Elsa (Frozen) of the song "Let It Go", with critics frequently calling her a "powerhouse". Attempts were made as early as 1937 by Walt Disney to adapt Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Snow Queen", into a film. The tale focuses on two children, one named Gerda, who served as the basis for Princess Anna, and the other named Kai, who is "cursed with negativity" after his heart is pierced with a shard of glass from an enchanted mirror and is later kidnapped by the Snow Queen. However, Disney struggled with creating a believable, multi-dimensional adaption of the fairy tale's title character,
Alan Menken The challenge was to create an animated musical film of this Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that could sit alongside the Disney films "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Cinderella". "The Little Mermaid" opened to critical and commercial success and signaled a new Disney era called the Disney Renaissance. The film gave them their first Oscar win: Best Song for the song "Under the Sea". Menken also won the 1989 Oscar for Best Score. Menken and Ashman's "Beauty and the Beast" garnered them three 1991 Oscar nominations for Best Song, winning for its title song. Menken won another Oscar