Reviews WesternAnimation / Frozen 2013

Disney's been reusing animation for so long it's hard to tell at this point if it's actually cutting corners or homage to their earlier stuff. Certainly Frozen is a film indebted to its past.

Who's Eona? That actually sounds like a pretty cool name, but I think you mean Anna.

The death of princesses’ parents is shown so quickly, it barely has any impact. Anna tearfully lamenting to her sister in the following scene meant nothing?

I honestly can't think of what "Rolling in the Deep" has in common with "Let It Go". One is a song about warning an ex-lover about incomng revenge, the other is "screw it all, I'm finally going to be myself" song.

Why would you want to leave after Let it go? One of the best bits. Seems...well... rather pretentious

^ I knew I heard that one wrong! Guess it gives me away as a non-native speaker.

Anna tearfully lamenting to her sister in the following scene meant nothing?

Notice I said barely. Yes, there was impact, but nowhere near as much as it should have been. The whole sequence effectively goes "We're leaving on an undefined business, sorry - 5-second shot of ship sinking - Anna crying", and because of it the main emotion I felt was WTF. It would have been much better if they did one of the following:

The ship is shown to be in rough weather and is rocked around a bit before being overwhelmed and going under. We see her parents' panicked looks and hear their last words as they accept the inevitable.

OR, if they truly didn't have time and/or resources for that, they should have not shown the ship at all and instead had a person directly informing Anna of their demise. Then, we would've been able to see the anticipation of news on her face turn to shock and tears of grief. Either of these approaches (or maybe both, if resources allow for it) would have made far more impact than what we got.

Finally, I might be confusing songs here (I've been trying to avoid modern pop as much as possible for about two years), but I was referring to the tonal/melodic structure of the song, rather than the lyrics (which are interchangeable with modern pop anyway). It definitely had been adapted from one of modern radio "classics", and I'm 82% sure that was Rolling in The Deep.

^ As a wise man (woman?) once said, each person is different in their tastes. While I can enjoy quite a lot of films and literature generally thought of as low-brow alongside the established classics (and vice versa), when it comes to music I have a very solid aversion to anything from/inspired by the mainstream pop/rap/etc. of the last eight years. It's either the older stuff (like Eagles or Scorpions) or the game soundtracks for me, I'm afraid.

The labourers’ song in the opening took quite a few hints from the Hobbit dwarf song Or the dwarves' song took inspiration from the many mountain men carols that "Frozen Heart" was emulating. I doubt they had time to copy a song that debuted during this film's production.

Actually showing the parents' demise would have been too dark, in my opinion. Shooting the sinking from a distance is a more respectful depiction, while a visceral sinking scene would be too "exciting" and thus make it hard to feel sad when our blood is pumping, kinda like a war scene. It also would have made the audience identify with them during that moment, when this scene is meant to be primarily from Anna's perspective. In her and Elsa's view, it's like her parents have literally sailed out of their lives, and out of the story as well. Unlike Mufasa's death, their death is not the central conflict starter, Elsa's condition is. This film chose to leave out details that would delay the story, like explaining how Elsa got her powers.

Rolling in the Deep still sounds nothing like Let It Go in tune or melody. RITD has a backup chorus, LIG has none. LIG has orchestral bridges, RITD has none. And interchangeable with pop lyrics? Pop songs don't have lyrics like "frozen fractals" (which pleased my geometry side, never thought I'd hear "fractals" in a song ever). And then one could make the argument that every Disney protagonist song sounds like a "pop song" if you try hard enough. "Part of Your World", "When Will My Life Begin", "Reflection", etc.

Rolling in the Deep still sounds nothing like Let It Go in tune or melody.

If you say so, then so be it. I honestly have no intention of analysing the similarities between Disney's songs and pop songs over the years and have this turn into a 100-comment argument that proves nothing like one over here. At the end of the day, I still didn't like it, but I accept that you and some other people did.

Actually showing the parents' demise would have been too dark, in my opinion.

Well, Finding Nemo famously opened with close-ups of a shark eating everybody in sight and it worked, so I don't really think that. If anything, Frozen is already rather light, even by Disney standards: that's their first film in years where not even a villain dies at the end (good idea on that one, BTW. Him being in jail at his home country was a better conclusion.) Plus, there's always more than one way to shoot a scene, regardless of what David Fincher might say. If they didn't want it to be too "exciting" for instance, it could have had extended shots of ship struggling in waters at a distance, then cut close to Anna's parents as they're trapped in a room on the ship and then pan out/fade out slowly as the water level inexorably rises.

