Frozen (Disney film)

Two royals travel to a galaxy far far away. The First Order recruits and arrests, and Chewie is suspicious.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 15th 2020 at 10:48:40 AM

I don't see any Pandering to the Base in Frozen II. If it was we'd have way more Elsa/Honeymaren teasing. Instead, it feels like Honeymaren and Ryder were major characters whose roles kept decreasing over the rewrites, to the point where they're barely relevant in the final film. Finding out about the fate of the Snow Sisters parents, and Kristoff trying to ask for Anna's hand in marriage, aren't pandery— they were, if anything, expected. They're natural progressions of themes from the first film.

Is Frozen II really Darker and Edgier? It felt lighter to me, aside from "The Next Best Thing". The psychological and familial themes seem a lot softer overall. It's actiony but not darker.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Feb 16th 2020 at 6:01:38 AM

Well "The Next Right Thing" is quite dark in itself, and on the whole it seems to me there are darker theme in Frozen 2. For one thing, we get to see a lot more of the sisters' reactions to the death of loved ones (her parents for Elsa, Elsa and Olaf for Anna), while in the first film this got reduced to a few frames and Elsa sobbing over the Annacicle. And the environment feels a lot more Everything Trying to Kill You than the first film ever did.

Didn't strike me as darker at all, particularly when comparing the two films' climaxes. In the first one, the winter has to be stopped right away or else everyone in the land will freeze. In the second, the dam has to be broken... uh, whenever, I guess, and if they don't do it... vagueness will happen, maybe.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 16th 2020 at 5:23:05 AM

The threat in this one is the spirits possibly destroying Arendelle if Elsa doesn't help deal with the dam.

That's why in the end Nokk and Elsa team up to save Arendelle once Anna destroys the dam.

Didn't strike me as darker at all, particularly when comparing the two films' climaxes. In the first one, the winter has to be stopped right away or else everyone in the land will freeze. In the second, the dam has to be broken... uh, whenever, I guess, and if they don't do it... vagueness will happen, maybe.

Let's face it, in the second movie, there was definitely a time sensitivity issue for those who had to be evacuated from their homes and town/city to the cliffs for an indeterminate period of time until Elsa and Anna figured out what was going on. Problem is, helping Arendelle stopped being the group's priority once they set foot in the forest. Kristoff was only concerned about his proposal (to a point I wanted to tell him "Dude, there's more important problems going on for you to deal with?"), Anna’s main concern was keeping Elsa safe, and Elsa was focused on Arendelle until she met the spirits and started on her journey to finding out her mother’s past. For the better portion of the movie, Arendelle was basically forgotten until the dam was broken and the flood happened...and then it lost importance again. It was always a secondary issue at best. Finding out more about the voice was established as the main reason for the journey. There are too many goals to be achieved and not all of them are convergent. There’s “save Arendelle”, “save the forest”, “find the voice”, “find out the truth”, “become a spirit” and “propose to girlfriend”…resulting in a confusing narrative.

Compare that to the first movie, where Anna never lost sight of the goal in hand, which was that Arendelle was frozen over and Elsa needed to undo the damage otherwise everyone would freeze to death. The urgency of helping Arendelle was always front and center there. Helping Arendelle and helping Elsa were wrapped up in the same overall goal of saving the day.

Yeah, but what happens if hypothetically Anna were to go "screw you, I'm not breaking the dam"? What's the consequence if the "set right what once went wrong" doesn't happen right away? The most we get is Pabbie saying something about not being able to see further into the future and possibly a ticking clock of maybe saving Elsa's life. But that's all so vague compared to the first film's very tangible stakes of Anna slowly dying and the entire land freezing over.

That's why I said earlier here that the world in this film feels empty. With the exception of Mathias, the other characters are barely more than 2 dimensional exposition devices (I'm not sure Honeymaren or Yelena get more lines than Oaken in the first film, and he was a side character, even if an Ensemble Dark Horse one), and even the stakes (Arendelle being threatened by the spirits) seemed pushed to the background.

Thinking back about the film, I also realised that even the sisters' relationship is not handled in a particularly satisfactory manner either, especially on Elsa's side. She spends a good chunk of the film entranced by this call and seems to be neglecting Anna, culminating with her pushing her sister away for her own good (something she spent the first film learning not to do) despite having promised the contrary. Granted, here it was justified, but this is never addressed once the sisters reunite. And Elsa does not even tell her sister what she found in Ahtohallan (it's really too bad they removed that scene where she shows her a memory of their parents) before deciding to stay in the forest. Basically I couldn't help finding Elsa a bit dickish to Anna toward the end of the movie.

Edited by C105 on Feb 17th 2020 at 10:51:08 AM

You said the world of the first movie was also kinda empty, too.

Then my mistake if I was not clear the first time. The first film did had a reduced cast, but the background characters (the Arendellians bystanders, Oaken, the ambassadors, etc...) had enough personality and quirks to add some depth to the film. Here in Frozen 2 there are very few characters outside of the core cast who seem to be anything else than 2-D Mr. Exposition.

