Frozen Vs. Rise of the Guardians

"I’m tagging ROTG and Frozen. Feel free to tag more if you see thisproblem often. Cause I want people to maybe answer me this:

Why are we competing?

I mean, I’ve seen posts recently by the ROTG fandom like: “everyone is raving about frozen’s detail I mean remember ROTG guys it’s good too”

And from frozen: “and Elsa has more of a personality than Jack Frost, more character depth blah blah blah”

Again

Why the hell are we competing?

Is there any point? Yeah, there are awards, but really? Are we going to bash movies that hundreds of people worked so hard to make? Why can’t we appreciate all of the movies?

I want to see more “Both movies have so much detail, congrats to both…”

The movies have characters that are very alike, not only in powers, but in personality. Jack wanted so much to be free, free from his solitude. Elsa wanted to be free to be herself, not be shamed by the monster she thinks she is. They both panic easily and make bad decisions sometimes. And they are both so lovable.

Because they are so lovable, can’t we do just that, just love both of the characters, instead of competing for who is best?

Let me explain something to you.

There is a very fundamental difference in the way these two films were treated by the media, and this treatment was based not on the quality of the films themselves, but on the brand name and the marketing which surrounded them. 

Rise of the Guardians was a very unfortunate film. Poor marketing, poor release date, and virtually no hype to boost it’s reputation pre-release. When Rise of the Guardians finally did come out, it showed poor numbers for it’s opening weekend (it came out the same weekend as Skyfall and Breaking Dawn Part 2, both very highly anticipated films) and in Hollywood, this almost always has a film labeled as a “flop”. Once a film receives this label, regardless of how good it is, it becomes a target. Critics absolutely slammed Rise of the Guardians  with one bad review after another. They went into the film having already decided that they would be writing a negative review. 

This landed Rise of the Guardians with a bad reputation pretty early on. Anyone who might have considered the film would have changed their minds upon seeing all those bad reviews. Why waste their money on a bad movie? And so Rise of the Guardians, which was already doing poorly in the box office, continued to suffer financially because bad reviews were turning people away from it. 

And the fandom tried so very hard to turn things around. I remember seeing post after post urging people to see Rise of the Guardians multiple times in order to boost box office intake. To convince our friends and family to see it too, more than once if possible. We were desperate, and we tried so hard, but inevitably we had to sit back and watch the franchise we loved so much crash and burn before it had the chance to get off the ground.

When the Golden Globes came around. Guardians lost. When the Oscars came around. Guardians was denied so much as a nomination. 

For months after we waited with bated breath to see if any news might come of a possible sequel. If, by some chance, our efforts had paid off. What we got was article after article damning Rise of the Guardians as “the worst DreamWorks film”. As the film that almost ran DreamWorks into the ground. As the big fat failure that got 300 people laid off. It was heartbreaking. Especially for those of us, like myself, who owed so much to Rise of the Guardians. 

And then there’s Joyce. William Joyce invented the story of the Guardians for his children, one of whom (Mary Katherine, who died of a brain tumor two years before the film was finished) DreamWorks would dedicate the film to. I can’t imagine what if must have been like for Joyce, for everyone who worked on this beautiful film, to pour so much of their time, effort, and creativity into something and watch it get ripped apart by the media. 

Rise of the Guardians was life changing for many people, and received little to no recognition. It was slammed by critics, denounced by the media, and was blamed for a financial disaster. 

Now Frozen comes along. Frozen was probably one of the most widely hyped animated films I’ve seen in a long time. The film hadn’t come out yet and already it was being paraded around as “a masterpiece” “the greatest disney film since Lion king” “the best animated movie of the year” etc, etc. 

When the film his theaters, critics raved that it was the best thing they’d ever seen. And do you know why? Not because Frozen was a good movie. No, that didn’t matter. Regardless of wether or not Frozen was any good, critics knew they would be giving positive reviews. Why? Because Frozen is a Disney property. People flocked to the theaters to see Frozen. Why? Because it’s Disney. Disney is familiar. Everyone know’s Disney. 

And so now Frozen has made several hundred million worldwide, it has it’s own line of merchandise, it’s been secured a Broadway show, and there’s even talk of a sequel. 

I guarantee you that if Frozen belonged to another, smaller, less powerful studio, this movie would not have made as much money as it did. And it certainly wouldn’t have landed so many positive reviews. There would be no Broadway show, no sequel, and it certainly would not have won the Golden Globe.

But because Frozen is a Disney film, everyone gives it special treatment. Frozen didn’t earn any of it’s success. Frozen was successful, because it belongs to Disney, and Disney has a chokehold on the industry. 

So now that Frozen has been stealing our jokes and has commandeered Jack Frost to be Elsa’s pretty little boy toy, I think it’s perfectly fair for the RotG fandom to be defensive. I think we have every right to complain about Frozen. Frozen was given everything by merit of the fact that it belongs to a popular brand. RotG was denied everything because of some very unfortunate timing."

 


This is a post from Tumblr regarding the mess of jealous rage that has become the Rise of the Guardians-fandom, me included. And this is explaining exactly why most of us are acting as defensive as we are about this film. I'm not saying that it's right to behave like we do about Frozen I'm just saying that there's a very good reason behind it. 

The ROTG-fandom has struggled and struggled and struggled so hard and we continue to do so because we care so much about the film and we want it to be successful. It has gotten to a point were we, at least I, don't even care about a sequel, we just want it to get all the success it deserves. Peter Ramsey, William Joyce and everyone else who worked on it deserves it so much! 

I've said this before at another point and I'll say it again. The reason I have such a problem with Frozen and more specifically it taking over tumblr is because Frozen got attention it didn't deserve while Rotg got none of the attention it DID deserve. So yeah I'm getting defensive. I'm even getting defensive about Jelsa (the Jack and Elsa ship) because for me it feels like "Nope, Jack Frost is ours, take someone else. You've already taken so much else from us". It's not even that I don't like Frozen because I do like Frozen and I like Elsa but it just feels like they keep taking things we've struggled to get, and that with ease. 

I even remember with the whole American snowchaos and people were blaming it on Elsa and us in the ROTG fandom got all defensive about it because America is Jack's fucking home.(plus it's his fucking job to spread snow around). xD It's not even close to Norway. I don't think her powers stretch that far. It's ridiculous, but yeah.. we're pretty much a pile of jealous rage right now xD 

On another note, it breaks my heart to hear that Rotg got so slammed. I knew it was unsuccessful but I had no idea it was that bad. Now I'm just glad I didn't read any reviews before I saw it, or that I didn't see the trailer. But I did wish that more people would've talked about it when it came out because I completely missed that it was even showing at the cinema. I saw tons about Wreck-it Ralph but nothing about ROTG: I only saw it because I saw pictures and Gifs of Jack Frost on tumblr and thought. "Huh that's some pretty nice animation, I have to check that out" and damn am I glad I did. 




Kommentera inlägget här:

Namn:
Kom ihåg mig?

E-postadress: (publiceras ej)

URL/Bloggadress:

Kommentar:

Trackback