Frozen 2 Script Doctor

so frozen to is deeply extremely weird I'm just gonna put it really harshly to start out I understand it's been six years between movies and this is an animated movie I have an incomplete understanding of animated movies but I do know that they take a very very long time so this is in the case of wow you had six years to write a movie and this is what you came up with it's more a case of like you had one year to write this movie and then your first 12 pitches were rejected in part or in full they were probably actively editing the story while it was in the process of being recorded and animated and then they're kind of at the mercy of like which scenes are already done because you have to keep those especially the most expensive ones and ultimately you're probably coming up on the deadline and just scrambling to fit whatever you do already have into some semblance of a movie but to be harsh with a movie so huge and highly anticipated it's just a bit disappointing to get a finished product that feels like someone ran up on a deadline and had a bunch of pieces that didn't really work or fit together so they just hurriedly smushed them into something vaguely passable all right spoiler warning I'm gonna get into some specific things so spoilers for the whole movie frozen 2 introduces this idea of spirits the spirits of the four elements and it's cool but also the way they did it it doesn't make any sense so there's this ancient symbol representing the four elements earth fire water wind and then there's a fifth thing in the middle presumably the avatar if each of the elements is a creature the obvious assumption is that Elsa is the water one because she controls ice and in frozen two she does some stuff that's just with water so you're like okay she's water and maybe there are cool-looking magical girls for each of the other elements and then Disney can sell pretty dolls of them and like maybe do an additional movie covering each one or something and it also kind of feels like if Disney is setting up any twist it's that Elsa is in fact the fifth spirit and she can control all the elements not just ice / water this is further reinforced by Elsa meeting a magical horse made of water so you're like okay that's the water spirit Elsa is the fifth one but here's how it shakes out as far as I could tell the water spirit is the magical horse I have it behind me it can control water but not ice I don't think it can break apart into just being water Alex Mack but it can also manifest as a horse but the horse is made of water it's not like a real horse made of horse skin the fire spirit is a little lizard it can appear as just fire a lizard that's on fire or a lizard and it's just a normal lizard when it's like that with lizard skin the wind spirit is just the actual wind and it has no physical form so it's not a creature it just is the wind but it has a personality the Earth Spirit is kind of unclear but it appears to be these big rock giants even though there's like 20 of them so I guess it's just all 20 of these guys they're made of rocks but they don't seem to actually even be able to control the earth so much as just pick up rocks and throw them and then the fifth spirit is Elsa a human woman who can control the same things as the water spirit and ice but nothing else make things more confusing the quest starts because Elsa in her own words accidentally wakes up the spirits of the dark forest these spirits attack arendelle by messing up the water fire wind and earth these spirits are not the four spirits of the elements that I previously mentioned the rock giants lizard and water horse were not present the jury's still out on whether the wind spirit was there because it's invisible and just looks like the wind but I think those spirits weren't present because they couldn't have been present because they were trapped in the dark forest by the mist that doesn't let anything in or out so they weren't responsible for the attack on arendelle so I guess those four spirits are the spirits of the elements but there are also separate spirits of the dark forest which also control each of those elements and make no sense so that's all I have to say about that I guess it's just it doesn't make sense again it just kind of feels like an unexamined first draft and like there are things and Disney Princess movies that don't make sense all the time and I don't care about those like you know how Anna and Elsa left all of their subjects on a cliffside with no food water or shelter you'll be safe here great thanks guys or the fact that suddenly the girls are in different outfits when they go on their adventure even though they fled the castle in the middle of the night and like I didn't see them pack a suitcase but like that kind of stuff it's just nitpicking it doesn't matter that much maybe they shopped on the way I don't really care this elemental spirit stuff it's kind of like what the movie is about there isn't a lot of character development so I think kind of the whole purpose of frozen to is to expand the lore of their universe and if that's the thing you're bringing to the table you really have to lock it down instead it was just really vague and if anything it raised more questions but here's my biggest beef with this movie is that frozen is supposed to be about sisters and Elsa and ona barely interact you get one scene at the beginning where Elsa can't sleep and Ana's comforting her and it's like a sweet sister moment then they're just hanging out as a group and pretty much all the character interactions are just Anna and Kristoff a quest or roadtrip movie is usually great like a great opportunity for just team-building and bonding all around but this isn't even really a question movie they set out on the wagon walk into the forest and then five minutes later just immediately run into all the people that live in the forest and all the old arendelle Ian's soldiers at the same time in the same scene like there isn't that much of an impression