This was the first non-Pixar Disney film I have seen since “Mulan” because I stopped having an interest in watching the typical Disney “heroine in distress” movie plot.

After returning home to Orlando for the break, almost all of my friends had nothing but rave reviews for “Frozen” but I just took it with a grain of salt. However, by the end of the break and hearing nothing but praise for the movie, I decided to go see it.

Two things stood out to me when I went to see it; I could not believe the amount of young adults in the theatre and I was amazed at how not “typical Disney” this movie was. I was swept up in the pandemonium and decided to learn more about this movie.

After reading an article by Ms. Grimaldi in Wednesday’s Daily Orange, I had a few points that I feel the readers should know about.

First off, I would like to say that I am not bashing that article. It was a great article. However, when she mentions that Disney changed the movie to fit a more “traditional mold of a hetero-normative love story,” it actually was the only way Disney could have this movie.

In the Hans Christian Anderson story, Elsa (The Snow Queen) is seen more as the villain and Disney felt that they couldn’t lift the story from the pages and make it into a movie because they felt it wouldn’t have connected well with audiences or even make a lot sense. In fact, the producers and storyboard artists spent a lot of time trying to fit everything together and the movie was nearly put back on the shelf during early pre-production.

Finally, in regards to Mr. Lino DeSlavo’s comments about making a woman in a Disney movie, he made these comments about the animating process and how tough it is to tell a computer to make an angry face or any face because everyone has a different expression for the same emotion. Plus, telling a computer to make a single movement is tough in the animation process.

Yes, Disney has moved forward with its movies, but let’s not say “Frozen” should have been more progressive. Let’s take it one step at a time.

Ben Castaneda

Freshman broadcast and digital journalism major

Class of 2017

Published on January 30, 2014 at 1:33 am