Verity's Book 2.0

What Actually Disappointed Me About Frozen 2

Guys, I don't know how, but I initially posted this in my Legea Trivia book. Proceeded to wonder why on earth nobody was seeing it. Thank Night and Mercy for stating the obvious. XD

If you're seeing this for the second time, and there's probably only two of you who will, that is why. *wanders away to facepalm*

**Spoilers ahead**

Ya still here?

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Ya sure?

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I'm going to come right out and say it.

Arendelle should have been destroyed.

I can forgive the weak plot and the predictability. I can overlook the underwhelming character arcs. But Disney took the one thing that they built the whole movie toward and pulled the plug on it at the very last second.

There are some instances of predictability that are appropriate to a movie. This is actually one of them. We feel the inevitability. We know the price that will have to be paid for deliverance and reconciliation. And we are ultimately willing to pay that price, because what we will gain is so much more than we will lose.

Anna realizes this. She sacrifices, and I don't think it's a light sacrifice. Arendelle represents so much to her. It's a symbol of everything she holds dear. And it is her home. How many of us would readily take a lighted match to the dwelling that keeps us safe and warm at night? But Anna acknowledges that places are not as important as people. And people need saving. Wrongs need righting. She goes and she breaks that dam.

And guys, there was so much potential.

Think of a Frozen 2 where the water crashes over Arendelle. Where the buildings shatter and crumble under the deluge, and the flood subsides on a broken city. Where the music murmurs in a sad yet triumphant register, and swells into gentle confidence as those who were once enemies join together in harmony to rebuild and restore. We see the scene set on a vista of beauty rising amidst brokenness... all the more beautiful for the brokenness around.

The best stories are those where a price is paid.

Instead? There is no price. Anna's sacrifice is cheapened. There is no payback on the foreshadowing. No fulfillment of the themes woven throughout the movie, still waiting for their capstone. Yes, we see the Northuldra mingling with the Arendellians, but how much more powerfully would the point have hit home if we could have seen them reach out to the Arendellians in need? The only takeaway that the movie actually gives us is that once you set a wrong to rights, whatever circumstantial consequences surrounding it vanish.

It was right, symbolically, for Arendelle to perish. Arendelle stood where waters once had, a symbol of the old king's arrogance and deceit. By washing it away, beginning anew, the movie would have completed the theme of reconciliation in a wonderfully whole way.

I'm all for story escapism, but guys, not THIS much escapism! Life bears consequences. I'll tell you what would have made a bad story: the Northuldra marching down the mountain, taking out their swords or axes or whatever and razing Arendelle's buildings to the ground. That would have sent a horrible message. But the waterfall is a figure of utterly impartial justice. It is destroying the city and the city alone, not out of revenge but out of necessity. The picture of justice tears down the picture of oppression that the city has slowly been revealed as over the movie.

I contend that this would not have been a sad ending. An element of sadness, but there would still have been so much joy. Anna reuniting with her sister, alive! Olaf could even have been revived without the same feeling of cheapness. And we would have been able to contrast the things that had been saved -- precious life, friendship, sisterhood -- with the temporal things that had been lost. It would have hammered home the truth about what things really matter.

There was so much potential.

That is what grieves me about Frozen 2, and why I still have mixed feelings about it as a whole. I love the songs, the characterization, and the themes. But I was waiting in that theater for the wave to crash over the shining city, and suddenly I found myself scrambling to realign my emotions to an easy victory, an absence of consequences, and an utter disregard for all the potent foreshadowing that had come before.

That will always make me sad.