Let. It. Go. Three little words that will now either make children squee or older people rampage all over where they happen to be at the time screaming ‘SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP! SHUT!! UP!!”, such is the life those three innocuous words have taken on for themselves since 2013.
With box office figures, soundtrack sales, and merchandise revenue not seen since the early 1990s, Frozen was the cultural sensation Disney had been chasing for the better part of two decades. While it inevitably became nauseatingly overexposed, it still stands as one of their finest achievements.
The seeds of what would become Frozen had actually been permeating at the studio since the dawn of feature animation in 1937. After the staggering success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney began searching for further fairy tales adaptations for future animated features. In the early 1940s, Walt began developing a live-action/animation co-production with film producer Samuel Goldwyn to be based on several fairy tales of poet Hans Christian Andersen including The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Little Match Girl, and The Snow Queen.
But when the U.S. joined World War II efforts in 1941, all future Disney animated features were placed on hold including the planned Disney-Goldwyn production. By the end of the war, Walt became intently focused on producing an animated adaptation of another fairy tale in Cinderella, causing the co-production with Goldwyn to fall apart. Goldwyn ultimately went on to produce Hans Christian Andersen as a live-action musical told in song and ballet without Disney’s involvement, which was consequently nominated for six Academy Awards.
In the 1950s, the studio again approached the idea of an adaptation of The Snow Queen, but couldn’t quite determine how to make the titular character relatable to modern audiences, nor did they have the funds to authentically produce an animated film set in a land of snow and ice. As such, the project was shelved indefinitely and wasn’t touched again until the late 1990s when veteran animator Glen Keane attempted to bring the project to life.
After working on story ideas for over a year, Keane ultimately quit the project in 2003 to work on his passion project Rapunzel Unbraided, which eventually became 2010’s Tangled. Over the next five years, numerous animators and screenwriters attempted to salvage the languishing project including Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Dick Zondag, Dave Goetz, and even Mulan voice actor Harvey Fierstein, but none were able to truly make the concept work.
During Disney’s contract renegotiations with Pixar in 2004, then-CEO Michael Eisner suggested Pixar director John Lasseter would be perfect to tackle the project when the new deal was finalised. But, as we know, the deal fell through and Eisner soon departed the Disney studio. When Lasseter was installed as the new chief creative officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006, he decided the project still had potential as a future animated production and set about finding the right director for the task.
In 2008, Lasseter convinced his close friend animator/director, Chris Buck to return to Disney from Sony Pictures Animation to potentially direct The Snow Queen. After working as a key animator at Disney since 1978, Buck had departed the studio in 2005 to direct Surf’s Up for Sony Pictures, but was keen to return to Disney after Lasseter took control of the studio. Under the working title Anna and the Snow Queen, Buck’s initial adaptation closely mirrored Andersen’s original fairy tale and was planned to be traditionally animated, but, yet again, it fell apart, and the project was shelved in March 2010.
After the tremendous success of Tangled in November 2011, Lasseter dusted off The Snow Queen project once again, but went a step further by officially announcing a new title for the film, Frozen, on December 22, and confirming its release date as November 27, 2013. Due to the box office disappointments of The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh, Lasseter also confirmed Frozen would now be fully computer-animated. This was also due to the complexities of its intended animated sequences, which would not be logistically possible with traditional animation.
With less than two years to complete the production, Buck was now under pressure to find a way to adapt The Snow Queen into something more palatable for modern audiences. At this point, the Snow Queen was still the villain of the piece, as she is in Andersen’s original tale, who kidnapped Anna from her wedding and intentionally froze her heart in a bid to usurp Anna from the throne. Yet there was still something lacking from the narrative that Buck couldn’t quite crack. In desperate need of assistance, Buck enlisted Wreck-It Ralph co-writer Jennifer Lee in March 2012, who provided the breakthrough the film needed.
