Psycho's Movie Reviews #245: Frozen (2014)

Frozen is a 2013 American computer-animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 53rd Disney animated feature film, it is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen". The film depicts a princess who sets off on a journey alongside an iceman, his reindeer, and a snowman to find her estranged sister, whose icy powers have inadvertently trapped their kingdom in eternal winter.

Frozen underwent several story treatments before being commissioned in 2011 as a screenplay by Jennifer Lee, who co-directed with Chris Buck. The film features the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana. Christophe Beck was hired to compose the film's orchestral score, while Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs. Frozen had its general theatrical release on November 27, 2013. It was praised for its visuals, screenplay, themes, music, and voice acting; some film critics consider Frozen to be Disney's best animated film since the studio's renaissance era. Frozen led the 86th Academy Awards season with two nominations (winning two), and received numerous accolades.

During its theatrical run, the film was a significant commercial success, earning $1.280 billion in worldwide box office revenue, overtaking Toy Story 3 to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time, and carried its position until it was overtaken by the remake of The Lion King in 2019. It also became the fifth highest-grossing film of all time and the highest-grossing film of 2013. By January 2015, the film became the best-selling Blu-ray Disc in the United States, which resulted in the film launching a franchise, including an animated short in 2015, an animated featurette in 2017, and a feature-length sequel, Frozen II, in November 2019.

Plot

Princess Elsa of Arendelle 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. To protect her sister from her increasingly unpredictable powers, Elsa ceases all contact with Anna, creating a rift between them. When the sisters are adults, their parents are killed at sea during a storm.

Following her 21st birthday, Elsa is to be crowned queen of Arendelle. She is afraid that the kingdom's citizens might find out about her powers and fear her. The castle gates open to the public and visiting dignitaries for the first time in years. Among them are the scheming Duke of Weselton and the handsome Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, with whom Anna falls in love at first sight. Elsa's coronation takes place without incident, but she remains distant from Anna. Anna and Hans develop a romantic connection during the coronation festivities, and he impulsively proposes to her, but Elsa objects when they seek her blessing. Hurt and confused, Anna protests, begging Elsa to explain her fear and isolation. The emotional strain causes Elsa to accidentally unleash her powers before the court. Branded a monster by the Duke, Elsa flees to the North Mountain, where she finally acknowledges her powers, building an ice palace to live a hermit life. In the process, her magic unintentionally engulfs Arendelle in an eternal winter.

Anna ventures out to find Elsa and end the winter, leaving Hans in command. She gets lost, collecting supplies at Wandering Oaken's shop. She meets an iceman named Kristoff and his reindeer, Sven, convincing them to take her to the mountains. An attack by wolves leads to Kristoff's sleigh being destroyed. When Anna's horse returns to Arendelle without her, Hans sets out to find Anna and Elsa, accompanied by the Duke's minions, who have secret orders to kill Elsa. Reaching the ice palace, Anna meets Elsa. When Anna reveals what has become of Arendelle, a horrified Elsa confesses she does not know how to undo her magic. Her fear causes her powers to manifest themselves once more, and she accidentally freezes Anna's heart, seriously injuring her. In desperation to keep Anna safe, Elsa creates a giant snow monster named Marshmallow, who chases Anna and Kristoff away. Realizing the effects of Elsa's spell on Anna, Kristoff takes her to the trolls, his adoptive family. Grand Pabbie reveals that Anna will freeze solid unless "an act of true love" reverses the spell.

Kristoff races Anna back home so Hans can give her true love's kiss. Hans and his men reach Elsa's palace; defeating Marshmallow (who falls into a chasm) and capturing Elsa. Anna is delivered to Hans, but rather than kissing her, Hans instead reveals that he has actually been plotting to seize the throne of Arendelle by eliminating both sisters. Hans locks a heartbroken Anna in a room to die and then manipulates the dignitaries into believing that Elsa killed her, but not before they were married. He orders the queen's execution, only to discover she has escaped her detention cell. Anna is freed by Olaf, her childhood talking snowman companion, and they venture into the blizzard outside to meet Kristoff, who Olaf has revealed is in love with her. Hans confronts Elsa outside, claiming that she killed Anna, causing Elsa to break down and abruptly stop the storm. Anna spots Hans about to kill Elsa; she leaps in the way and freezes solid, stopping Hans. Devastated, Elsa hugs and mourns over her sister, who thaws out, her heroism constituting "an act of true love".

