Most Over Rated Disney Movie

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 24 and the topic is “Most Overrated Movie”.

I almost gave this to “James and the Giant Peach” but then I recalled that a good 20% of that movie is in live action and decided that DQ’d the mean spirited thing.  I only went for it initially so I wouldn’t keep talking about the same damn thing again.  The ultra-mega hit that so dominated the world that they are redoing the theme parks to better incorporate the IP into them.  Who has a song that everyone has heard a million times—because the song is the best thing in the movie.  Of course I am talking about “Frozen”.

BUT I’M TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT “Frozen”.  I can’t even turn this into a top 5 in an interesting way, or find some new angle to come at the topic.  Disney is a pretty up-front about itself company and I can’t really scratch any deeper on this.  “Frozen” has awful bad guys, mediocre protagonists, stupid decisions driving the plot, and while the animation at first struck me as awesome—the snow looks great—it did not hold up to scrutiny as the character models (especially the women) are interchangeable and the houses look almost like doll houses (They look fake in the sense that they were poorly animated).

She cries funny.

This thing made a billion dollars.  It is in the top 50 for animated movies on Rotten Tomatoes.  IT IS A MERCHANDISING EMPIRE ALL ITS OWN.  I can’t see a movie with a greater disparity between its quality and the amount of praise it received.  IT WON BEST ANIMATED FEATURE.

            Blergh…

            What about high hopes?  While “Frozen” was reworked around some ideas (it has actually been workshopped since Walt was alive) I don’t think that Disney thought it would be the titan that it is.  What did they imagine to be their crowning achievement that amounted to little?  What was the most overrated by the company that ultimately underperformed because of inflated expectations?  Well, the answer is just around the riverbend.

            At the time of its creation “Pocahontas” was being seen as the sort of classic, “we’ve done this right before, we’ll do it right again” romance that would certainly be the hit of its era.  Animators jumped ship from working on “The Lion King” to work on what was sure to be the more successful project.  Jeffery Katzenberg, one of the most important and powerful entities in all of animation held this belief.  IT WAS A RARE MISSED MARK FOR HIM.

            I am a child that grew up in the 90’s, and if there is one thing I remember about going to school in the 90’s it was the ever present specter of white guilt that hovered over all of the curriculum of the era.  I remember learning all of the different tribes of North America in elementary school, how there were longhouses, teepees, and the sandstone Pueblo housing in the south west.  I recall learning about gender roles, property rights, some of the managerial styles of tribal life.  I went to field trips that emphasized Indian mounds.

This was no fun.

In Middle School we spent so much time dwelling on the Trail of Tears, by which I mean I learned that it was a sad and morally repugnant event in history, but I couldn’t tell you the year it happened, the events that led up to it, the events that followed, or who was president at the time, but I knew white people should feel bad about it.  It was a shallow view of history to say the least and I would even say it made me more of a bigot growing up.  You know what fought back against that idea?  The positive and inclusive steps pop-culture was taking to make minorities more prevalent and respected, which is why I don’t bitch about it now when they cast minority actors in more and more blockbuster movies.

            Keep in mind I know that my white forefathers were absolute bastards toward the Native Americans, and that there were many tribes and cultures that populated the Americas before they got there, but the strange BS mysticism and reverence of a vague Native American spiritualism that sprung up and the odd revulsion toward the explorers and pioneers of white America, that was doing no one any favors.  “Pocahontas” has that shit in spades.

"What the hell tree has purple leaves?" -Pocahontas

            There are a few good—albeit preachy—songs to complement the flowing animation, but overall you should NOT make a movie about the longest term genocide in history and frame it as a bullshit simplistic miscommunication between two people because of WANTING GOLD.  Ultimately the tension is resolved by… I honestly have no idea.  No substantial resolution to the underlying tensions are reached.  You can point to Pocahontas stopping the execution, but that didn’t answer any of the issues that still existed… Which I guess is a good explanation for why the Indians would ultimately be wiped out.

            “Pocahontas” is not the cultural touchstone that “The Lion King” became, and compared to “Beauty and the Beast”, who it was emulating—with an epic romance and tons of sidekicks— “Pocahontas” is a joke.  I am sorry, but the best romances are about strong FLAWED characters going thru arcs via contact with one another and becoming better people.  Having two perfect characters—John Smith and Pocahontas are annoyingly flawless—politely talk out the issues existing between two sides in a war because they want to bone each other IS NOT GOOD DRAMA.

"Want to see if my carpet matches my drapes?" asked Jon.
"What's carpet?  What're drapes?" asked the mysterious native woman.
"Oh yeah, gonna have to use different pick up lines in this country," realized John.

