Tangled vs Frozen! Which is better storytelling?

[DiegoPalacios]

I consider Tangled better than Frozen when it comes to storytelling and character dynamics.

Rapunzel and Ridel`s interactions are way too entertaining and heartwarming, and their arcs are pretty solid. Also, Goethel works perfectly as the antagonist keeping the stakes personal and meaningful.

Frozen gave me the sensation that they changed their mind about many things in the middle of writing. Hans`s actions dont make too much sense after the twist is revealed. While it can be expected for him to acts nice and pretend to care to keep appearances, he wasted a solid chance at killing Elsa without anyone knowing it was him.

[indagold]

Tangled felt like it was more cohesive than frozen which felt like a mess of a story..but i'm giving them too much credit, modern day disney just feels bland overall. It's like saying a bowl of oatmeal with sugar on it is slightly better than one without it lol

[ryoko]

I think Tangled had a better story, but I must say Kristoff's 80's music video montage song was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. If you haven't experienced cheesy '80s music videos, here's an example (albeit a literal version) of one:

[azzy-m]

I'm almost tempted to rewrite Frozen and Frozen 2's story. Almost.

Gonna put that in the backburner with the other stuff I've been thinking of rewriting, along with RWBY, Voltron, and Star vs....

[spadedigsbutts]

OH I GOT STRING FEELINGS BIUT THIS WOO. Both of them suffer from what all Disney Pixar films tend to trend towards in that literally every single recent one is a road trip movie. Moana? Road trip across the ocean for a magic item. Frozen? Road trip to find sister. Tangled? Road trip to lantern castle. Coco? Road trip to dead relative. Inside out? Road trip back to the control booth. Once you notice they’re all road trip movies they really start to bleed together in some ways not helped by each having several studio mandated action chase sequences that waste time and contribute nothing to character they’re just sort of there (mine chase scene in tangled, wold sled chase scene in frozen etc. ).

From a narrative standpoint, tangled is probably the better story since characters all have clear motivations and payoffs and the story is generally consistent throughout. Like the villain a lot too she’s entertaining and also REALLY REMINDS ME OF IRL PEOPLE I KNOW so good job there. I think the main thing is that parts of it are just very forgettable and come off as...idk, sorta sanitized? There’s also just some things that were a bit superfluous...like I literally always forget there’s a chameleon until I watch it again and go “when was there a chameleon “ since it’s just there for MERCH/ basically telling audience plot points? Idk it’s a fine movie, it’s pretty, I like watching it, and it’s generally consistent.

Frozen is defiantly the weaker since so much of its story in both films is very messy. I have a friend who’s family member did work as a storyboarder on frozen 2 and apparently it was horrible because there were so many rewrites that the art department was just constantly getting fucked. Frozen 2 I’m not going to address really because I think anyone who has watched it basically can look and tell it had issues. Like I didn’t even hate it it just...obviously had a shit ton of problems with story and characters . Frozen is probably the better of the two, but it still had issues. Like Anna doesn’t really have an arc outside of “Dont fall in love in a day “ which was then sort of undermined by the fact kristoph falls in love with her in a way so you’re like “which is it??”. Elsa then has the opposite problem where her entire character IS HER ARC. Ummm yeah I could go on it has problems​

[nostalgicroxas]

HAHHAHHA oh my god. Princess & The Frog is a roadtrip movie too. Zootopia myster+road trip. The Good Dinosaur road trip. wikis the list Bolt, also CG movie, also road trip.

So according to the list I found, the only movies that aren't blatant road trip movies that are recent ish are : Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Lilo & Stitch. Most of the others between Lilo to present day (that are done by Disney Animation Studios) are roadtrips. Forget if Home on the Range was... but I think it was. The other non-roadtrip movies, coincidentally, are from the Renaissance era: Tarzan, Hercules, Hunchback, ect.

List of Disney theatrical animated features

Also, Pascal is hilarious. I love his non-spoken gestures. Like what has this chameleon been exposed to in Rapunzel's books XD

[Iris-Grimoire]

It's amazing how expressive and fun Pascal is, but then Frozen 2 comes and the Fire Elemental is kind of useless. But they sure marketed it exactly like him!

[NickRowler]

The first Wreck It Ralph was not a road trip film (tho the second kind of is). I feel like it's more of a sports film. The underdogs, the training section, the falling out, etc.

Big Hero 6 is a superhero film also not a road trip.

