Frozen 2 was good. I liked the music, the concept, and the animation itself. Yet there were issues that I had with it — issues that I feel, if fixed, would have improved the overall film. Today, I’m going to dissect these problems as best as I can and suggest some possible solutions for them.

*SPOILERS*

 

 

1. Better role for Kristoff

Problem: I personally believe Kristoff got the worse end of the stick in Frozen 2. He had no role aside from being a glorified love interest. The poor boy just wants to propose to his sparkly girlfriend but girls are hard to talk to 🙁

I admit, Kristoff was basically a glorified love interest in the first Frozen as well, but he had a better role. He had a character arc — sort of — and he also helped Anna get to Elsa (twice). Take away Kristoff from Frozen, and it’s possible Anna wouldn’t have been able to save Elsa’s life. Kristoff served a crucial role in the first Frozen, but I can’t say the same for him in its sequel.

 

 

Proposed solution: Give Kristoff something to do. Anything besides proposing to Anna. Yes, he did get her to the dam when she was leading the earth giants to it, but to me that looked like pure chance. Maybe it’s poetic that he was carrying her to the place that she needed to go in both films, but the dude is his own person. Due to the way the film is structured, however, Kristoff barely has any room to actively contribute to the story.

 

2. More foreshadowing for Anna

Problem: We don’t really get to see why Elsa thought Anna was a better leader than she ever could be. There are a few scenes that I might think of (Anna arranges for Grand Pabbie to rule Arendelle while the sisters are gone, Anna actively decides to lead the earth giants to the dam in spite of her grief over Olaf and Elsa) that demonstrate this, but I feel like this could have been foreshadowed or illustrated better.

 

 

Proposed solution: Have Anna show her skills in leadership and her love for the kingdom. This doesn’t have to be a musical number (see the outtake “Home”). The little things matter, so in this case it might be adequate to show Anna’s internal conflict over destroying the dam (doing the right thing) versus leaving it as it is (saving Arendelle).

 

3. Consequences for Arendelle

(Note: this point was inspired by Trope Anatomy’s video essay on the wasted potential of Frozen 2. Would encourage you to check it out.)

Problem: There were no immediate consequences for the characters’ actions. Olaf came back, Elsa came back, everyone lives happily ever after. That’s to be expected — it is a children’s film, after all.

But the whole film seems to move towards the destruction of Arendelle. In “Some Things Never Change,” the characters sing “we’ll always live in a kingdom of plenty” and “our flag will always fly”, which to me sounds like a setup for something drastically wrong to take place — like the destruction of the kingdom. It’s also directly stated that if the dam were to come down, Arendelle would be swept away.

 

 

Proposed solution: Arendelle should have been destroyed. Elsa should not have been able to get to the kingdom in time to rescue the city. The film already proved that Arendelle was in the wrong, so a good way to restore justice to the Northuldra would be to do away with the kingdom itself. Because the people had already evacuated the kingdom, the destruction of the place itself wouldn’t have been too dark.

 

4. Structure, conflict, and character arcs

Aside from all my aforementioned points, something else felt off in Frozen 2. I thought was something to do with the structure of the film, but this would be a harder problem to fix because the structure of a story is the equivalent of its bare bones. Let’s quickly break down the movie using a basic, three-act story structure:

 

Act One: Setup

Backstory: King Agnarr tells young Anna and Elsa about the Northuldra, the Arendellian treaty with them, and the ensuing battle. We are also told about the four elemental spirits.

Inciting incident: Elsa starts hearing a voice call out to her and accidentally awakes the elemental spirits.

Point of attack: Elsa decides to follow the voice.

Central conflict: ??? (Back to this later.)

Climax / Lock-in: The Enchanted Forest doesn’t let anyone out. It’s a literal lock-in; our characters are stuck inside now and cannot turn back.

 

Act Two: Confrontation

First culmination / obstacle: The main characters discover that the Northuldra and some Arendellian soldiers have been trapped in the Forest and are still fighting against each other. The fire spirit reacts badly to the conflict, there’s chaos, but Elsa manages to tame the spirit. A truce is forged between the Northuldra and the Arendellians.

