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HKY91 — Hans Custom-made Poster 2
Published: 2014-02-10 13:25:11 +0000 UTC; Views: 9384; Favourites: 133; Downloads: 43
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....stop teasing us fans with these! They're awesome and make me want to watch this movie!
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So would I. I do hope that, although I dislike Hans for his actions, that we get some look into his background and see what he went through in order to become the villain most perceive him to be.
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So many fans have speculated what sort of history he might have had. A lot of it range from him being overlooked since he was the youngest of the king's brood, he was a victim of neglect at the hands of his brothers and his mother, he comes from a ruthless lot who wouldn't really care if he ended up dead, or he was actually confusing his brothers being too busy to play with him for them 'pretending he was invisible'.
There are so many possibilities, but I think it's that mystery that really makes him more interesting and have fans think about him more and come up with their own speculations.
Think of the Joker, who knows what exactly was it that makes him as insane as he is! Was it his accident as Red Hood? Was it the loss of his wife? Was it the toxic waste that fried his mind? All we know about him is that life was a giant joke and he was its punchline. Now he wants everyone else to see the joke too without him having to explain it.
With a poster like that, I see it more as brief recollections of Hans's upbringing without pinpointing exactly what led him on his road to hell. More like, everything in his life culminated to fueling his ambition to stand out and above his brothers. I see it more like he wants others to look up to him, rather than down on him. I wouldn't mind though to see a little redemption for him and possible a romance with Elsa.
Definitely his movie would be the one in which the charming handsome prince is deconstructed and reconstructed for what he is. What makes him so charming if he had been through much hurt in his life? What motivates him? What makes him move? What is his weakness then if he has taken so much time to construct this picture of himself for others? Is it a weakness that he has chosen for himself, so not truly a real weakness?
A discussion about Hans is that he's actually a very empathetic person who reflects the hopes, dreams, attitudes of whoever's company he's in. With Anna, he's her prince charming. With Elsa, he's the hero. With the Duke, he's a jerk. With Marshmallow, he's ferocious. He never has a solo scene like any of the characters. His scenes always has him interacting with other characters or extras that we are never really sure about who or what he really is.
He's a villain to us, but he's very likely a hero in his own mind. Thus Hans is possibly the best villain and character that Disney has created so far. He's relatable to a modern and older audience and he had even managed to fool us into thinking he was the hero! What other disney character had done so?
Sorry for the rave. Anyway, loved the movie poster. Would be cool to see more from you.
Take care!
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To HKY91: love your opinion!
As good as Frozen is, I honestly would have loved to see more of Hans. Unfortunately, that would also damage the appeal that he's invoked in so many viewers. Hans is so confusing a character that he's open up for discussion and almost every discussion can justify him. What I thought about when you mentioned him being invisible is that the invisibility likely aided in his transformation to be a mirror. I believe that everyone is how they are not only by their likes and dislikes, their talents and flaws; but their personalities, their essence, as a person is also influenced by who they're with. When I was younger, I had hung out with girls who loved to play with teddy bears and eventually I came to love teddy bears. As I'm older now, I tend to hang out with artistic people and I'm getting more into my own original work. Hans, being invisible and unable to interact with his family, did not have the development to create his own personality. Instead he had observed and this study would lend to him learning how to adapt. He's become something that is alive only with someone else projecting on him so that he knows what to do and what to say. Someone on tumblr had made an analogy that Hans is like a machine, the people around him are his batteries. When he's thrown into his cell, he looks absolutely tired. Like a machine that's lost its batteries. Without someone there for him to know what to do, Hans has become aimless with no idea. What is Hans supposed to do when he's alone? And he's been alone and it's obvious that it's a sore point that fuels his ambition to become something that will never have to be alone. What is Hans? He's a prince, but what else? There is such an infinite possibility to Hans for his identity, personality, and just core as a person. But as everybody in the world is complex(I like Schubert and Rammstein), Hans may very well be a tangled mess of hopes and dreams, of fears and disappointments, that may incite more questions than answer questions.
Hopefully, if Frozen becomes a larger franchise and Hans gets his day in the limelight, they may do a story of him finding identity, or at least coming close to realize who or what he is. Perhaps he may find some familiar form instead of being the abomination when he looks in the mirror.
