Frozen for challenge

[igenlode]

Last night I finally started work on my entry for the latest Writers Anonymous Challenge -- the challenge this time being that everyone is given the same opening line and has to develop their story from that. Or, in the case of many of us (including me), has to try to shoe-horn that into the start of the story they want to tell...

I decided it would be an opportunity to develop the idea that struck me back when I saw "Frozen"; that the entire plot would be much more consistent as well as more emotionally interesting if, instead of delivering the Insanely Over-Complicated Face-Heel Turn of Evil we simply take pretty much everything that Prince Hans said and did at face value. Write an ending where he acts pretty much exactly as he does in canon, but he does so not because he has been hoping to assassinate Elsa from the start (despite actually defending her in practice multiple times...) but because when he sees the chance of the throne there right in front of him, he is too weak to resist the ambition of his own worse self. Hans as understandable opportunist rather than cardboard villain.

Comments

[watervole]

That makes a lot of sense.

[betweensunandmoon]

I'm on board with this. Even back in my Frozen-is-the-best-movie-ever days when it first came out, I thought that plot twist was cheap and lazy.

[igenlode]

*laugh*

Actually (when trying to avoid spoilers when checking on Hans's nose -- don't ask...) I just came across this, which is the perfect explanation :-P

(He points out every one of the things that I'd already noted as making absolutely no sense, and then comes up with a rationale for Hans's actions and timing that does make sense :-D)

I'm not going to use it, because, well, it wasn't my idea. But it isn't half elegant...

[sallymn]

I've actually never seen Frozen (too many obsessed small relatives turned me off Disney princesses for life) but that does make good sense.

[igenlode]

I'm not sure when the 'princess' thing started (films like 'Bambi' and 'Pinocchio', 'The Jungle Book' or even the recent 'Lion King' certainly weren't aimed at attracting an audience of pink-obsessed little girls).

[erimia]

I'd love to read this fic, this plot twist never sat well with me. I don't mind Hans turning out to be not a good guy, but the mustache-twirling villain who is apparently also a great method actor stretches it way too far. I agree with some comments to the article you linked that say it would have been much more interesting (and still compliant with the themes intended by the movie creators) if Hans did kiss Anna but it didn't work because, well, you just don't have True Love (TM) with someone you recently met and don't know well. Hm, maybe having a princess kissed by someone else before her getting together with her True Love (TM) would be way too Subversive and Progressive for this ostensibly Subversive and Progressive story? :D

[igenlode]

I'm slightly worried that 'my' Hans is actually coming across as more psychotic than the original :-D
He's certainly an unreliable narrator along the lines of Thomas Sharpe; whatever his real feelings are he is not going to admit them to himself...

In fact he does kiss her in my scene, as it happens, as something of an afterthought (mainly to prove to himself that it really doesn't work, although obviously he has to be pretty convinced of that beforehand to risk Anna's surviving *after* making his 'confession' to her).

It makes sense as a movie theme that Anna's True Love is for her sister rather than for either of the men she has only known for a day -- much more sense than having her kissed by Kristoff would have done, and I was really afraid they were going to go down that route.