You see, I LOVE Disney villains. Seriously, they are fascinating. Ursula, Jafar, Scar, Mother Gothel, Cruella de Vil, Maleficent, Gaston, Minister Frollo, McLeach...the badder, the better. Even the goofy/non-sinister baddies (Yzma, Hades, Prince John) are marvelously crafted. These characters have depth, cunning, personality! They have incredible songs! You love to hate these villains because they are so evil! They're complex and scary. And you want the hero to defeat them. They are what drives the plot of these stories. Ariel wouldn't have become human without Ursula. Rapunzel would have been a boring old princess without Mother Gothel. Cinderella's rise wouldn't be as sweet without her evil stepmother.
And then there's Frozen. You're given this handsome prince who is kind and attentive and doesn't like bullies and puts his life at risk to save his sweetheart and likes sandwiches for goodness sakes! There's absolutely no indication that he isn't what he says. And then suddenly BHAM! We're supposed to believe that he's evil? What was wrong with the Duke of Weaseltown as a villain? I mean, sure, he probably couldn't belt out Poor Unfortunate Souls, but he was a satisfactory baddie. We knew he wasn't to be trusted. So why the sudden change? As if the writers decided three-fourths of the way through that they didn't actually like what they had but they'd already done so much work that they couldn't rewrite the whole thing?
Hans' betrayal just doesn't make sense to me.
First, there's no indication that he ever had any interaction with Elsa before meeting Anna. So how could he know "no one was getting anywhere with her"? How would he know Anna was desperate for love? They had been locked away in their palace for over a decade. Even the people in their own village didn't know what they looked like. There's no way he could have that information.
Second, that smile he gives her when she runs off to the coronation and leaves him bobbing in the water: totally genuine. If he was plotting her demise, it would have been something else.
Third, and probably the most glaring detail to me, why would he have saved Elsa from the Duke's henchmen if he was planning on killing her later? He had the perfect opportunity right there. Elsa had frozen the kingdom. She attacked the soldiers. The Duke's men could have claimed they killed her trying to save themselves, which would have been true. And if the "saving the kingdom" argument didn't work, he could have pinned the murder on the Duke's men. He could have "attempted to save her" and failed with a perfect alibi. Anna would have married him, he'd become king. But instead he chooses to save her life, only to have to come up with another mysterious death later? I don't buy it.
So how does one make sense of these discrepancies?
Kristoff.
The other guy, you ask? Yes, indeed. See, after Hams saves Elsa, the screen goes black. It's the only time in the whole movie that the screen goes black. My theory is this: that black screen indicates a shift in reality. What happens before is real; everything after is Kristoff's imagination as he's racing off to take her back to Hans.
He has fallen in love with her. He doesn't want her to marry Hans. So he dreams of an alternate future in which Hans reveals he is bad and Anna realizes she's actually in love with Hans. This ending really only makes sense if it's in Kristoff's mind. Why else would Elsa be okay with Anna being in love with Kristoff after only two days when she was so opposed to her being in love with Hans after one day? Why else would Anna be so immediately ready to love Kristoff after having her trust so horribly broken? Why else would Hans reveal his plan in minute detail and then not ensure that she died? Why else would sunken ships rise out of the ice? Why else would Sven fall into the freezing ocean and somehow regain his footing on a random ice floe and then somehow magically get to land when the ice melts? Why else are the Duke and Hans not imprisoned and sentenced to death for attempting to murder the royal family?
For some reason this line of reasoning makes me dislike Frozen less. Perhaps it's because I can enjoy "Love Is An Open Door" again. Perhaps it's because I prefer redheads over blonds. But whatever it is, this is my theory and I'm sticking to it.
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