Movie Day!

Monday was a holiday, so I spent all day in the theatres doing a movie-thon.  (By myself...  ~ so lonely)

The movies I watched were (in order):
The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug
The Hunger Games - Catching Fire
Frozen

They were all pretty good.

1.  The Hobbit
When I watched the first Hobbit movie, i didn't realize that they were cutting the books to make the movies a trilogy, so there I was in the theatre, waiting for nearly three hours before I realized there was an upcoming sequel.  I was terribly bored, and although I rarely do this for any movie, especially one in theatres, I took a bathroom break.  Thinking back on it, though, it was quite decent for the first third of the plot.  The second movie was pretty good in itself.  I never read the books, and I never watched the trailer, so I had no idea what it was about.  I only knew about the dragon because my friend told me about it.  She told me the movie was good, so I had some high expectations.  Because the movie is based off a book, I expect a good plot and good character building.  The movie has seasoned actors, so I also expect great acting.  The only thing that could have been iffy about this movie was the cg animation.  There was an extremely long sequence in the movie with the dragon, and I had some pretty high hopes for it.  Watching the movie, my hopes slightly fell.  The orcs weren't produced as well as they could have been.  The animation seemed either too stiff or unnaturally smooth.  But when the dragon scenes came by, I was so impressed the rest of the movie didn't matter any longer.  It was a very good dragon.  An amazing dragon.  The dragon was so good that there really isn't much to say about anything else.  In short, this movie had a damn good dragon.  Oh right, one more thing:  Why doesn't any of the metal in the dragon's hoard of treasure melt when the extremely hot dragon fire is directed at it?

2.  The Hunger Games
I was honestly not expecting very much from this movie.  I read the Hunger Game series before the movies started coming out.  It was a very good series, and the first movie was quite disappointing.  I was very skeptical at first when my friend said that the movie was quite good and may have been even better than the book itself.  I have to say, though, that I was very impressed with the movie.  The actors seemed to have taken a step up compared to the last movie, and scenes were well shot, and well timed.  The movie was so good, that the book actually seems quite dry.  The book is unable to convey the range of emotions and intense physical ordeals that the movie was able to portray quite nicely.  The challenge of this movie was the acting within the movie itself, and I must say, that the actors have definitely met the challenge.  If the movie for the next book is just as good, then I will definitely look forward to it, because I honestly didn't really like the book.

3.  Frozen
It was awesome.  I knew absolutely nothing about this movie coming in.  All anyone told me was that it was amazing, and I didn't even see the trailer.  (The trailer doesn't do justice.)  I feel like with this movie, Disney is definitely taking the step in the right direction.  (Apparently this is the first Disney movie with a female director, which explains why female leads weren't automatically taken from the obvious Disney mold.)  This movie broke almost every single one of the classic Disney tropes that were tying Disney down.  There were no evil or obliviously stubborn parents in the movie.  The parents in this movie were genuinely nice, concerned, protective, and caring.  They really wanted what was best for their daughter, and there is no denying it.  Things just didn't turn out as well as their intentions, which is much more realistic that the black-and-white parenting molds.  There was no evil antagonist in the movie.  In fact, the supposed antagonist was just a girl trying to keep people safe and do what was right.  It's not even the 'do what she thought was good but is obviously bad' either.  It was a genuine desire to protect people that just ended up falling into a bad situation.  The idea of love at first sight was also addressed in the movie.  At first, when the second male character showed up, I thought the plot was going to be similar to the movie Enchanted, where the girl just falls in love with someone else.  However, there was a definite plot twist late into the movie that really changed things around.  It was quite dark for a Disney movie, and I think the first Disney movie ever to have a prince with an actual brain, having his own agenda, doing his own thing.  The idea of what 'true love' is was also addressed.  Every Disney movie does its 'true love' things, with a 'true love's first kiss' or getting married to a handsome prince, or more recently getting married so someone you love even if he's not a rich prince.  However, the idea of true love needing to be that between a guy and girl was thrown out the window, and in came the idea of family love, more specifically sister love.  This idea of family love was addressed in Lilo and Stitch, but it wasn't as powerful of a factor as it was in Frozen.  An act of true love didn't have to be a kiss or marriage, or whatever else Disney has been promoting, but has now expanded into the idea of protecting your family members even if it means self-sacrifice.  Love is more than what we think of between a man and a woman.  Love is the willingness to give yourself up for the benefit of someone you deeply care about, including your sister.  Young girls who used to walk out of Disney movies wanting to be the spoiled princesses with everything in their grasp will now walk away with something entirely different.  They'll understand that if their parents do something that they don't like, it's not because they're evil, but because they really are trying their best.  That bad things can happen to people who are good with good intentions, and that love and support from family, not just a guy, can help them get through.
So yeah, Frozen was a good movie.  Good job, Disney, you're setting new standards.