****----THIS POST CONTAINS VERY MINOR SPOILERS FOR FROZEN---****
This is a topic that I've wanted to talk about for a while, but due to my schedule I've not been able to do so. I write this now, hoping that this hasn't already become a dated topic. Last year's Frozen has come out of nowhere to become a box office phenom. At the time of this posting, Frozen sits as the 10th highest grossing movie EVER at the worldwide box office. It was only the 18th film to ever cross the billion dollar mark at the global box office. This past weekend it eclipsed both Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Toy Story 3 to become the highest grossing animated film of all time. Of the top grossing 18 films that have broken $1 billion, #3 (The Avengers), #5 (Iron Man 3), #10 (Frozen), #11 (PotC: Dead Man's Chest) , #12 (Toy Story 3), #13 (PotC: On Stranger Tides), #15 (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace), and #16 (Alice in Wonderland) are Disney properties. With Star Wars Episode VII, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and a slew of original and sequel PIXAR flicks on the way, it doesn't look like they will be anything but dominant in the coming years at the multiplexes, but I digress.
So what is it that made Frozen the sleeper hit that it is?
The marketing effort leading up to the film's release wasn't it. It was horrendous. If I had only ever heard of the film from the ads I would have thought it was about the misadventures of a probably annoying talking snowman. The poster even features Olaf (the aforementioned snowman) more that either of the film's leading ladies. The movie itself is deeply flawed and reeks of being over written. In other words, it feels like the movie is draft #394, and frankly I will go so far as to squarely accuse the writers and producers at Walt Disney Animation of making this more a commercial than artistic endeavor. The story on which it is based, "The Snow Queen" features the Snow Queen as the VILLAIN! This would explain the limp noodle of a villain in Frozen. I think that having both Anna AND Elsa as good characters, Disney was banking on a two-for-one opportunity for their ever lucrative Princess line of merchandise. This caused them to soften the conflict between the sisters and thematically rob the film of some of it's potential power. For me, the film opened VERY strong. The opening musical number featuring Anna and Elsa established a very powerful bond between them and created something that people could really identify with. By bringing the emotion hard and early, you really grab people as evidenced in other Disney films like Up and The Lion King. Thus it would follow that this sisterly bond and it's troubles was to be the main theme of the movie and it WAS, but the musical meeting of the two sisters once the plot had been set into motion was NOT in fact the song that everyone remembers and is NOT the one that the audience I saw the movie with applauded. The power of this applauded song, and really the whole first act set a very high bar that the rest of the film simply did not live up to. A musical encounter with the magical trolls of the Norwegian forests threatens to upend the momentum built up so far and is hands down one of the most out of place and forced feeling interludes that I've ever seen in an animated musical. Even the Disney formula defying ending ended up falling a bit too flat to really bring around the emotion of the first act. I never would have guessed that the song that everyone at the midnight screening aboard the Disney Fantasy Cruise ship clapped for would be playing on the radio a full FOUR MONTHS later. That song, "Let It Go," though not the entire reason for the film's absurd success is a key element of WHY people have taken to this movie so fanatically.
The marketing effort leading up to the film's release wasn't it. It was horrendous. If I had only ever heard of the film from the ads I would have thought it was about the misadventures of a probably annoying talking snowman. The poster even features Olaf (the aforementioned snowman) more that either of the film's leading ladies. The movie itself is deeply flawed and reeks of being over written. In other words, it feels like the movie is draft #394, and frankly I will go so far as to squarely accuse the writers and producers at Walt Disney Animation of making this more a commercial than artistic endeavor. The story on which it is based, "The Snow Queen" features the Snow Queen as the VILLAIN! This would explain the limp noodle of a villain in Frozen. I think that having both Anna AND Elsa as good characters, Disney was banking on a two-for-one opportunity for their ever lucrative Princess line of merchandise. This caused them to soften the conflict between the sisters and thematically rob the film of some of it's potential power. For me, the film opened VERY strong. The opening musical number featuring Anna and Elsa established a very powerful bond between them and created something that people could really identify with. By bringing the emotion hard and early, you really grab people as evidenced in other Disney films like Up and The Lion King. Thus it would follow that this sisterly bond and it's troubles was to be the main theme of the movie and it WAS, but the musical meeting of the two sisters once the plot had been set into motion was NOT in fact the song that everyone remembers and is NOT the one that the audience I saw the movie with applauded. The power of this applauded song, and really the whole first act set a very high bar that the rest of the film simply did not live up to. A musical encounter with the magical trolls of the Norwegian forests threatens to upend the momentum built up so far and is hands down one of the most out of place and forced feeling interludes that I've ever seen in an animated musical. Even the Disney formula defying ending ended up falling a bit too flat to really bring around the emotion of the first act. I never would have guessed that the song that everyone at the midnight screening aboard the Disney Fantasy Cruise ship clapped for would be playing on the radio a full FOUR MONTHS later. That song, "Let It Go," though not the entire reason for the film's absurd success is a key element of WHY people have taken to this movie so fanatically.
