Mr. Freeze

This article is about the Mr. Freeze character, for the roller coasters see Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast (Six Flags Over Texas) and Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast (Six Flags St. Louis)

Mr. Freeze (Mister Freeze) is a fictional character owned by Time Warner and the title character of various Time Warner publications (novels, comics, video films).

Mr. Freeze is best known for publications by the American comic book publisher DC , a subsidiary of Time Warner. Most of the time he appears in these publications as an antagonist to Batman , another character owned by Time Warner. In addition, books, films, cartoons and life-action television series as well as computer and console games have already dealt with the character. In addition, Mr. Freeze was used in all kinds of merchandising products on the subject of Batman (action figures, mugs, T-shirts, etc.) and even in their own roller coasters in the amusement parks " Six Flags St. Louis " and " Six Flags Over Texas ", which are named after him.

The figure of Mister Freeze

Character history

Mr. Freeze is the nickname of the criminal cryologist Doctor Victor Fries, who, after a bizarre accident, has to rely on wearing a special suit that keeps his body temperature constantly below zero degrees Celsius so that he can survive. To achieve his mostly criminal goals, he uses various weapons that are somehow related to the subject of cold. The most common is a cold gun that shoots ice rays and can freeze people in blocks of ice within a short time.

Freeze is one of the most widely known figures of the classic "super villain" type and also one of the most popular Batman opponents. The character first appeared in Batman # 121 from February 1959 under the name Mister Zero and was created by Batman creator Bob Kane himself. Other names for Freeze were Doktor Schimmel (nickname in the Batman series of the 1960s) and Doktor Zero (alluding to the freezing point, which is at 0 degrees). In the Spanish-speaking world, the figure is called Capitán Frío or O Siñor Xeo ("Mr. Ice").

The character of Mr. Freeze became known to a wide audience through the Batman life action series of the 1960s. In this series, "Mister Zero" was also given the name "Mister Freeze", which was soon adopted into the comic book.

In the 1950s to 1980s, Freeze was one of the many “joke” villains Batman had to deal with (such as Killer Moth, the Mad Hatter or Signalman). Since the figure enjoyed enormous popularity with readers of the Batman series, it soon became a permanent fixture in the villain's repertoire of the Batman series.

The Batman animated series by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm from the early 1990s enriched the backstory of Mr. Freeze in the episode "Heart of Ice" with some more serious components and made the character a tragic and complex appearance. The series introduced Freeze's wife Nora, who suffers from a previously incurable disease, which is why Freeze keeps her in coolant until he has found a cure. Freeze commits his crimes to fund research on a cure. In addition, the series transformed the trashy, high-pitched villain into a melancholy-collected character, both in terms of his behavior and his appearance. This version of the character met with a great positive response from the fans and was soon adopted into the comics (Detective Comics # 670, 1994) - where the trashy old Mr. Freeze had already been killed in a story for a lack of creative ideas for the character and now had to be resuscitated in a hurry.

Appearance

Mr. Freeze is consistently portrayed as a tall, bald man. His physique has undergone considerable changes over the years: he was originally of normal stature, in the 90s he was temporarily of a highly athletic, bodybuilder-like figure and in recent years has been portrayed above all as a very gaunt man. His skin color was originally kept in the normal incarnate tone (flesh color), but since the 1990s he has been shown consistently as a bluish-watery whitewash. His clothes have also changed frequently. Originally he wore a colorful costume and a goldfish bowl-like, see-through glass helmet; later a heavily armored battle suit in matt blue or gray tones with a transparent cap over the skull; and today he wears an almost delicate, grayish armor. His weapons have always been "cold-based". In the past he wore normal, light pistols that shot ice rays, today mostly a heavy tank strapped to his back that feeds cold liquids into a heavy "cold cannon".

According to the publisher, Victor Fries is 1.83 m tall and weighs 87 kg. His eyes are blue, his hair was brown before he was transformed, and now he's bald.

Powers and abilities

During the Underworld Unleashed storyline, Freeze was given the ability to create cold out of his body, which he could "fire" off from his hands, so that he no longer had to rely on his combat suit to keep his body temperature cold and now no longer relied on his cold cannon as a weapon. However, he lost these powers again.

Character biography

Origin and beginnings

Even as a child, Victor Fries was fascinated by the idea of ​​freezing living things in order to preserve their shape and beauty. His strict parents, Charles and Lorraine Fries, by no means shared this fascination and reacted to it, especially after the completely misunderstood advice from a therapist, with corporal punishment and other harsh punishments. When they realized that they would not achieve anything, they sent their son to a strict boarding school, where he was sued and tortured as an outsider by his classmates and teachers. The young Fries barely saw his parents.