Edited by C105 on Feb 17th 2020 at 2:56:37 PM

The movie felt a lot less focused than the first. As x5 pointed out, none of the characters have a clearly defined objective or motivation, so the movie feels a bit aimless, and leaves the audience struggling to get invested.

The first movie was also more thematically coherent I think. Frozen had very clear themes about the bonds of sisterhood and acceptance of yourself and people who are different. But what was Frozen 2 actually about?

Edited by megaeliz on Feb 17th 2020 at 9:59:52 AM

x2 Thanks for linking the earlier comment, that was helpful.

x1 Something about growing older, being together even when apart, and colonial restitutions, I think.

I'm not entirely sure the writers thought of all that. It seems their main point was that Elsa needed to learn to love herself. Which would have been fine, if the fact that she needed to learn that had been better brought up during the course of the film (especially since one could otherwise easily think she had learned that in the first film), and if the tipping point had not been done through a song, where it is less easy to convey information.

Edited by C105 on Feb 17th 2020 at 4:38:52 PM

And the only indication that Elsa "doesn't feel like she belongs in Arendelle" is a single line of "Into the Unknown".

2 has the trappings of being darker and edgier. It's just overall not a very well-crafted film, which is why it only has the trappings of being darker and edgier.

It tries to make you feel like it's a more adult and grown-up film by having people dying and being sad and throwing in some surface-level attempts to talk about environmental issues and colonialism, but doesn't actually have anything meaningful to say.

Disney really hasn't done much to improve on the topic of colonialism since Pocahontas, what with relegating the Northuldra to be more like window dressing.

Ehh, I would say Pocahontas is worse because of its "both sides are bad" and coverup of a real life kidnapping. This one I would call... decent, somewhat progressive but not that far.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if the problem is that people are equating Emotional Honesty with Darker and Edgier.

Emotional honesty in a story means following through on character arcs and exploring how the characters would realistically be affected by their experiences, and isn’t necessarily the same as Darker and Edgier.

Frozen 2 is darker, but it’s more surface level. There really isn’t a lot of substance or emotional weight behind it.

Edited by megaeliz on Feb 17th 2020 at 9:48:16 AM

The original feels darker to me, though much of it is subtle. Elsa's depression and anxiety, Anna's feelings of inadequacy, etc. II has more mature themes, like colonialism, racism, and grief songs, but it doesn't feel more mature, Most of it is fairly shoved to the side in exchange for a standard self-discovery themed adventure.

"I wonder if the problem is that people are equating Emotional Honesty with Darker and Edgier."

Ish, kind of, sort of. Really it's a matter of what do how to define "darker" and whether we are using the "edgier" part in a disparaging sense or not. "Dark" is kind of a nebulous term to start with; I mean, is anything where someone dies and they actually use the d-word considered "dark"? Or does it actually need to be something above average for the setting? Is a single person dying because someone else murdered him out of envy equal amounts of dark when it happens in The Lion King versus Romance of the Three Kingdoms vs Warhammer 40K? Or does the magnitude of the act not matter as much compared to what the work itself focuses on, which is why Avatar the Last Airbender appears to want you to feel sadder that Katara was forced to learn and use bloodbending, rather that Hama had to watch every waterbender she knew die or get captured as they fought a losing battle against the Fire Nation?

In general, though, "Emotional Honesty" is the part that works ought to be striving for, and it just so happens that often this results in "darker" topics because delving into those topics unlocks the full range of possible emotional responses from the characters.

All brilliant points there, mate.

Now to add my own two cents, I just don't think Disney (well, modern Disney at least) is consistently good at being Emotionally Honest.

They've got flashes in the pan like Zootopia, but they don't have the guts that they used to have in the 90s.

That's where the idea of emotional honesty comes in. What makes the first movie work, is that all of the character's motivations and arcs are logical extensions of their characters and circumstances, and work to serve and push the story forward, and vice versa. The thematically darker elements make sense within the context (and in fact, are a consequence) of the story, and aren’t used as a means to itself.

Edited by megaeliz on Feb 17th 2020 at 11:42:55 AM

To add to C105's point about the world feeling emptier, there's the fact that all those characters who had scenes and screentime in Frozen like Hans and the Duke of Weselton have been replaced by the spirits who are…a bit flat.

I mean, come on. They don’t talk. Their interactions are quite violent at first, and they’re not people. Which I suppose contributes to create the feeling of “empty world”.

Matthias was fun. Honeymaren, Ryder and Yelena could've been interesting, but they weren’t explored so in the end…so yeah, less dimensional than Oaken.

Also, I think the fact that there was no villain made everything more confusing. I think if you asked a kid what Frozen was about, they'd tell you it was about the sisters vs. Hans, but about Frozen II, they'd scratch their heads.

For their modern movies, Disney doesn't seem to get the idea that a straight-up villain CAN work.

It's just that they need to be a more complex and sophisticated foil to the heroes rather than a singing antagonistic plot device that gets foiled at the end.

But the water horse and the salamander will sell more toys!