THE STORY
In the Scandinavian kingdom of Arendelle, Princess Elsa possesses magical powers that allow her to control and create ice and snow, often using them to play with her younger sister, Anna. After Elsa accidentally injures Anna with her magic, their parents, the King and Queen, take both siblings to a colony of trolls led by Grand Pabbie. He heals Anna, but alters her memories so that she forgets about Elsa's magic. Grand Pabbie warns Elsa that she must learn to control her powers, and that fear will be her greatest enemy. The King and Queen isolate both sisters within the castle, closing the castle gates to their subjects. In an effort to protect her sister from her increasingly unpredictable powers, Elsa ceases all contact with Anna, creating a rift between them.
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For the key role of Elsa, Buck and Lee turned to Broadway veteran Idina Menzel to bring the character to life. Menzel had unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Rapunzel in Tangled, with her original audition performance passed on to the Frozen team by the casting director of Tanged, Jamie Sparer Roberts. For the role of Anna, the filmmakers considered television actress Kristen Bell, but wanted to test her chemistry with Menzel before officially casting either actor. The pair were invited to a table read of the screenplay at the studio, where they performed the entire script before singing a duet of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings,” as none of the film’s music had yet been composed. The performance left the entire production team in tears, with Menzel and Bell perfectly creating a sisterly bond, despite never having met before the audition. For the remainder of the cast, Buck and Lee enlisted several noted Broadway performers including Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, Santino Fontana as Prince Hans, and Josh Gad as Olaf.
MY VERDICT
If you were the parent of a youngster in 2013, you probably shudder at the memory of Frozen mania. The film was likely all your child ever talked about. You were probably labelled the world’s worst mum or dad when you couldn’t find any of the sold-out Elsa or Olaf merchandise. “Let It Go” was possibly the only song allowed to be played in your car for weeks on end. I get it. Life was hell for parents post-Frozen. The phenomenon surrounding this film was unlike anything Disney had experienced in decades. And you bore the brunt of it. You have my sympathies.
But there’s a very simple reason Frozen became such a pop culture sensation; it’s a bloody great film. It’s easy to forget how dazzling this film was, since it was also tremendously overexposed. Disney cashed in on this film like few others, and that likely means most have forgotten what a remarkable piece of animation Frozen actually is. By drawing on the spirit of the Renaissance and infusing the film with brilliantly designed Broadway sensibilities, the entire production team crafted a film that truly recaptured the Disney magic. Essentially, Frozen is an animated musical, in the same style as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. By enlisting two composers intimately familiar with the Broadway stage and casting actors with musical theatre backgrounds, Disney played to the strengths of what makes Broadway musicals so wonderfully entertaining and emotionally resonant. While we all eventually became sick of hearing the songs, they are (mostly) brilliant pieces of music composition, and, yes, I include “Let It Go” in that summation. Just think back to the first time you heard and saw that song performed and remember how utterly breathtaking that moment was. Outside of Lilo & Stitch, Frozen is the only Disney animated film to present a narrative centred on the complicated relationship of two sisters, which proved to be the best thing about adapting Andersen’s original fairy tale. After years of animated films with gushy love stories, it was so decidedly refreshing to see something like Frozen present the notion of true love being that of two siblings and the love to thaw a frozen heart did not come from a romantic connection but a familial one. It was a sharp detour from a studio that rarely sought to offer insight into love being anything other than something elicited through romance. Once again, we find Disney presenting a tale where a hero or heroine longs to be “normal” like everyone else and fearfully attempt to suppress who they truly are. It’s only when Elsa embraces who she is that she realises the very powers she was hiding are actually her true strength. That’s why “Let It Go” is such a spectacular moment. It’s the culmination of years of suppression finally being unleashed and Elsa’s breakthrough realisation of how foolish she’s been to hide from her identity. Is it any wonder many have used this song as a metaphor for members of the LGBTQ+ community coming out of the closet? And, as a small add on, let’s face it, it’s a far better song than Hakuna Matata.
Is Frozen a Disney Classic? It’s hard to ponder another Disney animated film as outrageously popular as Frozen. We’d never quite seen anything capture pop culture quite like the phenomenon which followed the film’s release. With merchandise out the wazoo, a Broadway musical, theme park rides, several spin-off short films, and an equally successful sequel, it’s a film that simply refused to die. The legacy of Frozen is solid as ice, making it a true Disney Classic in every conceivable way.
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