A few months ago, we were surprised by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s announcement that he’d be producing a Sandman film with the blessing from creator Neil Gaiman. Then, we were teased by writer Jack Thorne’s attachment to the project. Now, as fans twiddle their thumbs waiting for more updates, I’d like to offer an argument for the casting of our beloved brooding Dream Lord.
Some e-whispers suggest that Don Jon himself should don Morpheus’ oneiric cowl. Why not? He’s pale with dark dressings and has dabbled in the DC universe before. Others like our own ethereal editor, Leia, champions more maturity in the master of disguise, Doug Jones. On the other hand, Gaiman put forward the razor-sharp cheekbones of Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch for his two cents.
What is my informed and corrected opinion on who should be cast, you ask, nay, you beg? All of the actors, or at least as many as could be seamlessly cut into a scene.
Hear me out. One reason among many that makes Sandman one of the most preeminent comic series of all time is it’s art, which not only was helmed by a multitude of different artists, but depicted a comic book hero who is iconically inconsistent from panel to panel. Unlike the red and blue of Superman, or Batman’s dark gauntlets, Morpheus’ face and clothing rarely had the exact same features from page to page, let alone spanning volumes. Even more interesting, Dream’s appearance would often depend on who he was interacting with. J’onn Jonzz sees Morpheus as a Martian, while to the Egyptian cat goddess, he is a great black cat with stars for eyes. How then could one actor really capture Dream better than a comic book artist? Why make a film at all if you’re going to lose something so essential from the character? (The different facets of Dream is probably best depicted and explained in the current mini-series, Sandman Overture, which marks Gaiman’s return to the character).
So imagine a movie where different actors play Dream in different moods, or in different scenes reacting to different characters. Picture the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but much, much, better. Not only would this be visually amazing, but would honor the inconceivable vastness of a character that personifies an eternal and formative aspect of the universe. Throw Cat-Dream in there, and I think you’ve got the basis for a perfect Sandman adaptation.
What do you all think?
Kaitlyn
Staff Writer
Kaitlyn@sub-cultured.com
I was lucky enough to get some great interviews with some of the guests for PAX East! I tried my best to get the best audio quality, but with a show floor as busy as downtown Mumbai and music blaring from every possible, there’s definitely background noise. Hope you guys enjoy!
First up is my interview with Evan, one of the developers of Broforce
Next up, I talked with one of the PR people and the music creator for FRACT
Next up, I talked with one of the Gigabyte reps about their motherboards, video cards, and mini-PC BRIX line
They then took me through their latest laptops.
MSI toured me through their new graphics cards. The interview starts while he’s talking about their 290X Lightning card, which is absolutely nuts.
They then showed me their latest laptops.
Project Cyber developers talked to me about their audience participation approach to game development and how it’s shaping their new game. The audio on this one is less good than the others (it’s possible, turns out) since I recorded it on my cellphone, but it’s still interesting!
Last, but not least, Greg Kasavin, writer of Bastion, talks about Supergiant Games’ latest game Transistor.
Our west coast photographer Chagler Photography dropped by WonderCon 2014 in Anaheim, CA and got some great shots of the con floor! See yourself or someone you know? Feel free to head on over to our Facebook page and tag and share to your heart’s content!
Want more Wondercon goodness? You can find the full album on Facebook! Don’t forget to show some love and “Like” the page while you’re there!
It’s not all about killing bad guys and saving the princess anymore.
When you take a look at media as a whole – books, comics, movies, games – and take a step back to see how they’ve evolved over time, you’d see a pretty interesting evolution. Over the last few decades look at the changes that we’ve experienced – not only the ability to be immersed into graphically realistic depictions of different environments, but the type of ideas that they can convey to the reader, viewer and player. Take the graphic novel as an example – once upon a time it wasn’t considered a medium that could convey serious thoughts, then came works like Art Spiegelman’s holocaust survivor story Maus and Joe Sacco’s journalist comic Palestine. These are only two examples in a number of titles that are more than superheroes and traditional good versus evil.