Realizing that love is the key to controlling her magic, Elsa ends the winter. Hans is arrested and exiled from the kingdom for his treason and attempted assassination, while the Duke's trade links with Arendelle are cut off. Anna gives Kristoff a new sleigh and the two kiss. The sisters are reunited, and Elsa promises never to lock the castle gates again.

In a post-credits scene, Marshmallow, having survived the fall, finds Elsa's discarded crown and places it on top of its head.

Production

Development

In the late 1990s, Walt Disney Feature Animation started developing a new adaptation of The Snow Queen after the tremendous success of their recent films during the Disney Renaissance era (1989–1999), but the project was scrapped completely in late 2002, when Glen Keane reportedly quit the project and went on to work on another project which became Tangled (2010). Even before then, Harvey Fierstein pitched his version of the story to Disney's executives, but was turned down. Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Dick Zondag and Dave Goetz reportedly all tried their hand at it, but failed. After a number of unsuccessful attempts from 2000 to 2002, Disney shelved the project again: 10–11  During one of those attempts, Michael Eisner, then-chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, offered his support to the project and suggested doing it with Oscar-winning director John Lasseter at Pixar after the then-expected renewal of Pixar's contract with Disney. But negotiations between Pixar and Disney collapsed in January 2004 and that contract was never renewed. Instead, Eisner's successor Bob Iger negotiated Disney's purchase of Pixar in January 2006 for $7.4 billion, and Lasseter was promoted to chief creative officer of both Pixar and Disney Animation.

The next attempt started in 2008, when Lasseter was able to convince Chris Buck (who co-directed the 1999 film Tarzan for the studio) to return to Walt Disney Animation Studios from Sony Pictures Animation (where he had recently co-directed the Oscar-nominated 2007 film Surf's Up); that September, Buck pitched several ideas to Lasseter, one of which was The Snow Queen: 6, 11  Buck later revealed that his initial inspiration for The Snow Queen was not the Andersen fairy tale itself, but that he wanted "to do something different on the definition of true love." "Disney had already done the 'kissed by a prince' thing, so I thought it was time for something new," he recalled. It turned out Lasseter had been interested in The Snow Queen for a long time; back when Pixar was working with Disney on Toy Story in the 1990s, he saw and was "blown away" by some of the pre-production art from Disney's prior attempts: 6  Development began under the title Anna and the Snow Queen, which was planned to be traditionally animated. According to Josh Gad, he first became involved with the film at that early stage, when the plot was still relatively close to the original Andersen fairy tale and Megan Mullally was going to play Elsa. By early 2010, the project entered development hell once again, when the studio again failed to find a way to make the story and the Snow Queen character work.

Writing

In March 2012, Jennifer Lee, one of the writers of Wreck-It Ralph, was brought in as screenwriter. Before Lee was brought on board, the efforts of the previous screen and songwriters had "imploded", which allowed the songwriters "to put a lot of their DNA" into the new script.  The production team "essentially started over and had 17 months," which resulted in a very "intense schedule" and implied "a lot of choices had to be made fast".

While developing the story, Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck drew influence from several sources. They said the biggest influence on the film was the country of Norway, when the art department visited the country, drawing inspiration from the country's culture and environment. They also cited the influence of several films, including Hayao Miyazaki's anime productions along with the David Lean productions Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), stating that they were inspired by their sense of "epic adventure and that big scope and scale and then the intimacy of funny quirky characters."

According to Lee, several core concepts were already in place, such as the film's "frozen heart" hook: "That was a concept and the phrase an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart." They already knew the ending involved true love in the sense of the emotional bond between siblings, not romance, in that "Anna was going to save Elsa. We didn’t know how or why." Lee said Edwin Catmull, president of Disney Animation, told her early on about the film's ending: ".. you have to earn that ending. If you do, it will be great. If you don't, it will suck". However, the final version differed sharply from the earlier ones. In the original, Elsa had been evil from the start, kidnapping Anna from her own wedding to intentionally freeze her heart and later descending upon the town with an army of snowmen. "The whole second act was about Anna trying to get to Hans and to kiss him and then Elsa trying to stop her". Buck revealed that the original plot attempted to make Anna sympathetic by focusing on her frustration as the "spare" in relation to the "heir". The pacing of the revised plot focused on musical comedy with less action and adventure.