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Thank you. I just want to point out something about being a hero in mind. While he eventually saw himself as a hero, I don't think that thought was present in his mind before the twist, as he never thought highly of himself until that moment. Being a "nice guy", he always appeared humble without any sense of pride in him.
To be a mirror is like to be a servant without a fixed master, you have to be a responsible, hard-working and neutral person. He did not went to the ice palace to look for Anna out of heroic instincts, but because he was just doing his job as a helper to the princess. The whole "staging an accident for Elsa" thing is also probably out of his obligation to protect Anna from being continuously "looked down" by Elsa. Because Hans was being such a responsible and efficient servant, everyone created dependence on him, from Anna to Elsa to the people of Arendelle. When he found out that everyone needed him, he realized he was no longer a servant, but a master! From that moment onwards, he stopped being a responsible servant and went full throttle towards his dream of a throne. With the aid of his expertise in human attitudes after "serving" people for a long time, he ended up manipulating everyone without raising suspicions, and those who knew about it would be dead (Thanks to Olaf, it didn't turn out that way).
In short, who made him into a mirror in the first place? His family. Who helped pushing him into becoming a murderous person? Everyone in Arendelle, including Elsa and Anna. Hence, does Anna's punch in Hans' face teach him any lesson? No, that punch only reflects Anna's anger and naiveness, nothing else and nothing worth applauding. Inextricably linked to his mirroring talent and desire for attention, the only thing real about Hans is how hard-working he is. To hate or to verbally abuse him is to ignore a big part of him, and that is his sense of responsibility which is more prominent than any other character in "Frozen". This sense of responsibility, due to an attachment towards his own dream, also paved a path to his tragic downfall. Besides, bear in mind that where Anna and Kristoff failed, he succeeded: He brought Elsa down from the mountains and (unintentionally) made Elsa more open-minded towards love after bringing her down to her lowest state of emotion.
What I hope people can understand about Hans is that he was not projecting himself as a perfect hero before the twist, but a serious and responsible worker who does not know the word "tired". More importantly, they should know how to differentiate responsibility from heroism.
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Goodness! What an analysis! While I do agree with you now that he probably did not see himself as a hero in his mind before the twist, he was certainly intentional in being perceived as one to everybody. I think that humbleness for his character is still an act. It's what would be expected of him. He has the face that defies evil and corruption. From his words to actions themselves(before the twist) he had provided no grounds for why he should be an untrustworthy character. Knowing his character now, we probably should have been aware of him from the beginning as he appeared to be 'too good to be true'. However, we mistook the film to be classically Disney. The villains are always swathed in dark colours with menacing grins and squinty eyes. Who could NOT have been able to tell from the beginning of Aladdin that the King's trusted adviser Jafar was the villain or that Maleficent(even her name is a witty play of malevolent) was the evil fairy/witch? But no, he had appeared with the typical prince charming traits that Disney had always used. The twist was totally unexpected! But I digress... the point is that he acts extremely kind that even the Duke sees it as strange for a royal person. We who believe in Disney see it as the norm. Whereas in real life, no real monarch would actually be so generous in giving away products to their people as Hans did for people that were not even of his own kingdom!
I just don't see the 'power corrupts' working on him. Certainly, there's potential for that in Hans. But I believe that it's his ambition that was his downfall, rather than his sense of responsibility. I didn't see him having any sense of responsibility. The only thing on his mind was to secure the throne of Arendelle for himself by any means necessary. When he saw that the Queen would not be so easily wooed as he might have hoped/expected, he went instead for the the Queen's sister, the second in line to the throne should the Queen not have any descendants. He saw Anna as someone he could easily manipulate. Once Elsa was out of the way, he could use her as a figurehead or even take that bold step and proclaim himself king and know that Anna would not argue against it. I think he's always seen himself as a master player, a master schemer. He may act like a helper to everyone, but who is he really helping by earning their trust and making a good name for himself?
I don't really believe that Hans was projecting himself to be the perfect hero. I believe that he was projecting himself to simply work with what he's given. He adapted to what he had to work with and he acted accordingly to how he saw fit in a manner that would have him blend in but still be able to subtly manipulate the events as he saw fit. I see him as an analogy to a criminal who would actually place himself as close as possible to the scene and do what he could to help authorities capture the perpetrator, while sneakily misleading them off his trail.
