Wild kids, family love, modern myth: How Disney’s “Frozen” and Enlight Pictures’ “Ne Zha” went so viral
Disney’s Frozen (2013), about a princess with ice powers who learns to be herself and banish fear with the help of sisterly love, took the world by storm. A decade later, it is still the 4th highest grossing animated film of all time with $1.3 billion, bumped down only by its own sequel, Frozen II (1.4 billion), and the recent nostalgia-driven successes of visually-stellar The Lion King (2019) and The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023). Parents around the world still cannot get the Frozen song “Let it Go” out of their heads. On the other side of the Pacific came another cultural phenomenon: Beijing Enlight Picture’s Ne Zha (2019) about the titular little boy who, cursed to be a demon, defies his ill fate thanks to the power of family and friendship. Directed by industry newcomer Yu Yang, nicknamed Jiaozi, the film soared. It brought back $740 million at the box office from a $20 million budget and is currently the only non-American film in the top fifty animations of all time. Dubbed “the light of national comics” at home, it is the fourth highest-grossing film in China.
These two record-breaking animated films from opposite ends of the world have something big in common: the self-realization journeys of misunderstood young antiheroes, centered around culture and family.
Big country? Big budget? Magic?
It’s true that when the Chinese film industry makes a splash, it’s more of a boom. Surpassing the US as the world’s biggest movie market[1], and with a population over that of Europe and North America combined, China is, not so coincidentally, responsible for all 10 of the most financially successful non-American films ever made. However, when it came to animated movies, China had struggled to garner as much success. Director Tian Xiaopeng’s nationally beloved works, from Monkey King: Hero is Back (2015) to this year’s poetic and mesmerizing Deep Sea, pale in comparison at the box office. Even Jian Ziya (2021), the new installment in the Fengshen Cinematic Universe that Ne Zha spearheaded, has only made a third as much as its predecessor.
We’ve had epic battles, catchy songs and good stories before, but it seems Frozen and Ne Zha had something else going for them. Both films had typical animated film budgets for their respective countries, and they were, like so many other children’s films, retellings of well-known classic tales. The secret that made Ne Zha and Frozen stand out from the global crowd is how and why they retell familiar stories. When parents and children head to the movies, they don’t only look for ancient, exciting, action-packed stories, they also look for themselves.
Children understand family and friendship more deeply than romance or heroism
Empathy and sympathy are powerful tools for emotional investment in an audience, and Ne Zha and Frozen revolve around a subject that touches children at their core: family. Of course, romance and heroism are areas of adulthood that children look forward to understanding and emulating, but family is the center of a child's world. It brings out their deepest emotions.” Ne Zha grows up feared by all the villagers for his demonic powers, but his parents’ love for him is constant and unconditional. There is a beautiful scene at his birth when he is marked with the demon pearl and wildly thrashes and snarls in plumes of fire as the villages watch in horror, until his mother fearlessly cradles him in her arms. The little baby bares his adorable, slightly demonic row of teeth, and bites her. Fighting the pain, his mother holds him closer and whispers, “Don’t be scared, mother is here.” Then, her baby looks up at her with the sweetest, innocent gaze.
At the film’s climax, Ne Zha also discovers the depth of his father’s love for him when he learns that his father had vowed to protect him from certain death in exchange for his own life.
Similarly, in Frozen, Elsa’s sister Anna loves her fiercely and unconditionally. When a misunderstood Elsa escapes the kingdom in fear of her out-of-control powers, Anna is determined to go after her and shows relentless bravery and heart, going so far as attempting to sacrifice herself to protect her sister. These themes likely stir up strong emotional investment because they tap into children’s central hopes and fears around their family’s love for them despite their flaws, and because a child can understand, from first-hand experience, a sibling or friend’s motivation to help and protect them.
When parents and children head to the movies, they don’t only look for ancient, exciting, action-packed stories, they also look for themselves.
Struggles that resonate with the experience of childhood
The characters in Ne Zha and Frozen have tangible inner struggles and motivations that children deeply understand. Ne Zha uses his powers for mischief out of boredom, lack of friends, and contempt for those who misjudge him. He cannot hold them in, they are out of control, he is angry and sad. Elsa, too, lets her ice powers go wild because she doesn't know how to control them, because she is scared and tired of repressing them. These are the central struggles of growing children, struggling to control their emotions, yearning to be wild, free and understood.
For the rest of us, there is something satisfying – maybe childishly, maybe not – about seeing Ne Zha going out there, being himself and wrecking havoc. Just like seeing Elsa build her glamorous ice castle while the world freezes over, in sync with one of the catchiest songs ever written. The idea of “letting it go,” present in both films, resonates with many people as a reflection of their struggles with illness, depression, social acceptance, repressed emotions or identity[2]. Adults and children alike relate to the fear of being intrinsically “bad,” the wish to be “good,” learning self-control and confronting prejudice. That all-round resonance for every audience is where Ne Zha and Frozen hit a home run.
A sense of national belonging
Another important way Frozen and Ne Zha boost audience investment is through cultural elements that reinforce a sense of a common national identity at home for American and Chinese audiences, respectively, while remaining palatable for audiences abroad. Frozen tells its story through the nationally-beloved medium of the musical, with touches of Broadway down to the dazzling, stage-like creation of the ice castle. Ne Zha, on the other hand, revolves around traditional Chinese ink paintings. The story includes a magical paintbrush whose strokes create worlds, and scrolls as portals. When it comes to relationship building, both films rely on cultural elements to stir up feelings: shuttlecock kicking in Ne Zha, and the prom-like ball in Frozen (not to mention Kristoff and Anna first bonding in a “car ride”).
Thematically, Ne Zha likely struck a chord with Chinese audiences due to its strong emphasis on family and unity, as well as its relevance to Chinese politics today: the extent to which people feel their fates are entangled with forces outside themselves. As one Chinese film reviewer on Baidu expressed, “Nezha is not just an animation, but our life.”[3] Similarly, Frozen embodies contemporary American values of self-reliance and self-actualization, as well as some debated areas of American humanistic psychology, like “needing space.” It also taps into the cultural importance of the family unit in American culture.
These cultural specificities beautifully acquaint international audiences with the films’ cultures without affecting the way the story is understood. Cultural situational humor and jokes in films like the USA’s Elf, France’s The Visitors or China’s The Mermaid make these brilliant laugh-out-loud comedy successes nationally, but total “fails” anywhere else. By keeping cultural elements to character names, types of games, mise-en-scene and core values, Frozen and Ne Zha escape this issue. Frozen’s success was bumped up by its popularity in Japan, where it is still the fourth highest-grossing film ever screened. And while Ne Zha’s frequent use of crude bodily humor likely warded off Anglo parents, the film did have much greater success abroad than other Chinese animations.
Our inner childhood
Director Jiaozi chose to make Ne Zha to encourage young people to chase their dreams, be themselves and change their fate, having suffered prejudice himself.[4] Frozen director Jennifer Lee came up with the film’s final plotline by thinking back on her childhood, the depth of her own relationship with her sister and the emotions that started and mended their fights: not “good versus evil” but instead, “love versus fear.”[5] To all filmmakers working on the next family blockbuster: look inwards, to the person you were as a child—your world, your fears, your dreams and your family recipes—and write for that child. You’ll be writing for all of us, too.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-china-movie-business-what-it-means-for-hollywood-2021-122. https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/how-frozen-took-over-the-world3. https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=16621121256247208314. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3023069/man-behind-nezha-summer-chinese-box-office-hit-they-call5. https://www.rd.com/article/frozen-movie-almost-failure/