A breakthrough was the composition of the song "Let It Go" by Lopez and Anderson-Lopez, which forced a reimagining of Elsa as a more complex, vulnerable, and sympathetic character. In The Daily Telegraph's words, the songwriters saw Elsa not as a villain but as "a scared girl struggling to control and come to terms with her gift". "Bobby and Kristen...started talking about what would it feel like to be Elsa", Lee said. "And this concept of letting out who she is, that she's kept to herself for so long, and she's alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact that the last moment is she's alone". Del Vecho explained that "Let It Go" changed Elsa into a person "ruled by fear and Anna was ruled by her own love of other people and her own drive", which caused Lee to "rewrite the first act and then that rippled through the entire movie. So that was when we really found the movie and who these characters were".

Another breakthrough was developing the plot twist that Prince Hans, having not even been in the first drafts, would be revealed as the true villain only near the end. Del Vecho said, "if we were going to make the ending so surprising, you had to believe at one point that Hans was the answer when he's not the answer, it's Kristoff. If you can get the audience to leap ahead and think they have figured it out[,] you can surprise them by turning it the other way". Lee acknowledged that Hans was written as "sociopathic" and "twisted". "It was difficult to lay the foundation for Anna's belated turn to Kristoff without also making Hans' betrayal of Anna too predictable, in that the audience had to "feel her feeling something but not quite understanding it. Because the minute it is understood, it deflated." In earlier drafts, Anna openly flirted with Kristoff at their first meeting, but that was changed after Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn pointed out that it would confuse and annoy viewers, since Anna was already engaged to Hans.

Lee had to work through how to write Anna's personality; some of her colleagues felt Anna should be more dysfunctional and co-dependent. Lee disagreed, but it took her almost a year to convincingly articulate "this is what Anna's journey is. No more than that. No less than that." In the end, Lee successfully argued for a simple coming-of-age story, "where she goes from having a naïve view of life and love – because she's lonely – to the most sophisticated and mature view of love, where she's capable of the ultimate love, which is sacrifice". Lee also had to let go of ideas that she liked, such as a scene portraying Anna and Elsa's relationship as teenagers, because they needed to maintain the separation between Anna and Elsa. To construct Anna and Elsa's relationship, Lee found inspiration from her own relationship with her older sister. Lee called her older sister "my Elsa" in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, and walked the red carpet with her at the 86th Academy Awards. Lee explained, "having to lose each other and then rediscover each other as adults, that was a big part of my life".

The team also turned Olaf from Elsa's obnoxious sidekick into Anna's comically innocent one. Lee's initial response to the original "mean" version of Olaf had been, "Kill the f-ing snowman", and she found Olaf by far "the hardest character to deal with". The problem of how Anna would save Elsa at the climax was solved by story artist John Ripa. At the story meeting where Ripa pitched his take on the story, Lasseter said, "I've never seen anything like that before", followed by a standing ovation. Along the way, the team abandoned a lot of the detail of earlier drafts, such as a troll with a Brooklyn accent to explain the backstory behind Elsa's magical powers, and a regent for whom Lee was hoping to cast comedian Louis C.K. These were excised because they amounted to a "much more complex story than really we felt like we could fit in this 90-minute film". As Del Vecho put it, "the more we tried to explain things at the beginning, the more complicated it got".

Given Lee's extensive involvement in the development process, she was promoted to co-director by studio heads Lasseter and Catmull in August 2012, which was announced that November, making Lee the first woman to direct a full-length animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Lee later said that she was "really moved by a lot of what Chris had done" and that they "shared a vision" of the story, having "very similar sensibilities".

By November 2012, the team thought they had finally "cracked" the film's story, but according to Del Vecho, in late February 2013 it was realized that it still "wasn't working", which necessitated more rewriting from February through June 2013. He explained, "we rewrote songs, we took out characters and changed everything, and suddenly the movie gelled. But that was close. In hindsight, piece of cake, but during, it was a big struggle." Looking back, Anderson-Lopez joked she and Lopez thought they could have ended up working as "birthday party clowns" if the final product "pulled down" their careers and recalled that "we were really writing up until the last minute". In June (five months before the announced release date), the songwriters finally got the film working when they composed the song "For the First Time in Forever", which, in Lopez's words, "became the linchpin of the whole movie". That month, Disney conducted test screenings of the part-completed film with two audiences (one of families and the other of adults) in Phoenix, Arizona, at which Lasseter and Catmull were present. Lee recalled that it was the moment when they realized they "had something, because the reaction was huge". Catmull told her afterwards, "you did it".

