In 2013, Walt Disney Animation's Frozen, a long-in-development loose adaptation of "The Snow Queen," directed by Chris Buck (Disney's Tarzan) and Jennifer Lee (one of the lead writers on Wreck-It Ralph) debuted in theaters and hit its target audience like a nuclear bomb. The film became the House of Mouse's highest-grossing animated film of all time, grossing over 1.2 billion dollars (supplanting titans like The Lion King and Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3) and catapulting Queen Elsa of Arendelle to the status of "Most Beloved Disney Princess" of the modern age.
So, obviously, a sequel was not only inevitable, but it was sure to be the safest possible bet for the Walt Disney company. Right?
Well, yes.
. . . But also, not really.
The last genuine "Disney Princess Movie" released in November of 2010, with Tangled.
"But Brendan," I hear you protest, "what about Frozen and Moana and Frozen II?" Well, now you may begin to see why this particular piece had to marinate a bit, and why it's going to take the shape of more a post-release examination of the new Disney joint as opposed to a standard review. But to really get a sense of what's been going on with Disney Animation, we have to look at it in the proper context.
*Psst, that means I'm gonna be SPOILING the heck out of this movie. You've been warned.*
*Psst, that means I'm gonna be SPOILING the heck out of this movie. You've been warned.*
For a bit of a preview, let's take a gander at the way Frozen II was presented to audiences compared to its predecessor. Here's a sampling of its posters:
Hey, that's not terribly similar to the posters for the first movie at all. Those looked like this:
And it's not just the color palette, but the framing and expressions of the main characters (particularly Elsa and Anna) are deliberately very different - not just from the posters for the original, but the entire "New Disney Renaissance" that we've been in since 2009. However, those Frozen II posters do echo something very deliberately, and the eagle-eyed among you may have already sussed it out.
. . . See it yet?
How about now?
Yeah. Frozen II takes the blank check granted by dint of being guaranteed to be a huge smash no matter what to veer fully into straight-up mythic fantasy adventure. And they weren't even remotely subtle about it, just look at the very first trailer:
And, just for giggles, the teaser for Frozen:
Did I give you whiplash yet? It gets better:
Marketing is fun, right? For additional context, Disney has been selling their big holiday animated films as "Hey, look - we made a DreamWorks with funny sidekicks and silly self-aware comedy!" since Tangled, because Tangled made a half-a-billion dollars and the year before, they sold The Princess and the Frog as "Return of the Classic Disney Animated Musical!" and it made. . . about half that. Sure, all that proves is that commercials and one-sheets lie all the time (they've been hiding the "this is a musical" detail for the past 10 years, after all), but the big "Taking the Ring to Mordor" Energy is reflective of an arc that you can trace back to, well, the beginning of this current run of 3D animated films.
The struggle to tell marketable stories in their most well-recognized lane while also attempting to reflect relatively modern sensibilities in regards to their heroines has been something that Disney has wrestled with since the late '80s. It's well-worn road that the classic "princesses" frequently need rescuing by their male love interests, so that even when their status as princesses aren't bestowed by their romantic entanglements, it inescapably defines them. Beginning with The Little Mermaid, there was a concerted effort to develop more active and fleshed-out heroines, but still resulted in a bit of a "square peg, round hole" situation.
Where Tangled was very much in the same vein of movies like Aladdin with a bit of extra spunk and action in the heroine department (with Rapunzel doing the magical "awakening" at the end of the film for good measure), the first Frozen is where they really started to swerve. The initial structure is pretty much "Princess, kingdom, magic, prince, true love," but the film slyly subverts a lot of those fairly early on, and then completely flips the script in the finale. Their next animated musical began with the patented setup, but then threw its "princess" into a Hero's Journey fantasy quest with no romance whatsoever, echoing the works of Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) more than the canon of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. So Frozen II choosing to borrow more from Avatar: The Last Airbender than from Hans Christian Andersen seems inevitable in retrospect.
And it stretches through the bones of the story. The film hinges on the quest to right the wrongs of our forbears in a similar dynastic vein to the Arthurian legends or the Star Wars saga, involves the literal taming of magical forces representing the elements, hidden birthrights, and a descent into the underworld (for both Anna and Elsa) before returning with the truth. By the end of the film, Anna has chosen to shatter the imperialist shackles her grandfather would have put on their neighbors while Elsa ascends to near-goddess-hood as the fifth elemental spirit of an enchanted realm. Anna is crowned queen, and - not only is she still yet to be married, but the character that constantly has marriage on the mind is Kristoff.
(Not only is the latter character far more immediately concerned with matrimony than Anna, but his big song is a "Part of Your World" riff by way of the Backstreet Boys - and it's arguably the best joke in the entire movie.)
The outright acquisition of Pixar by Disney has resulted in several years where, especially in their "off" years from musicals, the difference between a "Pixar movie" and a "Disney Animation movie" has become a bit blurry. Can you remember if Wreck-It Ralph was a Mouse joint, or the house that Woody and Buzz built? What about Coco? Or Zootopia? And whether the tweaks in their longest-running formula speak to a quest for a new identity in the 21st century or simply a pattern of coincidence, one thing is for certain: Frozen II is making "they're gonna make a Frozen III" money (shocking, I know), and there's no way they simply go back to princes waking princesses up from enchanted sleeps after this.
They've let that go, and their voyagers, kindly queens and heroic witches are all the better for it.
Where Tangled was very much in the same vein of movies like Aladdin with a bit of extra spunk and action in the heroine department (with Rapunzel doing the magical "awakening" at the end of the film for good measure), the first Frozen is where they really started to swerve. The initial structure is pretty much "Princess, kingdom, magic, prince, true love," but the film slyly subverts a lot of those fairly early on, and then completely flips the script in the finale. Their next animated musical began with the patented setup, but then threw its "princess" into a Hero's Journey fantasy quest with no romance whatsoever, echoing the works of Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) more than the canon of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. So Frozen II choosing to borrow more from Avatar: The Last Airbender than from Hans Christian Andersen seems inevitable in retrospect.
And it stretches through the bones of the story. The film hinges on the quest to right the wrongs of our forbears in a similar dynastic vein to the Arthurian legends or the Star Wars saga, involves the literal taming of magical forces representing the elements, hidden birthrights, and a descent into the underworld (for both Anna and Elsa) before returning with the truth. By the end of the film, Anna has chosen to shatter the imperialist shackles her grandfather would have put on their neighbors while Elsa ascends to near-goddess-hood as the fifth elemental spirit of an enchanted realm. Anna is crowned queen, and - not only is she still yet to be married, but the character that constantly has marriage on the mind is Kristoff.
(Not only is the latter character far more immediately concerned with matrimony than Anna, but his big song is a "Part of Your World" riff by way of the Backstreet Boys - and it's arguably the best joke in the entire movie.)
The outright acquisition of Pixar by Disney has resulted in several years where, especially in their "off" years from musicals, the difference between a "Pixar movie" and a "Disney Animation movie" has become a bit blurry. Can you remember if Wreck-It Ralph was a Mouse joint, or the house that Woody and Buzz built? What about Coco? Or Zootopia? And whether the tweaks in their longest-running formula speak to a quest for a new identity in the 21st century or simply a pattern of coincidence, one thing is for certain: Frozen II is making "they're gonna make a Frozen III" money (shocking, I know), and there's no way they simply go back to princes waking princesses up from enchanted sleeps after this.
They've let that go, and their voyagers, kindly queens and heroic witches are all the better for it.
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