            There are about a trillion tumblr nerds wanting to talk about how this movie is sexist or racist but you can ignore all of that because the real problem as far as I am concerned is how flat everything is.  Pocahontas is a pretty princess whose biggest concern when not frolicking in the forest is that she is being pressured to marry a guy who is noble, good looking, and liked by her entire community.  Boo-fuckity-hoo.  John Smith is the swarthy adventurer who has seen the world and conquered it all with his good looks, skill, and bravery, the guy probably has a trail of bastards and broken hearts from Cairo to Santiago.  I’m having déjà vu as it is another case of Boo-fuckity-hoo.  NEITHER OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE ANYTHING TO OVERCOME!

            I don’t even know these characters’ motivations.  Let’s compare a few protagonists from other movies.

Belle, “I want to see the world, the one beyond the little village I live in”.  How does she do this?  “All I can afford is to read books about that world”.

Hercules, “I want to prove myself worthy of my birthright as a god”.  How does he do this?  “I will fight evil, protect the innocent, and bring glory to my name.”

Rapunzel, “I want to go outside.”  How does she go about this?  “I go outside as soon as I have a—let’s call him ‘willing’—guide so that I will be relatively safe.”

"Tangled" sure as hell has a greater grasp on the idea of romance than "Pocahontas".

These Characters have goals and do things to accomplish those goals.  What is the goal of each of the leads in “Pocahontas”?  I don’t know.  What do their actions indicate might be their goal?  Getting some strange from an ethnicity they haven’t been with before.  Capital.  Wonderful protagonists.

Whatever.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Favorite Disney Song

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 13 and the topic is “Favorite Song”.

            The song is “Let it Go” from “Frozen”.  I heard and enjoyed the song as a pop-song before I even knew it was in the movie.  It is good to listen to while running up hill.

            What is ironic is, even though I like the song on its own, it is not a particularly triumphant song in the narrative, as it is Elsa in denial about her place in the world.  She just ruined her own kingdom and abandoned her sister.  Neither of these things is good, and the fact that she is so mopey when confronted later shows that this song, in the context of the story anyway, is just a big lie to both the audience and to the character.

            It would have made more sense had they just made Elsa the villain, but they decided to instead shoehorn in a couple instead when they decided that Elsa would be the secondary protagonist.  Too bad, as a song about a crazy powerful and dangerous person cutting loose would make for the most upbeat villain song in Disney.

And I guess they couldn't make the bad guy a protagonist...
Unless they want to give her a tragic back story about getting raped.

             Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Worst Disney Villains

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 9 and the topic is “Worst Villain”.

            This is kind of a cop out day because I am surprisingly busy dealing with the uncaring and sometimes outright painful bureaucracy of higher education.  So no massive comparison of 11 candidates and their rankings on the various modes of villainy.

I have mentioned before in this blog that I do not care for “Frozen” and while I have laid too much blame for this at lesser issues, there is something I can say without any difficulty, the movie has a problem with its villains.

            Generally speaking, the movie did not need a bad guy other than Elsa herself.  Her exile resulting in a winter without end is enough of a problem that you did not need another bad guy to drive the plot.  I do not know why they included them but they are there and both of them are just lame.

In this scene, Hans is trying to assassinate Elsa.
Later in the movie the writers assassinate his character potential.

             Hans, the would be lover of Anna who at first appears to be a dashing and competent administrator, giving every indication that he is as swept up with Anna’s annoying charm as Anna is swept up in him being both handsome and not a dick, turns out he is not only a dick but a murderous dick.  This was a misstep.

Hans’ motivation in the story could be tweaked from, “I want to rule a kingdom” over to “I need to save the kingdom if I am to help rule it”; and his role as a physical threat to Elsa could both be done from the perspective of a good person.  For instance, “Elsa, evil or not, is threatening the lives of thousands, I need to stop her even if it means killing her.  I’m sorry.”  It is possible for a good person to do a bad thing for the right reasons, especially if they feel they are cornered and have no choice.  Make him not a villain, but an antagonist who thinks they are the hero.

By making him a good person the rift that trying to kill Elsa would create between Anna and him is good drama.  I have never had to fight, let alone murder a significant other’s sibling to save lives, most good people would never be put in that situation, that’s interesting and not villainous.

You all did not make good use of your Alan Tudyk.
Just like the rest of Hollywood.

The second and even more unnecessary villain is the skinny Duke who sees the opening of the Kingdoms boarders as a chance to make a bank load of money exploiting them financially.  This character belongs in a completely different movie, at no point does his personal greed or desire for trade relations serve any function in the story.  The movie has nothing to do with trade and all of the action takes place in or around this kingdom and no other.  There is no point in the movie in which the Kingdom is mentioned to be poor and in need of new trade partners, wealthy and looking for new products, or afraid of other nations attacking because their closed boarders have alienated the other kingdoms.  Duke is in the wrong movie.