[spadedigsbutts]

Yeah a lot of the older ones aren’t but quite a few are road trip type movies. I think it happens because there’s like this very easy formula for it that hits a bunch of point that Disney executives want and just In general it’s easy to manufacture conflict and such idk. And Pascal is definitely adorable!! I just wish they gave him more to actually do in the movie​

[spadedigsbutts]

Totally agree! Kind of feels like they may have just reskinned and edited the Pascal model too which sort of makes it worse to me

Also can we talk about how inconsistent the elementals were?? Fire is a lizard, water is a horse, earth are....stone guys...and the wind is just the wind?! 🤣

[Iris-Grimoire]

That part was just so dumb, AGAIN, obvious seam of a rewrite or redesign. Salamander, Undine, Gnome, Sylph(which would be invisible but probably able to be frozen into a shape of SOMETHING), it was right there. Either go all in with the alchemical elements or do something else, don't half ass such a huge concept.

Then again, the series exists from not wanting to go all in or out with The Snow Queen, considering they didn't even keep the names of the characters and the only supporting character to make the cut is Bae/Sven.

[NickRowler]

Also can we talk about how inconsistent the elementals were?? Fire is a lizard, water is a horse, earth are....stone guys...and the wind is just the wind?! 🤣

So some of them are based of of mythical creatures

Fire Lizard is a fire salamander which appears in Northern European folklore and it is what charmander from Pokemon is based off of.

The water horse is based off of kelpies which are from Celtic folklore.

The stone guys are golems which come from Hebrew folklore.

I don't know about the wind thing tho.

[spadedigsbutts]

Someday I’ll get my good adaptation of the Snow Queen. The old concept art for Frozen looked so dang good uhnnnn

[spadedigsbutts]

I understood all the mythological references, they just....weren’t consistent in any way? The advertising went so hard in showcasing a very specific region’s ethnic group and then they just sorta mangled multiple pieces of lore from all over Europe together it had me very ????

[ThunderAngel]

In my mind, Tangled wins just by Maximus the horse alone,lol!

[Iris-Grimoire]

There's an old animation that's been partially saved that's the closest they ever get to the original tale... But in it the Snow Queen becomes an active villain and some elements just kinda get ignored for odd reasons. It's odd that the small budget adaptation could've derailed at many points and yet the newest Snow Queen animation that's supposed to be the tale(from a russian animation studio iirc) is the one that can't keep itself together.

[nostalgicroxas]

I think the wind is supposed to be the Zephyr or something wind from Greek that Hermes or someone flies his messages on? Since that's formless.

I think they should have continued to draw the imagery representation of the elemental creatures from one cultural source instead of Final Fantasy-ing it half-assedly :x

[nostalgicroxas]

To be fair, I feel like all of the women basically (except maybe Gothel) are all just reskins of the same model with a few tweaks to them. And I don't mean that lightly - I think they're all based off of Penni's design (Bolt) and just adjusted. Anna, Elsa, their mom, Rapunzel and her mom, and even some background women that appear in both movies, all look like they share the same model and just have different tweaks to eyes, hair, and bridge of the nose and tip of the chin.

And the chameleon actually I think might be based on Pascal, but I think it's more likely it's a re-used asset from Pixar's movie that was going to have a chameleon/lizard in it that they scrapped when movies like Rango were coming out at the same time.

I get the feeling Disney isn't above the same staffing yanks that SquareEnix does where it pulls staff from one department who's working on one project to work on another. (ie staff that were working on Type-0, 15, FF13-3, KH3, FF7r basically were constantly shuffled around) Now that Disney has possession of Pixar (a group of animators who left Disney to be more creative), I doubt it's above them to do the exact same thing and yank staff from working on, say, Onward to work on Frozen 2. Or to yank people from Frozen 2 to work on Onward.

[NickRowler]

Honestly my issue of the film had less to do with the borrowed mythology and more an issue with the villain being someone who died before the events take place so that no one in held responsible for their actions and everyone ends up "good" in the end. Their parents, who emotionally abused Elsa, are seen as good. SPOILERS, they had a fake out death for Olaf. The town wasn't destroyed by the wave. I dunno, I felt like the film was too "safe" and was simply their to fulfill the role of being a sequel. I sort of wish they pushed the envelope a bit. Coco was able to do that, so I know Disney is willing to have darker themes. I did like the song "Into the Unknown" tho.

[spadedigsbutts]

Rapunzel and the frozen ladies all looking the same was actually confirmed to be the same model so you’re right! They got a ton of flack for it when people noticed so, Moana to present, they’ve either made new models or been much better at hiding Reskins(usually using them to fill up scenes As background characters). Though this kind of had a really hilarious effect in Frozen 2 when I think they kept the mom’s old model as an adult but then made an entirely new one for her as a child where everyone I knew was like “I couldn’t TELL it was he same character’ (tho that could 100% have been on purpose so you wouldn’t see the “twist” with the mom at the end tho I still don’t know what it had to do with anything idk)