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Frozen 2 Problems (Side Characters (Rushed/Underdeveloped (Northuldra…
Frozen 2 Problems
Side Characters
Rushed/Underdeveloped
Northuldra characters are at best broad sketches (no-nonsense Yelena, Ryder who's Kristoff 2.0) or only there for one dialogue scene (Honey-Maron) and then mostly dropped for the rest of the movie
Halima has only one line of dialogue, not much characterisation and while she is first shown in the movie's opening number, she isn't introduced until a good ways into the movie in a conversation between two separate characters
Ryder and Halima have really interesting arcs/premises- Ryder wanting to see a sky beyond the mist again and Halima's insistence on staying with Mathias despite the time disparity but the movie never expands on those arcs or has the characters question what they mean
Retconned
Agnar and Idun
All the scenes with Agnar and Idun do flesh them out as characters but it's done in a way that's deliberately forgetful of their abuse in the first movie
Idun in particular never once gets called out by either the narrative or the characters for being complicit in pushing to make Elsa 'pass' and trying to sever any connections to her minority culture, that she used her own ability to pass to ensure her own safety instead of trying to fight the system
Story
Ending
Biggest problem of the entire movie because it so thoroughly undercuts all the goodwill/good aspects the movie had put in
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Undoes all of Anna's character growth by having her grieving over Elsa's death vanish in minutes and has the difficulty of her decision erased by having Elsa swoop in and fix it all easily
Has Elsa save Arendelle- the status quo of the kingdom- despite the movie making it explicitly clear that this status quo was built on the abuse and harm of others
Has Anna immediately become Queen of Arendelle and have Elsa abdicate the throne to live free in the forest abruptly- undoing the entire first movie's conflict in a matter of minutes with no consequences or commentary
Kristoff neatly resolves his proposal arc instead of addressing the actual larger problem of him getting sidelined
We never get to see any actual reparations for the Northuldra or hints of the hard work that de-colonisation requires
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Main Characters
Undercut, muddled or shortchanged arcs
Anna
Undercut/Shortchanged. It's not really clear what she wants or what her goal is which ends up turning her into a passive agent for a lot of the movie despite her being more selfless, empathetic and emotionally grounded/stable
Only gets a clear goal/arc in the last act of the movie when she finds out the truth thanks to Elsa's sacrifice (even though it's established very well with real emotional gravity to it): she has to sacrifice the only home she's ever known to make things right
But then the ending completely undercuts that sacrifice and all the work Anna did to get to that point by having Elsa save the dam and her become queen of Arendelle with her new family intact, so even that small arc is rendered entirely weightless
Kristoff
Completely shortchanged. His entire arc revolves around him struggling to propose to Anna because of a bad sense of timing and inability to communicate with Anna that's played for laughs and ends up coming across as incredibly cringeworthy instead.
Which is not only a bizzare arc to put in a movie dealing with things like reparations for colonialism but completely renders his character completely incompetent and unnecessary.
In the previous movie, his problem was that he was a self-serving, boring jerk who had to constantly save Anna from her own stupidity and bad decision making. In this movie he's a genuinely nice if somewhat awkward guy who gets narratively and thematically sidelined over and over and over again with only one moment- "Lost in the Woods"- to fully acknowledge it
And even then, nothing gets done about it. He never gets a moment where he pours these feelings out to Anna, saying that he feels lost and left behind and that neither he or Elsa are telling him anything. He just resolves his proposal problem at the end and the movie wraps up with neat little bow.
Elsa
Undercut/Muddled. She's established as wanting to go "Into the Unknown" and find the voice but the movie never has her showing her moment of regretting going into the unknown or contemplating the consequences of it, or any real introspection in general.
She wants to find the truth, even if it means pushing herself past her breaking point and pushing away anyone else that might help her. Feels partially justified on account of how much more powerful and competent she is.
While it's sort of made into an explicit point in one argument with Anna, Elsa doesn't do anything to change these things and it leads her to freezing to death in the depths of Ahtohallan.
