Frozen II · 3:18pm Nov 25th, 2019
So I play a game called Magic: the Gathering, and there was this one time where me and my friends got our hands on an entire box of unopened packs of Magic cards from a very early set entitled Fallen Empires. We decided to have a booster draft - we’d grab X many booster packs each, open them them, and use those random cards to build decks. And over and over again while picking out cards we kept uttering the same three words looking at these early, unbalanced, underpowered-to-our-modern-sensibilities cards.
“It’s not terrible.”
Frozen II is not terrible. But...
Okay, here’s the first problem: this is a story that doesn’t have any kind of villain or even really an antagonist. There’s never anyone acting against our heroes, not for very long in any event. The Elemental spirits are kind of annoyed for some reason, but they’re all of them comparatively easy to calm down except the Stone Giants. More on them later.
Now, there are movies that don’t really have a real “bad guy” in them. A standout example of this is Star Trek IV, AKA Whale Thieves From the 24th Century. The Whale Probe isn’t antagonistic, it’s stupid. It doesn’t mean to cause harm, it’s just not capable of realizing that it is.
Here’s the problem. The elementals in Frozen II are pissed off because of a dam built by Elsa and Anna’s grandfather (as part of a “cunning” plan to betray the people, the Northuldra, whom he built it for). But the thing is that three of those spirits are hundred-foot tall earth giants who can hurl boulders like baseballs. It was within the power of the earth giants to destroy the dam whenever they wanted, but they never do until Anna basically tricks them into doing it. We’re never given a reason to think that the earth giants don’t know the location of the dam, and we are never shown anything that can stand up to the earth giants, hurt them, or stop them from doing whatever they want to do. My friend used the excuse of “well, they’re dumb as rocks”, which makes a degree of sense, but that sure didn’t stop them from being the ones who do eventually destroy the dam when Anna does her “tricking”, which basically consists of poking them and then running on top of the dam.
The best idea I can come up with is that the elemental spirits didn’t want to flood Arendelle simply because their previous king had been a dick, and I’m fine with that idea, buuuut..
The only reason why we know that the dam is the thing pissing off the elemental spirits is because the former leader of the Northuldra told Elsa and Anna’s grandfather, which we see in a flashback/vision that Elsa gets to see. Elsa and Anna’s grandfather then stabs the Northuldra leader in the back and kills him (and then is himself subsequently killed, quite right too). Fair enough, except...how the Northuldra leader learn this? Presumably the elementals told him somehow. But then why did the elementals tell no one else for thirty-five years? The remaining Northuldra that we meet never evince any knowledge of the dam needing to be destroyed.
Finally, the plot kicks off because of Elsa hearing a “voice” calling to her from the far north, a fifth elemental spirit, who turns out to be...no one. It was Elsa the whole time! Elsa is the fifth element or something, the avatar, etc. Only she can calm the elementals and restore balance to the world or...something. Except she only has ice powers. So ice is the fifth element? But it’s just a form of water. Or is cold the fifth element? But...what? It’s just confusing. And how was Elsa calling to herself across the land?
I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but I feel like things would have been better if we’d taken a page from Star Trek V: Wherein God Needs a Starship. Elsa is convinced that the voice she’s hearing from the north is good throughout the movie; I think it would have been better if she got to the Fortress of Solitude at the end and discovered that actually it’s a prison containing some kind of negative, evil force. A wolf spirit of ice, maybe, just something to give the story a true villain.
Also I really, truly hate Elsa giving up her queendom in Arendelle to go live in the woods with the Northuldra. Ugh, I was afraid of that from the moment I saw the trailers mentioning “we always feared Elsa’s power would be too much for this world”.
So, yeah. I have other complaints, like how much Kristof’s 80’s Power Ballad song took me out of the movie, but those are the biggest ones. Overall...Frozen II just really was kind of meh. It’s not terrible. But that’s the most I can really say about it.
Ironically the first expansion which happened when I was playing Magic (several decades ago) was ice age.
In addition to the above I'd also add that I really don't get what Kristoff plot was in the story. He spends the first half constantly trying to propose while Anna manages to take everything he says entirely wrongly then gets left in a forest sings a song about getting left behind (which look either like a wonderful parody of a boy band music video or is a medioca boy band video) then turns up to say he doesn't have a problem that Anne will always put her sister ahead of him then disappears again.
On the other hand I loved about 90% of what they did with Olaf, particularly the recap but.
