Leith Skilling - Critic & Reviewer

November 23, 2019February 25, 2020

“Frozen 2” Spoiler Review! Villain Explained!

SPOILERS FOR FROZEN 2 AHEAD!

There’s a lot of movie to talk about in this post. Frozen 2 is completely different from its predecessor, which avoided controversy by sticking to more traditional Disney fare: true love, family bonds, embracing your differences, etc, etc. Frozen 2 takes risks by leaping into the thick of some of the most heated discussions of this century – there’s commentary on generational divides, nationalism, and environmentalism, among other things. And since this is a spoiler review, we can talk about all of it.

While the subject of nationalism would seem the most foreign and shocking in a family-friendly Disney movie about two princesses and a lovable snowman, it was actually the topic that I most strongly suspected Frozen 2 would touch on, in some way or another. Back in September, I speculated that Elsa and Anna’s peaceful city-state of Arendelle had some dark secrets they wanted to keep hidden: namely, their persecution of the Northuldra peoples. This persecution has its roots in the very real, very tragic story of the nomadic Sámi peoples of northern Scandinavia whose culture and history was almost wiped off the face of the planet by the governments under whose “protection” they dwelt. Mostly, the governments of Norway and Sweden – the two countries whose cultures have informed the creation of the peaceful sea-port of Arendelle, with its majestic fjord and majority-white population. The Northuldra tribe in Frozen 2, on the other hand, are very clearly stand-ins for the Sámi – to the point where the film even hired Sámi consultants. I guessed at once that Elsa and Anna might be in for a nasty surprise if and when they discovered that their country had actively worked to massacre an entire race of people.

But while I had worked out the basic framework of the story, I was unable to guess how important the Norway vs Sámi/Arendelle vs Northuldra conflict would be to the entire plot of Frozen 2. And that’s where the parallels to 1995’s Pocahontas, a film I referenced in my non-spoiler review as an unlikely contrast to this one, come in.

Both films deal with the interactions between a majority-white nation and a peaceful indigenous people. But while the early flashbacks in Frozen 2 indicate that relations between the two peoples were just that, peaceful, it turns out later in the movie that those flashbacks lied to us – or was it just that Elsa and Anna’s father, King Agnarr, was an unreliable narrator, leaving out the bits where his people turned on their friends and tried to kill them all? Yes, Elsa (Idina Menzel) discovers in the third act that her revered grandfather, King Runeard of Arendelle (Jeremy Sisto), attempted to wipe out the Northuldra by building a huge dam across the fjord which threatened their way of life – why, you ask? Well, the film does somewhat gloss over the notion of racial prejudice, but does touch on a form of bigotry – if not one we’re accustomed to seeing in the real world: Runeard’s fear and hatred of people who use magic (such as the Northuldra). Runeard’s plan to subtly undermine the Northuldra with his dam goes awry when the leader of the Northuldra sees through his deception and tries to stop him, leading to open conflict between the two peoples, one in which Runeard and the Northuldra leader were both killed by falling over a cliff.

Elsa never actually meets him personally, but she does have a brief encounter with…well, it’s not exactly his ghost, but I don’t know what to call it: ice-sculpture moving photograph? Confronting him over his fears and prejudices, Elsa wonders out loud what her grandfather would think of her, a brave young woman who controls all of the four elements of magic, in one of the most powerful moments in the movie. Unfortunately, Runeard is kind of dead, so it’s hard for Elsa to have any sort of meaningful interactions with him – but she doesn’t have to, because as I said in my non-spoiler review, Frozen 2 isn’t about clinging to the past, it’s about moving forward into the future. Runeard, the film’s only real villain, represents an older, more backwards-thinking generation who prevent change and progress: Elsa and Anna, representing millennials, are the change and progress, and they have better things to do with their time than get into arguments with the ghosts of bitter old racists. And so both Anna and Elsa turn away from the crimes and dark secrets buried in their family’s past and walk into the future hand-in-hand, helping to right Arendelle’s wrongs by destroying Runeard’s dam (even if it does nearly leave Arendelle drowned under a whole new fjord in what I can only describe as the Fords of Bruinen scene from The Lord Of The Rings multiplied tenfold), breaking the magical enchantments that separate Northuldran territory from Arendelle, and commissioning memorials to the Northuldra people. By acknowledging the crimes that white colonizers did to the indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, Frozen 2 is already a step ahead of Pocahontas, which blithely pretended that after Governor Ratcliffe was locked up in chains, everything was fine and dandy in the New World. By setting the story long after the violence occurred, Frozen 2 allows its young protagonists to learn the mistakes that their ancestors made, and do their part to try and fix them, since it’s too late to avert them – that’s a story that many young people can relate to, as they too inherit a world damaged by the actions of previous generations, what with wars, climate change, etc, etc.

