Disney didn't create the marketing concept of the "Disney Princess" until the classics I mentioned (
Snow White,
Cinderella,
Sleeping Beauty, even
Beauty and the Beast and
Little Mermaid) were in the books. They didn't try to make movies about princesses in those days, they made movies about fairy tales. Somebody looked up one day and realized that about a half dozen of their characters could successfully be marketed together as the princesses. Unfortunately that put some undue pressure on the movie studio.
Ever since they started
trying to make princess movies, they've struggled to hit one cleanly out of the park. I thought The
Princess and the Frog was a wonderful movie, but it didn't succeed financially and Disney realized times had changed; boys didn't go to princess movies with so many alternatives to choose from. I remember seeing it in a half filled theater while
Alvin & the Chipmunks, the Squeaquel was a packed house next door. Disney retrofitted their in-progress take on Rapunzel to try to appeal to boys as well, and the "disguising" of princess movies began with
Tangled. It did better but I think it suffered a bit from all the redirection it kept getting in the disguising effort.
I think they've found their way now with
Frozen. They shed traditional roles of the princess instead of trying to conform to them (Pixar did this with
Brave as well, but it was unconventional, wasn't a musical and didn't go for a Disney vibe).
I was thinking to myself watching Anna early in the movie that Disney had made their own princess out of Lucille Ball (in fact, she started stuffing chocolates double-fisted into her mouth right after my epiphany). She could easily have stood as the solitary protagonist, but gratefully she didn't since her relationship with her sister was the true center of the movie.
Superheroes have a small interest for me.
The comic book/superhero fan in me realized early on that Elsa could've been the first X-Man! Maybe a distant and far more powerful ancestor of
Iceman, or maybe Pixar's own Frozone. And I do mean powerful; the hair stood up on the back of my neck
when she raised her castle like
Dr. Manhattan on Mars. She could hold her own with some of the most immense fictional characters ever created. It wouldn't be very princess like, but I'd love to see her lay waste to an invading army coming after her kingdom.
The Mickey short was icing on the cake. I don't often recommend that movies be seen in 3D (I think since
Avatar there's been only 1 or 2 that I thought benefited from it) but I would see
Frozen in 3D for
Get a Horse alone.
