Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Frozen" (2013)

Scene from Frozen (2013)

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

Frozen (2013)

Directed By: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

Written By: Jennifer Lee (Screenplay), Hans Christian Andersen (Story), Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee & Shane Morris (Story By)

Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy

Running Time: 102 minutes

Summary: When the newly-crowned Queen Elsa accidentally uses her power to turn things into ice to curse her home in infinite winter, her sister Anna teams up with a mountain man, his playful reindeer, and a snowman to change the weather condition.

The Movie

Here is an easy question to answer: what animated film is most likely to resonate in the collective consciousness from the 2010s? Sure, one could argue that there have been better films, maybe even some that have come close in terms of overall popularity, but there is really only one answer. The film that is likely to define this decade better than any other single film of family entertainment is Disney's Frozen. How could it not? The phrase "let it go" has been forever tarnished by the song bearing its name, making even jokes about letting the movie's more obsessive fans to move on turn into chants of "just let it go!" It's ingenious in that way and the knowledge that both the launch of Disney+ and Frozen II this November only account for the franchise's popularity.

In a sense, it had roots in Disney that aren't dissimilar from The Little Mermaid. Both were based on Hans Christian Andersen short stories featuring music from Disney stalwarts who had moved over from edgier Broadway productions (in the case of Robert Lopez, the profanity-laced Avenue Q, and Book of Mormon) to make what many see as a new golden age of Disney Animation Studios. True, Frozen wasn't the birth of a new era necessarily (Bolt and Tangled would like a word with you), but its success created a cataclysmic shift in how their Disney Princess line was seen. It created the most infectious songbook in decades and promised to bother anyone with an infant who controlled their TV. Frozen wasn't just another hit. They had plenty of those. It was a phenomenon.

A detail that is likely to go overlooked by some is that 2019 also marks the SIXTH time that Frozen-based content has been released theatrically (disregarding trailers) in the past seven years. Along with the original film, there was a singalong rerelease in 2014, a short called Frozen Fever that played before Cinderella in 2015, a short called Olaf's Frozen Adventure that played before Coco in 2017, Anna and Elsa appeared in the 2018 film Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet, and finally Frozen II in the near future. If you include references to the film, Zootopia in 2016 would make it a clean sweep. If there was any doubt that Disney had stock in this franchise being their biggest hit since the 1990s, let this put the rumors to rest. Frozen doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and one can expect the sequel to make that statement even clearer, with a new soundtrack to bother parents and get stuck in everyone else's ears. It's the epitome of Disney in the 2010s, for better or worse. 

- The Campaign -

Like most of Disney's projects, this one was long in gestation. When it finally came around, there was plenty to be excited about. They were returning to the work of Hans Christian Andersen and were inventing new software to make the slow look more convincing. Even the presence of Wreck-It Ralph screenwriter Jennifer Lee was a welcomed addition as director. Following a controversial casting decision for Brave, the decision for Disney to hire Lee as their first female director on a major project was seen as a positive sea change. Add in that the music was going to be composed by Robert and Kristen-Anderson Lopez, the former fresh off of two Tony-winning musicals and work on the 2011 film Winnie the Pooh, there was a lot to look forward to. Idina Menzel was also a welcomed sight as she seemed like a perfect fit for the animated Disney musical genre. The film was also advertised heavily in various Disneyland parks ahead of the film's release. 

The first teaser trailer premiered at D23 in August of 2013 along with the songs "Let It Go" and "In Summer." What has since become odd in hindsight was that trailer's choice to focus on supporting characters Olaf and Sven. The argument was that Disney needed to make the appeal to both genders, as they had done previously by making Frozen's early marketing look like a raucous action-comedy. The later trailers were more emphasizing central characters, Anna and Elsa. Many considered the lopsided campaign to mean an uneven box office record for the film. However, following a limited release, the first-weekend box office during Thanksgiving weekend 2013 was an unprecedented success. It earned $93.6 million and was behind only The Hunger Games: Catching Fire for best three-day and five-day Thanksgiving grosses. The results would only get more exciting from there. It became the highest-grossing animated musical internationally as well as the highest-grossing film directed by a woman (Lee). The film would become the third-highest-grossing film in Japanese history (labeled there as Anna and the Snow Queen) as well, becoming a topic of international curiosity. 

Many were surprised by how well the film did, but then again not every film had as much conversation around it like Frozen did. The most noteworthy achievement came with its soundtrack. "Let It Go" became one of the most popular songs of the year (and arguably era). Many saw it as an empowerment song with some going even further to suggest that it could be used as a "coming out" song for LGBT audience members. Due to her solitary nature, Elsa also was considered a homosexual character with many pleading for Disney to make her queer. Predictably, evangelical pastors didn't care for that read of the film and decried the film for encouraging kids to be gay. It didn't help that the film, largely about sisterhood, ends with two women choosing familial love over a conventional love story. That last detail also helped Frozen to stand out, especially as a commentary on how gender politics were different from 1990s films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. They didn't need men to satisfy them. In similar news, the head animator Lino DiSalvo said to Fan Voice's Jenna Busch:

"Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty."

Many believed that this was a sexist comment, believing that it was a regressive view of women in a film meant to empower them. However, others claim that the statement was about the personal struggle these characters face, especially for a multibillion-dollar company like Disney, to be appealing to a mass audience. Still, Elsa's ability to be an insular character with emotional distress was appealing to audiences, even leading her name to be the 88th highest baby name the following year. It also was just literal commentary on having to animate said emotions.