Games have been a little bit slower to evolve on that front – there’s a field generally referred to as “serious games” out there but a lot of times that focuses on using the platform for interactive learning more than gaming in a traditional sense (… is there even a traditional sense of the word anymore?). What I’m talking about here though is a little bit different. I’m talking about games that through the very story and gameplay put the player in a position to wrestle with difficult decisions and make them think about more than just what’s on the graphical surface. Look at Papers Please, for example, a game where the player is an immigration official. Your job as said official is to decide who is allowed and denied entry past your checkpoint based on information your supervisor has given you. Simple enough right? What do you do when a elderly couple can’t come through together because one’s papers are right while the other’s aren’t? Do you let them both through and face a violation that prevents you from feeding your own family? How do you choose? There’s a whole other side to the traditional “war games” we see that is represented here in the moral quandaries regular people are put into during hardship.
And that other side, inspired by Papers Please, is where we find This War of Mine.
When you play a lot of big studio titles on the topic of war, you’re going to find a lot of common themes. First person shooters and real time strategy games are focused on peace through superior firepower. These games all tell stories from the viewpoints of the commanders, or the soldiers themselves. This War of Mine on the other hand focuses on everyone else that is still impacted by the conflict, exploring war with the focus shifted away from the soldiers and tanks, and onto the people suffering from the fallout, just trying to survive.
You begin in a besieged house with a group of survivors. Because of snipers outside, you’re trapped where you are. Immediately you have to salvage for anything in the house – spare parts, food, wood, medicine – anything that can be used to help your party survive. These materials can be put together to provide needs for the house – beds for sleeping, drinking water, wound dressings. At night you can leave the house to salvage at nearby locations to bring back more materials to use the next day.
In addition to salvaging you also decide who sleeps (on or off a bed) and who stands guard. The problem is that your backpack is extremely limited, and you have to prioritize what you bring back for the good of the party. Scavengers and guards don’t sleep. If you haven’t made a way to prepare food then they go hungry, making it easier to get sick and need medicine. All of the needs of the survivors must be juggled to survive.
Let me give you an example. During the first night I sent one survivor to scavenge and brought back materials for making beds for proper sleep. During the night, the house was attacked. My guard was hurt and the other survivor fell sick. I didn’t gather enough to be able to collect water for drinking or preparing food. OK, now what?
The next night I have the sick survivor sleep in bed while I send a scavenger out again. I pick up enough materials to construct a water collector – but that doesn’t leave me enough for picking up medicine. I made the decision to drop water filters for medicine. Now she had medicine, but no one got food or water. I now had 4 hungry and thirsty survivors. 1 was injured. 1 was sick and not getting better. None of them were rested. All of them hiding from snipers. The following morning, my sick survivor succumbed to illness ad died.
All because I had to make a choice between medicine and clean water.
It was a difficult and dark experience to have to go through those kinds of decisions, even if the characters were virtual people on a screen. And that was 3 days of virtual time (about 30 minutes real time) with me comfortable at a computer with a mouse and keyboard. I was forced to think about the hell someone in that situation must be in somewhere in the world at this very second.
I got to speak with 11bit’s Pawel Miechowski about the game, who said that while the game has gotten huge positive feedback there’s also been some negative backlash, complaining that games can’t handle serious topics and are for entertainment only. “I believe that games are perfect for talking about important things,” he says, “because they’re interactive.” And I totally agree. It’s the perfect vehicle for expressing thoughts and ideas, and this game forces the player to think. “Imagine yourself in a city under siege, and your mother is dying of sickness. How would you treat her? Would you be willing to kill someone to steal antibiotics to save her?”
To drive the point home Pawel decided not to name the city the game takes place in, to remind people that “it could be your city, your country – it could happen anywhere. And when it happens it doesn’t matter if you’re American, Indian, Polish, or Russian or whatever, because you’re a human being and you have the same needs.”
To those who say games are no place for tough topics, he says that as developers they feel that like movies, games have grown up. And the same way directors now make movies about love and hate and deep topics more now than years ago, so too can depth be found in games like This War of Mine. “It’s natural evolution.”
“Games are 30 years old, most of us have grew up with games and we treat them as a natural way of storytelling.”
Now for those with positive feedback about the game, Pawel did say that many survivors of conflict that are willing to help spread the word about the game, and are very supportive about it because it’s so important to talk about. He made sure to mention by name former Marine Corpsman John Keyser, who through what he saw during his time in Fallujah became anti-war, and is serving to help Pawel with this game.
