Frozen Information

Frozen is a 2013 American computer animated musical fantasy-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, it is the 53rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Featuring the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad, the film tells the story of a fearless, yet optimistic princess who sets off on an epic journey alongside a rugged mountain man, his loyal reindeer, and a hapless snowman to find her sister, the Snow Queen, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.

Frozen underwent several story treatments for several years, before being commissioned in 2011, with a screenplay written by Jennifer Lee, and both Chris Buck and Lee serving as co-directors. The film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre on November 19, 2013, and will go into general theatrical release on November 27.

Plot

The kingdom of Arendelle has two princesses, Elsa (Idina Menzel), the soon-to-be Queen, and Anna (Kristen Bell). Elsa has the ability to create snow and ice, but suppressed these powers after a traumatic childhood incident involving Anna. After her cryokinetic powers got out of hand during her official July coronation, she goes into hiding, but her emotions trigger a magical, eternal winter that freezes the entire kingdom. The arrogant Duke of Weselton (Alan Tudyk) plots to turn everyone against "the monster" Elsa for his own devilish needs.

Anna, a fearless and daring optimist, must journey with extreme mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and reindeer sidekick Sven in an epic journey, encountering mystical trolls, a comical snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad), Everest-like extremes and magic at every turn in a race to find Elsa (now known as the Snow Queen), save their kingdom from eternal winter, and make things right before it's too late.

Voice cast

• Kristen Bell as Anna, a member of a royal family
• Idina Menzel as Elsa, the Snow Queen and Anna's elder sister.
  • Maia Mitchell as young Elsa
• Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, a mountain man, who owns a reindeer named Sven
• Santino Fontana as Hans, a prince from a nearby country
• Josh Gad as Olaf, a humorous snowman
• Alan Tudyk as the Duke of Weselton
• Ciarn Hinds as Pabbie the Troll King
• Chris Williams as Oaken, the owner of Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna
• Jack Whitehall as a troll

Development

Origins

In 1943, Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn had considered the possibility of collaborating to produce a biography film of author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, where Goldwyn's studio would shoot the live-action sequences of Andersen's life and Disney would create the animated sequences. The animated sequences were to include stories of Andersen's works, such as The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, The Ugly Duckling, The Red Shoes, and The Emperor's New Clothes. Walt and his animators were having hard troubles about The Snow Queen, as they couldn't find a way to adapt and relate the Snow Queen character to modern audiences. Even as far back as the 1940s, Disney's animation department saw great cinematic possibilities with the source material, but the Snow Queen character herself, proved to be too problematic. This, among other things, led to the cancellation of the Disney-Goldwyn project. Goldwyn went on to produce his own live-action film version in 1952, entitled Hans Christian Andersen, with Danny Kaye as Andersen, Charles Vidor directing, Moss Hart writing, and Frank Loesser penning the songs. All of Andersen's fairy tales were, instead, told in song and ballet in live-action, like the rest of the film. It went on to receive six Academy Award nominations the following year. Back at Disney, The Snow Queen, along with other Andersen fairy tales (including The Little Mermaid), were shelved.

Later efforts

</ref> |width=40%|align=left}} In the late 1990s, Walt Disney Feature Animation started on their own adaptation of The Snow Queen after the tremendous success of their recent films, but the project was scrapped completely in late 2002, when Glen Keane notoriously quit the project. Even before then, Harvey Fierstein pitched his version of the story to the Disney executives, but was turned down. Dick Zondag and Dave Goetz all had their try on it, but failed. Disney shelved the project again. Michael Eisner, then-CEO and chairman of The Walt Disney Company, offered his support to the project and suggested doing it with John Lasseter at Pixar Animation Studios, when the studios would get their contracts renewed.

However, in March 2010, four years after the Pixar acquisition, Disney commissioned the project instead at Walt Disney Animation Studios, with Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale directing, along with Don Hahn to produce, John Lasseter to executive produce, Linda Woolverton to write the script, and Alan Menken and Glenn Slater to write the songs, which would have reunited most of the same creative team of Beauty and the Beast. At the time, the project went under name of Anna and the Snow Queen and was planned to be traditionally-animated. By June 2010, the project entered development hell once again, when the studio failed to find a way to make the story and the Snow Queen character work.

Revitalization

On December 22, 2011, following the success of Tangled, Disney announced a new title for the film, Frozen, and a release date, November 27, 2013, and a different crew from the previous attempt. A month later, it was confirmed that the film would be a computer animated feature in stereoscopic 3D, instead of the intended hand drawn animation. On March 5, 2012, it was announced that Chris Buck would be directing, with John Lasseter and Peter Del Vecho producing.