In her and Elsa's view, it's like her parents have literally sailed out of their lives, and out of the story as well. Unlike Mufasa's death, their death is not the central conflict starter, Elsa's condition is. This film chose to leave out details that would delay the story, like explaining how Elsa got her powers.

OK, but then it would've been better to break Show, Don't Tell and not show the ship and all and just show Anna's reaction at length as she's told of their demise. That would have been far more powerful than a pointlessly short shot that achieves nothing besides (poorly) substituting for verbal exposition.

I'm with Tuckerscreator that I thought using the ship to show their depths was more tasteful than dwelling on the scene would have been in this story, but also more interesting than pure verbal exposition after the event. And I think it's more appropriate to the tone and audience.

My only worry was I wasn't sure if kids would realise that they were dead. I don't think there were any signs of that happening, although I didn't watch the film with any particularly young kids.

Finding Nemo is a Pixar film, not Disney, so they do things differently. Bambi's mom's death? Overheard, but offscreen. Cinderella's birth parents, Ariel's mom, Lilo's parents, Tarzan's, etc, are all skipped past. The only exception I can think of is Mufasa's because Simba was there to witness. Again, because of keeping the perspective with the protagonist.

It would've been better to break Show, Don't Tell and not show the ship at all: We need some kind of proof that they did die; how would we know the informer was telling the truth? The ship's distant sinking provides a balance between too much detail and not enough. We just need to know that their ship sank because of a storm. We don't need to know specifically when they died, but do need know they are definitely dead. There's a reason why Show, Don't Tell is a rule, because the audience will believe what they see, but doubt what they only hear.

"Characters weren't blatantly reused..."

yes they were

look at repunzel, elsa, and anna.

They are the exact same character model with a palette swap.

I don't get that argument. I'd heard someone say something similar before I watched Tangled (and I'd heard that Rapunzel had the same personality as Anna) and it's just not true. Rapunzel has a very long face with high cheekbones and kind of goofy sticking out ears and her nose sticks up a lot. She's the Disney princess who looks most like a real person and whilst she's pretty, a lot of her face isn't traditional beautiful. Rapunzel looks like the girl who reads books under a tree in secondary school.

Whereas Anna has a really round face and it's pulled back a lot. They have the same eyes but that's about it. Elsa looks even less like Rapunzel.

I mean the world in general is still figuring out how to animate human faces in a nice looking way, Pixar dodged the question for most of their career, so there's some design sensibilities shared, but they really aren't palette swaps.

And Anna and Elsa are supposed to look similar because they're sisters.

Because all sisters look identical to each other, right? Right. >.>

They dont' look similar because they're "sisters", they look similar because the studio was aiming to make them both "pretty" and the image of what a "pretty girl" looks like has become so narrow that it allowed for literally zero variety.

Not all sisters look similar, but some do and in this case it allows for a lot of visual dichotomy shots. Like this◊, or this◊, or these◊ [[? two]]. By having them look similar, it creates a greater contrast between their two very different personalities, because we instinctively try to imagine one acting like the other only to find they can't.

Last link was supposed to be this one◊.

And as well as that, in the wider context of being Disney princesses it is important that they actually look related to each other. It makes who they are more iconic if you can still see that relationship between the two of them even when you're not watching the film itself. If we were in a situation where you couldn't tell that Anna was closer to Elsa than Rapunzel or Snow White, you'd lose something.

And as Tuckerscreator says, it makes the differences in their personality more marked, but even amongst the two of them the smaller differences in appearance are also important when contrasted to the similarities. Elsa has higher cheekbones, her face is sharper and paler and she's taller. It marks her out as the more 'royal' and responsible, but also cold and aloof one. Whereas Anna has a really round face with freckly cheeks because she's the more open and embracing of the two. [1]◊ I think their looks have been very carefully chosen by people who wanted to say specific things with their designs

Incidentally, just as an interesting thing, this is a picture of some of the changes that Elsa went through before they decided on this particular face [1]

Note in the first four draft pics Elsa wasn't related to Anna yet.