The film also, somewhat more controversially, gives Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa a personal stake in the fight by revealing that they are…bear with me here…mixed-race. Their mother, Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood), was actually a Northuldran woman who danced with flying leaves in the wind before rescuing a handsome young blond man from certain death, falling in love with him and returning with him to his kingdom…hold on a moment, this movie really is mirroring Pocahontas. Anna and Elsa are still very much white, however, and that fact actually shouldn’t be a problem, since many of the Sámi peoples of Scandinavia are, in fact, white. However, Frozen 2 takes the liberty of interpreting the Northuldra as darker-skinned, with dark hair – probably in an attempt to make the diversity look more clearly diverse. In the end it somewhat backfires by making Anna and Elsa into the sole white women among a group of people of color, coming in to save the day and free them from their captivity in the forest…in other words, they get a bit of the white savior treatment, and it’s not a good look for either character, or for Disney.

In the end, though, Elsa actually goes to live with the Northuldra, feeling her true calling among her mother’s people. Having discovered at the end of the movie that she is the “fifth spirit” who can control the four elements of fire, water, earth and wind, Elsa has become a shimmering goddess of the tundra, resplendent in an Aurora Borealis-inspired gown, riding a water-horse and carrying a fiery salamander as her animal sidekick. And, um, yeah, the movie never really does anything to explain why she got stuck with ice powers specifically. Instead, it spends a lot of time focusing on Elsa’s environmentalist journey: abandoning the trappings of modern (okay, well, late 19th Century modern) civilization, Elsa goes back to nature and finds peace there, among the splendor of the Norwegian wilderness. Whether or not she learns to paint with all the colors of the wind, we won’t know until Frozen 3.

Speaking of Frozen 3, it’s time to talk sequels. The film actually leaves off rather conclusively – Elsa is living her best life in the far north as a magic guru goddess, Anna is the progressive new queen of Arendelle, we’ve learned pretty much everything there is to know about Elsa’s magic (I think), and there’s peace at last in fantasy Norway. But is that peace destined to last? Looking at the progression in Elsa and Anna’s stories over the last two films, a pattern emerges: in the first film, we saw them brought together by the power of true love, risking their lives to save each other; in the second film, their journey takes the two sisters in different directions, leading them to finally separate and lead separate lives. What’s left for a third film to explore? Frozen: Civil War, in which Team Anna and Team Elsa face off against each other in the most brutal snowball-fight ever animated? Well, I don’t expect it to get that extreme (though I wouldn’t complain if it did), but something along those lines wouldn’t be a bad idea. We’ve seen them together, we’ve seen them separate – now would be a good time to show them on opposite sides of a conflict, eventually realizing they have to work together once more to solve a problem. As for what that problem could be: well, I’d recommend an actual villain. Runeard’s legacy of evil worked for Frozen 2 because of the message it was trying to send, but a third film would be a great place for an actual enemy to arise and threaten fantasy Norway. There might even be some opportunities to play with the concept of Dark Elsa – after all, she was originally written to be the first film’s villain.