Casting

Actress Kristen Bell was cast as the voice of Anna on March 5, 2012. The filmmakers listened to a series of vocal tracks Bell had recorded when she was young, in which she performed several songs from The Little Mermaid, including "Part of Your World". Bell completed her Frozen recording sessions while she was pregnant, and rerecorded some lines after her pregnancy, as her voice had deepened. Bell was called in to re-record dialogue for the film "probably 20 times," which is normal for lead roles in Disney animated films whose scripts are still evolving. As for her approach to the role of Anna, Bell enthused that she had "dreamed of being in a Disney animated film" since she was four years old, saying, "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."

Idina Menzel, a Broadway veteran, was cast as Elsa. Menzel had formerly auditioned for Tangled, but did not get the part. However, Tangled's casting director, Jamie Sparer Roberts, preserved a recording of Menzel's performance on her iPhone, and on the basis of that, asked her to audition along with Bell for Frozen. Before they were officially cast, Menzel and Bell deeply impressed the directors and producers at an early table read; after reading the entire script out loud, they sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" together as a duet, since no music had been composed yet. Bell had suggested that idea when she visited Menzel at her California home to prepare together for the table read. The songwriters were also present for the table read; Anderson-Lopez said "Lasseter was in heaven" upon hearing Menzel and Bell sing in harmony, and from that moment forward, he insisted, "Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel have to be in the movie!".  Lee said, "They sung it like sisters and what you mean to me, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house after they sang." Between December 2012 and June 2013, the casting of additional roles was announced, including Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, Alan Tudyk as the Duke of Weselton, Santino Fontana as Prince Hans, and Josh Gad as Olaf.

Animation

Similar to Tangled, Frozen employed a unique artistic style by blending together features of both computer-generated imagery (CGI) and traditional hand-drawn animation. From the beginning, Buck knew Giaimo was the best candidate to develop the style he had in mind – which would draw from the best Disney hand-drawn films of the 1950s, the Disney Little Golden Books, and mid-century modern design – and persuaded him to come back to Disney to serve as the art director for Frozen.: 33  Buck, Lasseter, and Giaimo were all old friends who had first met at the California Institute of the Arts,: 33  and Giaimo had previously served as the art director for Disney's Pocahontas (1995), which Buck had worked on as a supervising animator.

To create the look of Frozen, Giaimo began pre-production research by reading extensively about the entire region of Scandinavia and visiting the Danish-themed city of Solvang near Los Angeles, but eventually zeroed in on Norway in particular because "80 percent" of the visuals that appealed to him were from Norway. Disney eventually sponsored three research field trips. Animators and special effects specialists were dispatched to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to experience walking, running, and falling in deep snow in a variety of types of attire, including long skirts (which both female and male personnel tried on); while lighting and arts teams visited an Ice Hotel in Quebec City, Quebec to study how light reflects and refracts on snow and ice. Finally, Giaimo and several artists travelled to Norway to draw inspiration from its mountains, fjords, architecture, and culture. "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 said. "There is a real feeling of Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this," he finished.

During 2012, while Giaimo and the animators and artists conducted preparatory research and developed the film's overall look, the production team was still struggling to develop a compelling script, as explained above. That problem was not adequately solved until November 2012, 155  and the script would later require even more significant revisions after that point. As a result, the single "most daunting" challenge facing the animation team was a short schedule of less than 12 months to turn Lee's still-evolving shooting script into an actual film. 155  Other films like Pixar's Toy Story 2 had been successfully completed on even shorter schedules, but a short schedule necessarily meant "late nights, overtime, and stress.": 155  Lee estimated the total size of the entire team on Frozen to be around 600 to 650 people, "including around 70 lighting people, 70-plus animators," and 15 to 20 storyboard artists.

Del Vecho explained how the film's animation team was organized: "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 supervising 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."[35][52][83] Acting coach Warner Loughlin was brought in to help the film's animators understand the characters they were creating.[79] In order to get the general feeling of each scene, some animators did their own acting. "I actually film myself acting the scene out, which I find very helpful," said animation supervisor Rebecca Wilson Bresee. This helped her discover elements that made the scene feel real and believable. Elsa's supervising animator was Wayne Unten, who asked for that role because he was fascinated by the complexity of the character. Unten carefully developed Elsa's facial expressions in order to bring out her fear as contrasted against Anna's fearlessness. He also studied videos from Menzel's recording sessions and animated Elsa's breathing to match Menzel's breathing. Head of Animation, Lino DiSalvo, said, "The goal for the film was to animate the most believable CG characters you've ever seen."

