Frozen (Disney film)

"Except that the released plot revealed that Anna is under the curse now and now she conveniently has a bunch of men helping her out. Instead of a storyline where man needs help from a woman. Maybe it is a bit of a leap, but since Disney's pushing the formula so hard now, is it really that much of a stretch?"

Could you show me a link to that information? I was under the impression that Elsa was the one under curse.

"I mean, at least in Tangled, Flynn was taking over the part of a character who did help Rapunzel and did take a nasty injury in the process (and Rapunzel even saved him the same way!) The only major difference was that he and Rapunzel actually spent real time together. See? That's a GOOD adaptation - maintains the spirit and the core cast, but utilizes the difference in mediums to tell a fresh story."

And this only became apparent once the movie was actually released. The plot summary released before the movie certainly didn't contain this information. So maybe we should wait for Frozen to actually come out, or at the very least have more information released, before judging.

edited 4th Dec '12 7:47:30 PM by qindarka

I went looking for the bit about Anna being cursed, since that was the first plot Disney announced.

However, the new press release seems to have removed saving Anna all-together:

So now it's just a generic fantasy action film >_< Good going, Disney!

By the way, those "general plot summaries" you threw back at me? They're the actual high concepts for both the films and those stories. The Snow Queen and Frozen don't have the same high concept at all.

"A young girl goes on an epic journey to save her beloved friend Kai from the Snow Queen, with the help of the many women she meets along the way."

"A young girl and a hunstman go on an epic journey to defeat Anna's sister, the Snow Queen and save her from herself."

Okay, so there's an epic journey and a Snow Queen, but it still conveniently removed the female cast and the girl saving a boy in favor a woman being in need of saving(Elsa).

This is mainly a problem because it's a really nasty alteration from one of the few fairy tale stories with strong, well-developed, active female protagonists.

Somehow Disney could pull out a good movie, but it's not going to be a good Snow Queen movie. Maybe we'll be lucky and it'll be exactly like Tangled where the press lies to us about it being a male-led action comedy and instead it's a faithful and fresh adaptation after all.

edited 4th Dec '12 7:55:45 PM by Rebochan

"So now it's just a generic fantasy action film >_< Good going, Disney!"

Of course, we won't be able to know if it's 'generic' until we actually see it. It's about the execution and there are plenty of details they are not telling us about yet.

This movie couldn't come out soon enough. It's hard to discuss it with such limited info.

"A young girl goes on an epic journey to save her beloved friend Kai from the Snow Queen, with the help of the many women she meets along the way." "A young girl and a hunstman go on an epic journey to defeat Anna's sister, the Snow Queen and save her from herself."

From what little information we have, I have been led to believe that the quest is to save Elsa, not defeat her so more similarities there. And of course, you are adding details to these 'high concepts' in an attempt to differentiate them whereas you did nothing of the sort for the previous films you used as comparisons.

On a sidenote, I believe that Elsa is a merger of both Kai and The Snow Queen, with her taking the role of Kai more prominently. Also think that this is the reason they changed Gerda's name.

"Okay, so there's an epic journey and a Snow Queen, but it still conveniently removed the female cast and the girl saving a boy in favor a woman being in need of saving(Elsa). This is mainly a problem because it's a really nasty alteration from one of the few fairy tale stories with strong, well-developed, active female protagonists."

I admit this is unfortunate. It probably doesn't factor into the quality of the film but female portrayals in films in general are far from satisfactory.

edited 4th Dec '12 8:08:16 PM by qindarka

Bakshi was still recognizably adapting the source material though. It mainly falters due to its insanely fast pacing, some strange casting choices, and mostly just having to drop a lot of material because the source material is massive and Bakshi wouldn't have been able to get a three-hour epic animated film greenlit in 1978. Oh, and it wasn't finished :P And Sam is really annoying in that version.

But I think it has earned its cult following. Even Jackson was a huge fan and used it as inspiration. It's still not 'Golden' ;) And for what it's worth, Jackson took some liberties too, but he still kept the essential elements of Tolkien's prose.

Truth be told, I'd probably watch "Golden," too, if only out of morbid curiosity.

You also forgot Bakshi's epic animation. My friends and I refer to the Gandalf and Frodo scene in Bag End as the "zombie Gandalf" scene.

edited 4th Dec '12 8:03:40 PM by CorrTerek

I think we have a thread discussing Disney adaptations somewhere on Western Animation...

Rebo, can you make clear what exactly your issue is? Because part of it seems to be lack of faithfulness to an adaptation, and the specific alteration of the female characters. Anything else?

Those are my beefs - the adaptation is completely, from where we see it right now, In Name Only. And one of the elements of that is the replacement of a majority female cast with a majority male cast, which is actually downright insulting to its audience.

If they produce an adaptation that gets back on track with its source material and restores the ACTUAL cast, my objections go away.

Well, I really wish it was in 2D, but that's a pipe dream at this point and honestly not even close to a deal breaker.

Ha ha, yea, the rotoscoping is really something else. I can at least give it a defense of them trying to be more experimental and find a way to animate the kind of epic scenes described in the books on what appears to have been a pretty tight budget. The Balrog though...oh god...but at least they were trying.