All he does is use his goofy charms, try to have Elsa killed after her dangerous powers are revealed, and then fail to be a factor in the story afterword.  At no point does he make a moral or ethical argument as to why something needed to be done that was informed by his stated motivations.  And aside from his stated motivations of wanting to make money off trade he has no other motivations discussed, mentioned, or illustrated thru his actions.  Apparently witchcraft spooked him.  It also spooked everyone!

The Duke, if you must have him should be the ticking clock element of the story.  That no one knows where Elsa is in the wilds and he sends off mercenaries to kill her, have them be witch-hunters and a real threat rather than just typical nameless soldier-goons.  Anna has to find some backway around those mercenaries and save her sister from them (and them from her) to reach a peaceful solution.  Play up his bigotry toward magic, you could easily have some statue to a wizard in the town square and have him comment on it while walking to the palace, “Wizards and witchcraft.  Makes my skin crawl.”  Boom, motivation established.  You could even have the parents discuss that society has such taboos against magic that they were trying to suppress Elsa’s powers specifically because the other royals would have tried to kill Elsa.  As is, Duke is greedy, but his murderous fear/hatred of magic comes out of nowhere.

Or you could have just had the nads to make Elsa a full on villain.

Again, you don’t need the Duke, he adds nothing.  Hans being the misguided hero and Elsa being the heroine who can’t control her powers because her abusive dipshit parents failed so completely to understand the Trolls’ instructions are more than enough conflict.  You could change to focus on those elements and “Frozen” would still end the same way, with Anna sacrificing herself to save Elsa.

            I talked about both of these things before.  And have a link to it here.  Feel free to see some minor adjustments I suggested—even smaller than those discussed here—would make the movie a lot more complex and interesting.  Rather than how it is now, which is messy.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry.

            I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Favorite Non-Animal Disney Sidekick

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 7 and the topic is “Favorite Non-Animal Sidekick”.

            I am regretting putting all of the character entries in this blog series in the first week.  6 straight days of me happily endorsing the messages and abilities of things I like while deriding those I don’t might be entertaining, but it also gets a bit same-same.  It wasn’t as much an issue with video games as there were only five entries and that was after talking about 4 bigger scope ideas.

            Maybe this is sleep deprivation, stress, existential ennui, or my desire to take an unpopular opinion about this movie, but my favorite non-human sidekick—and my favorite character in the movie—is Olaf from “Frozen”.

This is actually a comically large desktop image.

            I do not care for “Frozen” but it did have three strong redeeming traits to it—and 1 lesser redeeming trait.  The first was “Let it Go” which is a good fun song without the movie, it is actually pretty good to work out to.  The second is the message of the movie about love being more complex than the traditional Disney idea of being swept up in a romance at first sight.  And the third is Olaf, who is kind of the anti-sidekick.  The other lesser thing is the character arc Anna goes thru which I talked myself into liking the other day.

            Much of what I am saying will mirror the thoughts expressed in this video talking about the character of Olaf.  He has symbolic importance in the story as he represents the innocence and affection the two sisters had at the beginning of the movie when they were both children and a time when Elsa felt she could safely and healthily use her powers for fun.  Olaf is also the funniest part of the movie, with the funniest song, dialogue, and motivations.  And that Olaf’s ignorance of what his goal is—see summer—will result in his death is pretty funny on its own even if he were written as a serious character that would be great.

            Beyond the typical sidekick, which provide a toy opportunity and inform the main character by being cute enough to let you know that the hero is someone who treasures “cute”, Olaf has actual narrative function and is juxtaposed in the story by the monster snowman who rather than having Olaf’s welcoming persona instead serves to drive people off.

Apparently this thing's name is Marshmallow?
That is hilarious.

             Know what else is fun?  How well Olaf contrasts with the Gargoyles from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, whom I—and I think everyone else—consider the nadir of sidekicks because they are so out of tone with the rest of the movie.  “You know what our movie about societal rejection, racial persecution, and sexual repression needs?  Jokes about poker!” 

Olaf fits in the context of “Frozen” and his humor fits in the context of the world.  While the gargoyles of “Hunchback” SEEM to be the delusions of Quasi’s lonely mind, but their humor makes no sense in the context of Paris of that era, Olaf IS a magical manifestation of a character’s emotional state and all of his humor makes sense!

            From a writing standpoint Olaf is the best thing in the movie.

