Diving into Disney Characters – Elsa

{Editor’s Note: If you haven’t seen the Disney movie Frozen, yet, check out this link for a spoiler-free review, but stay away from this post — there are spoilers here that may ruin it for you!}

The Disney movie Frozen has been one that has really reached deep into me — so much so that I have decided to explore some of the incredible details for the characters of the movie.  To start us off, I’m taking a look at all of the many layers of Elsa, Queen of Arendelle.

Elsa as a character is truly one that has many different levels to it.  In the beginning there is Elsa the free spirited one, who loves playing with her sister — until the accident.  As soon as that happened, Elsa immediately began to live in fear of the power of her magic — her curse, she called it, even though she was born with it.

Continuing on, we find Elsa finding her magic harder and harder to control, and her fear of it became a driving factor in her decisions.  You can see it on her face — she is withdrawn, scared, timid, not at all the girl she was when she was younger.  The words of Pabbie, the Troll King, were coming true when he indicated that fear would cause her magic to be very dangerous.

The worst of her fears are realized when Elsa and Anna’s parents leave for a two-week trip — a trip that would ultimately lead to their loss, and the girls would be forced to grow up even faster than they should have had to.  It is after the funeral of the King and Queen that you see a glimpse into the mind of Elsa as she sits in her room, with her magic freezing the room around her, as she cries uncontrollably at the loss of her parents.

Elsa’s emotions would range from fear to anger to joy at being able to use her powers and learn how to control them without fear of harming anyone before being brought back down to earth at learning that she hasn’t controlled anything — and that the entire Kingdom is at threat because of the winter.

Then, in the end, when all appears lost, the one thing that can save both Anna and Elsa happens — true love heals Anna, and it also teaches Elsa exactly what is needed to control her power, and also to remove the freeze from the land.

I think that the character of Elsa in the Disney movie Frozen may be one of the deepest characters that I’ve ever seen in an animated feature.  Elsa shows us that conflicting emotions range rampant — and if we take a look at Elsa, we can also see a bit of ourselves perhaps in her — perhaps without the magic, though. :)

I felt a deep sadness for all that Elsa had to go through during the movie, but at the end, I felt renewed, hopeful even, that Elsa had learned the lessons she needed to learn in order to control the beautiful magic within her.

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