“I’d like to send my greetings to John and thank him for his help.”
With the countless number of games glorifying war, in my opinion this is a very important game that through its story reminds us that in war there are no winners.
This War of Mine is being developed for Windows, Mac and Linux and 11bit will have something sometime this year, with a mobile experience coming too. As Pawel says though, “not a free to play ruined mobile experience with microtransactions.” It’ll be a pay-once, get it all from A to Z premium experience.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
MSI
As you would expect from a hardware vendor coming to a gaming convention, the focus for MSI was high end gaming, and boy did they come loaded for bear. Here are the top three products they had to show off.
MSI GS60 Ghost Pro
Gaming laptops have historically been large enough to be put in the category of desktop replacement, but with the latest wave of ultrabooks, we’ve seen a slimmer form factor with only a slight reduction in features. The GS60 Ghost Pro is no exception, featuring a 3K display, Intel i7-4700 HQ processor, GTX 860M graphics card sporting 2G of GDDR5 and a 128GB SSD with 750GB HDD. Its younger brother, the GS60 Ghost, has almost identical specs, but only features a 1080p screen (pshaw, right?). Coming in at less than an inch thick and under 5 pounds, this gaming monster is pretty much all you could ask for in a gaming ultrabook. It even has a fully programmable, rainbow backlit keyboard. Which is just so baller. The only downside is that when I was playing around with it, the fan was painfully hot. Maybe that wouldn’t be an issue normally, but after 4 hours of playing Bioshock Infinite, it was not advisable to touch that fan.
AG2712A
Even a few years ago, PC proponents would talk about how terrible the all-in-one paradigm that Apple had stuck to was a terrible idea, but now we see tons of PC all-in-one popping up from every manufacturer. MSI has taken this idea and run with it, creating an all-in-one aimed at gamers that’s sure to chew through anything you throw at it.
The AG2712A features a 27” touch screen with Windows 8 (come on, it just doesn’t make sense without a touch screen) and an Intel i7-3630QM processor. The 16 GB of DDR3 RAM and 128GB SSD are sure handle any modern game, and the 2TB HDD is ready to hold your collection of anime and completely legitimately downloaded movies. Perhaps the most interesting feature of this all in one is its HDMI in port, allowing the computer to be used as an external monitor or TV. So if you’re looking for a gaming PC and a TV at the same time, you’ve got one right here. “But I want to mount it,” you say? Well you can! VESA mounts are built in, though the ports are in such a position that you’d probably want an extendable arm to fit all the cables behind it. The screen also features flicker-free technology, anti -glare matting, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Coming in at around $1800 bucks, this unique form factor PC is optimal for low desk space or multipurpose use.
R9 290X Lightning
What? Just look at this thing and join me in asking “what?”
The R9 290X Lightning is the biggest graphics card I’ve ever seen. Not only was it longer than all of the motherboards MSI showed off, but it took up more than two slots! With that kind of size, it has to have wildly awesome specs.
And it does! 1.08 GHz core with 4GB of GDDR5 at 5GHz memory puts this thing toward the top of its class. This monster is kept cool with three fans, all of which you can monitor and control through software. It outputs to 2 Dual-link DVI-D ports, one display port and an HDMI port and has a maximum supported resolution of 2560×1600. It also supports DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3 and has support for Crossfire, which just seems unnecessary. If you can fit two of these in a case and decide to do this, you must be a mad scientist.
I’m told there’s also a shortage of product, not only due to ravenous gamers, but also Bitcoin miners looking to upgrade their rigs. If it comes back in stock and you have three slots to spare in your box, you can’t get much better than the R9 290X Lightning.
And if you’re interested in the full interviews, you can listen to them here:
Gigabyte
Not to be topped by MSI, Gigabyte also had some great products to show off this year.
P35W v2
Coming in at 20.9mm, the P35W v2 has a crazy thin design for all its monstrous components. It sports a GTX 870M with 6GB of GDDR5 Ram and an Intel i7-4710HQ processor. Combine that with 8-16GB of DDR3 RAM, RAID support with 2 SSDs and one HDD, and a 1920×1080 resolution and this laptop is a beast. And for those of you still stuck on physical media, it also has a Blu-ray RW drive. One of the best things about this model is that it’s configurable, configurable, allowing the user to choose from a few different processors, RAM, storage, and graphics offerings.