After Disney decided to advance The Snow Queen into development again, one of the main challenges Buck and Del Vecho faced was the character of the Snow Queen, which in that earlier version of the story, was a villain. Buck and Del Vecho presented their storyboards to John Lasseter, with the entire production team adjourned to a conference to hear Lasseter's thoughts on this work-in-progress. Production designer Michael Giaimo, recalled; "That was the game changer...I remember John saying that the latest version of The Snow Queen story that Chris Buck and his team had come up with was fun, very light-hearted. But the characters didn't resonate. They aren't multi-faceted. Which why John felt that audiences wouldn't really be able to connect with them." The production team then addressed the film's problems, drafting several different variations on the Snow Queen story until the characters and story felt relevant. Finally, the team decided to rewrite the film's protagonist, Anna (who was based on the Gerda character from The Snow Queen), as the younger sibling of Elsa, effectively establishing a family dynamic between the characters.

Production

Actress Kristen Bell was cast as the voice of Anna on March 5, 2012. Lee admitted that Bell's casting selection was influenced after the filmmakers listened to a series of vocal tracks Bell had recorded when she was young, where the actress performed several songs from The Little Mermaid, including "Part of Your World." Bell completed her recording sessions while she was pregnant, and subsequently re-recorded some of her character's lines after her pregnancy, as her voice had deepened. When asked on her approach to Anna, Kristen Bell replied, "I'm really excited to show it to people. I became a part of the kind of movie I wanted to see as a kid," she said. "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, after impressing the directors during a recording session with Bell. Between December 2012 and June 2013, additional casting roles were announced; including Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, Alan Tudyk as the Duke of Weselton, Santino Fontana as Prince Hans, and Josh Gad as Olaf.

On November 30, 2012, it was announced that Jennifer Lee, one of the screenwriters of Wreck-It Ralph, had joined Buck as co-director. The filmmakers hired Lee initially as a screenwriter, following her work on Wreck-It Ralph. Lee then became heavily involved with the film's pre-development process, working closely with director Chris Buck and songwriters, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. Following the announcement, Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a full-length animated motion picture produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Once the film entered production, Buck focused on the animation, whereas Lee focused on the screenplay, due to her inexperience with the former field.

Animation

The film's animators visited an Ice Hotel in Quebec, Canada to study how light reflects and refracts on snow and ice. For the film's setting, the animators used the landscape of Norway and the feel of the winter season of Wyoming for inspiration. "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 remarked. "There is a real feeling of Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this," he finished. Back at the studio, Del Vecho explained the film's production: "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 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."

Regarding the look and nature of the film's cinematography, the film's art director Michael Giaimo was greatly influenced by Jack Cardiff's work in Black Narcissus. 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 Giamo; "The juxtaposition of character and environment and the counterpart of how they played in terms of cinematography was brilliant in that film," It was also Giamo's idea that Frozen should be filmed in CinemaScope, which was approved by Lasseter. 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 animation, noted that the art design environment represents a unity of character and environment and that he originally wanted to incorporate saturated colors, which is typically ill-advised in computer animation. A live reindeer was brought into the studio for animators to study its movements and mannerisms for the character, Sven.

During production, the film's English title was changed from The Snow Queen to Frozen, a decision that drew comparisons to 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 foreign 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."

Music

The songs for Frozen were written and composed by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, both of whom had previously worked with Walt Disney Animation Studios on Winnie the Pooh. Lopez and Anderson-Lopez's "Let It Go" and "In Summer" were previewed at the 2013 D23 Expo, with the former being performed by Idina Menzel. In February 2013, Christophe Beck was hired to score the film, following his highly acclaimed work on Paperman, a Disney animated short film released the year prior to Frozen. Kristen Bell also confirmed that there will be a duet between her and Menzel. It was also revealed on September 14, 2013 that Smi musician Frode Fjellheim's Eatnemen Vuelie will be the film's opening song. On October 21, 2013, Demi Lovato released her cover of "Let It Go" for the film's soundtrack. Two editions of the soundtrack were released by Walt Disney Records on November 25, 2013; a single-disc and a two-disc deluxe edition (containing original demo recordings of songs and score compositions, unused outtake recordings, and instrumental versions of the film's main songs).

For the orchestral film score, composer Christophe Beck gave homage to the Norway- and Spmi-inspired setting, employing regional instruments such as the bukkehorn and traditional vocal techniques, such as kulning. The music producers recruited a Norwegian linguist to assist with the lyrics for an Old Norse song written for Elsa's coronation, and also traveled to Norway to record the all-female choir Cantus, for a piece inspired by traditional Norwegian music. The score was recorded by an 80-piece orchestra, featuring 32 vocalists, including native Norwegian Christine Hals. 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."

