So has anyone talked about the parallels between Magnifico and Elsa yet?
(Spoilers for Frozen and Wish.)
The obvious: they're both magic-users and monarchs of fictional kingdoms. They both have a traumatic incident in their past which left a profound impact on them and led to maladaptive coping mechanisms. Both are prone to emotional withdrawal when under stress. Both have power but also have a fraught and complicated relationship with their power. Both end up losing control and causing harm to the kingdom with their magic. And both have a prominent figure in their lives (Anna for Elsa, Amaya for Magnifico) who functions as both a foil and an emotional anchor, someone who helps draw them out of their mental dark place, with differing degrees of persistence and success.
I would argue that they are both the primary antagonists of their respective films, as well. Elsa is obviously not a villain, Hans is the villain, but his villainy is thrown in at the last minute. Elsa’s repression and fear functions, narratively, as the primary obstacle that Anna (the protagonist) must overcome…and the antagonist is not always the “bad guy,” but simply the character who is placed in opposition to the protagonist.
Both Magnifico and Elsa are fixated on control. With Elsa this is more about control over her emotions and (by extension) her powers; with Magnifico it is about maintaining control over his kingdom in order to keep it safe from perceived threats. In both of them, the desire for control stems from fear and memories of horrible things happening when that control is absent.
The differences: Elsa is born with her powers; they are portrayed as something she never had a choice in, whereas Magnifico (we are told in the opening narration) had to study intensively to acquire his powers. Elsa’s power is the source of her fear; Magnifico’s power is something he built up in response to fear.
There are also both similarities and differences in the way they lose control of their powers. Elsa gets triggered on her own coronation day, runs away, and unknowingly engulfs Arendelle in a blizzard which mirrors her own state of fear and isolation. Magnifico gets triggered by a mysterious light in the sky which he interprets as a threat and becomes increasingly paranoid, believing that there is a traitor in his kingdom. He keeps a book of dangerous forbidden spells as a last resort. He opens the book, unleashing the Evil Green Magic which possesses him and turns him into a force of destruction.
Both of these actions stem from a loss of control; both are in some sense a self-fulfilling prophecy, with fear itself taking on a magical life of its own and wreaking havoc. In Magnifico’s case this is portrayed as him reaching for an external source of power in an attempt to reestablish control, whereas Elsa’s power is something that wells up from inside her, overwhelming her attempts to repress it. She tries to regain her sense of control by isolating herself, but this—like Magnifico reaching for the book—is shown to be a flawed solution which ultimately makes things worse.
Throughout Frozen, Anna—Elsa’s anchor—refuses to give up on her, even to the point of sacrificing herself in an attempt to save her sister. Amaya makes an attempt to save Magnifico, but ultimately decides (based on a passage she read in the same book that possessed him) that he is beyond saving.
What is the major thematic difference between Magnifico and Elsa? At first glance, Magnifico seems to have more agency in engineering his own fate: he chose to acquire magic powers through his own efforts and to found his own kingdom in an attempt to remedy the tragedies of the past, where Elsa is portrayed as having less agency. She is born into the role of queen and born with powers that she can’t control. The eternal winter that Elsa causes feels like something that simply happens in response to her emotions, where Magnifico opening the book and unleashing its magic feels like more of a choice, albeit one he is making because he believes that he’s been pushed into a corner—I didn’t want to do this. I swore I’d never do this. But it's significant that the moment when he opens the book takes place against the backdrop of the burned tapestry which represents his trauma. In both cases, becoming a force of destruction is shown to be a result of unmanaged fear.
It’s well-known that Elsa was originally supposed to be the villain of Frozen but evolved into a misunderstood hero through various drafts...to the film's benefit, most agree. “Let it Go” was to be her villain song. It’s a moment of joyous release, and even if that freedom turns out to be illusory, the song itself is undeniably empowering and uplifting.
“This is the Thanks I Get?!” is upbeat and weirdly cute. Like “Let it Go,” it takes place within a castle which represents its owner’s defense mechanisms and power. Both songs represent a breaking point, of sorts, but Magnifico's feels less like a release and more like an inward spiraling, compulsive repetition (the chorus is just the same line, four times) and affirmations spoken into the mirror…an unsuccessful attempt at self-soothing which culminates in an eruption.
Elsa receives salvation in the form of unconditional love, which thaws the endless winter. Magnifico is left abandoned, trapped and isolated in a magic mirror. Frozen in time, as it were.
I don’t exactly have a thesis with this, it’s more just a collection of observations, but there is something frustrating about the way that Disney makes Elsa more conventionally sympathetic by giving her the appearance of less agency. Because in spite of this, the emotional journeys and motivations of these two characters follow some pretty similar beats (and yeah, the writers also kind of tacked on the whole “vanity” thing with Magnifico, but this always felt like just a character quirk to me, not a primary motivation). They’re like two facets of the same optical illusion.
Frozen came out in late November of 2013. These films were released almost exactly ten years apart.
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