"And one of the elements of that is the replacement of a majority female cast with a majority male cast, which is actually downright insulting to its audience."

Well, the two most important characters are still female.

I still think Disney put all these creative decisions in Tangled, Frozen, and their upcoming Oz film because they weren't able to get the rights to Wicked.

edited 4th Dec '12 9:16:44 PM by Shota

I understand the comparisons between Frozen and Wicked. But what does this have to do with Tangled?

Tangled was originally a much straighter adaptation of Rapunzel that got hit by Executive Meddling in an attempt to downplay the female lead and compete with the quirky Dreamworks films. This was all in response to The Princess and the Frog underperforming, which Disney suits blamed entirely on the lead being female (something they did not do when their male-oriented films performed on the same level.)

Fortunately, it seems that was largely marketing - a lot of the hype made it sound like Rapunzel had literally been written into a supporting role in her own movie, and Disney really played up Flynn as the dashing main character. In the film itself, it's clear that he's got just as much importance as in the original story and he's still a co-lead with the (former) title character.

Yes, but what has it do with Wicked? Thats what I was asking.

Anyway, I honestly don't see how Rapunzel would have worked as a straight adaptation. Seems like it would be rather short of material.

edited 4th Dec '12 9:54:18 PM by qindarka

I just mean none of the comedic elements - a proper epic fairy tale.

OK, this is just a personal pet peeve, but what Disney adaptation doesn't have comedic elements to it? Even frickin Snow White had Dopey. The Lion King, often renowned as Disney's most epic film, had a character who was constantly talking about how gassy he was. If you think comedy is something new in Disney films, you need to have the Nostalgia Filter goggles surgically removed from your body because they've embedded themselves into your flesh.

The comedy of the Seven Dwarves is extremely subtle, based on character interplay and largely intended to create seven distinct characters out of what could have been seven forgettable parts.

As for The Lion King, that's actually exactly what I'm getting at. Timon and Puumba were added to try and prevent the death of Mufasa from bringing the picture down too hard and the way they talk and act is completely out of sync with the rest of the movie and its characters.

Kind of like a parrot voiced by Gilbert Gottfried that starts doing stand-up on the villain's shoulder to try and cut down on the menace.

Tangled is largely more on the subtle side, but it still occasionally veers into "zany" elements because hey, Dreamworks does it!

So in other words, a completely comedic Disney film is fine? I suppose that makes sense only if it KNOWS it has to go all the way. The Emperors New Groove turned out great because it was intentionally funny all the way through, and the Timon And Pumbaa show had them more in their element, whereas Chicken Little's story didn't make sense to the point where no one cared if it was funny or not.

I agree with that. The Emperors New Groove worked as a pure goofy comedy because nothing was out of place within the world the movie created. Well, I guess ancient Incas shouldn't be so modernized, but the movie pretty much ran with it from the start and didn't try to mash those elements into a serious movie.

So, getting back to the snow queen, a talking snowman that looks like this◊ seems to be more of the "mood killer" type. On other hand, I found some more recent art of the movie and at least the reindeer seems to be drawn in a more realistic style. I'm hoping that means it's going to be more along the lines of a dignified but intelligent animal and not...talking snowman.

...dude, seriously, talking snowmen always make me think of Jack Frost. The Michael Keaton one.

I look at that and can't think "Oscar nomination", I think '"A-DUUURR HURHURRRR!!!!"'

But remember, one of the first pieces of art I saw for Princess was goofy Ray, and he wound up becoming my absolute favorite character in that film!! You never know.

Really, this whole naysaying is bumming me out.

Of course, first impressions from small snippets of imformation and concept art aren't always correct. I thought Brave was going to be awesome from the small snippets of info we got beforehand. Found it to be So Okay, It's Average +1 when I saw it.

"So, getting back to the snow queen, a talking snowman that looks like this◊ seems to be more of the "mood killer" type. On other hand, I found some more recent art of the movie and at least the reindeer seems to be drawn in a more realistic style. I'm hoping that means it's going to be more along the lines of a dignified but intelligent animal and not...talking snowman."

Eh, as far as I know, no art for the reindeer has been officially released yet. Do you have access to inside information or something?

Hey maybe Disney should distribute that Russian CGI Snow Queen. That'll teach us.

Yeah, if you thing the snowman looks ridiculous and will be a pointless comic relief, check out the trailer for the upcoming russian Snow queen look at this troll. http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/wizart-releases-new-pics-trailer-for-snow-queen/

edited 5th Dec '12 7:36:03 PM by Brokenshell44

The Snow Queen in that version looks absolutely horrid. Rest looks fine, in view of their budgetary constraints.

Hmm. I wonder if Frozen took the drastic turn it did because of the possible Dueling Movies scenario it would've had with this version...

...Nah, probably not.

edited 6th Dec '12 2:17:38 AM by PippingFool

http://family-room.ew.com/2012/12/13/disneys-frozen-animated-feature-reveals-icy-concept-art-first-look/

An article and a piece of concept art.

edited 13th Dec '12 5:20:00 PM by DS9guy