Dear Haters

This is a post made to relieve my feelings...

Ever since the official trailer for Disney's Frozen was released a couple weeks ago, all I have heard from people was hate, hate, HATE! Like, seriously! The darn movie hasn't even come out yet, and people are criticizing it down to the bone. I mean, I understand if maybe a movie just doesn't look interesting to you and there are things that just don't appeal to you. I get it. It happens to me all the time. You are allowed to voice your opinion, but for heavens sake! Don't spoil it for everyone else! And don't judge a movie so harshly before you've even seen it. There's a difference between voicing your opinion out of disapproval, and just complaining for the sake of complaining.

Alright, so basically, this is how the complaints go:
"Frozen looks terrible it looks like they just gave Rapunzel a different hairstyle."

"Yeah sure okay those 2 might look similar but that was back when Disney was low on money and had to cut costs wherever they could."

"But those 2 are done in different styles! Anna and Rapunzel are both done in exactly the same style!"

"But the plot is pretty much identical! A princess asks help from a stranger to go somewhere!"

"The castle/bridge/town/any random object or plot point I can find looks the same in both movies!"

"It looks like they just lifted the animation out of Tangled and coated everything in snow!"

"It’s nothing like The Snow Queen though! They changed everything! Why, it’s almost as though they were aware of the differences and changed the name of the movie to differentiate it from the original fairytale!"

"But the snowman! He’s going to ruin the movie! He’s so annoying!"

This has been extremely common on Frozen. People are picking out every single, tiny thing that could possibly be wrong with it and complain.

Before I address the controversy surrounding the look of the characters, I must address a few other issues, such as Disney is racist because there are no people of color in this movie. Seriously? This movie takes place in Norway where white people live. Disney is not trying to be racist, they are trying to be realistic! If it took place in Africa, there would probably be lots of, if not only black people. If it took place in India, there would be Indian people. If it took place in Japan, there would be Japanese people. If it took place in Canada, there would be Canadian people. And so on. But this one takes place in Norway before other cultures (such as black, Chinese, Japanese, etc) immigrated there, so there are only Norwegian people living there, therefore there are only white people present! For crying out loud! Why is this such a hard concept to grasp? People just aren't educated and don't do their research before voicing their opinions. I mean, even the blinkin' horse and reindeer are getting crap that someone had to make a defense post on Tumblr for them:

"They didn’t animate Hans’ horse to be “emo”."

"She’s a Fjord horse."

"They’re native to Norway.

(Guess where Frozen takes place?)"

"That’s what their manes look like."

"Many of you anti-Disney people think that all Disney does is sit around with their thumbs up their butts being sexist, racist, and making up cliche stories with stereotypical characters."

"They do their research. That’s why the characters look and dress the way they do. "

"THIS FJORD HORSE AND I LAUGH IN YOUR DUMB HATER FACES.

Oh. And for all of you talking about how annoying it is that Sven acts like a dog?"

"Reindeer are known for acting like dogs and panting like dogs."

"Fjord horse and I are still laughing at you."

Yes. Thank you random person on Tumblr. But really, Disney really does do their research. They sent a team over to Norway and they spent several weeks studying the culture. They've always done this with past movies at least since the Disney Renaissance. 

Now we shall address the controversy surrounding the character designs of Frozen.

The most common complaint I see is that the new characters, Anna and Elsa look too similar to Rapunzel (from Tangled). In fact everybody is using this gif to prove their point:

I get so ticked off every time I see it. Whoever made it needs to go sit in the corner of shame for eternity. They look SIMILAR, but they are NOT the same!

Now take a look at the pictures above. There's this thing about promotional images and the actual final rendering that people just don't seem to get. This is why I am tired of people using the old model of Anna for a comparison. In the first picture, I used Anna’s old model to use in between Rapunzel’s and Anna’s official look. And it sort of looks like a hybrid of the two. I don’t know if it had the base model for Rapunzel or not, but it looks really similar to Rapunzel, so yeah, people are going to tear that apart when it comes down to comparing them. I think we should move on from it. It’s not accurate anymore. Take the official Anna and the Rapunzel picture instead. They don’t look very much the the same, but that’s the point. They made her look different from her old model.

To prove my point further, I wondered, what if I took screenshots instead of promotional pictures? Promotional pictures would probably look more alike anyways because they have to have the same marketing pose (marketing poses. That's a whole other post!). So instead I took a profile of both Anna and Rapunzel and the differences here are even more profound.

Anna’s facial shape is not similar to Rapunzel’s at all, it actually reminds me more of Jane from Tarzan. Both she and Jane have a long, curved-in nose with a small nose that comes to a point. They also have jaws and lower facial structures that stick out more. Rapunzel by contrast has a rounder larger nose point and it isn’t as long or curved in. Her lower facial structure is flatter and closer to the face.

