characters in a short time frame. Frozen was so easy to read it was like having dinner done before you even had it cooked. .......bad example.

[Pelly <3's U]

Frozen didn't resonate with me and my boyfriend the first time, but I can see there's been some hype backlash against it. I think that overall though amongst popular opinion it is still a very well liked movie. I mean fratguys at my work would constantly sing 'Do you want to build a snowman'. 

[Uraraka]

The main reason I like the song "let it go" is because I love singing, and this song is so complex to sing, that it is a challenge to me, and I have just about mastered it now!  lol Some day soon I will have to post it!

[Meta77]

Complex song............nah. Try singing work it out and hitting those high notes sitting at a stop light. Then you know complicated haha. Jk

[...]

Found this really interesting post about Frozen's character designs and its impact/place in the animation indsutry. Found myself agreeing with all of it actually, even if I do think it's still a good movie.

[ElectricAngel]

Found this really interesting post about Frozen's character designs and its impact/place in the animation indsutry. Found myself agreeing with all of it actually, even if I do think it's still a good movie.

No offense to anyone that agrees to this, but when I see posts like this I can only think "Does it matter?". I didn't notice how similar the designs are, but you know why? Because it doesn't matter. Plus, the mother barely appears at all in the story, and Elsa and Anna get different hairstyles and clothes to the point where they look completely different. So I don't see the need for all this nitpicking. And really, it doesn't affect the story or overall enjoyment of the film.

[Nepenthe]

Character design is kind of important for an animated film, since you're going to be looking at these characters for 90 and more minutes. The older Disney princesses had enough physical distinction in their faces to tell them apart, describe their personalities, and fit them into the overall world, even the Glen Keane ones from the 90s that look similar. But the sheer similarity between the women in Frozen does detract a bit from the appeal, especially in light of Rapunzel's existence, and when you put them side by side like that it's kind of "ehhhh."

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

No offense to anyone that agrees to this, but when I see posts like this I can only think "Does it matter?"

 

...The entire post is on why it does. The film's shortcomings, and people's grievances with them, don't just vanish because you choose to ignore them. If we're considering an animated film, we must consider its animation, and designs are a good chunk of that. You can still like the film, comrade, but you can't simply shut up criticism because you don't care about the subject.

[ElectricAngel]

It's not that I don't care. I seriously don't get where the complaints come from. Call me blind, but I see some clear differences in the characters. Heck, I blame this shot for people calling the characters "carbon copies". Sure, it's heavily Tangled inspired, but there are still some very key features every character has. The only thing the characters have in common in that shot is the bangs and the facial structure. 

 

But you know what? I think I'll just shut up at this point. I really don't feel like talking about Frozen again. To be honest, this film has just become an annoyance at this point. It's not a bad film, no no. I like it, but it's stuff like this that makes me feel as if I'm just wasting time. Sure, it's probably my fault for not having such a critical eye, but whatever. I'll stick to my opinions and just leave it at that.

[TearForFear]

By popular demand, the guy of Cinema Sins made a sins list about Frozen.

 

[DarkLight]

I'm surprised he didn't list "So the parents never gave Anna an excuse as to why Elsa couldn't play with her anymore? I mean, they could've just said, 'Hey Anna! Since your sister is going to be queen one day, she needs to study up on how to be one, so sorry, less playtime for you!'" since even I found that really odd watching the movie. It's like the parents never tried to help Anna out with this sudden isolation from her own sister and focused more on helping Elsa control her power.

 

But other than that, he did make some points I never considered and did an okay job addressing the film's flaws.

[iDEATH]

Found this really interesting post about Frozen's character designs and its impact/place in the animation indsutry. Found myself agreeing with all of it actually, even if I do think it's still a good movie.

 

Gotta say...i think that posts really badly written. The writer doesn't do anything to back up their points at all....hell, they don't even really make points at all, just vague claims.

The movie sucks! The story sucks! The writing is crap!

 

they spout all that...yet offer no reasons...what part of the story sucks? Why are the characters bad? They don't even go into why having three characters that look similar is a bad thing...just "I do animation and I have to work hard to make my characters unique". Well, good for you, but that doesn't mean that characters with similar looks don't have their place. That they can't or shouldn't exist.

 

They then go on to say "instead of being met with cohesive arguments we are left with such weak and trivial excuses like: "Well, they’re related!"

Why is that a weak or trivial excuse? The three caracter are related....they look so similar...because they're related.

 

The characters of Anna and Elsa look a lot alike but their hardly carbon copies of each other. There's subtle variations in their faces and very noticible variations in their style, personalities and body movements. There's no way anyone could get the two mixed up or confuse them as one character. They may look similar, but they're far from identical.

 

It's not even like there's ay genericism throughout the rest of the cast.

 

The film has a clear style and the characters are all built to fit into that style, but that style still offers up the oppertunity for a lot of differing looks, body shapes etc.

 

 

So yeah...long story short...similar looking sisters in an animated movie? Not that big of a problem to me

[ElectricAngel]

*snip*

THANK YOU! Someone gets it! Praise thee lord I'm not the only one here who thinks like this! Perhaps I should have worded my original post better, like you did here. But yeah, I totally agree with you. And posts like that are what piss me off about Tumblr. People making "claims" and post "facts" when everything is just coming out of their ass. But yeah I shouldn't rant about Tumblr here. Great post, mate. You hit the nail on the head with that one.

[Sean]

You try to shoot down the "they look too similar" argument by pointing out subtle differences between the female characters and drastic differences between the male ones. How about some drastic differences between the female characters for a change? How about different face and body shapes, rather than depending solely on traits that you have to analyze under a fucking microscope to point out?

 

Also, I don't know about you but when I look at that picture, I don't see different "style, personalities and body movements."

[iDEATH]

You try to shoot down the "they look too similar" argument by pointing out subtle differences between the female characters and drastic differences between the male ones. How about some drastic differences between the female characters for a change? How about different face and body shapes, rather than depending solely on traits that you have to analyze under a fucking microscope to point out?

 

Also, I don't know about you but when I look at that picture, I don't see different "style, personalities and body movements."

 

Were there more female characters in the film, there'd be more opportunity for variation in their designs. There's some variety of looks and shapes in the background characters that pepper the town scenes.

I'm all for more representative female characters in animation, more diversity in looks, shapes and personalities.

The fact that there's far more diversity in the male characters in Frozen has a lot to do with the fact that there simply aren't any other females in the film which is kind of a different issue, though one worth addressing...

 

As for not seeing different personalities and body movements. Yeah, that generic promo image doesn't show them off but surely you wouldn't den that they're in the film? Elsa is far stiffer and regal in her movements compared to Anna's more carefree and awkward body language. From a stylistic point of view, Elsa's wardrobe, pre-transformation at least is much more closed off and "proper" comapared to Anna's which is a little freer and casual