It’s easier to endure a period of time if you have an idea of when (and if) it will end. It’s a helpful development for subway riders, but it’s also a savvy move on the MTA’s part most people are more willing to wait for a train they have some assurance is 10 minutes away than they are to wait half that time for a train with no sense of whether it will actually arrive.
Olaf frozen update#
There’s one big reason for that, and it has to do with what I, a New Yorker, think of as the “subway platform principle.” In the 12 years I’ve ridden the notoriously unreliable New York City subway system, signs have been installed in many stops that update riders on how many minutes remain before their train arrives. We thought we went to the wrong movie!!! I hate when companies treat consumers like robots, forcing us to do or watch things we have no interest in. The confusion my fellow moviegoers experienced in the theater, about whether they’d accidentally slipped into Frozen 2 (due out in late November 2019) rather than the whimsical story about a young Mexican boy in the Land of the Dead they were expecting, was shared by many moviegoers: Coco audiences were not prepared for Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, much less 21 minutes of it (How a sentient snowman can be a “tradition” is still a little beyond me, but by the end I wasn’t asking questions.) The Olaf’s Frozen Adventure credits rolled, I packed up and slipped out of the theater, and outside, I nodded to the father, who was sitting on a bench outside the theater scrolling on his iPhone. We all watched, mutely munching our popcorn, as Olaf got lost, then found, then discovered that he was the Christmas tradition they sought all along. When I nodded, he sat back down, but the father stood up and walked out and didn’t come back. “That’s what I wanted to know,” the father said from three rows back. He paused before passing me and asked, “Is this Coco?” About 10 minutes in, as Olaf was knocking on the door of another villager’s house, the 20-something man sitting in my row got up and started walking toward the exit. I knew what was about to happen - I was there to see Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, after all - but the rest of them were ostensibly there to see Coco. It was a small early evening crowd, typical for a weekday in Midtown Manhattan. A couple in their late 20s walked past me and settled down in my row while the trailers were playing. A family with two small children sat a few rows behind me, the parents talking to each other in Spanish, the kids chattering excitedly. Judging from reports people sent to me on Twitter, my viewing experience was similar to many others. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure didn’t screen for critics before Coco, so I had to seek it out separately, which I did about a week after its theatrical release. It certainly lacks the creativity one expects from the short films Pixar typically runs before its feature movies, but it wasn’t, on its own, the most heinous animated entertainment I’ve been subjected to this year. There are four original songs, none of which are memorable. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure alternates between grating and occasionally charming, with some mildly funny slapstick bits in the middle. Over Thanksgiving weekend and into the next week, people got mad, on the internet and elsewhere, about Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, a 21-minute “short” featuring Anna, Elsa, and most of all Olaf, the snowman voiced by Josh Gad, as they search for a holiday tradition to make their own due to the events of Frozen, the sisters don’t have traditions, so Olaf goes off to find some for them. Why, exactly, was Coco preceded not by the traditional Pixar short film but by a 21-minute-long featurette called Olaf’s Frozen Adventure?Īnd was the backlash so severe that Disney pulled the short entirely from theaters in the United States by December 8 - or was that, as Disney claims, always part of the plan? People who went to see Coco got a 21-minute Frozen featurette first It’s a question that many moviegoers faced in the days following Coco’s theatrical release - and one worth looking into. Then why, 20 minutes after the trailers ended, were they still watching a musical short about the characters from Frozen? A few people left the theater to check that the film they’ve sat down to see is, indeed, Pixar’s Coco. Ten minutes in, they really started to wonder.
Olaf frozen movie#
And after the trailers finished, the movie began.Ī few minutes in, they started to wonder if they’re in the right place. They settled into their seats, popcorn and soda in hand. In the two weeks around Thanksgiving, in movie theaters and multiplexes across the continent, the same strange event occurred: Moviegoers and families bought tickets to see a movie together.