of grandness and mystery in this forest like for all I know it's five acres of land then later they set out again and very quickly find their parents ship wreck there's only one scene of them walking it seems like they found it in five minutes when you saw the shipwreck I was immediately like okay this can go one of two ways either their parents aren't in there suggesting that they're still alive or my favorite these princesses are about to find the skeletons of their parents either one is going to be high drama so I'm admittedly pretty excited to see it play out but no the magical mist conveniently kept all of the skeletons out of the movie those cowards then for the whole like last half of movie Elsa and on are just separated it also tricks Anna and throws her down at Hillside in an ice canoe at like 50 miles an hour she could have straight-up killed her and Ana's furious but like this period never really addressed I mean she talks about it to Olaf but she never hashes it out without that worst of all the narrative suggests that Elsa doing this thing and pushing on away was actually the correct choice if she hadn't ditched her to go on the dangerous mission to the ice cave she never would have found out about arendelle's past and how to break the curse on the lands she gets frozen as a consequence of obtaining this information but it's not like a morality thing the message wasn't that Elsa shouldn't have gone here or that it was dangerous selfish reckless a fool's errand it was that Elsa was a hero for unwittingly sacrificing herself for this Intel so sidebar I kind of like to point out how much ominous imagery there is around the voice that's calling Elsa it's calling her out directly into a raging ocean and in into the unknown she specifically refers to it as a siren a siren isn't just a thing that tempts you because it has something really cool to show you it's the thing that tempts you in order to kill you when she gets in the water she's eventually carried off to the ice cave island by a magical water horse that's a lot like a kelpy the mythical water horse creature that tries to tempt people into climbing onto its back again not because it has something cool to show them and then there's the lullaby their mom sings them as kids which ends with an ominous warming about drowning if you go too deep and then we get to show yourself which was one of the two songs that I really liked in the movie but the actual revelation Elsa has in the cave really rubs me the wrong way Elsa is looking for answers and someone to tell her why she is the way she is and the musical number she has in the cave and like the vision and whatever is basically like it's just you trust in yourself the power is in you URL you need it would be very empowering under some circumstances but for Elsa it's all wrong she specifically says earlier in the movie that she's hoping the voice is someone like her she wants answers and community and this is triumphantly like good news Elsa there is no answer and there is no one like you you're really super powerful Elsa you have no equal you do have a horse a lizard the wind and these twenty guys and that's that and this is freedom to some beautiful triumphant revelation but think about frozen one for just like one half of a second didn't let it go Elsa is excited because she's embracing who she is but at the beginning of the movie she mistakenly believes that in order to do that she has to leave behind everybody she knows and loves and goofy a glamorous bedazzled hermit in an ice castle on a mountain and the resolution to that story is like no Elsa don't do that very weird thing you can embrace who you are and also find acceptance from the people who love you and frozen to ends with Elsa embracing her powers leaving behind everyone she knows and loves and going to become a glamorous bedazzled hermit horse girl in the forest and I guess she'll visit sometimes so that's growth I mean she'll at least visit for board game nights and use wind instant messengers so like that's something but also she's so directionless now there's no real sense that the forest or nature or whatever needed her there to function kind of get the sense that in an early draft Elsa was going to go be the queen of the forest people like they had some line about how their mother was from one of their oldest families which was maybe like a queen or a chief and she was like their lost princess or something and then maybe somebody at Disney was like hey this is a self-sufficient non-white tribe of indigenous people in a forest and Elsa is like as white as a person can possibly be without being a ghost so like maybe the optics of that are not ideal but then it's like what is Elsa even doing out there just riding her horse around it doesn't seem like they're facing any particular danger that she has to restore balance to so she's not a superhero she's not their queen so what what is this amount to that Elsa just has a wealthy family who will support her as she takes a gap year there's no growth here for any of the characters there are changes to the status quo at the end but that is not the same thing as character growth at the end of the movie Anna is Queen and Elsa I don't know wears her hair down there were no lessons learned I mean I guess also learned that she apparently didn't want to be Queen even though she had always seemed like benevolent ruler who was okay with the responsibilities like she only seemed to not like it in frozen one because of the stress of not being able to keep her powers concealed but that's not a problem anymore if it stops whole character conflict is that he needs to propose which I guess is daunting but it's not really a more interesting character beat than someone studying for a challenging exam that they have to get a good grade on there's this brief moment when Anna leaves him behind to follow Elsa and he sings a sad song about it I kind of thought going in his character conflict that they were leading up to was going to be like