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Here’s a thought: there are four elemental spirits, and between Elsa, Anna, Kristof, and Olaf, we have four people. So each could have befriended one of the spirits in some way and helped calm them.
God, it was so booooooooooooring. I went to see it with my family and about halfway through about 1/2 the adults and most of the kids had pulled out their phones. Also, the songs were bad and not good.
Yeah, they were still finding their stride with Fallen Empires. Though it did introduce Saprolings to the game.
... What? I wasn't planning on seeing the movie anyway. I'm just here because you brought up Magic. Kind of my thing.
I watched this in cinemas and when the rock giant thingies started throwing rocks (since it was 3D) I ducked under my seat, then my friend looked at my like I was crazy and I realized it was fake, that day, I was crown Queen of Stupidity.
Anyway, the movie, in my opinion was just fantastic! I wanted to watch it again.
Also, I'm now scared as hell of watching things at the cinema.
But I will still watch movies there anyways
Also, not every movie has to have a villain. The movie plot was great just the way it is. Beside if you think about it, there is a villain. Elsa and Anna's great grandfather.
He built the dam, started a war and covered the forest in magical mist, just because he wasn't there in the present time, doesn't mean he isn't a villain.
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Actually Empires introduces at least one staple card for each color, from Goblin Grenade to High Tide to Icatian Javelineers to Nightsoil to probably the MVP of the set, Hymn to Tourach (arguably the best discard spell until Thoughtseize, and almost certainly the best for 2 mana — and then you remember that it was tournament-legal at the same time that Dark Ritual and Hypnotic Specter and Necropotence were. “Oh-ho-ho-ho! You thought that you would actually get an opening hand? Oh sweet child, don’t you know that this is Black Summer 1996?”). It was also the first true “tribal” set.
Also Fallen Empires essentially invented the booster draft - it was the first printed set where the supply outstripped the demand, and while it does have good cards it didn’t have any power cards like Black Lotus or Library of Alexandria. So for years and years after it’s release you could get booster packs of Fallen Empires for pretty cheap, often cheaper than the boosters for whatever was the current Magic set.
So that’s where the “booster draft” format was invented, players buying six or so Fallen Empires booster packs and using them to build decks.
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I'd say I'd forgotten Hymn, but it's really more a case of suppressing the memory. Or at least discarding it at random.
Ok boomer
Why don't you just write your own "fixed" version of the movie then?
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I’m 32. I’m a millennial.
I mean...I already suggested all the things I thought would improve it. Give a better reason for the elementals to have not destroyed the dam themselves, create an actual antagonist in the present to serve as an opposing force and give more a sense of urgency to what w crew are doing, and give Kristof something to do other than kind of not contribute to the plot and sing a weird ‘80’s power ballad outta nowhere. Also let Elsa keep her kingdom, I’m not sure what we gain by putting Anna in charge apropos nothing.
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Lol you won’t find a ton of those on this website. Clearly you were eager to try out a new catchphrase.
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Sure, but he’s kinda’ dead, so there’s nothing really acting against the crew other than circumstance and the fact that the elementals never act to destroy the dam themselves, or communicate that they want the dam destroyed. For 35 years.
Here’s a question. Why was Elsa frozen in the Fortress of Solitude? If she’s the Fifth Element or whatever then what happened? Did she freeze herself? Why?
As a point of comparison, Star Trek IV doesn’t have a real villain either. The Whale Probe is an obstacle for the crew to overcome but it isn’t directly acting against them until the very climax, and that only by accident. But an antagonistic force still exists in the past, the US military as being unfriendly to people sneaking aboard their aircraft carriers, then accidentally injuring Chekhov, then opposing the crew’s efforts to rescue Chekhov; as well as a “ticking clock” to work against in the form of the knowledge that the whales they were after would soon be shipped off to the wild.
Comparatively, in Frozen II there’s no real “clock”. The people of Arendelle are shown as being perfectly safe in the care of the trolls, so if Elsa and Anna wanted to spend a week or two puttering about in the forest there’s really no consequence. And there’s no real opposing force to explain why Elsa, on realizing that the dam has to be destroyed, can’t just go back to Arendelle, create an ice wall to protect it or have her citizens build a proper sea wall to redirect the water over the course of a few weeks or months or whatever, then go back to the forest and destroy the dam, the elementals already waited 35 years without communicating their intents with anyone; why not wait a little longer?
