Sunday, December 16, 2012

"Frozen" Concept Art and Details


Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen has been in the works for a long while, and it’s great to see this film actually getting off the ground. This recently revealed piece of concept artwork is a nice little taste of what’s in store, after months and months of brief reports on the film’s status. Just look at it...


The environment looks rather hazardous. It's not a pretty enchanted forest, nor a regular snowy mountain. From the way the ice looks, we can tell that the Snow Queen herself is no laughing matter. The film's co-director, Jennifer Lee (who co-wrote the great screenplay for Wreck-It Ralph), explained "We wanted to push it to the extreme. The unnatural quality of the ice emphasizes that this is not, you know, sky made ice, but ice made by someone else."

It's already eye catching and beautiful, so I imagine that is will be another visual stunner from Disney. Will we see Scandanavian-style villages, forests and landscapes? Probably.

From the character design and story details from Lee, Kristoff looks like no Flynn Rider. Early on, I had worried that this film would essentially be a rehash of Tangled since that was a fairy tale-based film that outgrossed everything Disney released in the last five years (unless Wreck-It Ralph tops it worldwide). Instead, he’ll be a tough, masculine brute who doesn’t really understand women. That’s far different from the charming thief who genuinely likes Rapunzel from the get-go.

Anna isn’t like Rapunzel either, instead she’s a woman who fears nothing rather than being slightly rebellious or someone in search of something in her life. According to Lee, the film will focus on her relationship with her icy sister, which will make for an intriguing storyline. This is the kind of writing that’s helping Disney get back on top, and it was evident in the last five films they put out. Frozen should be no different.

The revised plot synopsis also replaces the army of snowmen with "mystical trolls". I guess the snowmen were renamed, or cut out. The names for Kristoff's reindeer and the "hapless snowman" have also been revealed, Sven and Olaf, respectively. The synopsis does state that the snowman will be funny, but at this rate, I’m not worried the possibility of him being an annoying comic relief character. Disney proved me wrong with Rhino, Ray, Maximus, Pascal and Vanellope.

Again, like Tangled, Frozen is its own story than an adaptation of the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. I call it an original fairy tale that happens to feature a character from the source material/ Those who can’t stand the fact that Disney alters these stories will have a field day yet again, but I’m looking forward to this new take on the story.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to this film? Do these new details excite you? Sound off!

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