Viktor Templeton

Frozen II is the sequel to Frozen, a movie based on Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Snow Queen”, if Hans Christian Anderson had been a lesbian cultural studies student during a summer semester at Vassar.

The movie opens with Anna and Elsa gingerly frolicking in their playroom as their parents look own with gentle approval, despite being deathly afraid of Elsa's powers to the extent that they shut her off from the world and alienated her from her sister in the first movie.

Anyway, their father begins to tell them the expository tale of the magic forest of the elements ruled by the kind-of-but-not-quite-white Eskimos. They worship nature and all that Pocahontas shit. I guess they’re supposed to be vaguely analogous to the Sami people, but their culture is never really explored in depth, probably because Disney was too scared to risk insulting anyone besides the audience, so I’m just going to call them Eskimos. It’s not right, but it’s easier. They’re the inoffensive aboriginal stereotypes of this picture, here to glorify pre-industrial civilization, and shame white people into eating bugs and practicing shamanism. They also exist in communion with the elemental spirits. All the stars are there, Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. You want whimsy? This place has got whimsy out the ass. Oh, It’s brimming with magic and awe and all that patented generic Disney wonderment.

Turns out the white Eskimos went nuts one day and killed the King’s father, fighting ensues, and the forest is blocked by mist. To which I reply, it’s mist. Walk through it. Unless you’re afraid to test the impermeable properties of water vapor.

Anyway, their father is carried back by some mysterious force, cut back to young Anna and Elsa their Mom sings a crappy version of “The Road Goes Ever On” from the Rankin Bass Hobbit movie with even more expository lyrics that explains that water has memory. Did Rupert Sheldrake write this?.

Cut to present day. Elsa is the beloved queen of Disney Finland, because her subjects have the memory of Goldfish and forgot all about that time last week when almost killed them all in one of her many, many anxiety attacks. Olaf is concerned about the ephemerality of his own existence, because as a cabbalistic snow golem he has no immortal soul and will not go to Heaven. In fact, he disgusts me and his very being is an insult to God. Let’s not talk about Olaf anymore.

Anna’s boyfriend wants to propose. And that’s about all he does.

They sing a song about how things never change, in the first act of the movie. I think we all know where this is going.

They all play charades and have pajama parties. Do you like that 20-something women? Don’t YOU do that with YOUR girlfriends?! ISN’T THAT JUST SO YOU?! RELATE DAMN IT!

Something has Elsa at ill-ease. She doesn’t think she can be a good queen. Remember this same exact conflict from the last movie? Well it’s back with a tin of peppermints and some warm brandy to commiserate with you about the good old days of 2013.

A mysterious voice calls to Elsa, offering her a new body and new troops to command if she she kills Ultra Magnus and destroys the Matrix of leadership. She says she won’t follow it as she actively follows it. She has poor impulse control and would likely have been deposed by a coup by now if Anna wasn’t a co-dependant wreck. After the song elemental powers wreak havoc on the town, and Elsa confesses to having contacted the magic spirits, just like Terence Mckenna. The non-copyright infringing trolls tell her that Elsa threatens the country once again, and yet not one of the peasants takes it upon themselves to burn her like the witch she is.

They embark to the forest to avert catastrophe. They find the wall of mist on the edge of the forest, but can’t go through it, to which I reply, Its mist. You have the power to instantly condense water molecules into ice. Just keep making everything colder and heavier until the mist goes away. I don’t know what specific year this movie is supposed to take place in, but I’m guessing late 18th century at the earliest. You can probably swing down to France and have Antoine Lavoisier explain it to you before he’s murdered by Freemasons. Or hell, ask Euler to write you some letters about it. He’d be more than happy to have another pen pal. Instead she just sort of touches it, and lets them inside before surrounding them and locking them in.

They’re attacked by the Eskimos and a lost band of multiracial Aranedllian soldiers, just like Barbara Spectre always wanted. If Netflix or the BBC made a movie about the life of Lord Nelson, it would probably look like this.

We then meet the first of elemental spirits. Charmander. Technically the wind spirit showed up first but it’s not even a real character. It’s just wind.

Turns out Elsa and Anna’s mother was one of the Eskimos, making them more personally invested in this new culture, and less inclined to consider the well being of the people they rule, but we’ll get to that.

Meanwhile Kristoff finds an autistic kindred spirit among the Eskimos, and that’s the extent I’m willing to talk about either character.

Elsa and Anna find find ship their parent’s died in. In a clumsy attempt to tie in to the first movie, it turns out they where looking for the mystery river in the song that their mother sang to them at the beginning of the movie. Elsa uses her power to recreate her parent’s death for some reason.

Elsa decides to to to the mystery river herself to find the spirit that’s been calling her. She tells Anna how much she means to her, then promptly endangers her life by shoving her in an ice boat and sending her down a hill at break neck speed into the path of some rock biters.

Elsa tries to use her powers to cross the sea, and we meet the next of the spirits, that horse from the Steve Miller Band’s greatest hits album cover. Elsa tames the horse, which takes her to Robert Schuller’s crystal cathedral where a disembodied spirit acts out all of her and her parents memories and passing reference is made to the made on who’s grave they’re dancing. (Hans Christian Anderson)

An ice sculpture of Elsa’s grandfather says magic people can’t be trusted. She says he’s wrong, despite proving him right on numerous occasions. Turns out the dam her grandfather built was part of a plot to subjugate the Eskimos because white man are bad and Disney wants you to resent your ancestors and their accomplishments. She sends Anna a statuegram to convey this shocking revelation. Anna’s white liberal guilt moves her to unilaterally break the dam, flooding Arandelle and ruining the lives of her subjects. But it’s okay because they didn’t check their privilege. Anna taunts the rock biters into destroying the dam, somehow convincing the royal guards to go along with it on little more than her own unverified testimony that her Grandfather, the man they swore loyalty to, was a murderer so they should totally flood their own kingdom. Thankfully, Elsa flies like an eagle on the Steve Miller horse and blocks the wave with an ice wall, and once again a female character is spared from facing the repercussions of her actions.

The forest is safe, the mist wall falls, and Elsa abdicates to live with the elemental spirits and the Eskimos like somebody's wine aunt who goes to India to "find herself", leaving the kingdom subject to the whims of an emotional basket case who made a snap decision to flood it because she thought her grandfather was a racist.

The movie ends. Everything was pointless. Kristen Bell goes back to shilling those terrible "Light Life" burgers. Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong. At least they didn't make Elsa a dyke.