There are lots of cool, funny, fascinating, or just plain weird stories about Disney’s seemingly omnipresent Frozen. On the financially impressive side, there’s the 16-week reign Frozen enjoyed atop the box office in Japan upon its release there this past February. On the “WTF? Really?” side, there’s the Japanese woman who sought divorce from her husband because he didn’t like the movie (the monster!). On the “I never thought I’d see this in a million years” side, there’s Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam, godfathers of grunge – covering a section of “Let It Go” in concert. Not even Eddie Vedder, that taciturn fella who once looked so angry while singing about a kid named Jeremy shooting himself in front of his classmates (or shooting them, the music video isn’t all that clear), could escape the power of Frozen.
Frozen‘s power continues on, lighting a fire for female-led/targeted films which has now spilled over into higher-than-expected box office totals for Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent and Scarlet Johansson’s Lucy this summer. Now, Sony has a female-led comic book movie in development, Warner Bros. probably has Wonder Woman, and there are whispers of solo films for Black Widow or Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Gamora for Marvel. Okay, Frozen can’t really claim credit for all of that (Gravity and The Heat helped). However, its influence is apparently long-lasting, with its characters set to make their live-action debut in the forthcoming season of ABC’s fairly tales-gone-crazy drama Once Upon a Time.
It was with all of that on my mind that I greeted the following email from Kate Southgate from over at AllFancyDress.com:
I have been working on a cool infographic that illustrates how Disney’s latest sensation, Frozen is connected to all of Disney’s animated feature films. I thought that this could potentially interest you and would love to get your thoughts on it.
What’s this? An angle on Frozen I hadn’t previously considered? Interesting. Disney has been around for seemingly ever, and has grown to now be in ownership of 30 different corporations. At least for as long as I’ve been alive they’ve been the clear major player in feature length animated films, weathering several fallow periods, holding off competition from DreamWorks, and simply gobbling up Pixar when they started out-Disney-ing Disney. I’ve lost count of how many animated theatrical films are considered to have been made by Disney, but apparently it’s 74, unless you also count recent distribution deals for foreign productions made through studios like Yash Raj Films (India) and Studio Ghibli (Japanese). Nah, let’s not count those since those are mostly made somewhere totally different and tapping into a totally different talent pool than Frozen. Looking at just the 74, how could Frozen really be connected to all of them? Kate mapped it out in her infograph:
You can click on the image to see the full-size version, or you can go straight to its location at Allfancydress.com
This is kind of like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon just with Frozen and its connection to every other Disney animated film ever, with the main sources of connection being Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Ciaran Hinds, Stephen I. Anderson (Kai), Jesse Corti (Spanish Dignitary), and Chris Wiliams (Oaken). Because of them we somehow end up covering all the bases, and learning things, like how Anne Hatheway apparently did a voice in Frankenweenie and dido for Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Treasure Planet. As Yukio from The Wolverine might say: “Interesting.” Also, did you realize that John Goodman has done voices in that many Disney films (Emperor’s New Groove, the 2 Monsters films, The Jungle Book 2, The Princess and the Frog), or that the same guy (Ralph Wright) wrote Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh?
Maybe there’s some greater anti-Disney comment to be made here about its gradual takeover of all things entertainment, or maybe the general “Six Degrees of Separation” theory is so unquestioned it’s not at all surprising to see Frozen linked to every single animated Disney film ever made. Me? I just thought it was pretty cool. Thanks for sharing the infograph, Kate.
What about you? Did you learn anything new from the infograph? Or did you find some kind of error I missed? Or do you just want to proclaim your love for Frozen because, really, why not? Get thee to the comments section.
