Frozen

Frozen is an American 3D computer animated musical fantasy-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Contrary to popular belief, this film does not  use Meander, the hybrid 2D/CGI animation tool made by Disney for the Paperman short, leading to uncertainty on when it will be used. This movie uses the same animation style as Tangled. It is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen. It is the 53rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It also features the twelfth and thirteenth Disney Princesses, Anna and Elsa. The film features the voices of Kristen Bell as Anna and Idina Menzel as the Snow Queen, in speaking as well as singing roles, along with Jonathan Groff playing the role of mountain man Kristoff. It was released on November 27, 2013.

The movie parodies and spoofs several tropes and themes used in earlier Disney movies.

This is also WDAS's second Andersen-inspired full-length feature, the first being The Little Mermaid (not counting The Steadfast Tin Soldier from Fantasia 2000 and The Little Match Girl).

Plot
Late in the night, 5 years old Princess Anna wakes her elder sister, 8 years old Princess Elsa to play using Elsa's snow magic. However when the magic goes awry, the royal family journeys to the legendary Valley of the Living Rock to seek the help of trolls who remove the magic from Anna, and her memory of her sister's power. In order to protect Elsa from the world, she is ostracized from everyone, including Anna, leaving both sisters distraught and lonely. Their despair only escalates when their parents die after they go on a ship to sail somewhere when a storm erupts and a wave capsizes the boat.

Three years later, it is the day of Elsa's (Idina Menzel) coronation ceremony. Dignitaries from around the world are coming to visit, including the Duke of Weselton (Alan Tudyk), who wants to run Arendelle's profits dry. Nobody is more excited than Anna (Kristen Bell), as they are finally opening the gates to the kingdom. She is happy to see other people, and hopes for the possibility of meeting that special someone, but Elsa is still concerned about trying to control her powers. As she strolls out onto the streets, she bumps into a horse, which happens to belong to the charming and handsome Prince Hans (Santino Fontana) of The Southern Isles. Anna is instantly attracted to him. The coronation goes off without a hitch, despite Elsa's fears and she even takes time to connect with her sister at the party before Anna and Hans sneak off to spend the evening together, quickly realizing the mutual attraction between them. Hans proposes right on the spot, and Anna immediately accepts. Elsa refuses to grant her blessing on the marriage, setting off an argument between the sisters culminating in Elsa's powers being exposed to the party guests.

Panicking, Elsa runs with Anna in hot pursuit. As she becomes more stressed and panicked, the weather starts turning colder: snow begins to fall and Elsa races across the fjord, freezing it with each step. She makes it to the North Mountain where she laments her failure at keeping the powers contained but quickly becomes more and more at ease and relaxed, free to use her powers as she pleases building a snow man, an ice palace, and an ice dress.The next morning Anna is on a hunt for Elsa, determined to return her to Arendelle, end the winter, and mend their relationship. She finds herself at Oaken's Trading Post where she meets Oaken (Chris Williams) and Kristoff (Jonathan Groff). Anna convinces Kristoff to take her to the North Mountain where the source of the winter is coming from. After an attack from wolves the pair meet the snowman Elsa created, named Olaf (Josh Gad) who shares his dreams of experiencing summer and agrees to lead them to Elsa's hideout.

The gang makes it to Elsa's palace. Anna and Elsa reunite, and while both are happy to see each other, Elsa still harbors fears of wounding Anna once again. Despite Anna's promising to stand by her sister and help her, Elsa only grows more agitated and nervous resulting in her magic flaring, this time striking Anna in the heart. Elsa, in desperation to get her sister to safety, creates a giant snow creature (that Olaf calls "Marshmallow") to throw them out. After they outrun the snow monster, Kristoff notices that Anna's hair is turning white, and he takes them to seek help. Kristoff leads Anna (who is slowly freezing) to the trolls. A mix-up occurs, and the trolls insist Anna and Kristoff get married. Before the two can be wed by Gothi The Troll Priest, Anna collapses and Grand Pabbie appears. According to him, only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart or else Anna will freeze solid. Kristoff races back to Arendelle to get Anna to Hans, believing true love's kiss will save her.

