[wegs]

Frozen teaches kids all the wrong lessons. Shirk your responsibilities. Ignore your community. Focus on yourself.

"Let it Go" is like an ode to everything I dislike about American culture. It's so very American.

Best animated movie I've seen in the past decade was probably Moana, but I can't say I've seen many.

[Closi]

Well, actually the moral of Frozen is the absolute opposite - by shirking her responsibilities the community suffered, and she had to go back and face reality to restore the kingdom. The moral of the story was 'running away is not the answer'.

"Let it go" as a song needs to be considered along with it's reprise:

Elsa: "I'm such a fool, I can't be free. I can't escape from the storm inside of me... I can't control the curse! Oh I'm afraid I'll only make it worse. There's so much fear - you're not safe here, i.... i.... can't...."

It's the same underlying moral story as the Lion King - Simba runs away and starts living the easy life, only for the community he left behind to suffer, and he has to become brave and face his responsibilities. The song "Let it go" is basically just "Hakuna Matata" from a story perspective. Is Hakuna Matata an ode to everything you dislike about American culture too? (Also the underlying story of Frozen is actually Danish)

[jfengel]

The uplifting music of Let It Go is an odd contrast to the film's message. As is the whole character of Elsa, who is seen as the protagonist of the film, when in fact she's practically the villain. Ana is the protagonist, but almost comes off as a sidekick.

You can feel the film's heritage, in which Elsa really was supposed to be the villain. It didn't evolve that way, setting up a genuine shock at the big reveal. Let It Go ends up mashing the I Wish song and the Villain Song, and (with Menzel's breathtaking voice) comes out doubly exciting. It makes the film feel a little uncoordinated, in a way that I like because it doesn't just follow the tropes.

But I think they didn't even understand that success themselves, and the sequel was rather poor. It dismissed the fact that the first film turned out to be about sisterhood, in a genuinely touching way, and thus lost its heart.

[dragonwriter]

> Frozen teaches kids all the wrong lessons. Shirk your responsibilities. Ignore your community. Focus on yourself.

Reading Frozen as teaching that is like reading Veerhoeven’s Starship Troopers (which, sure, is abysmal on all sorts of other grounds) as an endorsement of Fascism.

Yea, those things occur in the movie, but the movie is quite specifically about it producing bad outcomes that must be dealt with by people doing exactly the opposite.

[wegs]

You don't read Frozen. You watch Frozen.

You watch it in first grade through maybe through eighth grade, but probably at that point, you're too embarrassed to go to a little children's movie.

As much as I understand the more nuanced messages which could be taken out by a more sophisticated audience, much more so, I see the impact the movie has on actual real-world little kids.

I both read and watched Starship Troopers as an adult.

[dragonwriter]

> You don't read Frozen.

“read” as in “to understand and give a particular meaning to written information, a statement, a situation, etc.”

> You watch it in first grade through maybe through eighth grade, but probably at that point, you're too embarrassed to go to a little children's movie.

Well, I mean I was a lot older when I watched it, but when my then-four year old watched it his commentary indicated that he saw the problems stemming from the behavior problem it highlighted pretty well. Not sure my almost-three-year-old got it, but she hasn't shown any sign of inverting the message as badly as you have.

[jimbob45]

I’m fairly sure they created “Let it go” before they really knew what the story would be about.

They knew it was a snowy movie, knew they wanted something to rhyme with the traditional “Let it snow”, and vaguely had the idea that an angsty girl would be singing the song. As a result, the lyrics are incredibly generic and hardly seem to fit her specific situation.

[Closi]

You are half right, according to the song writer Robert Lopez the original movie structure and plan just had the placeholder title “Elsa’s Badass Song” and he was told to go write it, and then came up with let it go.

But it was still very early in the process and it was the first song to be written that actually made it into the movie. The extended soundtrack includes quite a few of the early songs that didn’t make it into the movie where they were still trying to work out what the style of music was going to be and who the characters are, so the music and story were definitely co-developed together.

[jerome-jh]

"Let it go" is pretty early in the movie, that's not the conclusion. To the contrary at the end Kristoff turns its steps to help stop a feminicide.