If you’re looking for a thin, light gaming laptop with some configurability, Gigabyte has a great solution in the P35W v2.
Brix Gaming
PC manufacturers have been trying to do smaller and smaller enclosures for machines for some time now, but it only really picked up when HTPCs became a big deal. As a result, it’s taken a while before something small, but gamer-oriented was released, but now it’s here. Meet the Brix Gaming.
Gigabyte’s Brix line has been one of the best small form factor PCs for a while, but it’s difficult to fit all you need in a gaming PC into a box that tiny. Gigabyte’s finally figured it out, though. The Brix Gaming features an AMD A8-5557M processor and a Radeon R9 M275X GPU featuring 2GB of DDR5 RAM. 2 DDR3 slots mean up to 16GB or RAM (you can configure this), and it supports 2.5”thickness hard drives with a 6Gbps SATA3 port. Throw in 4 USb3.0 slots, an HDMI port, mini DisplayPort, RJ45, and VESA mount support and the Brix Gaming is pretty desirable. For all of this, you’d think it’d be huge, but it only stands at 59.6mm thick, and 128×115.4mm around, small enough to throw in a backpack and take to the LAN party down the block. Now if only they made foldable monitors…
R929OC-4GD
Featuring AMD’s latest R9 design, the R9 290, the R929OC-4GD features 4GB of GDDR5 RAM and a 1.04 GHz core clock. It outputs to an HDMI port, a Display Port and two DVI ports. It also supports a max resolution of 4096×2160, so everyone trying to get a leg up on the new 4k wave, this card has you covered with the HDMI or DP ports.
The R929OC-4GD also supports DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3. Somehow, Gigabyte also managed to cram all of this into a 2 slot design, making it easy to Crossfire this bad boy.
If you’re looking for the latest AMD has to offer, Gigabyte has a card with all the right specs.
You can hear our full discussion here:
Oculus
I wasn’t sure if I should include this in gaming or hardware, but since I got to play with an Oculus last, it’s improved its hardware so much that I felt it was best to talk about its components.
The fine people at Oculus sat me down and let me play Couch Knights, a small demo game in which you control little warriors fighting each other in a living room. It looks something like this:
I think the best part of the demo was being told to look around to get my bearings. Left was fine, right was fine, up was fine, down was temporarily terrifying. I this demo, you’re a static body sitting down, so when I looked down, I saw limbs that were not my own positioned very similarly to my own body. And my brain couldn’t handle it. For about a second, I had a feeling like “OH MY GOD I CAN’T MOVE MY BODY WHOSE LIMBS ARE THOoh wait, right, VR.” So cool.
The Oculus Rift will be hitting retail shelves this year and if my hunch is right, will have better hardware than even this design does currently. Get hyped!
I am going to utter the current “Deplorable Word Phrase”: I didn’t really care much for Frozen. Collective gasps. “But Max,” you say, “You don’t like anything, especially if it’s popular, what else is new here?!” And to that I say, “[I] can’t hold it back anymoOOOOore!”
I am well aware that my opinion here is rather late (though I’ve been consistently vocal) and a minority amongst the masses. The movie has already smashed box office records, is still lingering in actual movie theaters all whilst copies of it on DVD and Blu-Ray fly off store shelves. It’s headed to Broadway. It’s a behemoth of a film. Why it’s so big though sort of leaves me scratching my head. It’s cute, sure. Did it deliver what it wanted to do. I guess? Will it be better on stage? Yes, 100 % better. Does it deserve the extreme accolades? I don’t think so.
I am not trying to change anyone’s opinion on the film, or say you shouldn’t like it. These are simply my opinions from the perspective of an aspiring playwright, screenwriter (particularly for the animated medium) and children’s book author. This film falls into my preferred career niche and something I want to be a part of in the future, so I tend to want to consume and judge material like this as to know what to do for my own work.
Also, despite all evidence, I do not hate Disney. In fact Disney films have had such an impact on my own writing that in contrast to my recurring role as cynic and curmudgeon (as Jen can attest), my own creative work tends to be pretty light, frothy and frilly fare often in the fairy tale genre. Wannabe musicals; they happen under my pen.