Meanwhile, Hans, on a search for Anna after her horse returns to the kingdom without her, and the guards find the ice castle. While Hans battles Marshmallow the duke's men attack Elsa who fights back, nearly killing them both much to her own horror. At the end of the altercation Elsa's chandelier comes crashing down, knocking her unconscious. She wakes up shackled in a cell back in Arendelle. Hans pleads with her to undo the winter to no avail but Elsa replies that she can't due to the fact that she is unable to control her powers. Anna is returned to Hans, freezing more and more by the minute. She begs him to kiss her and break the curse but he refuses, revealing his plan all along was to marry into Arendelle's throne, because he is the youngest of 12 brothers and he will never reach the throne. He leaves Anna to freeze to death and goes to kill Elsa. Also, he puts the fire out to prevent Anna from getting any warmth.

Elsa escapes from prison when she learns Hans means to have her executed for treason and heads out into the blizzard on the fjord. In the castle, Olaf comes to Anna's rescue and reveals Kristoff is in love with her. The two then travel together out on the fjord to find him, where he is racing back to the kingdom. Hans cuts Elsa off and tells her Anna is dead because of her. In Elsa's despair, the storm immediately stops, giving Kristoff and Anna the chance to reach each other. But when Anna sees Hans is about to kill her sister, she chooses instead to save Elsa, throwing herself between Elsa and Hans; she freezes solid just as Hans' sword hits her instead of Elsa. After a few moments of despair, Elsa sees her sister has thawed and come back to life because she sacrificed herself to save her sister, constituting an act of true love.

Elsa realizes love is the key to controlling her powers and thaws the kingdom. Sometime later, Anna gifts Kristoff a new sled and reveals Elsa has named him the Official Ice Master for the kingdom and the two share a kiss. Hans is sent back to his own kingdom in chains where he will have to deal with his 12 older brothers for his deeds and Elsa cuts off trade with Weselton. Elsa promises to never shut the castle gates again and skates on the new ice rink with Anna.

Origins
In 1943, Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn had considered the possibility of collaborating together to produce a biography film of author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, where Goldwyn's studio would shoot the live-action sequences and Disney would create the animated sequences. The animated sequences were to include stories of Andersen's works, such as The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, The Ugly Duckling, The Red Shoes, and The Emperor's New Clothes. Walt and his animators were having hard troubles about The Snow Queen, as they couldn't find a way to adapt and relate the Snow Queen character to modern audiences. Even as far back as the 1940s, Disney's animation department saw great cinematic possibilities with the source material, but the Snow Queen character herself, proved to be too problematic. This, among other things, led to the cancellation of the Disney-Goldwyn project. Goldwyn went on to produce his own live action film version in 1952, entitled Hans Christian Andersen, with Danny Kaye as Andersen, Charles Vidor directing, Moss Hart writing, and Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) penning the songs. All of Andersen's fairy tales were, instead, told in song and ballet in live action, like the rest of the film. It went on to receive six Academy Award nominations the following year. Back at Disney, The Snow Queen, along with other Andersen fairy tales (including The Little Mermaid), were shelved.

Later efforts
In the late 1990s, Walt Disney Feature Animation started on their own adaptation of The Snow Queen after the tremendous success of the Disney Renaissance films, until the project was scrapped completely in late 2002, when Glen Keane notoriously quit the project. Even before then, Harvey Fierstein pitched his version of the story to the Disney executives, but was turned down. Dick Zondag (We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story), and Dave Goetz (An American Tail, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Tangled) all had their try on it, but failed. Disney shelved the project again. Michael Eisner, then-CEO and Chairman of The Walt Disney Company, offered his support to the project and suggested doing it with John Lasseter at Pixar Animation Studios, when the studios would get their contracts renewed. However, in March 2010, four years after the Pixar acquisition, Disney commissioned the project instead at Walt Disney Animation Studios, with Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale directing, along with Don Hahn to produce, John Lasseter to executive produce, Linda Woolverton to write the script, and Alan Menken and Glenn Slater to write the songs. By June 2010, the project entered development hell once again, when the studio failed to find a way to make the story and the Snow Queen character work.

Revitalization
On December 22, 2011, following the success of Tangled (formerly Rapunzel), Disney announced a new title for the film, Frozen, and a release date, November 27, 2013, and a different crew from the previous attempt. A month later, it was confirmed that the film would be a computer animated feature in stereoscopic 3D, instead of the intended hand drawn animation. On March 5, 2012, it was announced that Chris Buck (Tarzan, Surf's Up) would be directing, with John Lasseter and Peter Del Vecho (The Princess and the Frog) producing.

When Disney decided to start up The Snow Queen again, one of the main challenges Buck and Del Vecho faced was the character of the Snow Queen, which in that earlier version of the story, was a villain. Buck and Del Vecho presented their storyboards to John Lasseter, with the entire production team adjourned to a conference to hear John's thoughts on this work-in-progress. Production designer Michael Giaimo, recalled; "That was the game changer...I remember John saying that the latest version of The Snow Queen story that Chris Buck and his team had come up with was fun, very light-hearted. But the characters didn't resonate. They aren't multi-faceted. Which why John felt that audiences wouldn't really be able to connect with them." The production team then addressed the film's problems, drafting several different variations on the Snow Queen story until the characters and story felt relevant. The film's protagonist, Anna, was based on the Gerda character from The Snow Queen, whereas Kristoff was loosely based on the Robber Girl character. The production team decided to have Anna and Elsa (the Snow Queen) as sisters. "From that moment forward, the project began to jell in some very exciting ways. Once we realized that these characters could be siblings and have a relationship, everything changed," Del Vecho enthused. Columnist Jim Hill wrote on the film's production back-story, "Lasseter also immediately saw the wisdom in taking the approach to adapting the story of The Snow Queen to the big screen. That a sibling dynamic like this had never been explored in an animated feature before. Which is why making this particular story change would definitely bring new to that table."

Production
On March 5, 2012, it was announced that actress Kristen Bell would provide her voice to the lead character, Anna. "Since I was 4 years old, I dreamed of being in a Disney animated film," Bell said. "It was the first goal I ever set for myself. It seemed like it would be a very unrealistic one." When Bell was a little girl, she she recorded a voice box where she sang a couple of songs from The Little Mermaid, including "Part of Your World", after growing much fascination of wanting to appear in a Disney animated film from The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Her Little Mermaid vocal tracks were part of the reason why she got the part of Anna, as director Jennifer Lee said to her that if she hadn't recorded her own vocal tracks from Mermaid, it would've been very difficult to the find the right one to play Anna. She did the recording sessions while she was pregnant. After she gave birth, she re-recorded some lines as her voice had deepened, and there were "more womanly tones." In addition to Bell's casting, Disney cast Idina Menzel as Elsa the Snow Queen.

On December 19, 2012, it was announced that Jonathan Groff would voice the role of Kristoff. It was also announced that Alan Tudyk, who voiced King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph, would voice the role of the Duke of Weselton, along with Santino Fontana who would be voicing Prince Hans, and Josh Gad who would be voicing Olaf the snowman. When asked on her approach to Anna, Kristen Bell replied, "I'm really excited to show it to people. I became a part of the kind of movie I wanted to see as a kid," she said. "I always loved Disney animation, but there was something about the females that was unattainable to me. Their posture was too good and they were too well-spoken, and I feel like I really made this girl much more relatable and weirder and scrappier and more excitable and awkward. I'm really proud of that."

On November 30, 2012, it was announced that Jennifer Lee, one of the screenwriters of Wreck-It Ralph, had joined Buck as co-director. "We brought Jen [Lee, the co-director] as a writer originally but she so quickly took to the story we were trying to tell, she worked so well with our song writers and had such a passion that it became clear she’d bring a lot of creativity to the film, was very much in sync with Chris. And given the time frame we needed two directors," Del Vecho remarked. Following the announcement, Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a full-length animated motion picture produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Peter Del Vecho commented on the matter of having two directors on the project: "In story planning we’re always together. That’s myself, the head of story, the songwriters and Jen[nifer Lee] and Chris [Buck]; you can’t do anything until you get that story working. But after that, we have the ability to keep Jen working on story while Chris is working on animation, and then they come together again in editorial. The idea of two directors is that they can come together to bounce ideas off each another when they need to but also split their duties a little bit so that, essentially, they can get more work done in a straight day."

Animation
The film's animators visited an Ice Hotel in Quebec, Canada to study how light reflects and refracts on snow and ice. For the film's setting, the animators used the landscape of Norway and the feel of the winter season of Wyoming for inspiration. "We had a very short time schedule for this film, so our main focus was really to get the story right but we knew that John Lasseter is keen on truth in the material and creating a believable world, and again that doesn't mean it's a realistic world - but a believable one. It was important to see the scope and scale of Norway, and important for our animators to know what it's like," Del Vecho remarked. "There is a real feeling of Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this," he finished. Back at the studio, Del Vecho explained the film's production: "On this movie we do have character leads, supervising animators on specific characters. The animators themselves may work on multiple characters but it’s always under one lead. I think it was different on Tangled, for example, but we chose to do it this way as we wanted one person to fully understand and develop their own character and then be able to impart that to the crew. Hyrum Osmond, the animator on Olaf, is quiet but he has a funny, wacky personality so we knew he’d bring a lot of comedy to it; Anna’s animator, Becky Bresee, it’s her first time leading a character and we wanted her to lead Anna.

