Saturday, January 13, 2018

Snow Queen 2012 Movie Review Analysis w/ Spoilers




From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.

Today I'll be reviewing the movie Snow Queen released in 2012.

Starring:
Anna Shurochkina, Ivan Okhlobystin, Galina Tyunina

Directed by:
Vladlen Barbe (as Vlad Barbe and Maksim Sveshnikov

Genre:
Animation, Adventure, Family

Rating:
PG

Budget:
$7,000,000 (estimated)

IMDb Rating is currently:
5.4


The Synopsis is:
This the 2012 adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen just prior to Disney’s version, “Frozen” released in 2013.

This film is about a young orphan by the name of Gerda who meets her long lost brother, Kai, but then loses him in the same day to the Snow Queen.  She sets out on an adventure with her ferret, Luta and a troll by the name of Orm, to reunite with Kai.


Story:
As I mentioned before, the story is adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen by writer, Vadim Sveshnikov.

To be quite honest, it’s one of my favorite tales from Hans Christian Andersen.  I’ve always loved the Snow Queen for the ice magic, the adventure,  the lore, and the mystery  of queen herself.

This film sticks to many of the story essentials from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale.  There is a Snow Queen that is mostly evil, Gerda goes on an adventure to find Kai, there is lots and lots of magic, there is a mirror, and there is a happy ending.

The changes between the original story and the film were all very exciting additions to me and a delight to watch.  In many instances where you expected it to start to follow the original story line, it veered, and did so well in my opinion.

In the transfer of language, some of the dialogue is a where the film felt a little odd.

They mostly figured out ways to make the story and mouth movements match up most of the time in a creative way.  But unfortunately, it doesn’t always make sense naturally.

Strangely enough, this version of the Snow Queen is reminiscent of the animated 1995 version were, Kai and Gerda are siblings in that film and trolls serve the queen.


Pacing:
At an hour and 20 minute it's pretty efficient.  Not a lot of fat or bloated moments.  But there are times when the film tries to  provide comedy, which is the film’s most severe detriment.  The adventure also slows down somewhere in the middle, when it tries to stick to the original Hans Christian Andersen story too closely.


Challenge:
The challenge is the snow queen and her cold siege of the land.  But she is not just a coldhearted villain.

Her origins began as a magical child by the name of Irma, who was bullied for being different.  While in the magical Amada caves she made a wish to turn her bullies cold, but instead, she turned cold as did the rest of the world physically.

And from that she became the Snow Queen.  She is a worthy adversary proving she is a real threat when she murders Gerda's parents right in the beginning of the film.

It sets the precedence that the Snow Queen is not playing around and there are high stakes. People can actually die in this children’s film.

And it’s very well done, setting the stage for the Snow Queens desire to secure the one thing that could destroy her, Gerda’s father’s magic mirror.

The Snow Queen is a delicious wonderfully developed villain relishing every moment she is on screen.  Because it turns out that the Snow Queen is a manifestation of Irma’s feelings, seeing herself in the magic mirror reveals who she really is and releases her from the magic of the Amada caves.

I absolutely love the depth they massaged in the story for her character.


Empathy:
The main character in the film is Gerda, who is an orphan with a white ferret, Luta, and a mirror with the words, Vegard inscribed.  It is the name of her father, who created the mirror.

The Snow Queen decides she has to find and kill Vegard’s offspring that has the power to destroy her.  Fortunately, she only thinks that there is one child to survive Vegard, but actually there were two children, Gerda and Kai.  And Gerda is the special one here.

As I described before, all in one day Gerda reunites her brother Kai and loses him to the Snow Queen.

As a character, Gerda seems to be a good hearted person, with a mission to find Kai as in the original story. To be honest, Gerda is not a dynamic character, except to be the vehicle for the audience to experience the adventure.  But she’s so cute, adorable, and a little stubborn.  I like her a lot.

What also helps us like Gerda is her relationship with a troll by the name of Orm.  Every once in awhile, he takes on the form of a weasel as to conceal that he is a troll.

Initially, he begins the story and most of the film being a servant of the Snow Queen.  His mission was to find Vegard’s child and bring him or her to the Snow Queen.  After 13 years, he does send Kai to the queen.  But Gerda is the second child on a mission to rescue Kai.  Completely by accident, he is playing both sides.

You can see his character arc on screen of being a third party to all of this and just doing what he’s told, to wanting to protect Gerda and Luta by the end.   It’s a slow process, but we see how their relationship grows.