All in all, I hope the franchise explores more about Hans!
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What I was trying to say about responsibility was that he was willing to take all sorts of responsibility to prove himself worthy, to gain the attention he craved for. He was serious about being responsible but he never really understand the real meaning behind those responsibilities, only thinking of them as important stepping stones to the throne. This is why I said that his sense of responsibility helped paving the way to his downfall, as he never really comprehended the sincere intentions behind the responsibilities, believing he never need to be responsible anymore when he realized he could actually be a true king in Arendelle.
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If he wanted to be perceived as a good guy, why did he had to be a mirror? As what I have mentioned in my journal, why not just create one good guy identity to fool everyone? Why is mirror a keyword to describe Hans? That word is seldom heard to describe villains who pretend to be nice. Yes, he came to Arendelle with the intention to marry to a throne. However, one must not forget that regardless of which royal family he marries into, especially Arendelle, he would still be an outsider and is not entitled to rule the kingdom all by his own unless the whole royal bloodline is gone. That is the sacrifice he had to make for not waiting for the throne in his own kingdom, but a small one as he would still be part of the throne. Either with Anna or Elsa, Hans thought he could never "own" a kingdom even if he would be the one actually running most of it (In Anna's case, it would definitely be him). In other words, there would still be someone on top of him whom he had to serve, hence the need to have a sense of obligation. All that changed when the situation had reached to a possibility that Anna did not survive the winter and killing Elsa was the only way to end the winter, making Hans realized that the fate of the kingdom now might now lie solely in his hands. Did Hans knew this was coming? No. But Hans did not think of jumping for joy yet, because a possibility is, well, still a possibility which was out of his hands. Things get changed in favour of him, again, this time with Anna's frozen heart. It was with the frozen heart, Hans realized that he has the power to make the aforementioned possibility a reality, as the fate of the royal bloodline (Anna and Elsa's lives) is now firmly in his hands. Did he ever predict that this situation would come? No. It was at this moment he realized what was impossible to achieve in a foreign kingdom i.e. establishing bloodline of his own is now possible. He could stop being a mirror who serves and become a true master at last. That was how he ended up doing what he did to Anna and Elsa in the end, using the idea that Elsa would ultimately be responsible for Anna's frozen heart and hence her death.
Of course, all the arguments I put forth would break down in an instant if Hans did indeed came to Arendelle to eliminate the entire family bloodline there. However, given that he never brought that up to Anna during the plot twist, there is high chance that he did not want to get his hands bloody or dirty for the sake of a throne in the first place.
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Additional note: Even if Hans managed to rule Arendelle with Anna, he would still remain a mirror even though he is now part of the throne, as Anna would remain higher than him in terms of political status, hence a person he still needs to mirror. Therefore, I am pretty confident that while he knew he was going to rule Arendelle with Anna after Elsa ran away, he never thought that he could become an independent being or ruling figure i.e. a king, not a prince consort, until Anna came back with a frozen heart.
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Awesome comment thread, thanks to everyone!
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It is so nice to hear from you!
Wow... Just wow... what an analysis.... I can't really think of what to argue. I'm glad that you added more and clarified your previous comment. I can definitely understand now what you had meant by responsibility. I suppose that you're right that he would have to continue having a sense of obligation to serve his higher-ups, if he was marrying into a foreign throne. But what I see is that by marriage and procreation, he would already be begetting his royal bloodline in Arendelle, that just happened to 'hide' beneath the royal family's bloodline. He is still a prince, his status is sufficient enough to wed into nobility or royalty. I think his main goal had intentionally been just to be a part of the throne, make sure that he would have heirs, even if his own heirs would be kings and queens while he could never rise higher than a prince. But I do agree that it was at the moment when the officials told him that he would be all that Arendelle had left after the death of the royals, that he felt that the impossible dream of actually being king was within grasp.
Awesome analysis! Very well thought out. I can tell that the movie must have certainly affected you!
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Well, as Tom Hiddleston once said, "Every villain is a hero in his own mind," and Hans is no exception to that. Loved your commentary by the way.
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