I am critical only because I care and expect good work from people involved in projects such as this. Directors, fellow writers, editorial to ink and paint (software engineers and animators hah) who are, in contrast to me, being paid to do this work and are labeled as professionals should do the best they can do. In the case of Frozen I feel these people are being lauded for something that was only mid-tier. That’s not inherently the staff’s fault. Undoubtedly cutting a year off of development to push a 2013 release certainly did not help it and I think that act alone is the source of a lot of the film’s problems. I would have loved to see what it would have been like had it come out this December.
“SO MAX, THAT’S GREAT BUT WHAT’S ACTUALLY WRONG WITH THE MOVIE?! IT’S CUTE! SISTERS! SUBVERSION!”
Charming at times with spatters of wit and interesting, introspective elements to explore (abuse via bad parenting rooted in good but misguided intentions, repression of self, self-“ice”olation, on the flip-side being shut out despite an able freedom her sister doesn’t have, sister relationships, fearing hurting others, etc) with great potential at it’s best, half-baked magic origins and rules, vague kingdom politics, and underwritten plot at it’s worst, Frozen was overall hurt by it’s own animation direction/cinematography, writing, and above all ambition. It just tried to do too much.
First, if you’re expecting (perhaps cringing in anticipation) a big essay on race, appropriation, representation, and the skinny white Disney princess problem that people usually start with when criticizing this film, I am not going to go there here. Others have written way, way better insights about these elements than I could possibly do here right now without doing another entire post. I did write a post last year regarding the eyebrow raising parts of Frozen‘s development and Disney’s white princess problem here. I also had some additional words regarding the euro-centric settings (it needn’t have been) and the back and forth decisions regarding the film to ensure families with boys come see it and Disney’s discarding of the original fairy tale The Snow Queen in a conversation held here. There are problems, and they need to be addressed. Luckily the Pacific Islander Moana or it’s new (groan worthy) title Spirited (can we not with the adjective titles please?) is the next slated Disney “Princess” film, but the fact Disney churned out (including Merida) 4 white princesses after introducing their first African American one (who was a frog for 2/3 of the film) in rather quick succession is rather…questionable. American marketing pandering be damned. Disney needs to rethink their storytelling that way.
Having finally seen the actual film on a large HD television, after skipping out on it in theaters and only seeing it on laptops since, I actually can say it’s not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be ever since they announced the big plot overhaul. Olaf, surprisingly, despite his awful design is a highlight of the film. As was Kristoff’s personality. Otherwise aside from the above racial and just…boring sameness problems, I have three main complaints why as a film as released, was just “meh”;
Problem #1
Inconsistent cinematography, sometimes strange camera angle choices which correlate to some poor visual thematic choreography with songs (‘Let It Go’) and or framing (I have a hard time describing this, bear with me).
The cinematography and or direction can be pretty in the film. It’s probably more the color theory at work. I loved the icy ships cracking at the end with Kristoff and Sven having to run through them. These scenes yeah, would look great with the 3D glasses. The scene of Anna pursuing Elsa in the ice castle whilst singing a reprise of ‘For The First Time In Forever’ up the stairs was one of the definite highlights and already had me thinking about a Broadway set. But for a great part of the film, there are shots and the way they were “filmed”, that for me, just felt…off. It is hard to say exactly why, I am a writer with very visual inclinations but technical knowledge and terminology does allude, so the actual details about what is wrong I can’t say for sure so bear with me as I describe them.
Watching the film I had a strange sense of something not feeling quite right and I felt compelled to re-direct and or rewrite certain actions and making other directing choices in my head as I watched. That’s not a good sign for me. I want to be awed by a film and not have to think about that.
For instance watching Anna hoist and pull herself up on the pulley system during ‘For The First Time in Forever’ to get a good look at the harbor and the arriving ships, while a somewhat memorable image, is not terribly striking for some reason; but it should have been. I am not a traditional medium purist vs. digital per se, but I felt the pulley scene, had it been animated in a flat, 2D style animation and had utilized the techniques we’ve seen with some of Disney’s best 2D work that Frozen pulled from visually (The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin, Tarzan, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Treasure Planet) or had they done a more Paperman approach, Anna, with her green dress and hair ribbon whipping in the wind while looking at the sails, could have had a really iconic moment. Perhaps even in the 3D style if the angles were different. Something was off.