an insecurity that he was always going to be second to Elsa in Ana's life but that's not really what's addressed his song is kind of just expressing fear that anna is going to break up with him and she's not going to so that's fine that worked itself out a gap and then he disappears for a lot of the movie and then he comes back at the end and says to honor that he's confident their relationship is strong and then he proposes so that's that I don't know when he had this growth moment but okay maybe someday we'll get frozen one and a half and it'll just show Kristoff going to therapy or something on and learned that arendelle had this whole revisionist history regarding their interactions with the forest people and that her grandfather was a bad man but that hadn't really been a quality of her character that needed resolving there was no indication that she had any particular distrust for the supposedly evil forest people she loves arendelle and the subjects in it just kind of has people that she's known her whole life and likes on a personal level but there's no indication of like a fierce patriotism for arendelle and the idea of a great nation that can do no wrong it's not like the princess is here that bedtime story at the beginning and go someday will have our Avenger just like whoa I love that story that was so cool and epic which admittedly is a very insensitive response to that story and then when they go to the forest it takes all of one conversation for them to just trust and like the forest people so yeah no real prejudice there and the girl's grandfather was such an on character you don't feel any shock or betrayal at the revelation that he's evil because he's just some guy that the audience doesn't know and that none of the living characters even met before he died you're not even given the sense that the girls had any particular admiration for the general idea of their grandfather like as a kind patriarch or a fondly remembered ruler it's just a guy that we hear a brief story about at the beginning I think the writers might have thought this would be akin to the Hans twist but it's just not even the reveal that their mom was from the forest and saved their dad as a kid like so what what does that mean for anyone I guess they have a new cultural heritage to learn about like somebody getting fun 23andme results in the mail that's about it this doesn't cast anything we knew about the mom and a new light or alter our opinions of her it was such a non twist that it might as well just not been a twist it even could have just been in the story that dad told them at the beginning like and then your mother saved me and she went with me to arendelle and we fell in love and that would change absolutely nothing about the way the story unfolded from there the weirdest thing about the story was the finality of it all frozen is such a big movie like culturally and financially and seems to have such legitimately good franchise potential especially after you send them out into the world and bring in other magical creatures you could churn out endless frozen movies or a frozen TV series if you just introduce interesting villains or obstacles or mysteries to solve but they seem so uninterested in exploring that in any way but the emotional core of the story was the sisters and now on Ice Queen so even if Elsa goes out adventuring they're splitting the team up and there wasn't any hook to imply that there was an unresolved threat out there or any loose ends not even as an after credit stinger so anyway if you want to settle in for a minute I can tell you how I thought this might go with musicals I could never resist having a soundtrack listen even though I know I shouldn't and it will spoil the story so that's how it went with this one it could immediately tell that the last two songs were the ones with spoilers so we just kind of skimmed them and I didn't give a second listen and because of that they gave me this weird false impression of how I thought the story was going to go and I wish that it had happened so let's go through that so you have show yourself in which Elsa is looking for and ultimately finds answers with a second voice singing back to her then immediately following it you have the next right thing which is a song about Anna being extremely devastated that someone is gone from her life someone she has always trusted and followed and now can no longer follow either literally or figuratively a lot of people started some early speculation that this meant Elsa would die or Kristoff what dock but I actually kind of thought that maybe Elsa would become evil not permanently evil but like temporarily misguidedly evil and I still wish that had happened so at the beginning of the movie Elsa is hearing this mysterious siren call and wants to seek it out in her introductory scene she is standing on this balcony the Queen overseeing her kingdom and she's hearing this voice that no one else hears one of her subjects comes up behind her and startles her causing her to shoot giant Spears of terrifying ice at the balcony railing so for anyone who's keeping score we have a queen who is jumpy hearing things and has powers that can kill you we don't usually love that onna is immediately skeptical that this voice is good her powers can feel that it's good so she's just trusting her mysterious magical powers over on his intuition again the film we got confirms that this was the correct thing to do there's a light in one of the trailers which was very misleading I believe it did not appear anywhere in the final movie where the wise troll says magic is very alluring without you she may lose herself to it being without you see bein lose herself to it on I even has the line in the movie when she's arguing that she should go with Elsa that there's a line in the lullaby that says go too far and you'll be drowned she literally yells at Elsa who will stop you from going too far but also just sends her away shutting her out again the exact thing that she learned not