Regarding the look and nature of the film's cinematography, the film's art director Michael Giaimo (Pocahontas) was greatly influenced by the legendary Jack Cardiff's work in Black Narcissus, which lends a hyper-reality to Frozen: "Because this is a movie with such scale and we have the Norwegian fjords to draw from, I really wanted to explore the depth. From a design perspective, since I was stressing the horizontal and vertical aspects, and what the fjords provide, it was perfect. We encased the sibling story in scale." In fact, Ted D. McCord's work on The Sound of Music was another major influence: "The juxtaposition of character and environment and the counterpart of how they played in terms of cinematography was brilliant in that film," Giaimo added. It was also his idea that Frozen should be filmed in CinemaScope, which was warmly approved by John Lasseter. Columnist Bill Desowitz wrote about the design and majesty of the film's visual splendor: "According to Giaimo, there were three important takeaways from the research trip in making Frozen unique to the Disney canon: the fjords, which are the massive vertical rock formations, and serve as the setting for the secluded Arendelle kingdom; the medieval stave churches, whose rustic triangular roof-lines and shingles inspired the castle compound; and the rosemaling folk art, whose distinctive paneling and grid patterns informed the architecture, decor, and costumes (the most elaborate in Disney history, designed by Brittney Lee). For Giaimo, whose background is animation and got into story, character design, environment and art, definitely achieves a unity of character and environment. "Now that I look back on Frozen, that's why I'm not afraid of color. I wanted very saturated colors and I wanted to use black, which is usually a no-no in CG." A live reindeer was brought into the studio for animators to study its movements and mannerisms for the character, Sven.

When the English title for the film was officially changed from The Snow Queen to Frozen, Peter Del Vecho explains "The title Frozen came up independently of the title Tangled. It’s because, to us, it represents the movie. Frozen plays on the level of ice and snow but also the frozen relationship, the frozen heart that has to be thawed. We don’t think of comparisons between Tangled and Frozen, though. The decision to call the film Frozen was the filmmakers' decision. The studio’s decision to then call it the Snow Queen overseas was because that just resonated stronger in some countries than Frozen. Maybe there’s a richness to the Snow Queen in the country’s heritage and they just wanted to emphasize that." As he continued, "We’re telling a story about family and relationships and that in itself can be very complicated. A lot of times what you perceive something to be isn't what it turns out to be – Elsa has to hide for her whole life who she is, even from her sister. That clearly affected her and made her into the character she is. Hopefully, if you look at the story through Elsa’s eyes you’ll be able to understand what she does or if you look at it through Anna’s eyes you’ll be able to understand why she does what she does, but they’re all complicated relationships. We don’t think of it as a Princess movie. They happen to be Princesses but we don’t think about it that way, so I always get a bit thrown when people talk about this. But I can say we want to make them really believable and not set them up on a pedestal. Our version of these characters should feel really real and be relatable to things you might go through in your life."

Release
Frozen was released theatrically on November 27, 2013 in the United States, and was accompanied by the Mickey Mouse animated short film, Get A Horse! The film was promoted heavily at several Disney theme park including Disney California Adventure's World of Color, Epcot's Norway pavilion, and Disneyland Paris' Disney Dreams!.

Box office
Frozen has currently earned $53,498,000 at the domestic box office. The film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on November 19, 2013 and earned $243,390 during its limited release there; it earned its position to be the seventh best pre-screen average of all time. On its opening day, the film earned $15.2 million

Critical response
Frozen received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. Several critics have compared the film favorably to the films of the Disney Renaissance, particularly The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 84% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 101 reviews, with an average score of 7.7/10, making it the highest rated family film in 2013. The site's consensus reads: "Beautifully animated, smartly written, and stocked with singalong songs, Frozen adds another worthy entry to the Disney canon." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 75 based on 37 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Frozen was an A+ on an A+ to F scale.

