After all this time Disney said they're not planning on making a sequel to Frozen, they have just announced a sequel in a matter of months. And, of course, I'm really skeptical.
During their annual shareholders meeting, Disney officially announced that Frozen 2 is in development. Of course, this excited many people, but also disappointed a lot of people. I, for one, am feeling very mixed about it.
This is a sequel that is clearly being made because of how well the film did in the box office. Frozen is a film that Disney apparently didn't even have faith in. Do you think they would make a sequel to a film they had no faith in? Of course not! But, then it became the highest grossing animated films of all time and the 5th highest grossing film of all time and Disney's entire view on the film changed.
I just need to get one thing out of the way here: Frozen doesn't deserve a sequel. Not in the slightest! You know what recent Disney films truly do deserve sequels? Big Hero 6 and Wreck-it Ralph. These movies are not only better than Frozen in my opinion, but also have so much more potential for sequels than Frozen does. Look, I think Frozen was a great movie, but it wasn't as good as Wreck-it Ralph and Big Hero 6 and certainly not as sequel worthy.
There's one thing that has me particularly worried about this film. I really, really don't want it to cater to those obsessive Frozen fans. You fellow animation fans know who I'm talking about here. The ones who claim to be "Disney fans" but don't know anything about Disney and yet they think that Frozen, along with The Lion King (and other 90s Disney films) are the best things in world because it "reminds them of their childhood." If you cringed when reading this description, good! Because I cringe whenever I see someone like that on the internet! And believe me, they're everywhere! Anyways, I'm worried that this movie will be little more than something that would seem like a horrendous fan-fiction made by those kinds of people brought to the screen. With Disney (and animation as a whole) in this new golden age, I know I shouldn't be worried about that kind of thing, but Frozen has become such a phenomenon, with obsessive fans running to the internet to write their next Frozen fan-fiction or sing their next cover of Let it Go or simply just talking about the film nonstop. These fans have become so uproarious that I wouldn't be surprised if they were to influence the production of the film in some way.
There is one good thing to come out of this news though, and that would be that Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, who directed the original film, are coming back to direct this sequel so I guess there's some hope there. But I hope the directors decide to just do their own thing when making this film, not try to please the very fans who have made Frozen come off as overrated. In fact, I'd probably like Frozen a bit more if it wasn't for those fans who don't shut up about it! I mean, as flawed a film as it is, despite how rushed the production was, it's still a great film nonetheless.
There is actually a very small amount of sequels in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon, with the only two being The Rescuers Down Under and Winnie the Pooh. Walt certainly wasn't too fond of the idea of sequels ever since his sequels to his short film The Three Little Pigs failed to live up to the success of the original. "You can't top pigs with pigs" Walt would commonly say.
Any sequels to Disney films were made by DisneyToon and were Direct-to-Video, until John Lasseter (thankfully) stepped in and stopped production of any Direct-to-Video films. Now they are commonly known for making the Planes movies and the Tinkerbell movies. Anyways, this had me thinking. What if Disney were to just pass Frozen 2 down to DisneyToon? This actually isn't a bad idea if you think about it. If it were given to DisneyToon, then it would lower the risk of disappointed fans since DisneyToon sequels aren't really counted among people. But then again, I think it ensures the film being of the best quality if it's done by Walt Disney Animation Studios. I'm just throwing possible ideas around, here.
Also, who knows? If this film isn't rushed like Frozen was, maybe it will actually improve upon the original film! If Disney knows what they're doing and learned from the scheduling mistakes they made with Frozen, the earliest they would release this movie would be some time in 2018.
At the moment, I am very skeptical of Frozen 2. But I think that if Disney plays their cards right, it could end up being just as good, if not better than the original film. We'll just have to wait and see!
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