By Morgan Wentworth
Recently I decided to watch Frozen II. I knew it would be bad, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I was about to watch. I honestly don’t know how people manage to watch it and call it mediocre, but maybe that’s just people getting acclimated to low quality storytelling.
The “plot” is a bunch of disjointed events that need constant exposition, because otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue what was happening. Like the evil white people built a dam that blocks all the spirit vibes (I have no clue how that works) and betrayed the peaceful natives (The natives are totally a noble savage trope, but it’s okay when Disney does it). Elsa and Anna’s mother, Iduna, saves their dad, which is literally described as her “Saving her enemy” which is a really weird way to “Saved an innocent bystander who also didn’t have a clue what was going on” (And I don’t either, which makes them relatable characters lol).
After a bunch of poorly paced events that don’t make sense, Elsa dies, and I didn’t care in the slightest. Not because I knew she wasn’t dead, I get sad at characters fake dying, but because she’d been so unlikable the entire plot that I just didn’t care at that point. Olaf dies again. It feels so dumb. Anna says “I love you” to Olaf with more passion than she’s ever spoken to Kristoff with this entire movie.
Anna decides to destroy Arendell to absolve herself of white guilt, but Arendell doesn’t get destroyed so it’s all good. Elsa gets to go off on a lesbian fantasy of living out in nature without being in touch with anything natural and having all her decisions arbitrarily validated.
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single character that I liked in the entire movie. Elsa and Anna’s sibling bond was replaced with this unhealthy, obsessive relationship with a weird amount of romantic tension. I feel like it was written by someone who has no clue how women interact outside of lesbian romance. I suspect this is an accidental side affect of the writers trying to gay-code Elsa. And I don’t just say this because they’re physically close or anything, there are plenty of fictional sibling relationships that are physically affectionate that don’t give me this vibe. It’s just that the way they interact is nearly identical to the way I’ve seen progressives write romance. It’s weird, and I don’t like it. Not to mention the fact that Anna is unhealthily emotionally dependent on Elsa the entire movie.
Anna has moved from barely knowing Elsa, to having the entire meaning of her existence depend on Elsa. “The only star that guided me was you.” is a weird thing to say about anyone, let alone a sibling. Now this would be okay if there was a message on how being obsessive over people isn’t healthy behavior, but Anna’s attitude isn’t even addressed.
The romance between Kristoff and Anna was just painful on both ends. Anna has her aforementioned obsession with Elsa, so every conversation they have ends with Anna railroading it to be about Elsa. Kristoff apparently can’t read the room at all and keeps trying to propose at inopportune moments. They both manage to have better chemistry with every other character, even ones that they really /shouldn’t/ have chemistry with. It just makes me want them to break up. The resolution of this obviously dysfunctional relationship is the affirmation the Krisoff’s love “is not fragile” (meaning Kristoff doesn’t suffer from male fragility) which means he doesn’t expect any kind of love or affection from his fiance, making him the perfect man.
And while I know the modeling and technology was good, the design was just lackluster. There wasn’t a single new design that was memorable. They switched from the well done natural ice patterns to modern geometric patterns. It just objectively looks worse. The cinematography was relying so much on the technology that they forgot the part where they had to make things visually interesting. The songs are constantly trying to reclaim the past glory of “Let It Go”, but all of them suck, with the exception of “All Is Found” which was actually really good.
I just walked into this film expecting something bland and mediocre, and ending up watching a disaster. The original Frozen is a 5/10, flawed, but still watchable. Frozen II is a movie that I’m never watching again for the sake of my own sanity.