Alonso Duralde of The Wrap hailed the film as "the best animated musical to come out of Disney since the tragic death of lyricist Howard Ashman, whose work on The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast helped build the studio’s modern animated division into what it is today." He also elaborated that "while it lags the tiniest bit on its way to the conclusion, the script...really delivers; it offers characters to care about, along with some nifty twists and surprises along the way." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter observes Frozen as a true musical and wrote "You can practically see the Broadway musical Frozen is destined to become while watching Disney's 3D animated princess tale." McCarthy described the film as "energetic, humorous and not too cloying, as well as the first Hollywood film in many years to warn of global cooling rather than warming, this tuneful toon upgrades what has been a lackluster year for big studio animated fare and, beginning with its Thanksgiving opening, should live up to box office expectations as one of the studio's hoped-for holiday-spanning blockbusters." Kyle Smith of the New York Post awarded the film 3.5 out of 4 stars and praised the film as "a great big snowy pleasure with an emotionally gripping core, brilliant Broadway-style songs and a crafty plot. Its first and third acts are better than the jokey middle, but this is the rare example of a Walt Disney Animation Studios effort that reaches as deep as a Pixar film." Scott Mendelson of Forbes enthused; "Frozen is both a declaration of Disney’s renewed cultural relevance and a reaffirmation of Disney coming to terms with its own legacy and its own identity. It’s also a just plain terrific bit of family entertainment."

The Los Angeles Times extolled the film's ensemble voice talent and elaborate musical sequences, and declared Frozen as "a welcome return to greatness for Walt Disney Animation Studios." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B+" grade and labeled it as a "squarely enchanting fairy tale that shows you how the definition of what's fresh in animation can shift." Richard Corliss of Time also lauded the film, writing that, "It's great to see Disney returning to its roots and blooming anew: creating superior musical entertainment that draws on the Walt tradition of animation splendor and the verve of Broadway present." Richard Roeper acclaimed the film as an "absolute delight from start to finish." Both Michael Phillips of Chicago Tribune and Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised the film's characters and musical sequences, which also drew comparisons to the theatrics found in Wicked. Emma Dibdin of Digital Spy awarded the film five out of five stars and called the film "a new Disney classic" and "an exhilarating, joyous, human story that's as frequently laugh-out-loud funny as it is startling and daring and poignant." Hot on the heels of the 90th anniversary, it's impossible to imagine a more perfect celebration of everything Disney is at its best."

However, the film was not without its criticisms. Scott Foundas of Variety, wasn't as equally impressed with the film, but nevertheless commended the film's voice acting and technical artistry: "The tactile, snow-capped Arendelle landscape, including Elsa’s ice-castle retreat is Frozen's other true marvel, enhanced by 3D and the decision to shoot in widescreen – a nod to the CinemaScope richness of Sleeping Beauty and Lady and the Tramp." The Seattle Times gave the film two out of four stars, stating that "While it is an often gorgeous film with computer-generated fjords and ice sculptures and castle interiors, the important thing that glues all this stuff together — story — is sadly lacking." Joe Williams of St. Louis Post-Dispatch also criticized the story as the film's weakest point.

Controversy
Allegations of sexism occurred, after head of animation for Frozen, Lino DiSalvo, said:

"Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive too — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry."

Thus suggesting a difficulty exists due to a limit range of facial variation for recent Disney female cartoon characters because of the need to keep them "pretty". A Disney spokesperson told Time that DiSalvo’s quote was widely misinterpreted.

Music
The original songs for Frozen were written and composed by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, both of whom had previously worked with Walt Disney Animation Studios on Winnie the Pooh. At D23's Destination D event in August 2013, a song called "Let it Go" was performed as a preview. The song is to be performed by Idina Menzel as Elsa, when she leaves the kingdom and creates her own ice palace. In February 2013, it was reported that Christophe Beck. had been hired to score the film, following his highly acclaimed work on a Disney animated short film Paperman, the year prior to Frozen. Kristen Bell also confirmed that there will be a duet between her and Menzel. On August 8, 2013, "Let It Go" and "In Summer," Olaf's song, were revealed at the Disney D23 Expo. It was also revealed on September 14, 2013 that Frode Fjellheim's Eatnemen Vuelie will be the film's opening song.

Trivia

 * Although some Disney Princess characters appear in films outside their franchise, such as in a non-related film (ie, Belle's cameo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame) or as a storybook/painting (such as the reference to Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty in Beauty and the Beast as well as Aurora's painting in The Little Mermaid), Frozen is the first film within the Disney Princess franchise to have two separate representatives in the Disney Princess series directly appear alongside each other (Rapunzel appears as a cameo during Elsa's coronation in the beginning of the film, as one of the attendees).
 * Like in Enchanted, the main heroine falls in love with the prince, and after a disaster, has to spend time with someone else, and finds out out at the end that her true love is actually not the prince, but the person whom she spent more time with. Both heroines also have a duet with the prince, and want to marry a day after meeting each other.

Trivia

 * http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/disney%20frozen