Drathnoxis said:I finally got around to watching Frozen, and I am completely stunned at how bad it is compared to how good it was hyped up to be. I will be going into complete spoilers so if you haven't seen it, and (for some reason) still want to, GET OUT!
Probably my biggest gripe with this movie is Elsa and her powers, they just make no sense at all. So for all her life, she is struggling to control her power and is completely unable to. The only way she can stop herself from randomly spurting out bursts of frost is to cover her hands with ordinary gloves. This doesn't really make sense as at one point she freezes a lake by stepping on it even though she isn't barefoot, but whatever. The important thing is that she has no control over her power, it just does whatever the heck it wants... That is until she climbs the mountain. Then she has absolute control over her power, she can create intricately designed staircases, floors, and chandeliers. She has so much control that she completely spears an attacking soldier to the wall using icicles without injuring him! If that doesn't require the keenest control over your power I don't know what does. And yet, even though she has such fine control, she is still completely unable to stop herself from somehow freezing the world. How does this even work? Why is she even affecting the city when before now she's needed to be in contact with the things that she freezes. She is so insanely powerful that she is basically an ice god, who can freeze the entire world in an instant. And she was just born like this? Just randomly her parents popped out an ice god? And even though she is an ice god with complete control over her power, she still has absolutely no control over her power. It just doesn't make sense and is never explained.
More than that, why wasn't Elsa ever sent to someone who could teach her to use her powers? The trolls obviously knew a lot about such things, why didn't she study with them? They said it was only going to get worse, but nobody ever thought to take the advice of the mystical wizard creatures that instantly cured the magic ice that Anna got in her eye? On that note, I also thought it was strange that ice to the head was an instant KO for Anna, but the far more deadly ice to the heart took forever to kick in. She's completely fine for like 15 minutes, and then after the song --boom-- she's dying. And the way they fix her blizzard? Love. Ugh, I'm going to puke. This is so cliche and stupid, yeah forget diligent training and self-control, you just need to love someone. This doesn't even make any sense anyway. Why did she confine herself to her room for all those years if not for love of her sister? Obviously she didn't want to hurt Anna again because she loved her.
Now onto my second biggest complaint: Hans. This guy. Like what the heck? For the whole movie he is characterized to be caring, kind, noble, and honorable, everything that a prince should be. Then completely out of nowhere he's suddenly the biggest sociopathic jerk who ever lived. Whatever happened to that old storytelling rule "show, don't tell"? For the whole movie we are shown that he is caring to Anna, and shares interests with her, while also having great chemistry. We are shown that he cares for the people under his rule, personally handing out blankets in the cold and maintaining order. The very second Anna's horse comes back without her he leads a charge into the frozen wasteland to find her. When he meets resistance at the ice palace he does battle with a freaking ice giant, risking life and limb in the hope of rescuing Anna and saving his people. Then when the dukes soldiers are about to kill Elsa, he interferes respecting Anna's love for her sister who is clearly causing a great catastrophe to befall the land. What proof do we have for him being a sociopath? We are simply told that he was just a manipulating douchebag that has no love whatsoever for Anna and just wants power. What? His character just pulls a complete 180. This guy's idea of an easy power grab involved fighting ice giants? Not to mention that he has to be one of the greatest actors ever to pull this off. From this point on he is simply the bad guy and loses all redeeming qualities.
A lot of people say that this movie turns the "love at first sight" trope on its head, but I don't think that's true at all. Hans and Anna's dating montage was far too good at giving the impression that their love was blooming and, personally, the montage made it seem like a fair deal of time had passed. I know it was supposed to be one night, but the montage doesn't give that impression. Also, it's implied that Kristoff hasn't met too many girls, living in the woods by himself, so Anna is probably the first girl he's gotten to know. How is that not the same as Hans and Anna's "love at first sight" or worse, since he's pretty much falling for the first girl he meets. The trolls also try to set them up, simply because she's the first girl he's brought home. Not to mention his whole diatribe against her marrying a guy she's only known a day was way out of line and just reeked of jealousy. It's not like Kristoff knew Anna for longer either. She knew both guys for about a day before deciding she was in love with them. No this movie completely failed at averting the trope, having two loves at first sight isn't really a whole lot more sophisticated that only having one. At least when there is only one, there is some evidence of their devotion. Basically once Kristoff came in as the new love interest the movie didn't know what to do with the old one of Hans and simply made him evil to get rid of him.
