Frozen has grown on me, and very much because of Elsa.
But I find it interesting, how people mostly take the Snow Queen of the Andersen story as abysmally evil. She was cold, yes, she took Kai with her, but Kai was already changed by a piece of a mirror, making him see only the ugly and bad in everything (except snowflakes it seems), that mirror was made by an evil troll though and not by the Snow Queen (it’s told in some adaptions that she was responsible for that change as well). The Snow Queen gave Kai a maybe nearly impossible task. The Snow Queen makes Kai forget Greta, but on the other hand thanks to the mirror piece Kai wasn’t seeing that much good in Greta at that time, on could say, it might have been even good for both of them, that he forgot for a while. On surface good and evil in Andersen’s tales sometimes seem to be simple, but it never is in my view in his tales, there are layers to it.
In the original story there is a frozen lake – the Snow Queen calls it the lake of reason – and some people see in using just reason something cold, bare empathy, emotions, something that creates loneliness and emptiness in the soul. A cold heart stands for a heart without love, but as well without hate, it’s worse one can say, no emotions at all.
Elsa is the twist on Snow Queen A&E could have come up with, so I am not surprised they’re taken by the movie, by the character. Twisting now Elsa back kinda to the traditional reading of the Snow Queen doesn’t quite sound like something A&E would do either. A capable antagonist to one or more of the main character, mistaken as big bad first, but that doesn’t has to mean evil villain. Seen some good ideas in that direction here and elsewhere.
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