I haven’t seen it yet but I spoiled myself by looking it up on the Movie Spoiler website. I almost always do that to myself if I can’t get to a movie within a couple of days of opening. Stupid but can’t be undone now.
I hate the sound of the ending. I guess I can’t know my own opinion for myself until I see exactly how it’s handled, but it sounds pretty crappy.
[SPOILER]It seems Elsa ends up going to live in the enchanted forest with the spirits of earth, wind, fire, and water because she is the bridge between those spirits and the human world.
Umm, okay… Why do these spirits need a bridge exactly? Elsa has powers but she is otherwise human. She belongs with humans, just IMO. Especially since the spirits are going to be able to create fire and wind and whatever else quite well enough on their own without her around. She’s gonna be hella bored.
Sure, she can go visit Anna, the new queen of Arandelle, in the castle whenever she wants BUT IT’S NOT THE SAME!
Okay, it’s unrealistic for them to be joined at the hip for their whole lives, but if there’s going to be a separation I’d like to see it make more sense.[/SPOILER]
Sorry so much of this was under spoiler tags but the thing that really sticks in my craw is apparently at the very end.
Has anyone seen it yet or planning to see it? I hope someone will post here after they see it and offer their perspective.
This could almost be a rant in the Pit, actually, because I was anticipating this movie for months and months and then when it gets here it’s a letdown AND something crappy happened in my personal life and I needed this movie to cheer me up.
Just got back from watching it with my son and daughter.
It was a little… complicated at times. Didn’t have that nice simple storyline the first one had. It also seemed like there were multiple “I now realize what I have to do” moments, way more than there needed to be. The songs weren’t as memorable as the first movie’s either. I couldn’t tell which was meant to be the “Let It Go” of this movie; seems like they maybe tried to hard to create that “gut punch” song, and there were no fun songs.
My thoughts on the end:
Anna doesn’t strike me as queen material. I think she would’ve been the better choice for the spirit bridge character, while keeping Elsa the queen.
Just a few of my initial thoughts, granted they’re all more negative than positive.
This doesn’t have that rewatchable feel as the original. Keep in mind that I say that as a 45 year old man; my eight year old daughter might think otherwise.
Thanks. I bet kids would be more forgiving, true. I’m just kind of surprised they went this direction with it since the first one was so popular with kids and lots of adults too. I loved it, flaws and all.
I don’t even mind the second one having a darker tone but need it to make sense and still have a happy ending. Maybe I would have preferred to keep the source of Elsa’s powers a mystery.
Anna didn’t seem to be queen material at the beginning of the show, but she has matured since the end of the last movie. She also had a growth arc through this movie. I can see her growing into it.
Olaf also has matured since the end of the last movie. He’s definitely not queen material, but I loved his song.
I need to learn to sing that one. It’ll get funnier the older I get.
I was impressed with the theme of discovering and righting old wrongs. In the end, the “bridge” connected Arendelle to the spirits/magic. The Northuldra were already connected and the former king of Arendelle distrusted them because of it.
The spirits may have wanted the bridge in order to bring the people together, but I assumed that they mostly wanted the dam broken, so that they’d be free, and the bridge was needed to do that.
At the end of the movie, Elsa’s with the Northuldrans who are still human but very definitely a First Peoples* sort of culture as opposed to the Arendellian’s western european flavored portrayal. I think the idea is that the spirits work in conjunction with the people closest to nature. Having a pair of sisters in each world but connected by family protects the spirits and Northuldrans from another attack by Arendelle since it would be pitting sister against sister. And Arendelle benefits from having a magically augmented ally, one assumes.
Honestly Elsa didn’t seem to do a huge amount of queening either so I don’t see why Anna can’t shoulder the burden. Besides, I don’t think it would be that hard to make a case that Frozen 2 demonstrates Anna’s got some codependency and boundary issues. The separation could be good for her!
Yeah, the movie’s a garbage fire. I still love it. Weirdly, I thought Olaf worked really well this time around. “This is called controlling what we can control when everything is out of control!”
