I hate hate hate Disney films generally. I’m not a big fan of true animation, I don’t like animals-behaving-like-people and I have a deep resentment of the Disneyfication of childhood - particularly as I’m trying to raise two girls. We have a deal in this house - dad does the Disney with them, I don’t have to tell the girls I can’t stand it.
We’d booked to see Frozen over Christmas, as my 2 year old’s first cinema experience. When it came to the day, my husband had to stay at home to see the plumber, so I did the duty. And I have to say… I absolutely loved it. My girls were a little anxious at times, but enjoyed it very much too. I thought the story was engaging, with the right level of complexity, the characters were great (especially Elsa and Anna), the songs were good. I’ve watched the clip of Let it Go on Youtube dozens of times now, it’s an astonishing performance. It’s a great film, I’m glad I saw it.
For a brief moment, I thought my Disneyloathing was melting away. But, nah, still can’t stand the others, but I loved Frozen.
My dd and I went about a month ago, she is 14 and wanted to see what all the hype was about. First we sat there hearing the opening music and it sounded like Lion King African type music and we both looked at each other and went HUH? I thought it was a good movie but not the best as everyone is raving. I kept looking at it as a marketing device for what I do not know but stated to my daughter that anytime now we should see the troll dolls for sale.
Along with the stunning visuals and the usually bad (for me, a non musical fan) song digressions, I liked the fact that there wasn’t the usual BS about a supposedly extremely powerful creature not being able to overcome an obstacle (usually accompanied by fake jump-shots-of-a-train-approaching-ever-closer-esque tension.)
It was a breath of fresh air to see this stupid cliche avoided. Instead, there was truly a creature who didn’t really run into any artificial obstacles to her power. Sort of like Dr Manhattan in that regard.
I was put off from the very beginning, when they took the injured Anna to the trolls, and the head troll guy warns them, quite plainly, that Elsa would lost control of her powers if she feared them, and then they immediately lock her up for the next decade or so, virtually ensuring that she’d grow up terrified of her powers.
And the resolution, “LOVE is the answer!” was super weak. I realize this is a movie for kids, but even so, that was lame.
I’m pretty sure they said that if people feared Elsa, the shit would hit the fan. She was supposed to learn control which is where I think her parents grabbed the idiot ball. What, you can’t make a journey twice a year to Trollcity for people who clearly know a thing or two about magic to train your daughter? Now, that was lame. The complete isolation was how they chose to try to keep people from fearing her.
It’s a Disney film. Love is always the answer. If that annoys you, I’d recommend not watching Disney.
Now there are bloggers/columnists/etc claiming “Frozen” promotes a gay agenda, and, alternately, saying that it is a Christian allegory. The internet is ridiculous (except for the Dope).
I liked loads of things about this movie (strong female characters, singable songs, “who marries a guy they just met?”) - but I wish people would stop saying it is based on the old fairy tale of “The Snow Queen”. Other than involving snow and ice the two stories are way different.
It was though. It languished in development hell for decades I believe and Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee made a lot of changes when they took it over but the genesis for the project was The Snow Queen. It wasn’t until the songwriters came up with Let It Go that they saw the character of Elsa that’s in the movie. I mean, they were going to go with Megan Mullaly as Elsa before that.
well, it may have started out with a connection to the snow queen fairy tale, but the end product on the screen is not close to the fairy tale at all. that’s all I meant.
The broad outlines of the story are still there, although the meat on the bones is clearly very different. As I see it, Elsa represents Kay, and her out-of-control power represents the original story Snow Queen, and Anna represents Gerda, who breaks the Snow Queen’s power with the greater power of love.
I’m not getting the love for “Let it Go” as an empowerment anthem. If anything, it’s Elsa’s villain song (Elsa isn’t a villain, but is the primary antagonist) . It’s the movie’s “Hellfire” or “Poor Unfortunate Souls”. At that point in the movie, it’s basically the equivalent of the kid with super religious parents who finally moves off to college and over-compensates for their childhood repression with drugs, booze, and all the sex they can handle.
Elsa is the antagonist, that doesn’t mean she’s the villain, she’s a sympathetic antagonist, but she’s the source of the obstacle the protagonist (Anna) has to overcome. While it’s clear during Let it Go that we’re supposed to feel happy that Elsa escaped oppression, immediately before and after it’s made very clear that Elsa just screwed everything up. The song represents a nadir, where she rejects the need to take any responsibility for her actions and callously and selfishly uses them to make an ice palace and a pretty dress while ignoring the fact that she just made summer winter.
And while she acts all surprised when Anna says that she made the entire kingdom eternal winter, in the song itself she said “let the storm rage on” which seems pretty clear that she’s rejecting the harm the use of her powers is bringing, even if she’s perhaps not quite aware of the extent of that harm.