Regarding the look and nature of the film's cinematography, Giaimo was greatly influenced by Jack Cardiff's work in Black Narcissus (1947). According to him, it lent a hyper-reality to the film: "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." Ted D. McCord's work in The Sound of Music was another major influence for Giaimo. It was also Giaimo's idea that Frozen should be produced in the CinemaScope widescreen process, which was approved by Lasseter. This made Frozen the first animated film to be completely produced in CinemaScope since 2000's Titan A.E.. Giaimo also wanted to ensure that Norway's fjords, architecture and rosemaling folk art, were critical factors in designing the environment of Arendelle. Giaimo, whose background is in traditional animation, said that the art design environment represents a unity of character and environment and that he originally wanted to incorporate saturated colours, which is typically ill-advised in computer animation. For further authenticity, a live reindeer named Sage was brought into the studio for animators to study its movements and mannerisms for the character Sven.

Another important issue Giaimo insisted on addressing was costumes, in that he "knew from the start" it would be a "costume film.": 77  To realize that vision, he brought in character designer Jean Gillmore to act as a dedicated "costume designer". While traditional animation simply integrates costume design with character design and treats clothing as merely part of the characters, computer-generated animation regards costume as almost a separate entity with its own properties and behaviours– and Frozen required a level of as-yet untried detail, down to minutiae like fabrics, buttons, trim, and stitching: 76  Gillmore explained that her "general approach was to meld the historic silhouettes of 1840 Western Europe (give or take), with the shapes and garment relationships and details of folk costume in early Norway, circa 19th century." This meant using primarily wool fabric with accents of velvet, linen, and silk: 75  During production, Giaimo and Gillmore "ran around" supplying various departments with real-world samples to use as references; they were able to draw upon both the studio's own in-house library of fabric samples and the resources of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts' costume division in Fullerton, California. The film's "look development artists" (the Disney job title for texture artists: 58–59 ) created the digitally painted simulation of the appearance of surfaces, while other departments dealt with movement, rigging and weight, thickness and lighting of textile animation.

During production, the film's English title was changed from The Snow Queen to Frozen, a decision that drew comparisons to another Disney film, Tangled. Peter Del Vecho explained that "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." He also mentioned that the film will still retain its original title, The Snow Queen, in some countries: "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."

Scandinavian and Sámi Inspiration

The setting is the fictional kingdom of Arendelle which was principally based on Norway, and the cultural influences in the film come from Scandinavian culture. Several landmarks in Norway appear in the film, including the Akershus Fortress in Oslo, the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, and Bryggen in Bergen. Numerous other typical cultural Scandinavian elements are also included in the film, such as stave churches, trolls, Viking ships, a hot spring, Fjord horses, clothes, and food such as lutefisk. A maypole is also present in the film, as well as the brief appearance of runes in a book that Anna and Elsa's father opens to figure out where the trolls live. A scene where two men argue over whether to stack firewood bark up or bark down is a reference to the perennial Norwegian debate over how to stack firewood properly. The film also contains several elements specifically drawn from Sámi culture, such as the usage of reindeer for transportation and the equipment used to control these, clothing styles (the outfits of the ice cutters), and parts of the musical score. Decorations, such as those on the castle pillars and Kristoff's sled, are also in styles inspired by Sámi duodji decorations. During their field work in Norway, Disney's team, for inspiration, visited Rørosrein, a Sámi family-owned company in the village Plassje that produces reindeer meat and arranges tourist events. Arendelle was inspired by Nærøyfjord, a branch of Norway's longest fjord Sognefjorden, which has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site; while a castle in Oslo with beautiful hand-painted patterns on all four walls served as the inspiration for the kingdom's royal castle interior.

The filmmakers' trip to Norway provided essential knowledge for the animators to come up with the design aesthetic for the film in terms of colour, light, and atmosphere. According to Giaimo, there were three important factors that they had acquired from the Norway research trip: the fjords and the massive vertical rock formations characteristic of fjords, which serve as the setting for the secluded kingdom of Arendelle; the medieval stave churches, whose rustic triangular rooflines and shingles inspired the castle compound; and the rosemaling folk art, whose distinctive panelling and grid patterns informed the architecture, décor, and costumes.

Music and Sound Design Christophe Beck composed the film's score.

The songs for Frozen were written and composed by the husband-and-wife song writing team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, both of whom had previously worked with Disney Animation on Winnie the Pooh (2011) (also produced by Del Vecho, who then hired them for Frozen) and before that, with Disney Parks on Finding Nemo – The Musical (2007). Lopez first heard Disney Animation's pitch while in Los Angeles working on The Book of Mormon, but Disney was so eager to get both of them on board that the production team travelled to New York City to also pitch the film in person to Anderson-Lopez (who was busy raising the couple's two young daughters). Lopez believes Disney was particularly interested in his wife's strong story talent. The decision, of course, was easy: "Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes."