*I’m appropriating the Canadian phrase since I keep wanting to say native american and that’s clearly not correct since the film is generically scandinavian and Disney worked with Sami representatives on the depiction.
I guess this is a good explanation of it. However, surely Arendelle and the rest of the world haven’t had any shortage wind and fire just because those spirits were trapped in the forest! I’m having trouble letting go of the overthinking for this one, whereas I could ignore anything for the first one.
Much was made in the first movie about how Elsa was raised to be more serious than Anna, both because she was next in line for the throne but also because of her powers that she was constantly worried would harm someone and expose her to the public. Anna suffered difficulties from being kept away from Elsa, but otherwise she was allowed to be a happy go lucky child, apparently. But in this movie all Elsa’s seriousness and preparation is down the toilet so she can go leap about in the woods. Anna has matured so I think she can handle it, but it still annoys me.
Also not sure why Elsa and Anna’s parents didn’t try to do something about the forest. They could have told Elsa about it when she was older. Apparently Queen Iduna didn’t mind that her fellow Sami were stuck in there.
I really liked the first one and thought it was the best Disney (non-Pixar) animated feature in quite a while.
And there’s absolutely no denying that the craftsmanship of the animation was top drawer, especially with the different elements manifesting themselves.
But I thought the story was dull (and only slightly picked up after the sisters separated), the characters mostly static from the previous installment, and the score universally forgettable–except for Kristof’s awful “power ballad”, which I wish I could scrub my brain of.
Looking at the landscape of animated feature films this year, I’m hard-pressed to think of any I’ve seen that I would give the Oscar to. Probably MISSING LINK, mostly because LAIKA is overdue for some Academy love (though it’s not as good as CORALINE or KUBO) and it’s not just a retread of a familiar property, like most of the major contenders this year. A real disappointment and exactly the kind of installment I imagine comprise many of the straight-to-video Disney sequels.
So many questions. What was the point of the parents going off on their boat trip? What the hell with the Pokémon fire guy? Jesus with that Christof ballad, oy.
The parents went on the boat trip to find the source of Elsa’s powers so they could get them properly under control.
The “Pokemon fire guy” is a salamander, which quite a number of cultures’ legends breathe fire, live in fire, their blood can make a person fireproof, etc.
Well, I just got back from actually seeing it now. I actually liked it better than I thought I would from reading spoilers, but I am still left with the feeling that this was kind of half baked.
What is Elsa supposed to be doing in the forest exactly? I still don’t get it. And it’s not like Anna as queen would attack the Northuldrans if Elsa weren’t living there. I don’t get it! I guess she tries to keep earth, wind, fire, and water calm and happy. But did she make herself an ice castle? Do the spirits control their respective elements for the whole world or just the immediate area? Elsa is a human, not a spirit. Ugh. It just bugs.
But I did actually like some of the songs. They’re not necessarily as catchy as the ones in the first movie, but I did like “Into the Unknown” and the words to the song that Anna sang when she thought her sister was dead. I still love Sven and even Olaf. Bruni was super cute.
Elsa never quite felt like she belonged in Arrandale - even more so with the revelation that her mother was from Northuldran and the magic. She went to stay there as it felt more like home AND to help heal the land.
This movie was about Elsa following her heart - the first movie was about her accepting herself and not being afraid - and also taking the role that her parents wanted of her, expected of her. This movie has her realizing that wasn’t the role she was meant for. Anna and Sven also had to finally face their fears and move on to the next phase of their lives as well - and that meant Anna learning to ‘let go’ of Elsa.
I just watched it earlier today with my 2 year old daughter and my brother’s kids.
Obviously the kids loved it.
The first film definitely felt like a cleaner, more compact story with catchier songs.
I liked that the characters are a bit older and more mature.
One technical complaint I had was that a lot of the background scenery was almost too photorealistic, creating a bit of an uncanny valley effect for the characters.
The ending didn’t really work for me. Elsa basically turns into Princess Monoke to live with the reindeer folk up north, but still wears evening gowns and heads to Arindale on the weekends to play Pictionary?