Am I the only one who feels Arendelle got a bit cheated compared to the other KH3 Disney worlds? Maybe I'm super sensitive to it because Frozen is my favorite movie, and I read in the Nomura interviews that Disney was a lot more protective of their newer movies compared to the old KH games, but it was a tad worse than I expected. Just off the top of my head:
- None of the main characters are party members. Makes sense that Elsa wouldn't be one, but no reason Anna and Kristoff couldn't have been the world's party members like Eugene and Rapunzel were for Tangled. They're on a journey to find Elsa just like Sora is,so it makes sense, even if it was just for a small portion of the story.
- Hans gets zero explanation other than Kristoff mentioning he's Anna's true love. So SDG have no idea that the guy who carried Elsa away and then tried to kill her was Hans. In the Tangled world, we get several cutscenes with Mother Gothel so I don't know why Frozen didn't get an equivalent villain reveal scene. I personally think they couldn't get a voice actor for Hans for whatever reason (what happened with his Heartless by the way? It looked like it didn't get destroyed so is it still out there somewhere?)
- Arendelle really needed at least one more different area; Larxene's ice labyrinth looked cool but added nothing to the Frozen plot nor the KH plot and so felt like a pointless detour, and traversing the north mountain for the rest of the story got repetitive. Even if it was a small area, some more variety was needed: maybe a battle in Elsa's ice palace where we see Hans using Heartless to capture her, or visiting the trolls and having to do some sort of extra mission there.
- Absolutely no excuse for not including a closing scene between SDG and the Frozen characters. Literally every other Kingdom Hearts game has Sora exchanging well wishes and thank yous to the new friends he made after the story’s finale. We get none of that for Arendelle - after Elsa thaws everything as SDG look on (the Frozen characters don’t even acknowledge they’re there), the camera panes away, we switch to a cutscene with Aqua, and then Sora's suddenly back on the Gummiship. This would have also been a perfect opportunity for the characters to explain Hans to Sora, similar to how the closing scene in Tangled informed Sora about Flynn Rider's real name. The only time Sora got to talk to Elsa was at the very beginning of the story - at least let him talk to her one more time! C'mon, that's all he was trying to do throughout the entire world!
(I go into more detail about the Arendelle restrictions on my blog post here, but this is the tl;dr version!)
As lousy as it is, I understand why Disney would place more restrictions on Frozen compared to the other Disney worlds for two main reasons: first, it's their highest grossing animated movie and Frozen's director/writer Jennifer Lee is the current head of Disney Animation (I did see her name in the KH3 credits), and, more importantly, Frozen 2 comes out in less than a year so that would make them even more touchy about non-canon depictions of the world and characters that might alter whatever image they want to uphold. This would also explain why Tangled didn't get as many restrictions even though it's also a very popular Disney franchise. Any other reasons? Am I right in feeling that Tangled got a better KH treatment than Frozen?
- None of the main characters are party members. Makes sense that Elsa wouldn't be one, but no reason Anna and Kristoff couldn't have been the world's party members like Eugene and Rapunzel were for Tangled. They're on a journey to find Elsa just like Sora is,so it makes sense, even if it was just for a small portion of the story.
- Hans gets zero explanation other than Kristoff mentioning he's Anna's true love. So SDG have no idea that the guy who carried Elsa away and then tried to kill her was Hans. In the Tangled world, we get several cutscenes with Mother Gothel so I don't know why Frozen didn't get an equivalent villain reveal scene. I personally think they couldn't get a voice actor for Hans for whatever reason (what happened with his Heartless by the way? It looked like it didn't get destroyed so is it still out there somewhere?)
- Arendelle really needed at least one more different area; Larxene's ice labyrinth looked cool but added nothing to the Frozen plot nor the KH plot and so felt like a pointless detour, and traversing the north mountain for the rest of the story got repetitive. Even if it was a small area, some more variety was needed: maybe a battle in Elsa's ice palace where we see Hans using Heartless to capture her, or visiting the trolls and having to do some sort of extra mission there.
- Absolutely no excuse for not including a closing scene between SDG and the Frozen characters. Literally every other Kingdom Hearts game has Sora exchanging well wishes and thank yous to the new friends he made after the story’s finale. We get none of that for Arendelle - after Elsa thaws everything as SDG look on (the Frozen characters don’t even acknowledge they’re there), the camera panes away, we switch to a cutscene with Aqua, and then Sora's suddenly back on the Gummiship. This would have also been a perfect opportunity for the characters to explain Hans to Sora, similar to how the closing scene in Tangled informed Sora about Flynn Rider's real name. The only time Sora got to talk to Elsa was at the very beginning of the story - at least let him talk to her one more time! C'mon, that's all he was trying to do throughout the entire world!
(I go into more detail about the Arendelle restrictions on my blog post here, but this is the tl;dr version!)
As lousy as it is, I understand why Disney would place more restrictions on Frozen compared to the other Disney worlds for two main reasons: first, it's their highest grossing animated movie and Frozen's director/writer Jennifer Lee is the current head of Disney Animation (I did see her name in the KH3 credits), and, more importantly, Frozen 2 comes out in less than a year so that would make them even more touchy about non-canon depictions of the world and characters that might alter whatever image they want to uphold. This would also explain why Tangled didn't get as many restrictions even though it's also a very popular Disney franchise. Any other reasons? Am I right in feeling that Tangled got a better KH treatment than Frozen?