Then the last picture I was surprised that I even was able to make becuase their facial expression and angles are practially the same. The nose difference from the profile shot is still there, just less noticable. The eyebrows are still similar but Rapunzel’s are slightly thinner and bend more. But the lips, eyes, and facial shape are huge points here. Anna’s face shape is so much different, it has more prominent cheeks and cheekbones, a rounder and shorter chin and fuller jaws, not to mention a straighter forehead, while Rapunzel has an overall slimmer, longer face. Anna has small, delicate thin lips, and Rapunzel has large, full lips. And lastly, Anna’s eyes are pointed on the inside, are very slanted, then round out on the outside. Rapunzel’s eyes do the opposite, starting round on the inside, barely slanting at all, then coming to a point on the outside. Anna’s eyelashes are also much fuller, shaped, and defined (her eyes are still blue despite the lighting).

Now, they still look somewhat similar from a design standpoint. But what I’m saying is their facial comparison is much more complicated than that old model of Anna shows, so I wish people would just stop using it, especially for comparisons.


Now back to the haters who are complaining about the similarities... It's called an animation style! Disney's been doing it ever since Walt Disney started the company, ever since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Disney is constantly developing different styles, that is what separates them from other animation companies and defines them, you look at something and you know it’s Disney, that’s why Pixar has such a different look to it and their characters are so different from WDAS.

When Disney releases movies close together, the styles are in fact similar, which causes people to think that the characters are copies of each other, you can see that from the earlier days, the characters appeared similar.

Each of these films were released EXTREMELY close together, if not back to back.

Now before you go and argue that the technology back then was not as advanced as it is today, Disney is still exploring new technology, and they are experimenting and trying new things, it’s the same concept as the films in the golden age, except now they don’t actually recycle the shots from one another.

If you are going to argue about their ethnicity, and say that they wouldn’t look similar to Rapunzel if they were of color, then just leave. Because that is a separate issue to this (which I addressed above), and that is also implying that white people look the same, and that is just… please do not. 

If you are one of those people that gets snippy when people point out the differences in their facial structures, and thinks that the different shapes of their noses, eyes, jaws, lips, etc. don’t matter, then you might need to ask the wizard for a brain because that’s what distinguishes real people from each other in real life

Anna and Elsa appear similar to Rapunzel because that is the style Disney is currently working with. They are people of similar backgrounds, but they are their own characters and a lot has gone into creating and designing them.

It's the promotional images of the characters are causing them to appear similar. Well don’t panic. Because, like I said above, that’s not really what they look like in the actual film. Disney, for some strange reason, makes their promotional images look oddly different from the final rendering. I don’t know why they do it, they just do. You can see it happen with Rapunzel:

And it clearly happens with Anna and Elsa

People are not looking at what they look like in the final product when they compare them, which is actually really important, because they are noticeably different just as real people are.

Seriously I promise you, Disney is constantly developing new looks to their films, it evolves over time that’s why this

Looks different from this

Which looks different from this

Which looks different from this

And why this

Looks different from these 

Tangled was the first CGI Disney movie to really add those new details and put a whole new definition of beauty behind it. It has a sense of realism because the expressions and emotions of the characters are relatable and real. Meet the Robinsons did not go to that distance, but Disney had still been rather new to using that technology, and ultimately it lead to the advancements in Tangled. Wreck it Ralph is a bit different because although it is the same style as Tangled, they are video game characters and they do appear more animated and cartoon-like.

Sergeant Calhoun is similar to Rapunzel in that aspect because they ARE the same style of animation, obviously she is older and you can see that, but the differences stand.

Frozen is being labeled “Tangled on Ice” because it is only the second Disney movie to explore this type of animation, it is giving a relatable and realistic feel to it, just as Tangled did, and that’s why it is coming across similar. The story plots are extremely different, they have nothing to do with each other, they just both consist of relatable human beings, and because Frozen is only the next movie to use this formula, it is taking an unnecessary beating for something that it is not doing, which is copying Tangled. It is BUILDING off of Tangled.

It is going to improve and get better over time, but no one is giving Disney any credit for what they are working on because they see something and immediately judge it without knowing anything about it. Criticizing Disney and saying that they should have done this, or they could have done that, is not proving anything other than the fact that you are being a snob

Just because Frozen does not have everything you want in it does not mean that it’s not going to be a great movie, the story is beautiful and the technology will help to tell it, but it’s not going to affect the messages that it carries.

A lot of the things people are complaining about Frozen for are going to be addressed in the next couple of years. YOU ARE BEING HEARD.

If you don’t study animation and you don’t know what Disney is doing then you can’t speak for the company and say that they are not working hard enough to advance, and you certainly can’t say that they are being lazy when they have specifically said they are working on giving their films a new look

It is not like Disney is doing nothing to give their future films new appearances and different feels, if you actually opened your eyes and did some research, you would see what they have been up to, and what they will be up to for the next decade. If you knew that, maybe you would realize that beating up Frozen for not having your wish list could ultimately mean missing out on an excellent film.

So haters... shut your pie holes!