Now, yes, at the end of the movie it becomes clear that Elsa does have to “Let it Go” a bit, and not be dominated by her fear of others, but she also learns that she care about them and her interactions with them too, so the song itself is kind of invalidated.
If that’s an allegory for coming out as gay, or generic female empowerment, or whatever else, it’s a pretty poor one. That doesn’t mean it’s not catchy, or whatever, but I’d hesitate to call it a true empowerment anthem.
No, the villain song is Love Is An Open Door. But you’re right that Let It Go is twisted. She feels that she’s broken free but she’s still broken off from Anna and that’s what she has to learn to rectify before the movie ends.
Like most of the movie, “Let it Go” is two songs at once. There is the surface appearance of freedom and empowerment, and the true meaning of isolation and powerful self-deception. She doesn’t realize it, but Elsa is basically accepting and embracing being a villain. Fortunately for her, her sister loves her enoguh to save and redeem her, despite Elsa being a total jerk to Anna almost their entire lives.
I found the song [Let it Go] to be more about not hiding or being ashamed of what makes each person unique or different - not letting other people’s idea of what you should do or be define who you are.
Yeah, the first time I realized that Love Is An Open Door is the villain song of the movie, I got chills.
At the end of the movie I was like “wow there was no villain song, what a bummer.” And then I bought the soundtrack and listened to the musical numbers over and over and thought more about it and I was like “OMG OF COURSE THERE IS AND IT’S ONE OF THE BEST VILLAIN SONGS EVER!”
“Let It Go” is certainly not a villain song nor is Elsa the antagonist of the movie. Like all the characters, she was flawed but sympathetic.
They even did a really good job with Hans not being too over the top evil. He had his positives as well. And the “good” guys had their negatives. “Let It Go” is an empowering song, and it’s also a complicated one.
People on the internet are weirdly obsessed about this incestuous relationtship between the two sisters. Its creepy. Or Par for the course, considering how much people like to fetishize the idea of siblings who secretly want to have sex with each other :rolleyes:
It was a cute movie, but one that gives fodder for people to really go overboard. I’m sure if the internet was as widespread back when Aladdin came out people would be blowing up the blogosphere about how Aladdin and the Magic Carpet had some forbidden affair going on :rolleyes:
Elsa is definitely the antagonist. She and her issues are the opposition to the hero’s resolution of the story. She’s the one who makes things go wrong, and the defeat of her fears is the resolution. She is by far the primary party of opposition in the story, the actor that represents the obstacle to be overcome.
Hans is a villain, and the only real villain in the story, but he’s still only the secondary antagonist to Elsa. The thing that complicate’s the hero’s resolution of her struggle with the primary antagonist. In a different work where Elsa was a villain in addition to being an antagonist, he’d probably be her vizier after she went evil, but in this more complex story he acts as a third party that complicates the attempt at redeeming the antagonist.
Honestly, the story doesn’t even really need Hans. I don’t think it would take too much effort to write Hans out of the story. While I enjoyed the subversion of “love at first sight”, the plot really would have been fine without a villain altogether. It was really only useful for the bait-and-switch true love things. Which, while important, could have been executed just as effectively with pretty much the same message without the Hans bait-and-switch. Really, half the time they mentioned him after Anna left on her journey I was like “oh, right, that guy.”
Either way, while Hans is a villain, thus making the successful plot in “Love is an Open Door” the real “villain song” I still think “Let it Go” is very much a “villain song” as well because it embodies Elsa accepting her role as primary antagonist to the story. She’s accepting shutting herself off from the world and embracing this as “being free”, in spite of this kind of being bad, which is what drives the majority of the plot.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Elsa herself isn’t the antagonist so much as “the abstract concept of Elsa’s fear”, but I feel like that’s splitting hairs.
Let it go ends quite fittingly with Elsa slamming a frozen door in the face of the outside world. I don’t see the song as a villain song, but more of a first step for the character. If the message of the song is to accept yourself as who you are, then the message of the ending is to not shut the world and the people who love her out. I appreciated the idea of the ending, even though they could have put it better than just “Love was the answer!”
The message of Let it Go isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just not enough by itself, and the first step alone makes things worse. Elsa learns to accept herself as who she is, which is a good thing, but she’s also shutting out the world and retreating to her own personal world with no regard to the people who love her.
There’s a lot of little touches and hidden meanings in the film. For example gloves seem to symbolize secrets as both Elsa and Hans wear gloves. Elsa loses her glove when her secret is revealed, and abandons the other when she decides to abandon the pretense altogether. Hans takes off his glove as he’s making his villain speech to Anna, and then puts it back on as he exits to give the sob story to the nobles.