Some things I wouldn’t expect to see from the third film would be any more revelations about the sisters’ past – Elsa and Anna literally found out everything we could possibly care to know about the history of Arendelle. We even discovered exactly what happened to their parents, the good King Agnarr and Queen Iduna, when the sisters found their wrecked ship washed up onshore. Thanks to Elsa’s magic, the sisters were able to see exactly how their parents perished – turns out, they were on their way to the far north to try and find answers about what Elsa was when they ran into a storm and drowned, holding each other one last time as the waves swallowed them up. So any mystery about them and their fate has been conclusively laid to rest, in the saddest possible way (in case you’re wondering, this scene is one of the three I referenced in my non-spoiler review as being absolutely soul-crushing: the others being Olaf’s temporary death and Elsa’s aforementioned confrontation with her grandfather).

On the bright side, most of the characters get happy-ever-after endings in Frozen 2: Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) finally proposes to Anna and she accepts; Olaf (Josh Gad) is dead, but then he isn’t (something I also predicted back in September); Elsa maybe-sort-of-kinda-subtly has a thing going on with fellow Northuldran woman Honeymaren (Rachel Matthews), though Disney being Disney, it’ll probably only ever be in subtext, despite how fervently the internet clamors for Elsa to get a girlfriend; Sven gets a whole bunch of new reindeer friends, and presumably isn’t excluded from all their reindeer games. Frozen 2 is darker than this franchise has ever been, and it could be the darkest it’ll ever get – but then again, maybe in six more years we’ll be treated to a third and final installment of the story of the two sisters. At which point in the timeline Kristoff and Anna will probably be parents, Olaf will be older, and Sven will be…well, Sven should be dead at this point considering the average lifespan of a reindeer, but somehow I don’t expect Disney to go in that direction unless they’re feeling particularly dark.

How would you feel about the possibility of Frozen 3, and what would you like to see Anna and Elsa do next? What was your favorite Frozen 2 moment? Share your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!

November 22, 2019

“The Mandalorian: Chapter 3” Review!

It’s impossible to talk about this episode of The Mandalorian without making reference to some spoilers, in contrast to last week’s episode, which saw Pedro Pascal’s armored bounty hunter and internet sensation Baby Yoda team up to take down a rhino and do basically nothing else for half an hour. At the end of that episode, titled The Child, the Mandalorian was last seen boarding his spaceship with Baby Yoda in tow, presumably escorting the adorable little green puppet back to his client, the mysterious mastermind played by Werner Herzog. So where does the story pick up this week?

Well, that’s where the spoilers come into play, so if you haven’t seen the episode, you should definitely do so – I know! I’m actually recommending this show now! That’s because director Deborah Chow has actually managed to revitalize my interest in the Mandalorian’s character arc, and his interactions with Baby Yoda, which are the emotional heartbeat of this story so far.

"The Mandalorian: Chapter 3" Review! 1 — denofgeek.com

When the episode begins, however, the Mandalorian is forced to make a very tough choice about Baby Yoda’s future: face-to-face with Herzog’s nameless (but unmistakably evil) Imperial client, the Mandalorian – even in-universe, every other character has taken to calling him Mando, so I’m going to do the same, despite my concerns that the name is instead in a disparaging, rather than respectful, way – ends up handing over the adorable little green baby in exchange for a handful of metal slabs that he turns into more armor (and another shoulder-pad to match his current one) with a little help from Emily Swallow’s character, The Armorer. Just as before, Mando gets flashback visions while the Armorer is busy making his new suit of armor; visions which, as before, show a child (presumably him?) being rushed through a war-zone by frightened parents and placed into a bunker. Now, though, we get a tantalizing new glimpse of what happened – barely moments after being carried to safety, an explosion rocks the underground chamber and baby Mando looks up to see the bunker doors thrown open to reveal an intimidating killer robot – one of the B2 super battle droids from the Star Wars prequels, if I’m not mistaken.