In the beginning of the film, Orm says in passing that he can transform into a bear if he wants, and as the audience, you don’t believe him because he’s so fearful and untrustworthy.

Once near the middle of the story when the trio are being chased by pirates, Gerda says in passing, “This would be a great time for you to turn into a bear.”  and he doesn’t.  At that point you figure, he must have been lying earlier.

It was a nice surprise that when he sees Luta in trouble, this finally inspires him to transform into the bear.  In his physical transformation we see his emotional transformation, wherein as a coward he is the weasel and now that he has become the courageous hero he transforms into the bear.

He is one of my favorite characters in this story.


Technical:
The film was produced by Wizart's Animation in Voronezh, Russia and took 3 years to complete in 2012.

The character design is either a hit or miss.  Many of the characters with smaller parts were really unattractive and designed with harsh exaggerations.  They don’t always work on screen.  But they make up for it in giving the characters great expressions.

There were a lot of recycled faces in the animation pool and those are the details that really hurt the experience of the production.

However, the main characters really shine.  They have stiff movements at times, but the filmmakers really capture the essence of their personalities.

One such is the Snow Queen.  She is beautifully designed in my opinion and I loved every moment she was on screen.  My only criticism was the unnatural boxy design of her chest.  The rest of the work on her was captivating.

The creature designs were especially wonderful and creative.  Especially, the ice creature designs.

There were lots of detailed design aspects that I felt had a great touch to the finish product.

I thought that the animated world, environments and magical effects were incredible.  I was expecting a lot less detail, but it was pretty good.

There is a story telling piece of exposition that they decided to use to depict in flat animation.  And it was used well to denote past events.  It was also used in the end as well and I enjoyed that alot.


Performances:
I am sure the performances were not easy to manage, but what hurts them is the dialogue and how it didn’t always make sense.

Best:
I really enjoyed how the story wasted no time diving into itself in the beginning.

And one other great scene for me was when Gerda walks into the Snow Queen’s mirror.  That was fantastic.


The ending:
The ending wrapped up pretty quickly and I didn’t mind that at all.  It’s a nice little happy ending with a lot of possibility for a vast future of storytelling.


Wish List:
I wish that they could have simply edited out any scenes that didn’t work with the dialogue.

I also wish that the story would have left out some of the adventures from the original such as the pirates and the royal family.  I think that they veer away from the plot too much and wasn’t interesting enough.


Enjoyment:
I was really surprised that I would enjoy this film at all.  First of all, based on the poster, the film looks like a very bad CGI snow queen adaptation that fell away from the original story written by Hans Christian Andersen catering to a very young audience.

Now it does cater to that audience, but there is a good story in all of this, that has many interesting surprises that occur along the way, that by the end I was stunned by how  good it was.

When I researched reviews on this film, I was very surprised to find so many of them panning the film and claiming that it was a Frozen knock-off, simply because it is based on the same source material, intended for a young audience, released a year apart, and it is also computer animated.

To me, other than those four facts, I think each film can stand on its own for what they are able to bring to the story, characters and animation.  They both took very different approaches, including a 143 million dollar difference.

I dare say that I enjoyed this story more, for keeping the Snow Queen the villain, which has always been my favorite part of the fable.

I think that since Disney’s film was so popular, many people assumed that this film was made in the hopes of banking off the film, when actually it had been made one year before Frozen.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some lame posters for the movie mentioning Frozen.  So someone in marketing it later on, thought it would be a great way to piggyback off of Frozen’s success.  But that was not the intention of the creation.

And the story of the Snow Queen has endured  several adaptations in films, television, staged plays and ballets.  It is especially beloved by many Eastern European countries.  This film was created in Russia with a possible bonus that international audiences might enjoy it after the fact.

In the video market, it did well internationally, inspiring the production of Snow Queen 2, and Snow Queen 3, both of which I have seen and actually enjoyed.  I know, it seems crazy but I did.

Look, this is a movie, kids will probably enjoy.  I won’t lie the production is a mixed bag for more sophisticated audiences because the animation style and the dubbing are so distracting.

Otherwise, I really liked it for the story and what they did with the Snow Queen and Orm.  Those characters had so much depth that they were stuck in my thoughts for a while afterwards and that's the kind of thing I want to feel after I watch a film.


My Rating:
8


That sums up my review.  I hope you liked it.  This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!  Take care movie lovers!  I'm off to the next review!



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