These guys suck.  Not the voice actors, but the characters.  They suck.
I feel the need to point them out because there is no blog entry for "Hated Non-Animal Side Kick".
They would be the most hated.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Most Disliked Disney Protagonist (Female)

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 3 and the topic is “Most Disliked Female Protagonist”.

            Two days ago, I talked about how “The Little Mermaid” had a painfully naïve protagonist whom I did not care for because she has no arc and does not grow as a person after having been exploited by a bad person and then getting bailed out by her Dad and boyfriend.

            Yesterday, I mentioned really liking the recent output of Disney with my love of both “Inside Out” and “Zootopia”.  But, I don’t like everything they have been doing.  Case in point, I think one of the most annoying characters in recent cinema history is Anna from “Frozen”.

            So which of the two do I think is worse?  Let me pontificate on each of their merits for a moment before ultimately condemn one to be the worst.

 

Neither win for best redhead in the Disney canon.  They are just in better regarded films than "Brave".

            Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” is the worst… Sorry, I should have pontificated in text form.  On Day 1 I spelled out how little I enjoy “The Little Mermaid” and pretty much all of it came down to the characters—and the plot, but that is not what we are talking about.  This is the sort of thing that kind of requires people to have seen each movie and then to see how those movies break by the failure of the characters as elements in the story.  It also means that a character can be superior via growth in the story or fitting into the world/narrative better, or just by learning a better lesson from the story—such as the story is.  So let’s start by explaining what each is about.

The Plots

First the recap of “The Little Mermaid” I wrote on Monday and touched up a little.  Ariel is the undersea princess of a race of mer-people but views the surface world of humans as a magical place that she wants to learn more about.  Her father, King Triton uber masculine bully of the sea, derides her obsession and after he destroys her collection of tchotchkes taken from human ship wrecks, Ariel runs—swims—away from home.

Body Language!

Ariel meets with the sea witch Ursula and strikes a deal to turn human for three days, if during that time she can find love on land she will be allowed to remain human and live out her life on the surface world.  If Ariel is unable to find love she will become one of the cursed creatures that Ursula torments for amusement.  Ultimately Ursula uses trickery to win the bargain and leverages Ariel’s freedom to take over the undersea kingdom from Triton.  Ursula is then justly murdered and everyone else has a happily ever after.  Ariel learns nothing from this experience.

            Now let’s look at “Frozen”.  After Anna is nearly killed by her sister she is mentally lobotomized by a cadre of helpful(?) trolls.  She and her sister spend the next decade being both neglected and sheltered by their parents until one day those god awful parental units are mercifully put out of the sisters’ misery by dying at sea.  Cooped up in the palace for decades Anna’s sister, Elsa is due to be coordinated.  On the day of the coronation Anna is seduced and Elsa’s freak magical powers cause havoc, these two things are not directly related, but sub textually they are very related.

Body Language!

Elsa exiles herself and Anna goes to bring her back—at the very least Elsa should stop the apocalyptic magical snow storm she summoned while leaving.

            After a series of adventures with a sentient snowman, a guy who sells ice for a living, and a funny reindeer, Anna finds her sister living in a magical ice palace.  Anna is betrayed by her would be lover for no reason and must rise to the occasion to save her menace of a sister from being justly murdered and in doing so Anna saves the kingdom.  Along the way she learns the difference between romantic love, familial love, and lust.  A pretty good set of lessons for young people.

  

My Thoughts

            Do you see the obvious difference?  That Anna learns from her experiences and grows as a person, ultimately being the key to saving everything thru an act of heroism.  Ariel by contrast does not.  In fact, the split between the two is so big you might ask, “Why did you even bring up Anna and ‘Frozen’ at all if the answer is so obvious?”  And that is a fair question.

1)     I already talked about “The Little Mermaid” and wanted a little more meat for this entry.

2)     I dislike “Frozen” and Anna is a part of why and I wanted to bring it up now so that when I start talking about “Frozen” down the line I can link back to this with the words, “She’s not all bad”.

            “So what is your problem with Anna then?” you are now asking, followed by the words, “You’re an asshole” as the fandom of “Frozen” is rather intense.  I dislike a couple minor things that stack into something more.

1)     Anna complains about not wanting to be cooped up in the palace, but unlike Jasmine or Miranda before her she doesn’t do anything to change her position in the world, she remains locked in the palace.  Even Ariel ran away, that was the impetus for the whole story.

2)     Anna is annoying, I do not find her all that funny and aside from the bemusement I feel watching other characters reacting to her BS.  She doesn’t really do anything for me.  Better than boring, but not by much.

            “Those 2 things don’t stack into anything,” you are saying.