Speaking of Anna, I didn't really like her as a character. She was such a giddy moron that I could hardly stand her. I wouldn't be surprised at all if she fell off a balcony and broke her neck on the pavement, the way she was always carelessly dancing around at great heights. She nearly did this before Hans' horse caught her. Also there was that time she cut the supporting rope causing them to fall hundreds of feet, only to emerge completely unharmed, cause "there was snow at the bottom." Yeah, given how popular this movie is I wonder how long it will be until a kid breaks their legs jumping off the roof into a snow pile. Olaf, the brainless snowman was pretty annoying too, and I simply didn't find him to be at all funny.
Finally, the music. I just didn't like it, and I'm a person that likes musicals. There was way too much of it, it was like the movie couldn't go two minutes without breaking into another terrible song for no reason near the beginning. The songs themselves sounded like the same garbage that is heard on the radio all the time and completely lacked the magic of songs from other Disney movies such as The Little Mermaid. Also that Vuelie song at the beginning and end sounded a lot like Yub Nub from Star Wars to me. The songs never seemed to flow naturally in the story and were simply there because Disney movies have songs so they needed to have songs in the movie.
Overall, the story just felt mechanical and never gave enough depth to the characters or plot to make it feel real. I will admit that it was beautifully animated, but what isn't these days?
Holy wall of text, Batman! This got kind of long, didn't it? Anyway, what do you think? Am I right, or do you think that Frozen was actually an excellent well written film?
Spoilers:
The answer to your question is very similar: Liberal politics. This movie was pretty much pandering (intentional or otherwise) to deep left wing sentiments, hence it's praise despite being one of Disney's weaker movies over all.
The thing is that "Frozen" subverts the usual Disney tropes by pretty much mocking things like "love at first sight", having Prince Charming be an exploitive sociopath, and putting all of the power and agency in the hands of female characters. What's more Elsa doesn't wind up hitching herself to any male characters nor is she really rescued by one. What's more some reading into the body language (I believe Movie Bob has done this as well) have commented that Elsa might very well be Disney's "Lesbian Princess" given some of the burlesque inspired dance moves and such.
The basic idea here is that young girls will pretty much embrace any princess they are given, the success of Disney movies at this point being pretty much a given. Elsa being such a "good liberal icon" in the movie being more feminist in theme and possibly a lesbian is seen as a positive thing in indoctrinating them away from the "offensive Disney stereotype" of men saving or completing women, or women pretty much biding their time waiting for a guy to fall in love with, etc...
To be honest there isn't anything really wrong with a lot of this, though to be honest I find nothing wrong with traditional portrayals. It's just written like crap and is pretty much designed to beat you over the head with "oh look, at how edgy and liberal we're being, look at how in line we are with hipster politics" without really developing the story or it's concepts. We've mocked love at first sight, given the women primary agency, and made what would normally be the hero who saves the day into a first order douchebag, dropped some very subtle lesbian hints for those that want to read into them... but neglected everything else.
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That said I get the impression that Elsa can do whatever she wants with Ice when she concentrates, and the thing she is focusing on happens, but due to her subconscious the power leaks and does whatever it's going to do. The gloves probably work by being a psychological focus, not because the clothing blocks her powers, but because he mind views them as doing so which keeps her subconscious under control. Throughout sci-fi and fantasy there have been similar things. That said the movie is not very explicit in setting up it's concepts, just beating you over the head with it's "messages" which was the intent of the film more than the story.
That said if they do make a sequel as they have been threatening I've been joking that they should get the rights from Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta's estate to rip off "Fire and Ice" let Elsa go full villain and fill the role of "Nekron" maybe even taking the name. If we're going to go with dumb ideas it would be worth it just to see her sister pump iron and abuse 'roids to get a proper Frazetta build for the final battle... oh yeah and then they can call Olaf's "story arc" foreshadowing when he's the one to open the volcano at the end.