Midpoint (twist): Anna and Elsa discover that their parents had been heading to Ahtohallan in order to find answers about Elsa’s powers.

Obstacle: Elsa doesn’t want Anna and Olaf to get hurt and sends them away.

Obstacle: Elsa needs to tame the water spirit, the Nøkk, in order to get to Ahtohallan.

Main culmination (crisis): Elsa discovers that the Arendellians are the ones who attacked the Northuldra in the first place, hence angering the spirits.

Climax & Dark moment: Elsa succumbs to Ahtohallan and freezes, resulting in Olaf fading away (climax). Before Elsa completely freezes, she sends a message to Anna about her newfound knowledge, leaving Anna alone to decide what step to take next (dark moment).

 

Act Three: Resolution

“Aha” moment: Anna decides to do the “Next Right Thing”.

Climactic Confrontation: Anna leads the earth giants to the dam. She also convinces the Arendellian soldiers that the dam must fall.

Victory and resolution: The dam falls. The spirits are happy again. Elsa reverts back to herself and saves Arendelle. Olaf returns. Kristoff proproses to Anna. Anna becomes queen. Everyone lives happily ever after.

 

Okay, after breaking down the movie, here’s what I think is wrong with it: there’s no clear central conflict. There is an external conflict — saving Arendelle, appeasing the spirits, etc. — but there is a striking lack of clarity when it comes to internal conflict in both sisters.

I don’t mean to say that they don’t have any internal conflict at all, because they do. “Into the Unknown” and “Next Right Thing” demonstrate this. But there fails to be a situation where Anna and Elsa’s desires, needs, and fears are truly established, as in order to discover what they truly need, a character must first face their greatest fear.

 

Elsa:

Desire: To find where she’s “meant to be” (see “Into the Unknown”)

Need: To embrace her power

Fear: Losing her loved ones (?)

There are two potential problems here:

1. Having Elsa “embrace her power” and accept herself is the exact same need she had in the first film. If this is the very thing that she needs to overcome in the second film, it’s repetitive and doesn’t show character growth. However, this is arguable because by embracing her identity as the fifth spirit, she becomes more free and is able to find where she truly belongs.
2. It’s also arguable that Elsa never actually faces her deepest fear. She wants to find out where she belongs, but in order to do that, she needs to tackle her fears. Except this moment never happens. If her deepest fear is losing her loved ones, Elsa avoids facing it by sending Anna and Olaf away before travelling to Ahtohallan alone. This means that she discovers what she needs without having to struggle internally for it. Rather than facing her own internal struggles, she faces external struggles (taming the Nøkk). This is not as satisfying of a character arc as it could have been.

 

Anna:

Desire: Things to stay the same (?)

Need: To move on into the future (?)

Fear: Losing her sister again / being shut out again

Anna seems to struggle with the opposite problems. Unlike Elsa, her desire and need is not made clear. While this is likely because the spotlight is more on Elsa in this film, it does mean that her central conflict is unclear to the audience. However, if her desire and need is what I’ve stated above, then her character does go through a minor arc. By facing her fear twice (first when Elsa “shuts her out” by sending her and Olaf away, the second time when she loses Elsa), Anna learns to let go of the past and move on, paving her own way into the future.

Yet all of this feels like a stretch. Anna’s fear is the same fear she had in the first Frozen. If she had overcome this in the first film, she should have had a new fear to replace it and therefore expand her character arc.

 

Proposed solution: Ah, here we go. My suggestion is that the character arcs in Frozen 2 be more clarified. What are the sisters’ individual desires, needs, and fears? After facing their fears and discovering what they truly need, how do they come out of the events of the story changed? I feel that if the character arcs in Frozen 2 made more sense and were clearer to us, the story as a whole would have been more satisfying.

 

 

That’s all for now!

Okay, this was a surprisingly difficult post to write, but now I want to know your thoughts.

Did you agree / disagree with me? Why? Were my points confusing? I’d love to discuss more in the comments below.

Make your mark,

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