Frozen Review

Walt Disney Animation Studios, reborn from the ashes of the early two-thousands, still haven't figured out how to make the songs work. Tangled came the closest, but neither The Princess and the Frog or now Frozen quite capture the magic of the old classics.
I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but the songs don't gel with the rest of the action the way they did in, say, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. It might be as simple as the type of music; where Tangled has a fairly traditional feel, Princess had its jazz thing and Frozen is more of a modern pop musical - it's no coincidence that one of the leads is Idina Menzel from Wicked. It might also be a pacing issue; Frozen crams all its songs into the first half, leaving the second half feeling kind of empty, and the last song we hear is a jokey comedy number which just doesn't seem right somehow.

It's clear, though, that Disney is truly passionate about keeping the animated musical alive, long after it was declared dead, and that is a wonderful thing. Maybe they haven't nailed it yet - there's bound to be a few hiccups in this early stage - but they've come damn close, and the fact they're trying at all is a triumph in itself.
Besides, while the songs may not blend seamlessly with the rest of the film, they're still great songs. There's a couple I'll be humming well into next year.

Their real strength, though, is how earnest and heartfelt they are. Every number, bar the aforementioned comedy one, crackles with emotion and really lets us into the hearts of the characters. What we find there isn't always obvious, either. A cute song about building snowmen suddenly becomes incredibly poignant, an even cuter song about snowmen is surprisingly bittersweet, and a duet combines the excitement of one character with the dread of another. The single best sequence in the entire film is when we're expecting one kind of song but get the complete opposite - it's just so unexpected and powerful!

That's sort of Frozen's entire philosophy; to be moving in unexpected ways. We have the traditional Disney setup of a princess with no parents, a handsome prince, a magical curse. But the unexpected part is that there's two princesses, sisters Elsa and Anna, and every part of the story - both the warmth and the conflict - comes from their relationship. Except for one snivelling ambassador, there's not even a villain, and it's amazing how well that works.

When they were younger the sisters were extremely close, as you'd expect, but one day Elsa, the oldest and heir to the throne, suddenly shut herself away and they've barely spoken since. The reason, unbeknownst to Anna, is that her sister can magically manipulate ice and snow. When, as children, those powers almost got Anna killed, Elsa became a recluse to keep her sister safe and try to repress the magic. All Anna knows is that her best friend suddenly shut her out and she misses her deeply.
When Elsa's secret is eventually revealed, in the most explosive and public way possible, she flees to the top of a mountain, accidentally trapping the country in an unending winter. This leaves Anna as the only one who can follow her up there and make things right - and that double meaning of "make things right" is basically the whole point. It's a quest to save the country, sure, but it's equally about saving their broken relationship.

While this sounds pretty heavy - and it is, particularly for Elsa - the film stays light and fun, with Anna almost hyperactive from being cooped up in a castle her whole life with no-one to talk to or play with. The side-characters help with this too, as Anna collects a small posse on her way up the mountain - Kristoff the hunky ice-farmer, Sven the reindeer, and Olaf the comedy snowman (he likes warm hugs) are all very funny and bounce off each other nicely.
While every character is important and has something to do within the story, including a handful of townspeople and the dashing Prince Hans, all of it's ultimately incidental to the central tale of two sisters. We never lose sight of the film's heart.

As a result it's a very touching film but, like Brave last year, the intimate focus leaves everything feeling quite small. There's only a few locations, and travelling between them seems to take very little time (Elsa's mountain must be quite a short one). But, like Brave again, the lack of scale allows for a very fine level of polish, and the emotions are anything but small. Though the finale in particular is technically tiny, it feels big - it's such an emotional moment for the sisters, and it staunchly refuses to take the obvious or traditional way out. It works brilliantly.

In the end, Frozen fully embraces everything that makes Disney musicals great, centring itself around a heartwarming family story, and balancing fun with genuine feeling. But, importantly, it always finds ways to mix those things up - from the number of princesses to the direction of the songs - becoming something unusual and special. This slightly subversive streak runs through everything, right down to the message of the film, which basically boils down to "most Disney movies have a stupid message." Add to that the only Disney song that will ever contain the word "fractal" and it's worth the ticket price already.