Well, the more I write this the more I feel like I am being overly harsh.  You know what, the decision was easy and now my dislike of Anna seems tremendously small.

 

I am so confused.  This image isn't even from either of these movies!

I think I just figured out that I dislike “Frozen” for other reasons and while Anna doesn’t help the case of the movie she is not the bugbear that I thought she was when I started writing this.

            Ariel Sucks!  Anna is fine.  Internal argument over without ever getting going.

            You know if I were not doing a daily thing and had more time to think this over I would scrap this blog and do something else entirely.  Can’t do that now!

Beg for Attention

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry.  Tell me how this non-argument was not entertaining, confusing, and a waste of time that would have been better served by a more straightforward blog.  Or whatever.

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Fix the Scene, "Frozen"

“Frozen” is an okay movie and illustrates perfectly why so many films shoot for braod mass appeal: IT MAKES A SHIT TON OF MONEY.  I find more and more issues with it as I look back thru my mind’s eye (that the background animation is a little wanting, houses look a bit fake, that sort of thing).  My biggest issue has to do with the movies two villains, Hanz seducing his way to a crown when he could have just won it thru administrative merit (Kind of like Loki) and losing it because he was an idiot; and the Skinny Duke, whose name is inconsequential, just that is a silly character explicitly out for money who gets shat on at the end of the movie.

I just found Hanz being the villain to be unnecessary. Her out of control powers were the real villain, and if you wanted to add peril for the heroes that is easy too.

-Hanz (Kisses Anna and it has no effect): That can't be right.
-Anna (her hair still turning white): Try again.
-Hanz (kisses her again to no effect): I guess a true loves kiss isn't enough.
-Anna: It has to be.
-Hanz (steel determination on his face): Anna I can't lose you. I have to do something more.
-Anna: Hanz just stay with me, I will get better.
-Hanz: No, I know what I have to do. I have to stop Elsa.
-Anna: No.
-Hanz: She destroyed the kingdom. And now you’re dying. There is no other way.
-Anna: No!
-Hanz: I can't lose you. If there is a choice of who to save, I am saving you!

There is really no reason for him to not kiss her.

The movie then proceeds as it did before, but now Hanz is trying to save the kingdom and his (not) true love because he is misguided, rather than because he is a bastard.  You could have him do many traditionally heroic things, like have him slay another giant snow monster that is protecting Elsa, but ultimately have Anna stop him (just like in the movie) from killing Elsa.

The end of “Frozen” would be him leaving, disgraced but apologetic, that he should have listened to Anna and found another way, perhaps saying that as the youngest brother he was always jumping too fast to being a hero rather than being cautious. Anna forgives him but explains that they are not in love, and that this is a rift that will never close between them.

Not every movie needs a transparent villain. Because in real life few bad guys are pure bad.  The villains in this movie sucked. It should have just been Elsa's lack of self-control was the villain.

And furthermore the skinny old Duke shouldn’t get punished either because he did not do anything wrong.  But the movie says the Duke did basically nothing but try to kill someone with out of control dangerous super powers. Oh, and he wanted to make profitable business arrangements. What an asshole, with his drive and ambition. Clearly deserves to be embargoed.  Here is how it should have been.  His forgiveness scene

-Skinny Duke: I am sorry for my conduct, I reacted out of fear and personal weakness and drove you to self-imposed exile, and I ask for your mercy my queen.
-Elsa: I too was driven by fear and caused great harm.  (Pause looking at all the goods being unloaded from the Duke’s ship) but I too seek the forgiveness of my people just as you seek my forgiveness. I offer you a pardon, but in the future you should seek to make reparations with my kingdom.
-Skinny Duke: Most assuredly my grace. I came here to seek profits, made a fool of myself, and then became a danger, the least I can do is try to make reparations thru trade and charity.
-Elsa: Just as I must make reparations to my people thru good judgement and just rule.
-Skinny Duke: It is good that we can grow and become greater people thru adversity.
-Elsa: Indeed.

 

I am sorry, and I know when to admit I was wrong about someone.  I feel more sorry for all the ice witches we burned to death in my homeland.

            CHARACTER ARCS ARE IMPORTANT.

            There are numerous other issues.  Not the least of which being how awful Elsa’s parents were in handling the situation (I can see how this movie gets a lot of “gay metaphor” press for telling the little girl to “conceal, don’t feel” as if the Kingdom were one giant pray-away camp).  But those issues were covered by the internet series “How it Should have Ended”.

(I previously complained about a particular scene in "Man of Steel" if you would like to read more of my stuff trying to fix scenes, and if you would like to suggest other scenes I should fix please comment).

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