About 23 minutes of the film are dedicated to their musical numbers. Because they live in New York City, collaborating closely with the production team in Burbank required two-hour-long transcontinental videoconferences nearly every weekday for about 14 months. For each song they composed, they recorded a demo in their home studio (with both of them singing the lyrics and Lopez accompanying on piano), then emailed it to Burbank for discussion at the next videoconference. Lopez and Anderson-Lopez were aware of the fact that their work would be compared to that of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman from the Disney Renaissance era, and whenever they felt lost, they asked "What would Ashman do?" In the end, they wrote 25 songs for the film, of which eight made it into the final version. One song ("For the First Time in Forever") had a reprise and the other ("Let It Go") was covered by Demi Lovato over the final credits, for a total of ten songs. Seven of the 17 that did not make it were later released on the deluxe edition soundtrack.

In February 2013, Christophe Beck was hired to score the film, following his work on Paperman, a Disney animated short film released the year prior to Frozen. It was revealed on September 14, 2013, that Sámi musician Frode Fjellheim's Eatnemen Vuelie would be the film's opening song, as it contains elements of the traditional Sámi singing style joik. The music producers recruited Norwegian linguist and composer Christine Hals to assist with the lyrics for an Old Norse song written for Elsa's coronation and traveled to Trondheim, Norway, to record the all-female choir Cantus, for a piece inspired by traditional Sámi music.

Under the supervision of sound engineer David Boucher, the lead cast members began recording the film's vocal tracks in October 2012 at the Sunset Sound recording studio in Hollywood before the songs had been orchestrated, meaning they heard only Lopez's demo piano track in their headphones as they sang. Most of the dialogue was recorded at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building in Burbank under the supervision of original dialogue mixer Gabriel Guy, who also mixed the film's sound effects. Some dialogue was recorded after recording songs at both Sunset Sound and Capitol Studios; for scenes involving Anna and Elsa, both studios offered vocal isolation booths where Menzel and Bell could read dialogue with line-of-sight with one another, while avoiding "bleed through" between their respective tracks. Additional dialogue was recorded at an ADR facility on the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank (across the street from the Disney Animation building) and at the Soundtrack Group's New York studio, since the production team had to work around the busy schedules of the film's New York-based cast members like Fontana.

Lopez and Anderson-Lopez's piano-vocal scores for the songs along with the vocal tracks were sent to Salem, Oregon-based Dave Metzger for arrangement and orchestration; Metzger also orchestrated a significant portion of Beck's score.

For the orchestral film score, Beck paid homage to the Norway- and Sápmi-inspired setting by employing regional instruments, such as the bukkehorn, and traditional vocal techniques, such as kulning. Beck worked with Lopez and Anderson-Lopez on incorporating their songs into arrangements in the score. The trio's goal "was to create a cohesive musical journey from beginning to end." Similarly, Beck's scoring mixer, Casey Stone (who also supervised the recording of the score), worked with Boucher to align their microphone setups to ensure the transitions between the songs and score were seamless, even though they were separately recorded on different dates. The final orchestrations of both the songs and score were all recorded at the Eastwood Scoring Stage on the Warner Bros. Pictures studio lot in Burbank by an 80-piece orchestra, featuring 32 vocalists, including native Norwegian Christine Hals. Hals performed kulning for Beck to use it in the score whenever Elsa misuses her magical powers. Boucher supervised the recording of Anderson-Lopez and Lopez's songs from July 22 to 24, 2013, then Stone supervised the recording of Beck's score from September 3 to 6 and 9 to 10. Boucher mixed the songs at the Eastwood stage, while Stone mixed the score at Beck's personal studio in Santa Monica, California.

Regarding the sound of Frozen, director Jennifer Lee stated that sound played a huge part in making the film "visceral" and "transported"; she explained, "[i]n letting it tell the story emotionally, the sound of the ice when it's at its most dangerous just makes you shudder." The complete silence at the climax of the film right after Anna freezes was Lasseter's idea, one he "really wanted". In that scene, even the ambient sound that would normally be there was taken out in order to make it feel unusual. Lee explained "that was a moment where we wanted everything to feel suspended."

