Frozen is Cool

Frozen, the 2013 surprising smash hit of the year, well, not that surprising, I mean it's a Disney movie, of course it was gonna be a success, but to this degree. So for those of you that aren't fully aware of how successful this movie was, allow me to put it into perspective: On a budget of $150 Million, the film ended up grossing $1.2 BILLION in box-office alone, followed by 3.2 Million DVD/Blu-Ray copies sold, which would equal another $32 Million. The Soundtrack has sold nearly 3 Million copies in the US alone, so that's another $30 Million in the piggy bank. Not to mention "Let it Go" has had over 250 Million views on YouTube, that's gonna be bringing in the big bucks and this isn't even including all of the merchandise sold from this film, dolls, costumes, posters, etc. This film has made nearly $2 Billion in profit and it's less than a year old. It is the 5th highest grossing film of all time and the highest grossing animated film of all time. Putting this up against the last two Disney movies, Wreck-It Ralph only made $471 Million in box-office while Tangled (another Disney Princess movie) made $591 Million. This means that Frozen is more succesful than the two previous Disney movies combined!

But now a lot of people are asking the question, why does everyone love this movie? I mean the fact that the popularity for this film is yet to die down with memes and covers of the songs posted left & right, this is a film that is here to stay, and is already being ranked against other classic Disney films like Beauty & The Beast or The Lion King. And like most popular movies, there is an inevitable backlash of people claiming the movie is "overrated". Which is a point of view I can completely understand. Don't get me wrong, I freaking love this movie, I've watched it like a dozen times on Blu-Ray, and I went to go see it in theatres and it was my favourite film from 2013, it was the only film to get a 10/10 from me, and I've seen over 600 films in my life and have only ever given 33 films a 10/10.

(Spoilers Ahead)

So do I love this movie? And why do so many people love this movie? Well I can't speak for everyone, but here's why I love it. First of all, Disney does not have the best reputation for it's princesses, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, they aren't well known for being an ideal representation of women and are considered bad role models, or to an even greater extent, bad characters. And I can prove this by the fact that half of you don't even realise Aurora is Sleeping Beauty, yeah, that's how forgettable she was. But in Frozen there is a big change, not only do we have two princesses, but one of them actually becomes Queen, a very rare sight in a kids product for the princess to become a queen (Lookin' at you Princess Peach). But on top of that the female protagonists have very distinct personalities, real character arcs to go through and don't just sit back and let the man do all the work, so right there it's broken 3 of the biggest cliches that Disney have used in the past.

But on top of that they go even further to constantly pull the wool over your eyes, firstly by having Elsa get engaged to Hans and have it pointed out "You can't marry someone you just met" at this point I just wanted to shout out "fucking finally!" but seeing as I was in a theatre filled with children I don't think the parents would have appreciated it. They do this yet again by the end of the film, when Anna is going to die and the only way to cure her is an act of true love, I like a lot of people assumed it was going to be Kristoff or Hans kissing her and that would save the day, oh god, come on Disney! You were doing so well! Don't fall into the biggest pit of all!...And they don't! It's not a romantic kiss that saves the day, it's Anna sacrificing her life to save her sister Elsa that saves the day, an act of true love, the love between sisters.

Now look, I have been a big fan of Disney since I was a kid (obviously) but even I will admit they have a lot of dumb cliches that a lot of their films follow, and to be fair this film doesn't get rid of all of the cliches (Seriously, what was up with those trolls?). But in comparison to the classic Disney movies, you can tell Disney are growing and their Disney Princess films (yes because that's a genre now) are just getting better and better in terms of characters. Now like I said, the film doesn't develop fully and that can be a big turn off for some people, they don't wanna see a half-measure, they want the full-measure, so maybe the next Disney Princess film will be the one that completely reinvents the Disney franchise for them, but for the rest of us, this film did a damn good job.

But apart from all that, there is still a lot of great things about this movie, the songs are very well done, they're catchy and help move along the narrative, the characters are memorable and likeable, the comic reliefs are funny without being annoying, very rare in a Disney movie, the last time they achieved this was Lion King. The animation is spectacular, there's no denying that and the film is overall really, really good. But it does have it's fair share of problems as well, like the tone at the start of the movie is very uneven, the villains are under-developed and completely pointless and the movie is filled with plot holes (though to be fair it's a Disney movie, they're allowed to get away with those kind of things).

But one thing that I always was confused about was people saying this is the film to reignite the Disney Princess genre, which is weird isn't that what Tangled did? I mean that was the first Disney Princess movie in over a decade and people loved that when it came out. Now personally I just think Tangled is okay while I love Frozen (Adjectives FTW!), the main reason being that Tangled felt like it was trying to be like a Disney Princess movie, but I never felt like that, mostly because there was way too much pop music which is probably gonna seem dated 50 years down the line. While Frozen is a classic Disney movie, in both style & tone. So I like to think of it as Tangled is The Little Mermaid while Frozen is Beauty & The Beast, yeah The Little Mermaid reintroduced the Disney Princess genre but Beauty & The Beast perfected it.

So overall I understand why some people dislike the movie but at the same time I understand why everyone else loves it, but really only one question matters: Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

-Danny