The soundtrack was a runaway success story, topping the charts and selling over 10 million copies in 2014 alone. It was the third-highest selling album of 2013, proving that Disney had a major hit on their hands. However, it leads many parents to become annoyed by the song "Let It Go," which only became worse when the film was released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Still, many wondered why this phenomenon was so prominent in society. The Lopezes would suggest that they didn't know what it was, just that they wanted to compose music that "didn't suck." In one of the more enjoyable facets of the legacy regarding "Let It Go" were the parodies that included such masterpieces as "Will You Help Me Hide a Body?" and *ahem* "F--k it All." They were both better than the film and arguably more annoying because of how plausibly they fit the earworm structure. There was also a momentary lawsuit from Jamie Ciero believing that "Let It Go" was a rip-off of his song "Volar." The case was later dismissed. There were also comparisons to Menzel's "Wicked" song "Defying Gravity" for "Let It Go," but that's more of an irk.

The impact was so apparent that Phase4 films even got sued for trying to piggyback on their success. The film The Legend of Sarila was renamed Frozen Land in America to try and gain attention. It didn't help that they had a similar logo, meant to draw in feeble minds. They were required to pay $100,000 to Disney in January 2014 and remove Frozen Land merchandise from any point of sale. On another note, Frozen's success was so massive that it was the second-most pirated movie of 2014 (behind The Wolf of Wall Street) with over 29.9 million illegal downloads. 

Yes, even the memes got in on it and joked about the rivalry between Disney movies:

Finally, the immediate Frozen phenomenon was so popular that it lead everyone to want to work with the performers in live productions. Among those was a moment billed as the music moment of the year (was it though?) in which Menzel performed "Let It Go" with Jennifer Nettles. She has been singing it in some capacity ever since, including with Taylor Swift and on New Year's Rockin' Eve... over two whole years later. The film was considered a chance to usher in a new moment in Disney's control over pop culture, and it hasn't exactly gone away since. As much as this is all description of an Oscar campaign, it's hard not to get it lopped into everything that's come since. Few films have had the obvious impact of Frozen, and trying to narrow it down to a three-month span between release and the final Oscar wins is a lot more difficult than it looks. 

- The Payoff -

The time between Frozen's release and Oscar nominations day felt like an eternity, especially since pop culture became obsessed with it. On one hand, it was Disney making a feminist masterpiece and reviving their Disney Princess brand. It was making a film with blatant LGBT themes (as divisive as that decision ended up being and never actually confirmed). It was a sign of the future. It was a cultural phenomenon... and it also failed to get a Best Picture nomination. It ended up with only two: Best Original Song ("Let It Go") and Best Animated Film. The competition seemed small and there was nothing that was going to beat Frozen. It was just too powerful.

If there was anything to remember from the speeches, it was when the Lopezes took to the stage. Fresh off of winning a Grammy for the soundtrack, Robert Lopez became the youngest EGOT winner in history to that date. Their speech was written in a jokey rhyming pattern that made the whole experience more memorable. However, there was one detail - winking or not - that they inserted by asking "please let there be a Frozen 2." At the time, there were no plans and it continued the belief that the film was insufferable to parents of young children who loved the film. Who would want more? As previously mentioned about theatrical released, Disney believed that they wanted much, much more. 

In some respects, Frozen is among the most successful "original" films of the decade in that it was one of the few films to not be a sequel or remake to an existing property. While some could argue differently, it was the one positive sign for the film's success, especially as a female empowerment anthem. Still, others like David Ehrlich decried that it was a travesty that filmmakers like Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki didn't win the award for the visually superior The Wind Rises. It still raises the question of why Disney and Pixar had a hold on the category until 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and why few international films actually win the category. In a later documentary, Miyazaki would claim this:

“That song ‘Let it Go’ is popular now.It’s all about being yourself. But that’s terrible — self-satisfied people are boring. We have to push hard and surpass ourselves.”

In a lot of ways, Frozen hasn't gone away yet. With the aforementioned theatrical releases, the film has remained in the public's consciousness both with the film and various pieces of merchandise. Shows can't help but rib it, including The Simpsons prior to Disney buying out Fox and adding the series to day-launch streaming on Disney+:

There are now shows at Disneyland for Frozen called Frozen Live at the Hyperion Theater. Anna and Elsa now walk the parks among other Disney Princesses. They have even gone so far as to get their own Broadway treatment with Frozen the Musical, now touring, that received three Tony Award nominations including Best Musical. Like the movie, the odds are that the show is going nowhere. It's here to stay. 

To go any further into Frozen lore is to perform a foolish act of believing that because it lost Best Picture that it immediately vanished. Quite the contrary. While it didn't become the second Disney movie to enter the category (fourth if you include Pixar), it did leave an impression that hasn't gone away. It created a phenomenon for a new generation, not unlike The Little Mermaid in 1989, that Disney has been trying to achieve ever since. Even other Disney Princess movies like Moana are success stories, but none have touched Frozen's lapels - in part because the number of female directors in mainstream cinema haven't blossomed as much. Still, time will pass and Frozen II will come out. Will it be as good as the original? Does it matter? People will always know Anna and Elsa like they know Ariel, through song or iconography it will always be there.