” BUT MAX ‘LET IT GO’ WAS SO PRETTY THOUGH WASN’T IT?!”
Elsa’s ‘Let It Go’ number for me actually suffers from some poor direction ranging from her choreography and then the “camera-work”. It did not feel big enough. Her actions did not match the lyrics of her song, the emotions involved did not fully translate. It was”shot” too far away from her most of the time, nor took full advantage of her power-set. The foot stomp was great, the rest was strange, too strolling and sparse. Where is her really unleashing her powers and letting loose? Why isn’t she tired? Where’s the storm? The angle choices and distance to Elsa during her dress’s transformation was a strange one. Too stoic. How could you do a dress transformation, let alone an icy silver-blue dress in a Disney film and not via angle do a nod to Cinderella, Walt’s personally favorite animated sequence?! Why not do a nod to Beauty & The Beast ballroom segment as you created the castle?
This scene also had the infamous braid phasing through her shoulder animation cheat which when spotted made a lot of animation students unhappy. Why? Because they’d have been chewed to death if that segment was submitted in a class. Disney is considered a creme de la creme pillar of animation; such poor editing or flat out cheating a bit and hoping people wouldn’t notice is just lazy. The awful zoom out and then cut back at the end of the song with Elsa on the balcony felt jarring and cheap to me.
The entire scene required a much more sweeping and organic pans, more intimate close-ups, and just more fluidity, exuberance, anger, and above all; magic. I keep thinking of Disney’s own Spring Sprite from Fantasia 2000, perhaps one of the most beautiful characters and animation Disney has ever done. Elsa as a magic user should have been given a similar fluidity once she embraced her powers. She sadly was not.
Tumblr user blueandorange wasn’t impressed with that scene’s choreography either and has actually thumbnailed out an, in my opinion, superior rough fan storyboard for the latter half of ‘Let It Go’ (part 1, part 2). While not so different than what we got, it is different enough that for me it’s more traditionally “Disneyish” than the actual film. She also busts through a wall, makes her dress out of the wall powder or shards with an angle closer and in motion to Cinderella, and then henshins her train/cape all whilst in the glowing sun of the balcony. She is seen reveling in her powers, floating up into the sky swept up by her magic and forming her signature snowflake all the while continuing her storm. It’s non objectifying with less jarring more sweeping camera shots and while very rough, this storyboard struck quite a chord with me. Watch it and tell me that wouldn’t be better had it been animated like that.
Problem #2
Half-finished or sparse appearing non-snow environments/interiors along with stiff animation at times for background crowds and lots of cheat-shots to hide singing and speaking faces (as to not have to animate). Surprisingly low usage of Elsa’s powers.
Over all I thought a lot of the non-snow environments looked too sterile, sparse and stiff, what I’d assume was an attempt at a Mary Blair style meets Scandinavian and or Nordic minimalism. This was most visible in the town outside the castle. An interesting experiment and in certain shots looks great, but overall in that 3D style CGI it fails due to the contrast of the characters and the beautiful lighting on them to said environments. They looked soft and more organic than the world around them. Background characters did not have as much detail (which they technically shouldn’t) but they appeared to be more rubbery and that was also a turn-off. I felt the disparity between character animation and the environments were noticeable in the first scene with Kristoff and Sven upon the ice. They looked out of place. Had they experimented with a more graphic look for all, unifying character design and environment animation underneath a more overt Scandinavian or Nordic folk-art influence in the rendering of the characters, such minimalism or picturesque feel would have been excused but for me it kept unintentionally looking like an unfinished or much older (barring the characters) film according to the environments.
I’m not sure if it’s true or not but I felt there were a lot of cheats made during singing to make it so they did not have to show too show the animated mouths from the characters. ‘Let it Go’ is especially guilty of this; spending way too much time on the building of the castle rather than showing Elsa relishing in the power of being able to build it. Again, bluandorange’s alternate fan storyboard solves this issue by making her more active, creating a staircase and then showing her as she sings whilst creating the chandelier and then leaning over the railing, emotional and showing she’s been exerting energy. It’s this kind of naturalism or organic feel that is missing from Frozen. Likewise the movie did not nearly utilize Elsa’s powers and the opportunity to really show them off; the should have done much more to really show off.
