Movie Thoughts: Frozen 2 (2019)

 

• Released: November 7, 2019
• Directed by: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
• Running time: 1 h 43 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

Elsa, Anna and the gang go to look for the four spirits in the Enchanted Forest in order to answer questions from the past.

My Thoughts

When the trailer for this film came out most people went nuts, because it looked to be an even more epic fantasy than the original Frozen was. Then the movie came out and it was...eh?

Anna, Elsa and the gang now still live in Arendelle a year after the events of the first movie. When Elsa starts to hear a voice calling to her and accidentally angers the four spirits of the Enchanted Forest, the group travels there to find both questions and answers.

This movie is a mess. Most people have called it that, and I agree. It just is. It has good elements, it has good concepts, it looks phenomenal...but the rest is just not very good. So I'm giving it points for the things they did right...but there's also a lot of stuff here that just doesn't add up.

This movie honestly just is kind of confusing sometimes and raises more questions than answers. How is the voice calling to Elsa her mother from beyond the grave (never explained)? Why is her mother so special (never explained)? Why are all of the four spirits a single individuals, Gale, Bruni and the Nokk, but there somehow are multiple earth spirits (the rock giants)? How is Elsa the fifth spirit tying everything together when her element is ice (never explained nor does it make sense. Seriously that's just water again)?

It's just confusing, not structured very well, one of our main characters gets sidelined for no reason (poor Kristoff), Olaf is a lot more annoying in this one outside of one scene, the "sacrifice" of Arendelle is 100% meaningless because Elsa ends up saving it... It's just not very good.

And honestly I can see why. Into the Unknown is a documentary series about the production of this movie available on Disney+. It shows that the production behind the movie was pretty chaotic and despite the crew working on it remaining positive throughout the thing you just feel for them knowing they're under a deadline. Heck, one of the reasons why the voice calling to Elsa is so confusing and poorly explained is because they didn't even know who or what was going to be calling to her throughout a great deal of production. Like...that's the emotional core of the story, the biggest mystery it presents. Isn't that something you should figure out in your first draft? 

And they keep being proud about how they're not missing deadlines and I'm like...if this movie we got is your final product, maybe you should delay the movie. Isn't it better to have a good final product rather than the mess that is this movie? Again, let me make this clear: I don't hate it nor do I think it's very bad. It's just confusing and messy and you can tell. I'd rather have had a really good final product a bit later than the rushed mess that it currently is. I get that it probably isn't the movie's crew who decide this and instead the Disney higher-ups themselves, but I really think it would've been meaningful if they had delayed it to get a better final product. I like the potential and concepts of this movie, it's got some good stuff in there (and of course looks fantastic) but it's just not fully realized this way.

So overall I still consider the first to be better. While this one technically should be more of my jam (more fantasy and magical elements, lore, a cool new location) the first one overall just holds up much better. I don't consider this one bad and I do like it to an extent, it's just held back by its flaws.