Disney's Frozen Misses an Opportunity for a Great Story

Disney’s Frozen missed a great opportunity to tell a compelling story of self love and acceptance.

Most of the movie is told from Anna’s perspective, which I think is the much less interesting story here.  Though clearly loyal to her sister, and clearly moving from a love for her sister, Anna is naive and simple.  The whole ‘Yay-Disney-for-making-a-movie-that-isn’t-about-being-saved-by-a-prince’ refrain just doesn’t ring true for me.  Anna would never have made it to the North Mountain (or back down) without Christoph’s help.  She clearly loves adventure and is capable of bravery, but nothing interesting happens with her, per se. 

Elsa is the one who has the great transformation.  Elsa is the one who is powerful who has to learn to accept herself and love who she is.  Elsa is the one who has memory of what she can do and the pain she can cause.  Missing in this movie is the grief she felt when her parents died, her sadness about probably really wanting to build a snowman when she was little, and how she dealt with her father’s advice, ‘Don’t feel, conceal,” while her sister was on the other side of the door jumping on furniture and singing. 

I know, I know, people are going to say – hey, it’s just a Disney movie that’s supposed to be fun, give them a break.  And I’d say that there is something here that falls flat.  I’d go so far to say that it’s insulting to the audience to tell the Anna story when the Elsa story exists as a backdrop. 

When we finally get to meet Elsa the day of the coronation, we see her as funny and interested in the world but really cautious of her power at the same time.  She laughs with her sister at the ball and she is happy until Anna says that wants to marry a man she just met and asks for Elsa’s blessing.  Until that point, she seemed hopeful that life on the other side of the door could maybe work. 

When Elsa has that powerful moment of shedding the ‘good girl’ she’s always been, letting go of not feeling and literally building herself an ice castle on a mountain, she is transformed and has radically accepted her power, her truth, herself.  She begs Anna to leave her, and one of the lyrics from the song: “I know I left a life behind but I'm too relieved to grieve.”  And “I may be alone, but I’m alone and free.” I think this says it all.  She doesn’t want to go back to having to live up to some standard of herself (conceal don’t feel). 

Anna keeps insisting they can solve the problem together, but understandably, Elsa is enraged – what the heck does Anna know about power and responsibility?  And in fact, Elsa doesn’t go back willingly, but is brought back a prisoner.

Olaf has that great line, “Some people are worth melting for.” And later, after Anna defrosts, that line resonates with Elsa’s epiphany that love melts.  She suddenly does know how to control the cold and send it away so everything thaws out. 

I think we are to take from this that after Anna’s great act of love, Elsa herself feels the love and from that is able to harness and control her powers (a few moments later, she’s making Olaf his own little snow cloud.)  I think it’s a shame and a missed opportunity that we are left to conclude this rather than see it as a key feature.  For example, we could have seen Elsa working really hard in the ice castle to learn how to control her powers; the girls could have gone back to Arrendale willingly to figure out how to save all the people they loved. 

Two other things that didn’t sit right:

Seriously, Disney, you don’t need to make these characters so skinny and busty.  I’m all for accepting all body types, and I do appreciate that there were all sized women and men at the coronation ball, but your main characters need to not have cleavage.  Get a grip. 

Apparently, this movie was an adaptation of a fairytale with much stronger female characters.  Boo on you Disney for not taking this where it could go. 

I guess that’s my biggest problem with the movie – it doesn’t go where it could have in many accounts.  There’s nothing of any real value to walk away with (except that parents shouldn’t ever shut their kids away because they are different.)