to do in the first movie so I imagined this story being about Elsa meeting some kind of corrupting influence be that a evil magical force or a specific person whatever maybe it's this lady who didn't have anything to do in this story or this lady who didn't have anything to do in the story or this guy who talked to Kristoff one time about reindeer or maybe it's some new character regardless I am going to name my character villainous don't worry I trust her maybe this character meets Elsa early in her journey and tells her the story of the five spirits maybe they urge her to continue to follow the voice maybe this is the character Elsa remarks to about how come lullabies always have some ominous warning at the end and villainess says well the world is dangerous and children are curious maybe villainess noticed on a yelling at Elsa for running into the fire and they have a conversation where she gently validates else's feelings that onna is cramping her style she can also insinuate that that's just one of the burdens of having amazing powers people won't understand and they'll try to control you that's definitely what else's parents were doing with all the gloves and stuff so that obviously resonates with Elsa so yeah maybe that's what honest trying to do now but villainess seems really nice and she's nice too on they have like a one-on-one conversation villainous loans her some of her cold-weather clothes like the fur lined cape and hat because we love a costume change and you know unlike Elsa Anna can actually feel the cold up north so also when the girls find out that their mother was from the forest originally Anna can have some line like I don't understand how could she leave her people behind forever she's on the right track but you can basically just put a pin in that until frozen 3 because I'm not touching it today anyway then the thing happens where Elsa wants to cross the dangerous ocean and on a tries to stop her and Elsa sends her away in the murder canoe but maybe they can have more of an argument first which brings up some of the issues I've been discussing Elsa doesn't need on his help Ana's just jealous she's trying to control her etc etc sure oh god I'm so violent and then Elsa leaves across the ocean to the ice caves and the whole scene plays out basically identically to how it already does in the movie that's good news because in my imagination they're like hey we can't take out that scene it was the teaser and it's fully animated do you know how much it costs oh yeah that seemed can stay it's fine we have the same song the same beautiful imagery the same emotional high point we've all got tears in our eyes Elsa's got tears in her eyes she finally found her answers she knows where she belongs it's beautiful but it's also a filling song villainess is waiting in the ice cave and she's like this was a test this water horse is the guardian of this magical place and could only be tamed by the true elemental spirit of water villainess tells Elsa that she is confirmed to be the spirit of water and that she villainess is the fifth spirit it is her job to find all of the spirits and tell them what needs to be done to maintain balance in nature and the universe and now that else is here she can help her unite all the spirit so basically she's telling Elsa that she's gonna be her boss but Elsa is still riding the high of her beautiful musical number so she's like awesome I finally know my place and my purpose I love this anyway cut to onna in the dark cave that the murder canoe has carried her to and she's being extremely sad she doesn't know how to get out and then she sees a flickering light down one of the tunnels and she thinks it's the way out so she goes toward it but it's not the way out surprise it's actually the blue fire lizard it was just light from his little flickering fire yeah remember the little blue fire lizard he showed up in like one scene and didn't do anything in terms of the story well here he is he's back he's in the cave on a season and he just starts going ballistic he's like trying to attack her and she's trying to get away because he's made of fire and at some point on a trips and her fur lined hat falls off and the lizard stops trying to attack and Ana's like oh you were just scared of my hat and then she thinks about it for a minute and things like click for her and she's like wait no you're scared of me because I'm dressed like this - and you think I'm her because you're a dumb lizard and you don't understand clothes there's something off about that lady named villainous how could it be but now I wanna be friends the little lizard and he helps guide her back out of the caves and she's got to go find out that she has to warn her she doesn't know of what exactly but still you know something is not what it seems but when she arrives back at the camp where all the forest people are the first person she runs into is villainous so Ana's on edge the little lizard is on edge he's like hiding in her satchel then up walks Elsa in her glamorous new white dress and her blown-out hair and completely failing to read the room Anna is like still very angry about being pushed down the hill in the murder canoe especially because Elsa doesn't seem apologetic about it but Elsa is just super hype to tell her about what she's learned about how cool she is you know which I'm sure Anna will take well then villainess sees the lizard and honest satchel and is like that's the spirit of fire I've been looking all over for him and she starts coming toward him on it gets upset the lizard gets upset and starts you know doing fire villainous is acting super calm and not evil but she's like Elsa we need that lizard I'm glad you're here you can use your ice powers to contain him and finally we can start uniting all these elements like we want to do on us like Elsa do not use your ice powers on this lizard it's the best line in the script she's also like Elsa I think your new friend villainous is hiding something and else is like yeah she