Growth is a process with many steps that takes time.
I think a lot of times, movies show us the high point of a character’s growth — the titular moment where a character renounces their old ways and steps into the new. But growing is more than just accepting that you need to make a change. The actual making of that change is a whole painful process of its own. We, as the viewers, often do not get to see the growing pains that come with trying to reorder your life. Movies that depict the afterward or epilogue, so to speak, are rare and easy to do poorly.
It is on this basis that I’m going to make the argument that “Frozen 2” is better than “Frozen.”
“Frozen 2” is meant for the fans of “Frozen” after they had all grown up. This might sound like a duh argument because it’s a sequel, but that’s not always the case for sequels — especially when it comes to animated kids’ classics.
The original movie came out at the end of 2013 and “Frozen 2” came out at the end of 2019. That’s a six-year difference. Those of us who were 12 when the first movie came out were legal adults when the second movie came out. We were in entirely different stages of life.
“Frozen 2” is set about three years after the first film and follows Elsa in her new role as the Queen of Arendelle. But something is not quite right. Elsa, having been raised in isolation her whole life, was always on the fast track to becoming queen. She never had enough time or help to learn how her powers worked, so she definitely never had a spare moment to think about whether she even wanted to be queen or not.
Her sister Anna, desperate to not lose Elsa again, encourages and supports her sister, almost to a suffocating point. These smaller character conflicts are exacerbated by the larger plot conflict when Elsa hears a voice calling to her. This leads the crew into an enchanted forest where they discover secrets about their kingdom, their family and themselves.
At the end of “Frozen,” Elsa learned to let people into her life and lean on her sister. Fans of the movie understand that Elsa is likely a manifestation of depression, but “Frozen 2” takes her character growth to a new level.
Learning to lean on other people is important, but after someone has done that, they also have to learn how to healthily live on their own. It’s about balance, and “Frozen 2” levels the scale for Elsa. She learns in this movie how to be her own person outside of her family, even though her family means well.
Anna also gets significant character growth in “Frozen 2.” In “Frozen” she already understood what it was like to live on her own, but she learned what kinds of people she should allow herself to lean on. “Frozen 2” also levels the scale for Anna by teaching her that being alone is not always a bad thing.
Anna clung to Elsa with a vice grip at the beginning of the movie because she was so afraid of losing her sister again. This suffocates Elsa and eventually, Elsa has to push Anna away in order to think for herself. Anna, initially hurt, ends up rallying herself and realizing that she is strong on her own.
Both of these characters learned important lessons in “Frozen,” but that wasn’t the end of their journey. The lessons they learned in “Frozen” were only one side of the coin, and “Frozen 2” pushes them to understand that while leaning on the right people is important, living for yourself is also just as important. They learn how to have identities in their family and in themselves, and in the process they come into their most fitting roles: Elsa as keeper of the forest and Anna as Queen of Arendelle.
“Frozen 2” came out my senior year of high school. I saw the movie in theatres with a big group of my friends and I remember laughing so hard we probably disturbed the rest of the theatre. We had a grand ol’ time, chuckling at Olaf’s idea that “This will all make sense when I am older” and Kristoff’s solo music video that harkened back to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
But there is a moment at the beginning of the movie when Olaf looks at the camera and says, “You all look a little bit older.” My eyes immediately filled with tears. Maybe it was because I was a senior in high school and I was already emotional about growing up, but as the movie continued, I felt even more connected to it as a picture of growth.
These were characters of my childhood. I had seen them go through hard times and come out on the other side having realized big things about themselves. Once again, I was walking with these characters as they took the things that they learned earlier and had to keep going because growing is a process that never stops. I loved “Frozen 2” that much more because it taught me that it’s okay if you’re still learning. It’s okay if you’re still growing. Everyone is still growing, and growing pains hurt.
“Frozen 2” went above and beyond the expectation of a sequel because it didn’t just continue the physical adventures; it continued the characters.
The “Frozen” movies are ultimately not about Anna, Elsa and their shenanigans; they are movies of self-discovery.
“Frozen” and “Frozen 2” can be streamed on Disney+.