To obtain certain snow and ice sound effects, sound designer Odin Benitez travelled to Mammoth Mountain, California, to record them at a frozen lake. However, the Foley work for the film was recorded on the Foley stage on the Warner Bros. Pictures lot by a Warner Bros. crew. The Foley artists received daily deliveries of 50 pounds (22.6 kg) of snow ice while working, to help them record all the necessary snow and ice sounds for the film. Because the film's visuals were finalized so late, five separate versions of nearly every footstep on snow were recorded (corresponding to five different types of snow), then one was later selected during mixing to match the snow as rendered in the final version of each scene. One issue that the production team was "particular" about was the sound of Elsa's footsteps in the ice palace, which required eight attempts, including wine glasses on ice and metal knives on ice; they ended up using a mix of three sounds.

Although the vocals, music, sound effects, and almost all the dialogue were all recorded elsewhere, the final re-recording mix to Dolby Atmos format was performed at the Disney lot by Casey E. Fluhr of Disney Digital Studio Services.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Frozen was released theatrically in the United States on November 27, 2013, and it was accompanied by the new Mickey Mouse animated short film, Get a Horse! The film's premiere was at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on November 19, 2013, and had a five-day limited release there, starting from November 22, before going into wide release.

Prior to the film's release, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez's "Let It Go" and "In Summer" were previewed at the 2013 D23 Expo; Idina Menzel performed the former live on stage. A teaser trailer was released on June 18, 2013, followed by the release of the official trailer on September 26, 2013. Frozen was also promoted heavily at several Disney theme parks including Disneyland's Fantasyland, Disney California Adventure's World of Colour, Epcot's Norway pavilion, and Disneyland Paris' Disney Dreams! show; Disneyland and Epcot both offered meet-and-greet sessions involving the film's two main characters, Anna and Elsa. On November 6, 2013, Disney Consumer Products began releasing a line of toys and other merchandise relating to the film in Disney Store and other retailers.

On January 31, 2014, a sing-along version of Frozen was released in 2,057 theatres in the United States. It featured on-screen lyrics, and viewers were invited to follow the bouncing snowflake and sing along with the songs from the film. After its wide release in Japan on March 14, 2014, a similar sing-along version of Frozen was released in the country in select theatres on April 26. In Japanese-dubbed versions, Japanese lyrics of the songs appeared on screen for audiences to sing along with the characters. A sing-along version of the film was released in United Kingdom on November 28, 2014.

Frozen opened to positive reviews, with several critics comparing it favourably to the films of the Disney Renaissance, particularly The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Some journalists felt that the film's success marked a second Disney Renaissance. The film was praised for its visuals, themes, musical numbers, screenplay, and vocal performances, especially those of Bell, Menzel, and Gad. The "Let It Go" musical sequence was also particularly praised by critics. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 90% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 250 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Beautifully animated, smartly written, and stocked with singalong songs, Frozen adds another worthy entry to the Disney canon." Metacritic, which determines a rating out of 100 from the reviews of mainstream critics, calculated a score of 74 based on 43 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews." CinemaScore gave Frozen an "A+" on an A+ to F scale, based on polls conducted during the opening weekend. Surveys conducted by Fandango among 1,000 ticket buyers revealed that 75% of purchasers had seen the film at least once, and 52% had seen it twice. It was also pointed out that 55% of audiences identified "Let It Go" as their favourite song, while "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" and "For the First Time in Forever" held proportions of 21% and 9%, respectively. Frozen was named the seventh-best film of 2013 by Richard Corliss of Time and Kyle Smith of the New York Post.

Alonso Duralde of TheWrap wrote that the film is "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 said 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 observed 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 lacklustre 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." Scott Mendelson of Forbes wrote, "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 was "a welcome return to greatness for Walt Disney Animation Studios." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B+" grade and labelled 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 stated that: "It's great to see Disney returning to its roots and blooming anew: creating superior musical entertainment that draws on the Walt Disney tradition of animation splendour and the verve of Broadway present." Richard Roeper wrote that the film was 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." Frozen was also praised in Norwegian Sámi media as showcasing Sámi culture to a broad audience in a good way. Composer Frode Fjellheim was lauded by Norwegian Sámi President Aili Keskitalo for his contributions to the film, during the President's 2014 New Year's speech.

Scott Foundas of Variety was less impressed with the film, describing it as "formulaic", though he praised its 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... That's almost but not quite enough to make up for the somewhat slack plotting and the generic nature of the main characters. Neither princess here is a patch on Tangled's babe-in-the-woods Rapunzel, while both Hans and Kristoff are cut from pretty standard-issue hero cloth until a reasonably surprising third-act twist somewhat ups the ante. Only Olaf is unimpeachable: Get this snowman a spinoff feature to call his own." The Seattle Times gave the film two out of four stars, stating "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 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also criticized the story as the film's weakest point. Writing on Roger Ebert's website, Christy Lemire gave a mixed review in which she awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four. Lemire praised the visuals and the performance of "Let It Go," as well as the positive messages Frozen sends. However, she referred to the film as "cynical" and criticized it as an "attempt to shake things up without shaking them up too much." She also noted the similarity between Elsa and another well-known fictional female who unleashes paranormal powers when agitated, Carrie White.

