Despite Disney’s best efforts across the board, Frozen 2 ended up being a disappointment compared to the original Frozen. In some ways, this was inevitable. Frozen was a monster hit in 2013, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year and highest-grossing animated film ever at that time. As such a hit and cultural phenomenon, following it up was going to be difficult if not impossible even under the best circumstances.
Frozen’s success went beyond just the box office, as many movies make a ton of money but don’t have a cultural impact. “Let it Go” was everywhere, Elsa and Anna’s faces were on every type of merchandise Disney could think of, and it seemed like the whole world was obsessed with the movie. Disney movies are usually big hits with kids, but this went to obsessive levels last seen during the early 1990s Disney renaissance.
Rather than moving too quickly, Disney did everything that they could to get Frozen 2 to be more than just a cash grab or rushed sequel. Back in the Disney renaissance days, there had been a series of sequels to Disney movies, but they were all cheap, rushed direct-to-video releases that aren’t remembered all that well (though there are exceptions, like the Aladdin sequels). It was obvious to Disney that they had to take this seriously; it just wasn’t enough to make a movie that could live up to being a Frozen sequel.
Disney waited until March 2015 to announce Frozen 2 was actually happening, and then its November 2019 release date wasn’t announced until April 2017. No one would have blamed them for announcing the sequel in December 2013 for a pretty quick turnaround, given just how big and unexpected of a success Frozen was.
This is a sharp contrast to the production of Frozen, which was an incredibly rushed production. While Walt Disney himself was trying to crack a story based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” in 1937, the actual project that became Frozen wasn’t seriously started until after Tangled came out in 2010. The problems with trying to develop a proper story continued well into production, with the script still going through major rewrites in June 2013, five months before the movie released. Major elements of the film, like Anna and Elsa being sisters, were figured out way later in production than they normally would be. This rush is largely responsible for many of the issues with the original movie, especially with regards to the animation.
Compared to that chaotic production, Disney gave Frozen 2 a ton of room to breathe and develop slowly and deliberately. This allowed directors Jennifer Lee and Christopher Buck to take their time, creating the mythology and mysteries that drove the plot of the sequel. This was the right move to make rather than rushing a cheap cash grab out, but it didn’t work out like they’d hoped it would.
Frozen 2 was clearly not a disappointment in a couple of ways: box office returns and the animation. It made $1.45 billion at the box office, ahead of Frozen’s $1.28 billion, both on a $150 million production budget. The animation was also stronger, the one area that undeniably benefited a lot from the extra time taken to get things right.
The rest of the movie doesn’t fare quite as well. It doesn’t pick up from any obvious ideas in Frozen for how to build the sequel. Frozen 2 tells a more ambitious story, going away from a traditional Disney movie structure to go after something bigger and more complicated. Among the main criticisms of Frozen 2 are that a lot of the introduction feels like it’s moving the characterization backward, it doesn’t hit the emotional depths of the first, and while the story is ambitious, it doesn't quite work in execution.
The elephant in the room with the story of Frozen 2 is that Disney made a movie with the same story two years earlier: Thor: Ragnarok. The big, thematic ideas of Frozen 2 are about the sins of your ancestors (Thor’s father Odin in Ragnarok, Elsa and Anna’s grandfather Runeard in Frozen 2), building a legacy through conquest and deception. There’s even the same basic resolution: the only way out is to destroy Asgard/Arendelle, though Frozen 2 lets Elsa save the kingdom at the last minute. These parallels aren’t subtle. While it’s hard to blame a movie for not nailing its premise as well as another, it’s also hard not to see when the parallels are so obvious.
There’s also a step down in the music. Frozen’s success can be credited in large part to the success of “Let it Go”. “Into the Unknown” and “Show Yourself” are solid songs but can’t rise to the level of the first movie's breakout hit. That was an iconic song that no one could avoid, while the equivalent songs in Frozen 2 never reached anything like that. They’re good, but not good enough to catapult the movie beyond just being a sequel to a movie that didn’t necessarily call for one.
Disney has never been good with sequels to their animated movies. In fairness, it’s not like there’s a great track record at all for animated franchises, with the Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon series being the only ones that have been solid and consistent. Disney is, at least, beyond its days of direct-to-video sequels, but still hasn’t quite figured out how to get them to work. Disney hasn’t produced many full sequels, with only five of the 58 movies they’ve made qualifying for in that category (The Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000, Winnie the Pooh, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and Frozen 2). They’ve obviously changed their tune in recent years, but they still don’t have a solid grasp on how to make a sequel that resonates the way the first movie did. Ralph Breaks the Internet wasn’t as well-received as Wreck-It Ralph, and Frozen 2 continued that trend.
Not that it’s an easy task with everything going their way. Trying to make a sequel to Frozen is trying to follow up one of their most successful movies ever, one that wasn’t designed with sequels in mind. Frozen 2 had to go bigger, taking the story outside of Arendelle because there wasn’t really anywhere else to go. It’s not a great fit, trying to make sequels to their big movies. Add in the incredibly high expectations to following up such a hit, and nothing short of making a movie on the level of something like Aladdin or The Lion King would be enough to satisfy. Frozen 2 ended up as a disappointment, despite Disney putting all of its best efforts into making it the best movie they could. It was probably an impossible task, trying to make a movie that could match up to the expectations of a Frozen sequel. Sadly, it wasn’t going to do anything but fall short, even though Disney gave it every opportunity to make the best movie that they could.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3d6JQzN
0 comments:
Post a Comment