it took me a rewatch to notice this, but the progression of elsa’s facial expressions in this sequence is frightening.

she starts off using her magic purely for self defense. every blast of it she throws, there’s a look of pure fear of her face. she doesn’t want to be doing this, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, she just wants them to stop attacking her, please, please stop.

but the longer the fight goes on, the more they keep up their attacks, that fear slips away and makes room for something much darker. anger. hate. suddenly she’s not just acting in self-defense anymore, she is actively attacking, very well near impaling one man and fully intent on sending the other to a fall to his death.

hans’ words are what snaps her out of it, and she is horrified because she realizes how right he is. how very, very close she just came to becoming a monster.

it’s horrifying because, if he hadn’t called her out then — if they had simply continued to fight against her as a threat that had to be conquered — she may well have never snapped out of it. she would’ve become consumed by her rage and hatred, and the pure heart she’s clung on to for so many years would turn to black ice.

throughout the movie, elsa was never once a villain. she was an antagonist by the demands of the story structure alone — there was never a drop of badness in her, never a real desire to bring harm to people.

until this moment. this moment, where her soul was almost completely lost.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I think Elsa is one of the most complex characters I’ve watched in a long time and the commentary above helps explain why. I love this sequence for that reason. Elsa starts off completely in flight-mode (she wants to run away from them, and pleads with them to leave her alone) but as the scene progresses she realizes they’re not going to stop until they kill her, so her flight-mode leaves and her fight-mode completely takes over. I have to say I do see her actions throughout as self-defense, but I do agree killing someone would have completely changed her and broke her. Afterwards she would have felt like the monster she always feared she was.