Which would have made for a solid downward arc as her her refusal to change gets her killed, but then the ending completely undercuts it by having her not only survive but completely save Arendelle and leave the throne behind for her sister to take with zero consequences
Olaf
Muddled. His arc is established well enough, he's growing older and losing his innocence. The opening number has Anna assuring him over his fears of nothing being permanent and the whole movie centers on him trying to cope with the ways in which things have kept on changing and falling apart. And in the end, he finds one thing that is permanent: love. But the throughline is a bit muddled by plot events and the other character arcs not working
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Setting
Unsatisfying/Murky
Northurlda
Northuldra are broadly sketched out by the things shown in the movie- the extent to which they value reindeer, their nomadic nature with the tent-like wooden structures, their reverence for nature and the spirits through dialogue
But there is no sense given to who they are as a people: what do they really value, how do they approach life, how have they resisted and kept themselves together in the face of colonisation, how does their culture reflect those things?
Not a lot of detail into how the Northuldra were treated after Runeard killed their leader, or how they fought back/dealt with their loss
Magic
Elsa's ice powers are explained but they still aren't given any real definitions or limits- though they are used more the way you'd expect ice to be used
The mist itself is introduced but it isn't exactly clear how it works in regards to keeping people stuck in time or what the harmful effects of it are. Or if it was meant to be harmful instead of a protective barrier keeping the Northuldrans safe from further oppression
We broadly come to understand that the Northuldrans value magic and see it as part of nature whereas the Adrenellians regard magic as foreign and scary but we don't see the contrast very well- we see too little of the Northuldrans using magic and no-one comments on say, how much harder their lives are now that their spirits are turned against them
Arendelle
Painted as a "kingdom of plenty/that stands for the good of the many" but while that idea is completely undercut by the revelation, there's no real detail on the way Arendelle oppressed their neighbours- reform schools, forbidding the language being spoken, stealing cultural objects
There's also no real detail on how Arendelle benefitted from hurting the Northuldra people, what resources they got
A happy ending shouldn't come at the expense of character growth and development, it has to be earned by those things
Furthermore, I would argue that it's impossible to portray a story of colonialism like this with a completely happy ending wrapped up in a bow because real reparations require genuine sacrifice, loss, hard work and a complete change of perspective from the colonisers themselves
And considering how relevant the topic is in our modern landscape such as the Standing Rock protests, if you're going to write a story about colonialism then you have to either be honest with it or not even bother with it at all regardless of whatever demographic you choose to write it for
Especially when you consider that Native children do exist and do watch these movies and might actually appreciate a piece of mainstream media doing justice to them and their history
Reconciliation needs both parties to be on equal footing and if Arendelle had been allowed to be destroyed, it might have done that because now both peoples have lost everything and need to start from scratch (with the onus especially being on Arendelle to do it right this time).
By keeping Arendelle the way it is, the power is still mostly in their hands and a measure that doesn't restore balance of power isn't real decolonisation- it's just lip service
While it's a good thing that the characters are much more enjoyable to be with and have firmer personalities compared to the first movie, their lack of truly good arcs holds them back.
And it's especially a shame because all of them now have the potential to be truly multi-faceted and memorable people
They're supposed to be not just one of the most important parts of the story's world but also the group that was hurt the most badly by Arendelle.
The fact that they lack so many of the details that make a people feel like a people doesn't just make the setting feel hollow and superficial it also hurts the message the movie is trying to get across and it feeds into the more icky ideas of how native cultures have been portrayed in media
The lack of detail regarding Arendelle's discrimination against the Northuldrans makes the film toothless and cowardly, saying that Arendelle was a colonial power but not willing to go into the actual grisly details of colonisation and occupation because it might make Arendelle too unsympathetic to the audience
All of these tropes and devices not only make the movie feel quite dated but also feeds into dangerous ideas about centrism that lead to legitimate complaints and problems regarding the treatment of native cultures by whites being dismissed or ignored
Retconning the parents/ignoring the harm they did to Elsa and Anna once again sends really bad messages about abuse in the same vein of "they didn't mean to" or "they had a good reason for it, trust us"
It's already bad enough that the POC characters are most sidelined ones considering how that has been the norm in media, especially American films for decades but is especially appalling in the face of works like Black Panther that have been completely shattering those trends