Gipsy Danger's iPod

Do you know what’s awesome about Pacific Rim? I mean, besides the eighty-metre-tall robot battle-suits, the hundred-metre-long alien death-monsters, and the fact that one hits the other in the face with a freaking boat! Apart from all that, d’you know what’s awesome?
The music is awesome.

It's by Ramin Djawadi, the guy who does the equally awesome music for Game of Thrones, and it's just perfect for this movie. The main theme makes me smile the exact same way the film makes me smile: it’s exciting, over-the-top, and just a little bit cheesy. The whole soundtrack is the same - there's an operatic horror-theme for the Kaiju, and an overly melodramatic one for the overly melodramatic bits. It knows it’s kind of silly, and it’s running with it - which is Pacific Rim in a nutshell. It's larger than life.

I said before that the Iron Man 3 score didn’t really feel like an Iron Man film to me. It's brilliant, but it's too choral and orchestral, where I think Tony Stark needs a more mechanical sound. Why I'm writing this post is that the main Pacific Rim theme - the one I linked to above - is exactly what I had in mind!
This film's also about guys in power-armour, and it turns out that Djawadi actually is the guy who did Iron Man, so I shouldn't really be surprised that they synch up so well. I just wanted to mention it because I thought it was interesting, and because it gives me an excuse to listen to it again.

Because it's awesome.

Iron Man's iPod

It's been a couple of weeks since I saw Iron Man 3, and I've wanted to write a few things about it ever since. Unfortunately, writing that huge, depressing Doctor Who thing ate up all my blogging time (speaking of which, the new episode was pretty good but it just reinforced everything I dislike about Clara). Now that that's finally out of the way, I can write about cheerful happy things again - like the music in Iron Man 3.
Please understand that I know barely anything about music. I'm writing this post completely as a layman; which means I'll be talking even more bollocks than usual. I'm calling 'em as I see 'em. Or hear 'em.

I said in my review that it's weird to see an Iron Man film with no AC/DC on the soundtrack. That band has been inseparable from this series since the first shot of the first trailer for the first film. So much so that Tony Stark himself diegetically uses Shoot to Thrill to announce his arrival in both the second film and The Avengers.
But dropping AC/DC from its soundtrack gives Iron Man 3 an opportunity to have something the other two films were missing: a real honest-to-gods theme-tune!

All the Marvel films have decent scores (Thor is a personal favourite) but until now they've not really had clear central themes associated with the characters. The first Iron Man came close, but the theme was underused and swallowed by the well-known-rock soundtrack. They could have built that theme into something stronger for the second film - but they strangely opted for a totally different theme that I barely even recognise.
That's a really odd move, actually. Batman Begins' theme is not very strong at all, but Warner Bros. stuck with it throughout the series and two films later The Dark Knight Rises had a recognisable (if minimalist) theme for Batman. Likewise, Sony's Spider-Man theme is one we all know (or knew at the time, at least) because it was used throughout the trilogy. Iron Man, on the other hand, has three different films with three very different soundtracks.

I actually prefer the first Iron Man theme to the third (it's got a more industrial, electric, metal feel that really fits with the character) but, of the two, the new theme is definitely much easier to hum.
The humming's important because it's not about the actual quality of the music (though that obviously helps); it's about being memorable and, if done right, iconic. Thor and Captain America both have great music, but you can't identify any real character theme. Iron Man and Iron Man 3 are the only Marvel themes that really pass the test.

What's interesting is how well this new theme fits with the theme from The Avengers (which was also pretty hummable). It's almost as though they're intended to blend into one-another in some future movie, but I can't imagine what.
We'll see later this year if Thor: The Dark World does something similar. If it does - and I really hope it does - then The Avengers 2 may bring Marvel's various theme-tunes together alongside its characters. Imagine that amazing swooping shot from the first Avengers, but with each character's iconic theme playing as that character does their bit. I just got chills.

Why theme-music is important, as opposed to just having a great score in general, I'm not sure. I just know that being able to hum the Iron Man 3 theme from memory makes it a little more special for me. I want to have that with their other heroes, too.
Marvel still have a long way to go if they want to compete with the gold standard of the form, though.