We still don’t know why the Mandalorian gets these flashbacks when he’s at the armory, but we do get some insight about the workings of Mandalor culture – emphasis on cult, as the small group of secretive warriors seem to be. With their semi-religious reverence for weaponry and their deference to the weapons-maker, it looks like the way of Mandalor lies in battle and the glory of warfare. Our protagonist, the Mandalorian, is up for a promotion, it seems, for killing the big rhino in the last episode, and the Armorer asks him if he’d like to choose a signet engraved with said rhino’s image – an honor he respectfully refuses, as he had help in killing the creature “from an enemy”, i.e. Baby Yoda.

But the Mandalorian has a heart of gold, or at least something other than Beskar steel, which everybody else in the galaxy is willing to sell their souls for: rather than move on with his life and go hunt down other innocent people for money, he decides to turn around and save Baby Yoda. Helped along by his new, impenetrable armor and his highly-advanced weapons (such as “singing birds”, which is basically a volley of poison darts hidden in one’s glove), the Mandalorian is successful in his mission, and breaks an unconscious Baby Yoda free of creepy Doctor Pershing’s nefarious operating table. Pershing swears up and down he was trying to keep Baby Yoda alive, but the Mandalorian ignores him and goes looking for Herzog’s character – instead, he finds a whole bunch of stormtroopers, whom he dispatches (thanks to those singing birds and a couple of flamethrowers), before making his escape. As of right now, we still have no idea where Herzog’s character has gone, and we’re still no closer to learning his true identity.

So the episode’s titular Sin has been repented for, but the Mandalorian isn’t quite out of the woods yet – or should I say, out of the grungy city full of hundreds of other bounty hunters whose tracking fobs all light up and start pointing the way towards the fleeing Mandalorian. That little predicament (undoubtedly sparked by Herzog, wherever he is) leads to a confrontation at the spaceport between Mando and a crowd of angry killers, assassins and mercenaries led by Mando’s…friend?…Greef Karga, played by Carl Weathers. While it seems at first like little Yoda might use the Force to get them out of trouble, it turns out to be Mando’s other Mandalorian friends who arrive with jetpacks and laser-machine guns to save the day – well, night. And after briefly confronting Karga and throwing him out of his spaceship, Mando and Baby Yoda take off once again to destinations unknown.

And I, as the skeptical audience-member unimpressed with the series’ previous installments, am left feeling very pleased with what I just watched. It was complete, but gave us enough hints and unsolved mysteries to keep us guessing. It was more compellingly acted, though Pedro Pascal is still fighting a losing battle with his helmet (which, according to his character, he has never removed in all his life: he did hesitate slightly when asked if he had ever had it removed for him, though – why, pray tell, is that even a question one asks of someone?).

Next week, we should find out where the Mandalorian and his infant quarry are headed, and what Herzog plans to do about them. I hope we also finally get to see Ming-Na Wen in next week’s episode, since the show is still conspicuously Ming-less.

What did you think of the episode, and what theories do you have about the series in general? Share your own thoughts in the comments below!

Episode Rating: 7/10

Greef Karga (Carl Weathers)

November 22, 2019

“Frozen 2” Non-Spoiler Review!

The franchise that began with one great song, a few boatloads of in-your-face Disney Magic (read: Olaf-themed merchandise), and a couple of warm hugs along the way has grown up significantly over the past six years, and will presumably continue to grow as it evolves – Frozen 3 isn’t exactly inevitable, but it’s far from implausible. To reflect the fact that its audience has matured both physically and mentally, Frozen 2 branches off in an unexpected direction: at a time when it feels like every franchise is trying to cash in on nostalgia, Frozen 2 has a different message for kids and adults alike, one that is more interesting and more powerful: the past informs our future, but it doesn’t define it.

You might be tempted to laugh, and in the confines of a non-spoiler review I won’t be able to give sufficient evidence to back up my claims, I know. After all, Disney has teased a similar message before, and then walked it back – wasn’t it Star Wars‘ very own Kylo Ren who told us to let go of the past, “kill it if you have to”, not long before Disney introduced the world to the thrilling story of a Boba Fett-lookalike and his Baby Yoda sidekick, and started promoting The Rise Of Skywalker, which reveals that characters like Lando Calrissian and Emperor Palpatine are all on their way back to the big screen? Yes. But in Frozen 2, change and progress are real, obvious, and important to the story, whereas in franchises like Star Wars it sometimes seems like more of a charade.

