Five Ways ‘Captain Marvel’ Is Marvel’s Version of ‘Frozen’
The following post contains some SPOILERS for Captain Marvel, and also for Frozen. If you didn’t know that Elsa sings a song called “Let It Go,” watch out!
Maybe it’s because my daughter watches Frozen on a constant loop, performs the soundtrack as a one-woman show, dresses like Elsa whenever we let her, and pretends to have ice powers when her baby sister pisses her off, so the movie is on my mind all the time whether I want it to be or not. But one thought kept occurring to me while I was watching Captain Marvel:
“This movie is basically the Marvel version of Frozen.”
Again, some of this may be because I’ve now seen Frozen so many times I’ve begun having actual nightmares about Olaf. (He tries to make me a snowman too. It’s very troubling.) But even if you don’t have a preschooler forcing the adventures of Anna and Elsa into your eyeholes all day and night, you might recognize some very similar story beats, character types, and messages in Marvel’s latest blockbuster. I don’t have any knowledge of anyone at Marvel willfully making Captain Marvel into a hero in the Elsa mold. But it would make a lot of sense for the studio to look to one of its sister company’s most successful films — featuring a character that has become a cultural touchstone and a strong role model for a generation of young women — when shaping its first solo female hero.
If you are skeptical of my comparison, there’s no need to let it go. For the first time in forever, I’ve made a list of some of the most striking similarities between the two films:
Gallery — The Best Disney Villains of All Time: