Yellowstonetim
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 22, 2013
"Hans! He was great. A nice guy, when leading in Anna's absence, a good guy (because he loves being in power) but greedy and selfish in the end."
Hans wasn't a great villain, he was a realistic person. He was the 13th son of the King in a society that is all about position and power. 13th! He sings to Anna about how much he wants his own place! He so wants to be a King, but his brothers probably always let him know he would never even be dog catcher. Like real villains, he isn't all bad and is more complex. He probably wants to be a good King. Yes he is fake to some degree. But he probably was having a blast being left in charge of Arendelle! He was in charge of something, FINALLY! In fact, maybe he didn't even plan the murder until he got to taste this wonderful feeling of being in charge of a kingdom. And note how he ordered them not to harm Elsa. Either he is halfway decent and gives into temptation when he finds Anna smitten, or he is one dastardly calculating bad guy.
Either way, it is important that he turn bad and has his character development undone! There is a major point in this movie about not marrying someone you just met. Why? Because the world is full of Hans's whom are wonderful when you meet them but turn out to be real life villains! This lesson would have no punch without Hans being exactly who he was. What a great lesson for kids!
I couldn't disagree more about Kristoff. I thought he was wonderful. He was a partner to Anna. He deferred to her at times, led her at times, was strong, helpful, argumentative. Not one dimensional at all! In fact, he was a perfect match for Anna, and I do mean match. Marriage should be a partnership and these two learned to work together without one being subservient to the other while having different personalities. That is what a real relationship - a real healthy relationship - is like. And I disagree with the bold. She spent way more time actually doing things, working, making decisions, etc. with Kristoff. She only sang with Hans.
I don't mind the trolls, but they did seem out-of-place somehow.
I better keep my mouth shut about Lion King. It is my daughters favorite, too. But I don't think it is all that great. I think Frozen is WAY better.
Happy off topic story: Took my now adult daughter to see Lion King 3D since Lion King was her "THE Disney movie of her childhood." We sat in a row of Dad's with little daughters. Little girl next to Rachel told her she was here with her Daddy. Rachel, says, "I'm here with my Daddy, too!" One of those great moments. We had fun. Our whole family are Disney & movie fans.
Hmm. That's another very interesting take! I would, however, respectfully disagree.
The moment they revealed Hans was evil, they undid most of his past character development. Because all of his interaction with Anna was revealed to be a sham, as he was playing her, we really don't know who he is. Even the character traits he showed during his time "wooing" Anna were limp at best.
He was shown as being:
*Sweet... very sweet ("nice" falls into this category as well)
*Hungry for love (that's the vibe he gave with his whole brothers story, and the fact that he proposed to Anna so quickly... and even the title of their love song pointed toward this)
*Romantic?
*Funny?
The last two are me grasping at straws, because I honestly can't remember any other character traits he displayed.
The scene where he was helping the people of Arendelle by giving out supplies also seemed fake to me. It could've been because he liked being in charge/being in a position of power, but I'm more inclined to believe that he did it solely so that no one would be suspicious of his intentions or anything like that, and so that his future subjects would already like him when he took over because of how kind he was to them during those rough times. Or something like that.
I don't think we can explain those actions away by simply being power hungry and enjoying being in command.
I could be wrong and Hans might be deeper than all this... but I honestly think he was just putting on a front.
And what does that mean? It means Hans is left with only:
*Deceptiveness/manipulativeness
*Evilness/power-hunger/greed
Wonderful! We have no explanation for why he's like this, just that he wants power and he's evil. Which isn't a cliché at all.
Also, why the heck did they have to make him evil?! I'll admit that I thought the plot twist was pretty cool, but it also was such a cheap move! Many people who saw Frozen thought it was ridiculous that they had to go and solve the Anna-Kristoff-Hans love triangle by making Hans the villain, and I have to kind of agree. It did come off just like a quick and easy way to solve Anna's love woes, and also, a cheap way to give the film a villain (which was weird because the movie had made a big deal about having "no villain" since Elsa wasn't actually evil). It would've been nice if they hadn't given us a villain, considering pretty much every Disney movie in existence has one.
And you know what else? Instead of giving us a great villain with real depth and characterization, they give us Hans. Hans. He's like the biggest ripoff from the Cliché Movie Villain Handbook out there. The only thing that made him original was that in the beginning of the movie, they make us think he's one of the "good guys." But that was just him being a power-hungry, manipulative, evil...
Eh, you get my point.
Hans wasn't a great villain, he was a realistic person. He was the 13th son of the King in a society that is all about position and power. 13th! He sings to Anna about how much he wants his own place! He so wants to be a King, but his brothers probably always let him know he would never even be dog catcher. Like real villains, he isn't all bad and is more complex. He probably wants to be a good King. Yes he is fake to some degree. But he probably was having a blast being left in charge of Arendelle! He was in charge of something, FINALLY! In fact, maybe he didn't even plan the murder until he got to taste this wonderful feeling of being in charge of a kingdom. And note how he ordered them not to harm Elsa. Either he is halfway decent and gives into temptation when he finds Anna smitten, or he is one dastardly calculating bad guy.
Either way, it is important that he turn bad and has his character development undone! There is a major point in this movie about not marrying someone you just met. Why? Because the world is full of Hans's whom are wonderful when you meet them but turn out to be real life villains! This lesson would have no punch without Hans being exactly who he was. What a great lesson for kids!
Also, since this thread was originally about Maleficent before I came along and ruined it, I feel I should note that everything I just said about Hans could also be applied to Stefan. The only real difference between the two is that Stefan spiraled into madness and showed at least something resembling love (maybe obsession? a territorial devotion?) for his daughter Aurora. Stefan is more complex than Hans, to be sure, but he definitely shares some of Hans's clichés and flaws as a character.
Any time you have a guy turn bad that can be called a cliché, just like any time you have a hero. Both are still needed for the story.
Okay, let me quote once again what you said about Kristoff, this time in bold:
Those three traits would indeed be interesting if those were just the beginning of Kristoff's development. The problem is, Kristoff's development and traits begin and end at "nice," "helpful," and "not a wimp." If that is all Kristoff is as a character, he's pretty dull.
Yes, Kristoff was very helpful to Anna. He was also pretty sweet to her. He was also not a wimp in the slightest. But that's it. Seriously, in a movie that has a character as complex and dimensional as Elsa, how can there possibly be a character as weak as Kristoff?!
Normally, I would say that they had time constraints to deal with, and it's a kids movie so we shouldn't be expecting too much, blah blah blah... but I'm not even going to say that here, because Kristoff's lack of characterization is just inexcusable to me.
The older princess movies, like Snow White or Cinderella, show a notable lack of characterization. I still love them, and you can pardon these sins as being a flaw of the era in which they came out rather than a flaw of the writers. Back then, women were still expected to be somewhat submissive and pretty passive, so it only makes sense movies would reflect that. Sad, yes, but understandable.
Nowadays, people have a much higher standard for the characterization in Disney movies. We've been spoiled with films like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan (just to name a few). Yet Kristoff, who's really a pretty lackluster character, particularly when compared to Elsa or even Anna, slips through the cracks somehow. No one even notices that Anna's main love interest has all of three character traits and not much else. It was one of my biggest pet peeves about Frozen... and I liked Kristoff. I did. I just thought he was so completely underdeveloped, which wouldn't have been too bad if, you know, he was a minor character... but he wasn't.
I will give him props for being somehow likable despite that, though.
That said, I found myself hoping Anna would end up with Hans (who, of course, isn't that developed either, but compared to Kristoff...). I was pretty disappointed when she ended up with Kristoff, honestly. Even though they'd known each other for a shorter span of time, Anna had actually learned more about Hans and his personality than she did about Kristoff during the whole time they spent together. (Not that she learned that much about Hans, and yes, of course it was all lies... but if it weren't, at least she had an idea of who he was. With Kristoff, the deepest thing she knew about him was that he was raised by trolls.)
To me, Kristoff is only a small step up from the princes of the old Disney films, whom we knew next to nothing about but were still supposed to want the princess to end up with (Prince Charming, Prince Philip, the prince from Snow White, etc.). Kristoff has more depth than they do, of course, but he's still pretty bland on the scale of things. Yet somehow, we're supposed to want Anna to choose him over Hans -- who, up to the whole evil plot twist thing, had seemed like a much better and more reliable pick.
That's a wonderful point, and very true. For example, you mentioned Timon and Pumba above and I very nearly went into quipping about their lack of development as characters (yes, they're both pretty original characters and Pumba shows a bit of unexplained dimension, but as a whole they struck me as mostly there for comic relief and not much else), but the truth is, I couldn't because I love The Lion King so much that it's hard to really criticize anything about it. Even Timon and Pumba.
I still love movies if they have good story lines or characters or whatever, but I'm also acutely aware of flaws. That's the reason I consider Frozen to be an awesome movie, and Maleficent to be really good, but still write long posts like these critiquing every single thing wrong with them.
(And this is just me criticizing Frozen's character development. If I were to talk about its plot, originality, and other such major things -- which I wouldn't, as this thread's not even about Frozen and that would be just plain topic-hijacking -- I could easily go on and on about its dead-parents cliché, Elsa's unexplained powers, those annoying trolls which were really just thinly-veiled deus ex machina, the fact that it relied way too much on its admittedly amazing music, the cheesy and cliché "act of true love" thing, the predictability... et cetera, et cetera. )
I couldn't disagree more about Kristoff. I thought he was wonderful. He was a partner to Anna. He deferred to her at times, led her at times, was strong, helpful, argumentative. Not one dimensional at all! In fact, he was a perfect match for Anna, and I do mean match. Marriage should be a partnership and these two learned to work together without one being subservient to the other while having different personalities. That is what a real relationship - a real healthy relationship - is like. And I disagree with the bold. She spent way more time actually doing things, working, making decisions, etc. with Kristoff. She only sang with Hans.
I don't mind the trolls, but they did seem out-of-place somehow.
I better keep my mouth shut about Lion King. It is my daughters favorite, too. But I don't think it is all that great. I think Frozen is WAY better.
Happy off topic story: Took my now adult daughter to see Lion King 3D since Lion King was her "THE Disney movie of her childhood." We sat in a row of Dad's with little daughters. Little girl next to Rachel told her she was here with her Daddy. Rachel, says, "I'm here with my Daddy, too!" One of those great moments. We had fun. Our whole family are Disney & movie fans.