Almost as soon as the movie opens, this theme is being foreshadowed – while everybody in the cheerful Norwegian city of Arendelle is getting together to sing “Some Things Never Change” (told you it’s obvious), only Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) is feeling out of place and isolated among her own people: her realization, that things do change – and, in fact, need to change – is at once startlingly relieving. I would say Frozen 2 is all about change, transformation, the metamorphosis of the soul: basically if the hit song “Let It Go” from the first Frozen was an entire movie – speaking of which, Elsa has a few more power-ballads to belt out this time around, and all of them are extraordinary. At the same time, there are frequent, if mostly humorous, ruminations on the concept of mortality and permanence. Even Olaf (Josh Gad), the happiest snowman in Scandinavia, is feeling the passage of time and gets his very own song about the subject, “When I Am Older”, that sums up his feelings on the matter in a funny, philosophical way.

But change isn’t something to be afraid of – it can also make the world a better place. It’s the change we see happening both onscreen and behind the scenes all the time: for instance, the stark contrast between movies like 1995’s Pocahontas and Frozen 2 (which deals with a very similar concept at its core, surprising as that may seem), is only made possible by decades of change: slow, sometimes, but steady.

Some things really don’t change, though: for one, the fact that Elsa and Anna (Kristen Bell) are still two of Disney’s most emotionally complex characters, despite being denied the official Disney Princess title (though, depending on how long some of Frozen 2‘s most significant developments have been in place, I can almost identify a very good reason for why neither woman was given that honor. Let’s just say, both Elsa and Anna have much bigger things in store for them. Elsa continues to be a relatable role model for people of all walks of life, but especially members of the LGBTQ+ community (who have identified with her and embraced her since 2013): while she’s never given her own “exclusively gay” moment, she is still Disney’s most undeniably queer-coded heroine. Her journey in Frozen 2 takes her from being an outcast (and the sole introvert in a city where apparently everybody gets together for group singalongs on the weekend), to being, well, something else entirely. Her younger sister Anna is still as lovably optimistic and chipper as she was in the first movie, but also more understanding of Elsa’s struggle, more capable of handling her own problems, and more aware of the world around her – up to a point. There’s a running gag in the movie about Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) trying to have a romantic moment with Anna, which keeps going south when she misconstrues his intentions and thinks he’s trying to break up with her: but it only keeps happening because Anna herself jumps to the weirdest conclusions, to the point where I had to wonder if she was making excuses to get away from Kristoff intentionally.

But even though a couple of jokes here and there don’t land quite as well as they might have, the movie is, overall, very funny. Much of the humor is based off making fun of the previous movie, just as Frozen itself made fun of other Disney Princess movie tropes: here, we have gems such as Elsa cringing at the sound of her breakout hit “Let It Go”, and Olaf hilariously recapping the first film’s events – not to mention several humorous references to Frozen‘s despicable villain, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles – in this movie, despite never actually appearing in person, he gets mocked, made fun of, and turned into a snowball. But at the same time, Frozen 2 reaches Pixar levels of sad – as in, there are three heart-crushing scenes, all of which we will discuss in the spoiler review.

What about the music? What is most shocking about the film’s soundtrack is that, while the songs vary greatly in style, they are all consistently great. Elsa gets a very gay, very sparkly anthem of empowerment – it’s amazing. Kristoff has his very own melodramatic, angsty 80’s rock ballad with reindeer backup singers – it’s weirdly wonderful. There’s no “Fixer-Upper” on this soundtrack: almost every song feels like it has the potential to be a new “Let It Go”. Strangely, though, it is “Into The Unknown”, the film’s most hyped-up musical number, that made possibly the least impression on me in the theater.

