Please Translated into Chinese This year, Disney is at war with its history — and so are we Story Highlights • In 'Frozen' and the upcoming 'Saving Mr. Banks,' Disney departs from its usual movie traditions • Both films seem to reflect an emerging sensibility among moviegoers that is more skeptical and inquisitive than they been in the past • See Randy Moore's VOD film 'Escape From Tomorrow,' which turns Disney's iconography against itself SHARE 14 CONNECT 8 TWEETCOMMENTEMAILMORE There are many familiar ingredients in Frozen, the 3-D animated Disney musical opening this week: singing princesses, dangerous spells, calculated villains eager to usurp the crown and the power of love to save the day. Yet even while Frozen often feels like a charming throwback to old-school Disney productions, directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee infuse much of the material with contemporary qualities: Aside from the use of computer-generated imagery, a standard approach now for well over a decade, the plot repeatedly approaches certain clichés before dancing around them. In this story, there are two princesses, neither of them inherently evil, and the male characters largely take on supporting roles. The villainy comes from an unexpected source, as does the resolution to the story's main conundrum. It's as if the filmmakers realized the boundaries of Disney tradition and decided the best way to upend it was to start with the usual stuff before carefully deconstructing it. STORY: 'Frozen' defrosts Kristen Bell's Disney dreams EXCLUSIVE CLIP: Snowman pines for heat in 'Frozen' At the end of the day, Frozen is still a pretty conventional if disarmingly fun-for-all-ages story about the aforementioned princesses, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel), who grow up as orphans kept apart by a deep secret: Elsa possesses the power to create ice and snow out of thin air, and she's told in her childhood that Anna must never know about it, lest the power get out of control. But that's exactly what happens when the two grow up and get into a spat over Anna's abrupt desire to marry a local duke (Alan Tudyk) and Elsa inadvertently freezes the entire kingdom before fleeing it in shame. Anna's mission to subdue her sister, eventually with the help of jolly ice merchant Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and an adorable talking snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad), turns Frozen into a fairy-tale take on sibling rivalry.