Problem # 3
Rushed writing with redundant tropes (All animals are dogs, for instance, though considering Rapunzel and Gene are in the crowd I guess all horses in that world are like Maximus) extreme colloquial touches in songs that attempt to justify the character instead of actual roundness. Weak writing and a firm lack of Elsa.
I felt the story, while ambitious, and again, pretty cute in a lot of ways, was a bit redundant from what Disney has already done. I feel a lot of their problems would have been avoided had they just adapted the original tale rather straight with a few modernizing nips and tucks instead of razing it and going from the ground up. It seemed a rather tedious task. The film feels like a blend of Tangled and Enchanted but those films accomplished what they wanted to do much more efficiently narrative wise. Lilo & Stich is likewise a superior sister film.
Anna, particularly suffers from underwriting; her dangerously quirky naivety and traits such as being gassy, messy haired in the morning and extremely clumsy are things being mistaken for actual character. Anna, caring as she is, is pretty bland. She has potential, but as far as the movie goes it’s not quite there. We know little about what she wants or does and likes to do (Liking chocolate! Omg she’s such a modern girl!) aside for wanting to be noticed and accepted. There’s promise there, those are valid traits, but they didn’t quite focus enough on it. In earlier drafts there was a pronounced “heir and the spare” element to her relationship with Elsa and the amount of attention their parents invested in them, something I wish stayed. Anna had an able freedom her sister does not have (which is why keeping her stuck in the castle too all alone while growing up was a plot hole, she would have had been dealing with the busy running of the castle and could have been, more than not, an ideal Arendelle representative at parties and functions during her teens since her sister’s shut-in status no doubt kept her from said public functions). I think having Anna, still quirky, but less of a shut-in and more involved outside the palace but ultimately still alone would have greatly helped her character. Hobbies besides art….miming, would have helped too.
Likewise, Elsa seeing Anna being able to leave the castle often and living a seemingly carefree life through her window could have put the idea in Elsa’s head that Anna now hated her and was perfectly happy without her after her not speaking to her through the door, maybe even having a touch of jealousy at her perceived freedom, thus further contributing to the awkwardness at the coronation and the conflict that was needed to be clarified by the end; that neither hated the other as they assumed . We simply had a case of Hedgehog’s Dilema particularly on Elsa’s side.
If it had been made more explicit that their parent’s negligence of Anna whilst focusing their attention on Elsa, and Elsa’s own withdrawl made Anna feel even more useless and shut out I would be firmly behind Anna’s thirst for attention and acceptance. It would have also justified perhaps her flair for the theatrical to get attention as seen in her interactions with the paintings. Her being the “thespian” princess would have been a nice addition after Rapunzel’s “artistic, painting” one. (Not that Disney remembers the latter much.)
I say this because as-is Anna in the Princess line-up is nothing Rapunzel doesn’t already offer which is not of course the character’s fault but a lack of creativity on account of writers (though had Rapunzel kept the more unkempt feral country bumpkin with a cross-bow personality or was South-East Asian as many people have suggested where the movie should have been set anyway, I’d have excused Anna more as is). Anna is also, it is worth noting, the first “looking for love” heroine (barring Giselle) for well, “For the first time in forever.”
Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana and Rapunzel don’t really have love as their initial goals, and certainly none for Merida. Sure for Ariel Eric becomes an additional infatuation and gives her a more direct need or rather reason for a ticket above, but she had long before pined to live freely up on land. These princesses’ romance relationships, while inevitably written for the characters and put upon them, are technically additional icing on the cake for their narratives. Them getting their guys is sorta…a bonus. Hell, Cinderella one of the most maligned (unwarranted) “classic” old fashioned Disney heroines herself never explicitly sings about love or men prior to the ball to my knowledge. Rather she sings about dreams, and having faith in them, and that’s more an implied desire for a change in her situation and a vague perhaps aspiration (rather, a return) to the upper class. She likewise doesn’t even realize the man she danced with at the ball was even the Prince and seemed satisfied to have just gone when it was all said and done with despite her liking him. Only until learning he was the Prince and he was looking for her specifically did she bring out the bedroom eyes and then gave one of the best “No bothers” responses on film animated or otherwise.
