Frozen
If Hans Christian Anderson knew that his Snow Queen would become lo largely popular in the early 20th century, he would create more fairytales about this character, for sure! Disney Company, which is an expert in creating amazing screen implementations of various fairytales, even grim ones, has created an amazingly large franchise of Frozen, which today is far bigger than the initial animated motion picture of 2013.After the huge and generally unexpected success of Frozen even for its makers, it swiftly became understood for Disney that they needed to expand the film to make a large franchise out of it. And they did! Today, the universe of Frozen includes the following:
• 2 theatrical films (of 2013 and 2019)
• 14 official video games
• Various television implementations
• Several short films and series
• 1 documentary
• Many music albums and singles
• Several live shows and musicals
• A huge number of various merchandise
• Many activities and branded locations, including parades, ceremonies, celebrations, and even cruise lines
• Participation in Disney attractions and amusement parks
• Books, comics, and other elaborations.
As Disney is a huge corporation, thousands of people work on Frozen on a daily basis to promote it and earn a bigger name for it (and money). It is believed that from 2013 to 2021, the entire earnings made on Frozen have surpassed $20 billion (while only animated films collected $2.8 billion), which makes Frozen as a universe to be one of the most successful ones in the modern entertainment market.
History and background
Hans Christian Andersen first published his fairytale “The Snow Queen” in December 1844. It gave a solid basis for inspiration for the Frozen movie creators these days.
What did the world think about the Snow Queen before Frozen was released in 2013? That she was a cold-hearted ice queen living in her completely frozen castle, who made the heart of a young boy named Kai freeze completely. So she was perceived as an evil one. But Disney is known to tell classic stories much softer, at times, reversing them to show the unique part of the soul of main maleficent heroes, exploring why exactly they became so evil. In Frozen, the Snow Queen became much younger than in the original and was explored from the position of a regular person, with her soul, fears, aspirations, and love. Disney showed the reasons why she became the Snow Queen but also did not make her look static – she was able to change and progress when she found that the entire kingdom is freezing because of her spell. And that her blood sister is going to freeze because of her reckless behavior. From the movie of Frozen, we know that the Snow Queen has a human name – Elsa. And that she had a sister Anna, whom she loves more than anyone. And that love is actually the strongest power on the planet, able to stop ice blizzards, thaw frozen cities and hearts.
Thus, the original story was completely rebuilt, basically, recreated from scratch. The Snow Queen’s motifs were revealed and people found out that she is actually a good person (only doing evil because she was deeply hurt). The same change, by the way, was explored in the recent film ‘Maleficent’ with Angelina Jolie. This story also was a huge commercial success and reveals the true nature of the Evil Fairy from Sleeping Beauty – also a Disney production, initially released in 1959.
Characters
Elsa, a 21-year-old princess of Arendelle, fictional kingdom, an older sister of Anna, and the future Snow Queen. She has the magical power of generating snow and ice and she has been learning how to cope with her powers since very early childhood. Being a small kid, she unintentionally hurts Anna, her younger sister with her magic powers. King and Queen of Arendelle, the sisters’ parents, save Anna at that time but tell Elsa to be very careful with her magical abilities and that she must know how to control them perfectly to avoid such a bad happening in the future. Elsa supposes to become a crowned queen of Arendelle after her parents die in a stormy sea.
Anna, a princess of Arendelle, 18 years old. She completely loves her sister and is devoted to her. In the first film, she freezes because her heart is hurt by Elsa’s magical powers but then she thaws as the true love of her sister is demonstrated upon her.
Kristoff, an iceman of 21 years old. He is in love with Anna.
Sven, a reindeer, an accompanying of Kristoff. He is the only main character who does not speak but he is able to make various sounds to express his emotions, reactions, and thoughts.
Olaf, a magically created animated showman, who is able to speak, move, seems alive (having a soul), is always in good humor, and is able to rearrange his body parts into various compositions, which adds comedy at times. His main dream is to experience summer although he knows that he’d thaw.
King and Queen – father and mother of Elsa and Anna, who raise the sisters until their adulthood.
Additional characters are trolls (helpful dwellers, strong in magic), Duke of Weselton (an evil one), Oaken (owner of the local post and sauna), Marshmallow (an artificially created ice-and-snow monster who protects Elsa as the Snow Queen and her castle), various citizens, horses, and wolves.
Interesting facts and information about the original Frozen movie
An average human head has around 100,000 hair follicles (but, in either case, not more than 150,000). But Elsa in the Frozen movie had a significantly better and super posh hair look because it was made of 400,000 hairs! To render the hair during creating the CGI effects (not only for Elsa but also for Anna and other characters with hairs), separate computer software was designed, which was dedicatedly working only for this purpose. There were around 10 specifically created software pieces to render the Frozen animated movie – and so huge efforts were awarded 2 Oscars (Academy Awards) in 2014, one of which for the best animated feature, another for the best song.