In conclusion, Frozen 2 is very much worth seeing – it’s a movie full of heart and real emotional weight that arrives at a time when Disney and all film studios are under attack for supposedly worshiping the past, never making original content, blindly rebooting, remaking and redoing dead franchises without concern for art form. Frozen 2 is an ode to progress and substantive change, and a clear message to embrace the future with open arms. If you can take a moment in between musical numbers to go into the unknown on a spiritual journey of your own, I encourage you to do so.

"Frozen 2" Non-Spoiler Review! 3 — animationmagazine.net

But…if you’re just there for the music, that’s great too, and I don’t blame you. Let It Go, dear reader, and may you have a wonderful time at the movies. Just don’t expect to be entirely unchanged by your film-going experience.

Movie Rating: 9.5/10

November 20, 2019

“Joker 2” Drama Turns Nasty – What’s Going On?

Yikes. The movie that has been sparking universal controversy and uproar since its release in early October is still stirring up trouble, this time leading to a feud between two of the biggest entertainment news trades in Hollywood – quite appropriate for a movie about the Clown Prince of Crime.

This time, the inciting incident was an article by The Hollywood Reporter, which claimed that The Joker director Todd Phillips is looking to team up with star Joaquin Phoenix once again to film a sequel to the R-rated villain origin story which grossed over a billion dollars at the box office and is gaining slow traction in awards season races. Phillips and Phoenix had both previously discussed not wanting to do a sequel because it would ruin their artistic vision – that seems to have changed when the film crossed into the billion-dollar club, landing Phillips himself a paycheck somewhere in the range of $100 million. THR added that on October 7th, mere days after Joker opened in theaters, Phillips met with Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich and pitched an idea that Emmerich rejected: that Phillips should be given the ability to develop origin movies for an entire rogue’s gallery of classic DC Comics villains (THR specifically referenced the dictatorial Darkseid and power-hungry businessman Lex Luthor as possible examples). While Phillips’ idea appears to have been a bit too extreme for the studio, it is said he walked away from the meeting with the rights to “at least one other DC story”. All this seems pretty standard so far: it’s unsurprising that Phillips would want to direct a sequel to the smash hit, and it’s not even all that surprising that he thinks he’s entitled to take over the entire DC villain roster.

But soon after, Deadline fired back with a vicious piece that used the words “great click bait” to refer to the Hollywood Reporter’s earlier story. According to their sources, no Joker sequel is being discussed at this stage. And that’s not all. I quote: “the linchpin of today’s THR story – that a week after Joker’s opening, Phillips met with Warner Bros film chief Toby Emmerich to pitch a portfolio of DC character origin stories – is as flat false as earlier stories that Martin Scorsese contemplated directing the first Joker”.

Okay, this isn’t really relevant to the rest of the story, but this is what Martin Scorsese had to say about those “flat as false” rumors, in an interview with Variety earlier this month: “[I] thought about it a lot over the past four years…I decided that I didn’t have the time to do it”. Marty went on to complain about how he didn’t want to direct it because he didn’t feel comfortable making a movie about a comic book character, etc, etc, you’ve heard all that before, I’m sure.

Leaving aside that glaring error in Deadline’s reporting, the lack of professionalism from the respected trade is shocking and dismaying – is this the malevolent work of the Joker at play, turning Hollywood news agencies against each other? Is it an act of pettiness on Deadline’s part, because THR broke the story first? The bigger, more important question is: which one is actually right? Is Todd Phillips going to be placed in charge of the DC’s villains department or not? Will we have to endure several more years of Joker-induced chaos?

Not long after Deadline’s article came out, poor little Variety showed up with their own piece, which is basically being ignored by everybody: in it, they say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle: Phillips has met with Toby Emmerich to discuss a sequel to Joker, but no other DC villain origin films are being planned, and Phillips would be too busy directing Joker 2 (if true) to direct those other films, anyway.

As of right now, that’s all I have to say about this strangely chaotic story. But I’m posing the question to you, dear readers: what’s really going on at the DC right now, and who’s directing what? Would you be interested in a Joker sequel? Would you be interested in origin stories for other DC villains? Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below!