Too "Frozen" to Commit

Now that it’s been well over a decade since its release - with the next sequel already under way, from what I hear - I feel like I can finally tackle this topic without feeling the wrath of little girls and Disney-adults everywhere: 

Frozen (2013) is super overrated. And not necessarily for the reasons you might think…

Three Stories Converge in a Movie Studio...

So, we all know the basic of the story: 

A magical girl is crowned queen, but her powers are too much for her to handle (yet), and this is proven true when she accidentally summons a perpetual winter. Her younger sister, the heroic princess, must go on a journey to find her sister so that they can break the spell and restore their kingdom.

After 13 years, you probably also know the backstory of the making of the film:

An adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” this movie pretty much sat on Disney’s shelves for 50 years before things finally came together in the form of the 2013 blockbuster. Honestly, with that much time spent in development-hell, it makes perfect sense that the movie’s story-line doesn’t much resemble the original source material anymore.

Personally, I’ve never taken an issue with this because “The Snow Queen” is a very weird story; I would’ve been more surprised if the filmmakers didn’t take some liberties.

But there is a clear trade-off with this compromise, and I think it’s one that really kept Frozen from meeting its “Lion King” standard (a high praise it was consistently given at the time of release). You see, what really makes “The Snow Queen” stand out among the rest of Andersen’s work, is something Disney has been reluctant to touch for a very long time: Darkness.

Disney-Darkness is Best-Darkness

Having grown up during the Disney-Renaissance period I feel comfortable asserting that most of Disney Creative's greatest work comes from fully committing to the story. It’s the reason titles that under-performed, like The Black Cauldron (1985), Treasure Planet (2002), and Atlantis: the Lost Empire (2001), have maintained such strong followings to this day. It’s also the reason titles like The Lion King (1994) and Lilo & Stitch (2002) still reign supreme as juggernauts of the larger Disney brand. 

Whenever Disney fully commits to the bit, they’re good. 

I mean REALLY good.

But when they play it safe and wishy-washy, well… 

We get Wish from 2023. 

Personally, I’ve always felt Frozen (thankfully) falls somewhere in the middle of the road. It’s a perfectly good movie, sure. With a strong voice cast and the iconic “Let it Go” anchoring it, how could it not be?

But did it receive more accolades than it actually deserved? 

Absolutely.

And solely because of its one song.

It's beautiful with a powerful message. But all that means that the song itself is iconic - not the movie or the story it’s telling. 

In fact, the story is really sad in a lot of places when you really sit down and think about it: 

Elsa spent most of her life being afraid of herself, because her parents taught her to be afraid of herself. She grew up with the pressure and knowledge that one day she would be queen, and had to be “perfect” in order to be at the job. 

She was so wound-up from this stressful upbringing, that at the first sign of disaster at her coronation, her only instinct was to run and hide - because that’s all she ever knew. The performance of her  “I want song" (the aforementioned “Let it Go”) feels cathartic for this reason: she’s finally in a place where she can just be herself…

But it’s also a place of loneliness, one that she freely admits to during the confrontation with her sister, Anna - and one that she welcomes as she tries to shoo her sister away.

Traditionally, it’s a story-beat that usually signals an important turning point in a character’s personal journey - and one you typically signals a lot of darkness brewing. 

And, as Disney has already shown us, time and again, characters can do very terrible things when they’re hurting.

But this time around, Disney is clearly afraid to commit to the bit. 

They don’t want Elsa to be the villain of her own story - even though all logic dictates that she should be.

The Fumble at the Finish Line

You know the real irony of the original fairytale? 

The title character - the designated antagonist of the entire wild ride - is not the focus of the story.

Her personality is antagonistic, and her actions are seemingly antagonistic, but her place in the narrative is surprisingly short with suspiciously murky motivations. Overall, she contributes very little to the tale, and serves primarily as a plot device for the actual main character, Gerta. And I suspect that was part of the point: Andersen was telling a classic good-versus-evil narrative. One that was tinged by his religious affiliations and with elements of the traditional "hero’s journey.”

Disney, meanwhile, watered-down these elements drastically: 

They wisely chose to remove the religious undercurrents, and made an interesting choice in reinterpreting Anna’s motivations for her hero’s journey: she’s on a mission to save her sister, rather than a lover.

But they refused to fully commit Elsa to being the antagonist.

This is the choice that I think actually drags the movie far away from the “Iconic” status audiences so desperately want it to have. 

Because we don’t see Elsa and Anna sharing a sisterly bond for more than a few minutes of screen time, it’s hard to invest in the new (but still inspiring) idea that the story is driven by sisterly love. They share parents and a home, but due to their separation they clearly don’t know each other well enough to even be friends - let alone for Anna to jump into peril to save Elsa.

And Elsa, after years of emotional isolation, fear, and pressure, has no motivation to even be a good person, let alone return to her kingdom and be crowned a hero.

Disney had all of the pieces for a great villain-origin story - and even had them lined up perfectly throughout the first and second acts (though whether this was by design or a happy coincidence, I honestly don’t know). But their failure to commit to Elsa’s negative character arc - one that could've easily fueled sequels for years to come (everyone loves a good redemption arc) - left the movie feeling only half-realized.

Conclusion:

Frozen (2013) has a lot of great things about it: it’s beautifully rendered, the characters are engaging, the voice cast is stellar, the story is fun, and that one song had the whole world in a choke-hold. For a really long time!

I still like to watch it, especially with my mother who's always favored it (and is, right now, probably rolling her eyes at this critique she has heard many times over). 

But does Disney's Frozen deserve the accolades audiences and critics were beating us over the head with? Was it really on the same level as, if not greater than, The Lion King? Well… 

The long answer is: 

The Lion King both adapted and re-interpreted its source material, “Hamlet,” in very creative ways. Frozen, meanwhile, sowed the seeds for some truly intriguing re-interpretations of their own - but then chickened out in favor of a single, iconic song.

The polite answer is:

It just depends on who you ask; Purists may not vibe with it, but it is still fun, family fare.

My honest answer is:

Hells, no... Not when K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) did it better.

(Silly) Author's Note:

"When I saw this challenge posted, I tore through my house looking for a very specific essay I wrote over 6 years ago. No one has ever seen it before, because I pretty much wrote it on a lark one day during 2020. You will not be reading it here, because it’s pretty much badly written!"