A few thoughts on Frozen
Apr. 21st, 2014 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyHuh. The caffeine hasn't kicked in properly so this will probably make a little less sense than usual. Ah well, one can't have everything.
Watched Frozen this morning, and I will likely give it another whirl tonight since this morning I was in that manic sort of awake where you really should have gone to bed hours ago but didn't for whatever reason and now your brain simply will not shut off.
Which is just to say that I think it's only fair to give the movie another shot when I'm not basically wired.
This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the movie. I did. I think it was cute and the Anna/Elsa relationship might've kicked me in the gut a few times, and I might've started on the watery eyes a little early.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I didn't hate Olaf who looked like he was going to be really friggin' annoying during every ad, trailer, and all the merch he was shoe-horned into and onto. He was actually pretty lowkey and cute and I didn't expect that, so good job, Disney. Good job.
I enjoyed the turning the usual princess/prince meet-cute on its head and having other characters call BS on it.
All of this is pretty clearly leading up to a But. And I have two (and a half), one of which may be rectified during a re-watch.
The half first: The constant breaking into song. I know it's a silly thing to mention, especially in a Disney movie, but holy cow! Maybe I just noticed it more because I was in that weirdly awake state, or maybe they OD'd on the songs just a bit.
1) The pacing felt massively off to me. This, again, could be due to the shoulda been asleep status of my brain, or maybe it's actually a thing because I heard other people have the same complaint. I'm not entirely sure how I would have tweaked it, but something was just...off about it. Some things dragged, some things raced, and some things were just right.
2) Hans. The movie already had a villain ready to kill Elsa and didn't need a second. I get that the twist with him was the easiest way to tie up that romantic entanglement for Anna AND provide some extra ~drama~ leading up to Anna sacrificing herself (which was a fun twist, having her save her own life by saving Elsa's) but that drama could have easily been provided by someone else. (See the Duke already putting a hit out on Elsa.)
I was looking forward to seeing how they'd get out of the usual meet-cute that Disney princes and princesses have. Sometimes the third wheel isn't the bad guy and just isn't the guy. It just felt wrong to have the only hint (unless I missed them) of his twist be the fact that he was the youngest of what, 13? So you go the whole movie until the last twenty minutes or so and he's an okay ruler and then nope, we need this love triangle resolved easily and we don't want to take time out of the Anna/Elsa or add any more time to this soo... easy fix! He's a bad guy. Done, solved, let's do this.
Ah. IMDB tells me there's one other hint.
In a movie that managed to do the unexpected it rang hollow to go with the easy fix, I guess.
B-but it's so refreshing to show that the hero can be the bad guy! *shrug* I guess, but I also think it would be just as refreshing to show that whole "not a bad guy, just not the guy" side, too. In fact, I can think of more instances where the would-be hero is the bad guy (though usually not as nice seeming as Hans was) than a well done let down of the third party in a love triangle in a kid's movie.
Tangled is still my favorite of the more recent Disney princess movies (and Rapunzel is my disney princess) but I can definitely see why so many people adored Frozen.
I cannot, however, understand why the blue hell Disney can't get a decent handle on the lack of Frozen dolls, though. You guys ain't newbies in this arena and eventually the ever elusiveness of something turns from "thrill of the hunt!" into "fuck you, fuck all of this BS, I'm taking my money and going elsewhere." I'm pretty sure people are rapidly spinning towards that second option because of the boneheaded lack of stock. So all that goodwill you got from making Olaf not suck in the movie you just killed on the merch end. :P
Watched Frozen this morning, and I will likely give it another whirl tonight since this morning I was in that manic sort of awake where you really should have gone to bed hours ago but didn't for whatever reason and now your brain simply will not shut off.
Which is just to say that I think it's only fair to give the movie another shot when I'm not basically wired.
This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the movie. I did. I think it was cute and the Anna/Elsa relationship might've kicked me in the gut a few times, and I might've started on the watery eyes a little early.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I didn't hate Olaf who looked like he was going to be really friggin' annoying during every ad, trailer, and all the merch he was shoe-horned into and onto. He was actually pretty lowkey and cute and I didn't expect that, so good job, Disney. Good job.
I enjoyed the turning the usual princess/prince meet-cute on its head and having other characters call BS on it.
All of this is pretty clearly leading up to a But. And I have two (and a half), one of which may be rectified during a re-watch.
The half first: The constant breaking into song. I know it's a silly thing to mention, especially in a Disney movie, but holy cow! Maybe I just noticed it more because I was in that weirdly awake state, or maybe they OD'd on the songs just a bit.
1) The pacing felt massively off to me. This, again, could be due to the shoulda been asleep status of my brain, or maybe it's actually a thing because I heard other people have the same complaint. I'm not entirely sure how I would have tweaked it, but something was just...off about it. Some things dragged, some things raced, and some things were just right.
2) Hans. The movie already had a villain ready to kill Elsa and didn't need a second. I get that the twist with him was the easiest way to tie up that romantic entanglement for Anna AND provide some extra ~drama~ leading up to Anna sacrificing herself (which was a fun twist, having her save her own life by saving Elsa's) but that drama could have easily been provided by someone else. (See the Duke already putting a hit out on Elsa.)
I was looking forward to seeing how they'd get out of the usual meet-cute that Disney princes and princesses have. Sometimes the third wheel isn't the bad guy and just isn't the guy. It just felt wrong to have the only hint (unless I missed them) of his twist be the fact that he was the youngest of what, 13? So you go the whole movie until the last twenty minutes or so and he's an okay ruler and then nope, we need this love triangle resolved easily and we don't want to take time out of the Anna/Elsa or add any more time to this soo... easy fix! He's a bad guy. Done, solved, let's do this.
Ah. IMDB tells me there's one other hint.
In a movie that managed to do the unexpected it rang hollow to go with the easy fix, I guess.
B-but it's so refreshing to show that the hero can be the bad guy! *shrug* I guess, but I also think it would be just as refreshing to show that whole "not a bad guy, just not the guy" side, too. In fact, I can think of more instances where the would-be hero is the bad guy (though usually not as nice seeming as Hans was) than a well done let down of the third party in a love triangle in a kid's movie.
Tangled is still my favorite of the more recent Disney princess movies (and Rapunzel is my disney princess) but I can definitely see why so many people adored Frozen.
I cannot, however, understand why the blue hell Disney can't get a decent handle on the lack of Frozen dolls, though. You guys ain't newbies in this arena and eventually the ever elusiveness of something turns from "thrill of the hunt!" into "fuck you, fuck all of this BS, I'm taking my money and going elsewhere." I'm pretty sure people are rapidly spinning towards that second option because of the boneheaded lack of stock. So all that goodwill you got from making Olaf not suck in the movie you just killed on the merch end. :P