Soundtrack

</ref> | extra_column = Performer(s) | collapsed = yes | title11 = Libre Soy | extra11 = Martina Stoessel | note11 = Spanish version | length11 = 3:46 }} </ref> | extra_column = Performer(s) | collapsed = yes | title11 = All"?alba sorger | extra11 = Martina Stoessel | note11 = Italian version | length11 = 3:46 }} </ref> | total_length = 54:61 | extra_column = Artist(s) | collapsed = yes | title1 = For the First Time in Forever (Demo) | extra1 = Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length1 = 3:33 | title2 = Love Is an Open Door (Demo) | extra2 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length2 = 2:05 | title3 = We Know Better (Outtake) | extra3 = Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length3 = 4:04 | title4 = Spring Pageant (Outtake) | extra4 = Robert Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Katie Lopez, and Annie Lopez | length4 = 3:11 | title5 = More Than Just the Spare (Outtake) | extra5 = Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length5 = 3:26 | title6 = You're You (Outtake) | extra6 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length6 = 1:50 | title7 = Life's Too Short (Outtake) | extra7 = Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length7 = 3:53 | title8 = Life's Too Short (Reprise) (Outtake) | extra8 = Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length8 = 1:44 | title9 = Reindeer(s) Remix (Outtake) | extra9 = Robert Lopez | length9 = 2:29 | title10 = The Ballad of Olaf & Sven (Demo) | extra10 = Christophe Beck | length10 = 1:35 | title11 = Queen Elsa of Arendelle (Demo) | extra11 = Christophe Beck | length11 = 0:44 | title12 = Hans (Demo) | extra12 = Christophe Beck | length12 = 1:22 | title13 = It Had to Be Snow (Demo) | extra13 = Christophe Beck | length13 = 1:18 | title14 = Meet Olaf (Demo) | extra14 = Christophe Beck | length14 = 2:01 | title15 = Hands for Hans (Demo) | extra15 = Christophe Beck | length15 = 0:48 | title16 = Oaken's Sauna (Demo) | extra16 = Christophe Beck | length16 = 1:26 | title17 = Thin Air (Demo) | extra17 = Christophe Beck | length17 = 2:19 | title18 = Cliff Diving (Demo) | extra18 = Christophe Beck | length18 = 0:51 | title19 = The Love Experts (Demo) | extra19 = Christophe Beck | length19 = 1:04 | title20 = Elsa Imprisoned (Demo) | extra20 = Christophe Beck | length20 = 1:04 | title21 = Hans' Kiss (Demo) | extra21 = Christophe Beck | length21 = 2:11 | title22 = Coronation Band Suite (Demo) | extra22 = Christophe Beck | length22 = 1:34 | title23 = Let It Go (Instrumental) | extra23 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length23 = 3:46 | title24 = For the First Time in Forever (Instrumental) | extra24 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length24 = 3:46 | title25 = Love Is an Open Door (Instrumental) | extra25 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length25 = 2:07 | title26 = In Summer (Instrumental) | extra26 = Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez | length26 = 1:48 | title27 = Let It Go (Instrumental) | extra27 = Robert Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Emanuel "Eman" Kiriakou | length27 = 3:42 }}

Release

Frozen premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on November 19, 2013. It will be theatrically released on November 27, 2013 in the United States, and will be accompanied by the Mickey Mouse animated short film, Get a Horse!

Critical response

Frozen received widespread acclaim from film critics, with many praising the film's characterization, animation, casting, music, screenplay, and themes. Several critics have compared the film favorably to the films of the Disney Renaissance, particularly The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 91% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 35 reviews, with an average score of 7.7/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Alonso Duralde of The Wrap hailed the film as "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 elaborated 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 observes 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 lackluster 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." Kyle Smith of The New York Post awarded the film 3.5 out of 4 stars and praised the film as "a great big snowy pleasure with an emotionally gripping core, brilliant Broadway-style songs and a crafty plot. Its first and third acts are better than the jokey middle, but this is the rare example of a Walt Disney Animation Studios effort that reaches as deep as a Pixar film." Scott Mendelson of Forbes enthused; "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 as "a welcome return to greatness for Walt Disney Animation Studios." Richard Corliss of Time also lauded the film, writing; "It's great to see Disney returning to its roots and blooming anew: creating superior musical entertainment that draws on the Walt tradition of animation splendor and the verve of Broadway present." 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." Overall, she said that Frozen is 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." Drew McWeeny of HitFix gave the film an "A" grade and praised the musical numbers, art direction, screenplay, animation, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee's direction, and Kristen Bell's performance as "one of the year's very best...in a live-action or animated film, with a level of commitment that is dazzling." He finished his review by proclaiming that "Get a Horse! celebrates and deconstructs Disney's animated history in a very fun way. Throw in Saving Mr. Banks, and it seems certain that the long creative history of the studio is on Disney's mind these days. With the enormously entertaining Frozen, they honor that legacy completely."

However, the film was not without its detractors. Scott Foundas of Variety, wasn't as equally impressed with the film, but nevertheless commended the film's voice acting and technical artistry: "The tactile, snow-capped Arendelle landscape, including Elsa"?s ice-castle retreat is Frozens 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." Paste Magazine gave Frozen a negative review, awarding 6.8 out of 10, and criticizing the new story and the "undeveloped" relationship between Anna and Elsa. Noting "the downside of trying to rekindle that unique magic is that Frozen feels a little like a Las Vegas tribute show: it hits all the recognizable beats without quite capturing the soul of what it"?s paying tribute to."

Box office

Frozen earned $243,390 during its limited release at the El Capitan Theatre. It earned its position to be the seventh-best pre-screen average of all time.