Frozen earned $400.7 million in North America, and an estimated $880 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $1,280,802,282. Calculating in all expenses, Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film made a profit of over $400 million. It became the fifth-highest-grossing film, the highest-grossing animated film, the highest-grossing 2013 film, the third highest-grossing Walt Disney Pictures release, and the 8th-highest-grossing film distributed by Disney. The film earned $110.6 million worldwide in its opening weekend. On March 2, 2014, its 101st day of release, it surpassed the $1 billion mark, becoming the eighteenth film in cinematic history, the seventh Disney-distributed film, the fifth non-sequel film, the second Disney-distributed film in 2013 (after Iron Man 3), and the first animated film since Toy Story 3 to do so.

Bloomberg Business reported in March 2014 that outside analysts had projected the film's total cost at somewhere around $323 million to $350 million for production, marketing, and distribution, and had also projected that the film would generate $1.3 billion in revenue from box office ticket sales, digital downloads, discs, and television rights.

Budget $150 million

Box office $1.280 billion

{What is it with concept art and looking better than the actual movie?}

My Review

Given the mass of animated features of late, it becomes hard to discern which stable any given title derives from; given the Walt Disney Studios' monopoly of the market for so many decades, their efforts remain among the more popular but not necessarily the best with respect to both box-office performance or, for that matter, when accolades are doled out. So, when the film under review copped 2 Oscars (Best Animated Feature and Original Song "Let It Go") at last Sunday's ceremony, I thought of checking it out now rather than wait for the Christmas season – for which period I usually leave such family-oriented fare!

In retrospect and, to my surprise, the end result was generally very satisfactory – evoking favourable memories of some of the brand name's better efforts of the last 25 years! The narrative is inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale (of which I also own but have yet to watch a 1966 live-action Russian version). The icy setting is appropriately elaborate and nicely detailed, while characterization is reasonably appealing – at least where the two female protagonists are concerned, and especially with respect to their unusually tense relationship, as well as the obligatory comic-relief sidekick (represented by a garrulous snowman called Olaf who has a carrot for a nose, is constantly getting dismembered and, at one point, even deadpans about having been impaled on a jutting piece of ice!). On the heroic side of things, we have a stocky woodcutter and his sympathetic reindeer but, oddly enough, the orphaned princesses are shown growing up sans guardians!

Conversely, the rogues' gallery – involving an elderly foreign tradesman and a young, deceptively handsome but opportunistic visiting prince – seems decidedly weak in comparison; similarly, the would-be sinister elements – a group of wise and friendly trolls on one hand and a giant snow creature (whom we thought had been disposed of but reappears for the, by now inevitable, post-credits sequence!) on the other – somehow feel like an afterthought! The climax, too, is sort of underwhelming because the sense of awe expected, after considerable build-up (and the film clocks in at a hefty 102 minutes), is rather lacking!; still, the songs – which are definitely not what I look forward to the most in efforts of this type – prove surprisingly tolerable on this occasion...which brings us back to "Let It Go", whose live performance during Oscar night was not only introduced by John Travolta apparently struggling with a bad hair day, but he also went on to spectacularly mispronounce singer Idina Menzel's name (incidentally, the star quality typically found among the engaged voice artists is conspicuous in its absence here) as Adele Dazeem while obliged to wax about her "wicked" talents!

The film is glorious to watch--particularly on the big screen. The CGI is absolutely lovely as are the character designs. However, it's a film that looks great but whose story is less than stellar. Part of it is because the characters sometimes do inexplicable things (mentioned above), part of it is because parts of the plot are missing (such as explaining how everyone LOVED the interim leader yet hated him later--after he'd actually done a good job in regard to the people as well as why everyone suddenly hated the guy from Weaseltown) and part of it is because there were too many distractions when the main thrust SHOULD have been the relationship between the sisters (the reindeer and guys got in the way). Still, it is worth seeing--especially if you don't spend too much time thinking through the plot. Plus, many might enjoy the more Broadway style of the music, as Idina Menzel really pours it on when she sings (as do the rest, though she clearly overshadows them with her magnificent singing). 5.9/10