I know that you don’t need a villain, but you do need a proper antagonist, something that introduces a sense of urgency and gives a reason for why Our Heroes can’t just take their time. Disaster movies do this regularly with natural disasters, for example. The “villain” is the earthquake or the hurricane or volcano or whatever. Dante’s Peak is a good example of this.
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There's more than you think. Also boomer energy.
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Clearly you think you can do better. Although I'm not surprised by your behavior here. Later boomer
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>Keep her kingdom
I mean, I've been specifically avoiding this and the previous except for osmotic knowledge, but wasn't that the entire point of the first movie, that her being Iceman was fine and as long as she wasn't murdering people with it, they should just deal?
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The first movie showed her running away to be by herself and abandoning Arendelle was probably the worst thing she could have done. “Let It Go” is a song about basically abandoning everything to do whatever she wants, which sounds good on paper, but she has family and responsibilities that don’t just disappear because she wants to live on a mountain.
Compare/contrast her to, for example, Moana, who wants to go explore the sea but isn’t willing to just abandon her people to do it.
Plus the first movie and, to be honest, this one don’t really do anything much to suggest that she’s unhappy being a ruler in Arendelle. Likewise nothing suggests that Anna wants it or even would be any good at it - the opening of Frozen II shows Elsa in the middle of some statecraft but still plenty able to go out into Arendelle and hang out with it’s people or play charades with her family when the day is done. Conversely Anna is introduced wandering the outskirts of Arendelle, hanging out with Olaf. And of course nothing in the first film suggests Anna has any statescraft ability (Elsa might be a shut-in but she can at least still carry herself like a ruler).
It’s not that it’s a terrible idea, it’s just not one that’s developed very well. Which describes Frozen II as a whole. It’s not terrible, but it needed a bit more focus and development.
I really wish they had turned Elsa into a sort of Professor X figure who would go around and rescue and recruit other people with powers like her. That would have been a cool concept (they could have spun an animated series off of that...).
No one saying anything about the 'Witch Queen of Arendelle' or something?
Missed opportunity.
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Frankly, you're the only person in this thread acting like a baby boomer.
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Honestly, after a movie about finding Elsa and putting her in her rightful place on the throne, this movie could do with a subplot about Anna find her own role in the kingdom, other than smiling and waving or acting as Emergency Replacement Princess.
To me I thought the whole plot could've been made much more interesting if Elsa was NOT the one being called. She heard none of the creepy singing voice at all. Anna did. Not that Anna in the end would gain powers or anything. She'd just be responsible for navigating around the issue and solving it. She's the special 'magical one' for this movie doing something the other sister doesn't understand.
Her sister with insanely strong ice powers is...supporting her sister in some magical adventure that isn't revolving around her in any real way and is only there to support her. And how that would throw what dyanmic they've had the last few years on its head. Perhaps Elsa and Kristoff not thinking she's hearing anything. She's not the magical sister, etc. Think that would've been a lot more fun. Anna needing to use her wits to get the two sides together, and figure out the problem. Elsa being less needed and more a weapon for a bit and impressed by how Anna works things out with her charm and some sort of experience or feeling. Ending the movie then with them both grown a bit. Anna maybe a little more confident since she has her own role to play more obviously now then not really having one.
Or as a alternative they both hear the voice. Since they are both the combined child of the forest people and their kingdom. So it's all much more a team effort from the start. Elsa can't ever leave Anna behind cause they're both needed for whatever macguffin at the end, rather then it just being Elsa. Either way changing things up a bit that the magic isn't just on Elsa would've been a neat change.
Damn, I'd have paid good money to see this movie if Skoll from Kingdom Hearts 3 was in it.
i.ytimg.com/vi/REEWg_Qdw-g/maxresdefault.jpg
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Holy crap I was just looking over this blog post and I realized that you’re the same person who thinks I’m part/the leader of some conspiracy against Jaxie.
Are you...are you stalking me?
Does anyone remember when villains were actually terrifying...
Is that like in hollywood where you can't move a desk or something in the film industry?
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Eh, all-time favorite Disney villain has to go to Ursula, personally.
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does anyone remember when the little mermaid sewed her legs together and threw herself off a cliff?
Perpetual Child Trauma remembers
Really, a lot of these stories get pretty screwed up.
I liked Judge Frollo myself. I'm more fond of that sort of villain. Also another happy ending tacked on by the mouse. Also they made him a judge instead of a priest, and I'm not sure a judge was the right term for the time period
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That came out of nowhere...
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Ah, that explains things.
Nerd rage is...
funny as hell