Frozen 2: At least they kinda broke the trend of sequals sucking?

Remember when the idea of Disney making sequels was code for "this is going to suck, don't buy it!"? These things were seen as absolute disasters, cheap cash grabs that only exist to capitalize on direct to home media. While they've certainly improved on this, my guess is that the Frozen Shorts were akin to the traditional Disney Sequels, acting as placeholders until this movie came out, and got rushed to Disney+ when the DVD and Blu-Ray sales were going to tank due to the lockdown. Was the 6 year wait worth it though?

Before going into the movie itself though, do you like Let It Go? No? Well too bad, this movie tries to replicate it every chance it gets. Most of the soundtrack feels like Let It Go wannabe songs, and while on their own, they're fine, I personally like Into the Unknown, it feels like complete overkill and adds to one of my biggest problems with the movie, the fact that it tries way too hard to replicate the marketing potential of Frozen. I know that's a weird thing to say, but hear me out. It's no secret that Frozen is a marketing juggernaut, it never really went away since the movie came out in 2013. To me, if the source media is good, the merchandise will sell, you don't need to make stuff in the media that exists just to sell toys (ideally at least, there are countless examples when it didn't work). With that said though, it is now pretty obvious when something is being made specifically to be sold as merchandise, and there's a lot of it here in Frozen 2. The biggest offenders being the elemental spirits, specifically the fire spirit. While I'm all for turning expectations on their heads, there is a limit to that, and "Pascal from Tangled, but purple" is beyond that limit, screaming out "BUY NOW AT YOUR LOCAL TOY SHOP!".

As for the movie itself? it does suffer from a part of Frozen 1, in that there wasn't any built-in reason to do a sequel, the story had nowhere else to go. Frozen 2 has a focus on world-building as a result of it, with the trade-off to it being character development for the majority of the cast. A more accurate name for this movie may as well just be Elsa, as the other main characters are mainly there for the ride. After getting a literal call to action due to an eerie voice and nature spirits causing chaos in the town, Elsa, Anna, Kristof and Olaf (side note, f!@# you Chris Buck and Jeniffer Lee for having Olaf be a fake-out death moment, melt him!) set off to an enchanted forest protected by spirits of Fire, Water, Air and Earth. To compress the story and take away the filler like Anna and Kristolf's plots, the spirits are angry about a dam that Elsa and Anna's grandfather had built, and Arendellian army attacking the people of the forest due to their connection to the spirts and the magic of said spirits. Why yes, there is a colonialism tone to this setting, and yes it's reinforced by the visuals. Elsa goes out to get answers, learning the truth of the dam, gets frozen in the process, Anna uses Earth Spirits to tear down the dam, Elsa is thawed out and rides on the water spirit horse to save Arendelle, Anna becomes the new queen of Arendelle while Elsa stays in the forest to serve as it's Ice Spirit, see you in 6 years for the inevitable Frozen 3? The story itself is fine, passable. A good story for a full sequel? Not really, it feels more like a story for an Elsa spin-off movie.

One part of the movie I don't have issues with is the visuals. This movie looks gorgeous, and it's kind of shocking how far the team's animation has gone between Frozen 1 and Frozen 2. The amount of little details is amazing to see, and it's hard to pick out a scene that looks completely dead, akin to the older 2D animated movies (not counting the sequels) where there was always just enough movement to make the characters feel alive. I can honestly say this movie is worth a watch for the animation itself, though it's a recommendation based more on style over substance. Frozen 2 is good for kids, though I don't think it's as good as other recent Disney movies about the balance between catering to the young and young at heart, though that could just be personal bias.