As for the songs, there were plenty created for the movie. But one of them specifically stands out from the crowd – ‘Let It Go’, which was performed by the astounding voices of Demi Lovato first and then even a much better, unsurpassed version, was sung by Idina Menzel, which has become the biggest music significance for the movie. The creation of this song required some large chunks of the Frozen film to be rewritten and these efforts eventually turned
The snow. Creators of the Frozen wanted to make the snow act as believably physically as possible. For that, many people in the creative, CGI, and engineering teams have been working collectively for tens of thousands of hours and created several pieces of computer software to specifically recreate the snow in various circumstances – when it falls as snowflakes, when someone is walking on a layer of it when it is turned into ice, when it is made in snowballs and lumps and when it breaks from footsteps, sleighs riding on it, or from throwing. Also, they wanted to recreate blizzards and various ice effects as realistic as possible. As some of the team told, ice and snow are essential parts of the film, so they simply had to make them perfect. Eventually, that resulted in one of the best visual effects amongst all the existing animated movies as of 2013, so no wonder it was awarded for excellence. The perfection of visual effects has largely contributed to the popularity of Frozen, in addition to a powerful story, likable and attributable characters, and music. The Frozen movie has 37 wins and 65 nominations on various awards and prizes.
The Frozen film collected 1.280 billion dollars, being surpassed by its sequel of 2019, which collected 1.450 billion. The sequel holds today the second result in the box office among all-time-created animated movies, only falling behind The Lion King of 2019, which is a record holder (as of 2021) with 1.657 billion dollars.
Online simple games featuring Frozen
There are numerous websites, which today feature Frozen-themed online games. In addition to a large number of official games, online games are somewhat a mixture of official and unofficial games. The characters from Frozen are extremely popular among girls, continuing the trend of animated films (Frozen films perfectly match the audience of girls between 13 and 17 years).
We’re exploring the following groups of online simple games and provide their characteristics:
• The most popular and, thus, the biggest category is changing the appearance: hair, apparel, makeup, manicure, pedicure, accessories, and exploring the themed wearable things, for instance, Halloween, wedding/engagement day, Christmas, picnic, or some themed cosplay… Here, Elsa and Anna are most often explored characters, with some other Disney princesses joining them (occasionally). Probably, as of the time being, the sisters are the most popular Disney princesses. Also, the same makeovers are applied to the sisters when some of them or both become mothers, so their children also a part of the games
• Finding differences between two pictures
• Finding hidden objects located on pictures (like keys, stars…)
• Runners – most types of runners are popular among boys but when a runner features a Disney princess, its popularity shifts to girls
• Making various foods – pasta, ice cream, cakes, pancakes, cupcakes, pizza, sushi, grill, and fish…
• Kissing. Definitely, Kristoff is one of the most kissable male characters of the Frozen universe but there can also be others, like a prince of some neighboring kingdom or even a fictionalized prince or simply some handsome guy. The premises of kissing and flirting can be picked from a wide variety – for instance, sauna, a park, a movie theater, university, or a picnic…
• Exploring the sisters (and maybe, sometimes, Kristoff and his reindeer) as babies. Most games of this direction require things to be done with the babies, like changing their diapers, bathing, feeding, playing with, getting them to sleep…
• Going to a family picnic – with a beloved of one of the sisters or when they already have a family (with children)
• Visiting a doctor’s. This is a common type of online free games, where a large spectrum of doctors has to be visited, for instance, a gynecologist (to make sure that the pregnancy of one of the sisters is going well), therapist, brain doctor, skin doctor, dentist, or a surgeon. Even a veterinary (for a reindeer or other featured pets)! So many options of going to a doctor are pretty explainable: people would love to be closer to their idols, which is also a desire to be closer to their bodies.
• Having fun with people and pets during a fun day (holiday)
• Redecorating a room or the entire premise
• Running magic or regular zoo and/or playing with various pets. That also can be pets and animals from other Disney tales and even ones that aren’t Disney-connected
• Collecting jigsaws with the characters of Frozen
• Coloring-up the characters and backgrounds
• Playing various sports games: tennis, ping-pong, and other (mostly, girlish options of sports)
• Taking part in social media, taking pictures for them and posting pics to gain likes and subscribers. While some of such games do not have an internal currency, others have it, allowing buying more apparel and appearance options
• Arcade adventures (which include shooting, roaming the levels, and similar)
• Giving characters of Frozen another look, out of their universe – this is not so a part of apparel change, makeup, and makeover games but it rather represents them in connection with other gaming or cartoon universes. For instance, making the sisters (or just one of them) look like a character from ‘My Little Pony’, Maneki-Neko, or a Russian reckless bully
• Pranking someone – like a nanny, parents, or other characters
• Match 3 type of game, where the match-able items are picked from the Frozen universe of things.
We have found over 300 simple online games themed like Frozen characters on dozens of online sites. Surely, there are more but even this amount is definitely enough to say that people would like to see their beloved idols in many situations, and a significant part of them is connected to real-life situations (but some are not so connected).