was she's the fifth spirit isn't that super neat on a react negatively to the news which upsets Elsa Elsa is trying to explain her truth which is misguided villainous is seeming very chill and well-intentioned so Anna just seems like a crazy person for not trusting her and it basically turns into an argument between the two sisters Elsa tries to use her ice powers to stop both onna and the lizard from leaving she's not like attacking them but you know she's shooting ice around them it's not cool they narrowly escape maybe there's a herd of reindeer involved in the escape so Kristoff can come back from whatever character purgatory he's been banished to then having failed villainous is like you see Elsa people fear and distrust what they don't understand no one will be safe until we can unite all the element and Ana's trying to get in the way of that meanwhile Ana is on her way back home with Christoph and the lizard and Sven and she's very upset that Elsa chose her new friend and being a water goddess over her family and then she sends us off with her big song about how she's very sad but ending with cautious optimism about how she can only keep moving forward and trying to do the right thing and then she goes back to arendelle to rule temporarily as Queen Regent just until she can get Elsa back which she's determined to do and she's looking very somber in her dark green velvet dress that's almost black and the little fire lizard is like her familiar now she takes it around with her on her shoulder or she carries it in her hands but since it's warm she wears protective gloves which is like you know some kind of cool echo to Elsa being the sad queen with her gloves on this isn't specified but I figured that everyone in the kingdom basically assumes that Elsa has died and honor just doesn't want to accept it but honor needs to find Elsa again someday and convince her that she's on the wrong side and that's how we leave them onna the Queen the sisters separated Elsa tricked onto the dark side it's basically just a big emotional cliffhanger and I know what you're thinking Jenny a cliffhanger with a downer ending and a film for children an animated film whose follow-up we won't get to see for another six years well in my concept frozen two and three ideally would have been animated and developed simultaneously with the plan being to release frozen 3 1 to 2 years after so it wouldn't be quite as long of a gap and to soften the blow maybe you could even do like an infinity war thing and have an end card about how the adventure will continue in frozen 3 and that's how you can announce the sequel but kids love drama and I don't think this would upset them I think it would make them excited for more and also make them want to like buy a lot of frozen dolls and speculatively act out what might happen next speaking of dolls frozen 2 didn't really do anything to bridge the coolness divide between Anna and Elsa Elsa is the top-selling sister by far and if anything frozen 2 just made her that much cooler while on a stagnated I'm of the opinion that the story is better if Anna doesn't get hours but that is definitely why she's at a disadvantage with kids and that's also where I thought I'd like throw her a bone and give her the little fyrelizard to be like her Pokemon by frozen three they'll be even more familiar with each other so they'll be able to jump around and incinerate things together with perfectly refined teamwork so on and will be able to hold her own a little better in action scene Charmander didn't really serve any function to the story before so it's a win-win anyway all this was useless because the movies out so it's too late but I will implement all of my changes when Disney puts me in charge of the frozen to live-action adaptation premiering on Disney Plus in 2025 so yeah this might surprise you but all in all I actually liked frozen to fine I liked Olaf being a philosopher in this one instead of just having the same thing going on I liked Elsa's two songs a lot even though in my opinion every single other song just sounded like a b-side that should have only been a cut song on the deluxe edition and not one that actually made it into the movie it really liked all the dazzling action sequences and the fact that both princesses got them pretty equally they felt like something more out of a Marvel movie than a princess movies that was pretty fun how weird that we have a princess movie like this I think that's my favorite thing about it this is just really weird a movie this weird would never have happened in the first place that frozen hadn't been such a giant success at the box office so that kind of enabled them to think outside the box and take some risks you know maybe some misguided risks but some risks yeah I'll probably go see it a couple more times while it's still in theaters there's a lot of cool atmosphere and neat visuals and I like all the characters from frozen I just wish they had realized more of the potential that I see within this framework because I feel like this story has a lot of really good bones but unfortunately no skeletons you Oh also in frozen 3 the twist is that the reason there's no tangible wind spirit that you can see is that villainous actually is the wind spirit she's obviously lying about being the fifth spirit and that's Elsa which will be supported by us gradually learning that else that can control the other elements and not just water and ice and so also all of the times the wind and the leaves were guiding Elsa on her quest that was all part of the trap if we felt like it we could even say that she caused the storm that sank the parents ship it feels a little on the nose but we could and obviously the horse actually was the water spirit and the villainess just slide she's keeping Elsa under her thumb and yeah it would have been a fun time

Channel: Jenny Nicholson

Views: 1,006,504

Keywords: frozen ii, disney

Id: jwN3Myxrpvw

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/rocketwilco]

That sneeze