Frozen is now the most successful animated feature film of all time. After opening in Japan this weekend, the film's worldwide grosses now stand at $1.072bn (£644m). In fact, forget animation – Frozen is now the 10th biggest film ever. It's bigger than Jurassic Park, than any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. It's bigger than Star Wars, even. And because it's a Disney film, it will keep raking in cash for decades to come thanks to sales of DVDs and toys and costumes and Broadway musicals. It's unstoppable.
This might be that, despite being an animated movie with limitless possibilities, Frozen has an incredibly traditional Disney fairytale plot. There are princesses, dead parents, eternal winters, terminal illnesses that can only be cured by love and many, many violently sincere songs.
In fact, Frozen's traditional plot is a stark reminder of how weird most animated storytelling can be. Let's compare it with other successful animations, just to be sure. Remember, all of these films have made at least half a billion dollars.
Toy Story 3 (worldwide gross: $1.063 billion)
A cowboy doll – along with a plastic astronaut, a Mr Potato Head and an excitable pre-moulded dinosaur – wrongly assume their human owner wants to throw them away. They escape and spend time at a daycare centre run by a sadistic, dictatorial teddy bear, before ending up in an incinerator, where everyone quietly braces themselves for imminent death.
The Lion King ($987,483,777)
In a violent bid for power, a lion kills his brother and attempts to do away with his nephew. But the nephew escapes, falls in love, learns some jaunty songs about how to deal with anxiety and history's tendency to repeat itself, is visited by the ghost of his father and then wreaks a terrible vengeance upon his uncle.
Despicable Me 2: ($970,761,885)
The world's former most evil man is now a devoted father. He is convinced to help track down another arch-villain, using a shopping centre bakery as a front, while he continues his search for love. He realises that he's fallen in love with his partner when she shoots another of his romantic interests. Eventually, he saves the day by firing a fart gun at the baddie.
Finding Nemo ($936,743,261)
A widowed father's worst fears are realised when his disabled son is kidnapped by a dentist and the dentist's murderous niece. He sets out to rescue his son with the help of an amnesiac fish and, to a lesser extent, a sea turtle who – it's strongly implied – is constantly stoned.
Monsters University ($743,559,607)
A by the numbers, 1980s-style slobs v snobs college comedy, but starring two men in their 60s as the students. Who, by the way, are also monsters.
Up ($731,342,744)
A young man meets a young woman, and they fall in love. They grow old together, fail to realise their dream of having children and then she dies. Ravaged by grief, the man becomes an aggressive hermit so determined to escape humanity's cold grip that he ties balloons to his house and flies it to a wilderness full of talking dogs. Only the love of a fat little boy can save him.
The Incredibles ($631,442,092)
A number of superheroes – all of whom reside in a protected-identity relocation scheme – are brought back into action to defeat a normal man who has the temerity to want to be a superhero himself. Together they learn that special people deserve more things than normal people, and that Batman is possibly a fraud.
• This article was amended on Monday 31 March 2013. We originally converted $1.072bn into £640,000, not the slightly higher (correct) figure of £644m. This has been corrected.