Only Snow White and Aurora and now Anna to my knowledge openly sing about looking for a true love or the possibility of a guy or sing about “someone else”. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong about wanting that romance, being the girl pining for that chance, or being naive and sweet. I’d be that girl if I identified as a girl. Many boys and girls feel the same way. The problem lies in three things; One, that most if not all the Disney Princesses are sorta kinda that type of dreamy so it’s nothing new. Two; Rapunzel fulfilled the energetic ditzy naive role well. Three; the company, fans, and reviewers are positioning Anna as a feminist subversion of the princesses that came before when she’s really…not.
That fallacy is what is frustrating. Despite her colloquial-ness she doesn’t break the established mould. Snow White (surprisingly enough), Aurora, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Rapunzel, and now Anna all end their film in the beginnings of a “Happily Ever After” engagement or hints of a relationship without a visible on-screen marriage (at that time). Anna and Kristoff’s ending is not much different than Snow White’s (sans consent to kiss) in terms of ending with a possible continued coupling. Their is more informal and realistic, but it still lands in the same category right above Mulan where no kiss is exchanged but there is some pretty heavy set-up at the end. Anna’s nothing new, because actual on screen marriage amongst the Disney princesses, the issue most poked fun at and criticized in the film, is actually the minority (Cinderella, Ariel, Tiana).
” BIG COLLECTIVE GROANS”
I know, I know. Please go get some tea. While I’m here and you’re boiling water, on the topic of Kristoff, I would like to add I think the Anna and Kristoff pairing was forced and much too riding the coattails of the Rapunzel and Gene dynamic. Kristoff as Anna’s ultimate love interest was underwritten and subject to quite a few plot holes too. I thought his anti-social nature needed more explicit on screen reasoning; him being an outcast for a more specific reason seen in film and seeing people reject him in film possibly as a child could have given him and Anna a great scene where they admit common ground in that regard. The image of doors slamming in their faces as children could have been a unifying thing).
I will say, him expressing his desire to and asking for consent to kiss Anna at the end and them running off to skate with her was admittedly, very, very cute.
Elsa, the more popular sister in merchandise (between her dress and powers) is likewise not given enough attention from the writing. Which overall is the biggest tragedy of the film, as she’s the best part. She’s a wildly interesting character, certainly is or has the potential to be one of Disney’s most complex heroines according to her situation from a psychological standpoint. The lack of attention in the movie, her sort of incomplete growth and a very vague explanation of her natural born powers makes her, the more interesting party in the film, take a second seat to Anna and Kristoff. I would have loved to have seen that changed, and Elsa being made the main narrative protagonist. It would have given Disney their Wicked feel they so obviously wanted for this film. It would have been nice to her grow more and have ‘Let It Go’ carry more weight and resonance for her in the rest of the film.
If you’d made it this far, and bless you if you did, please know I do believe the Broadway show will ultimately provide a better story and iterations of both Anna and Elsa. Anything from forty-five minutes to an hour or more of extra content will certainly help fill in gaps of character and back story as well as pacing that hurts the narrative in its film form. The music is 100% modern Broadway anyway, and while that’s not entirely my cup of tea (there was a lot of tone dissonance) but it will adapt well. A lot of elements will likewise both be a challenge and a treat to see on stage (I’m imagining a carousel type stage for the sleigh scenes myself).
Other people have made great arguments and reviews that are much more concise and better than I could ever cough up. My two favorite reviews who are less than enthusiastic about the film but constructively so are CriticalHit’s review (here) and their additional talkback response to their review (here). I also enjoyed the more negative but very smart analysis from Cheshire Cat Studios (here) who gives a great breakdown about tropes, art direction, and even has a great segment about musicals and the film’s misteps regarding music. The latter is especially effective in describing the music of Frozen and the problem with modern Broadway in general.
I promise I’m not cold-hearted ( well, maybe there’s a shard or two of goblin mirror in there). I’m just very picky. I think Frozen’s cute. But I want better. There was a lot of lost opportunity. I think it could have been better. Hopefully on stage, it will be better.
What do you think? Now that Spring has finally come, has your opinion of Frozen thawed or has it stayed consistently chilly? Do you think it could have been better? Was it perfection to you? Let me know!
See you all real soon!
Max Eber
Staff Writer/The Doctor
max@sub-cultured.com
Twitter: @maxlikescomics