As he got older, Fries, whose obsession had waned over time, decided to study and met student Nora, the university's most successful athlete, a figure skater. The two fell in love and married a year later. After successfully completing his doctorate, he began to work at a school as a natural history teacher.

At this time Fries began to draw attention to himself with his first cryogenic experiments and became a leading expert in the field of refrigeration technology. His life went on in a regular manner until his wife fell ill with a rare form of cancer. In order to raise funds for the treatment of his wife, Victor took a job at GothCorp, where he continued his experiments in the development of cryogenic healing methods. Eventually he developed the prototype of a cold chamber, but his supervisor, Ferris Boyle, had the project stopped for cost reasons.

Transformation into Mr. Freeze

As Nora lay dying, the desperate Victor froze her with his cryopistol, hoping that one day a cure for her illness would be found. When he learned that during his brief absence she was replacing the pistol's cartridge to kill herself and that the GCPD was just around the corner, the only way out was to freeze himself. He was officially pronounced dead and taken to Indian Hill. Where he was from Dr. Hugo Strange can continue to live in a cryochamber.

Freeze, who has since been believed to be dead, but who survived in the cryostasis in Arkham Asylum, discovered after he was thawed again that he had only been able to survive under arctic temperatures since his attempted suicide. He escaped Arkham Asylum by breaking out. After his outbreak, he developed a temperature-regulating protective suit so that he could move freely and a cold cannon with which he could freeze objects and people.

Start of a criminal career

Eventually, he took revenge on the GothCorp person in charge by killing them with his cold cannon. When he also wanted to kill Ferris Boyle, he was attacked by Batman, who had become aware of him through the mysterious murders. In the course of their argument, Nora, whose body had been stored by GothCorp for research purposes, was struck by a beam from Victor's cold cannon and torn to pieces. Victor then blamed Batman for the death of his wife and swore eternal revenge on him.

With the help of some rackets, the initially “Mr. Zero, ”Fries embittered increasingly cruel crimes, but was stopped again and again by Batman and his partner Robin. In the psychiatry of Arkham, where he is taken again and again after his arrests, Fries devoted himself further to his scientific studies. His incarceration in Arkham is controversial, as Freeze shows no real signs of insanity, but appears to be in their right mind. His accommodation in Arkham is mainly due to the fact that this institution is the only facility in Gotham that can satisfy Frie's claim to be housed in a refrigerated cell.

Later acts

Through a pact with the demon Neron, Fries was later temporarily transformed into a creature made of living ice that no longer relied on weapons and a cold suit. Only Green Lantern and Darkstar managed to defeat him. He lost his strength again after the defeat. He compensated for this loss by getting a new, improved suit.

From the character studies that were made during his imprisonment, it was concluded that Frie's troubled psyche is becoming increasingly unstable. His only goal in life now seems to be to kill Batman and turn Gotham into an ice desert. By his own account, Victor Fries died the day the cold liquid poured over him, leaving only the cruel, vengeful Mr. Freeze.

Due to his solitary nature, Freeze rarely works with other Gotham criminals and prefers to keep to himself. Nevertheless, he has already worked as an enforcer for the "Black Mask" gang, a powerful group in the Gotham underworld, and for the terror network of Nyssa al Ghul, another enemy of Batman.

Most recently, Fries succeeded in resuscitating the dead Nora by embedding her remains in an occult tomb called the Lazarus Pit, which has the ability to give new life to the dead. Nora Fries changed as a result of a mistake by her husband who mixed the chemicals with which the dead must be anointed during the resuscitation rite in the wrong proportion. Nora Fries returned to the living, but is no longer a person, but a mighty fire creature that calls itself Lazara.

Enemies and allies

Batman

The protector of Gotham City and archenemy of Mr. Freeze.

Ferris Boyle

Ferris Boyle was the powerful CEO of GothCorp, an influential corporation based in Gotham City. He made his debut in the episode " Heart of Ice " of the animated series " Batman the Animated Series " from 1992. (US dubbing voice: Mark Hamill ) and was subsequently in the one-shot " Batman: Mr Freeze " (1997) also in the Batman Comic universe introduced. In both media, he is an unscrupulous and greedy manager who initially hires Freeze to give him the opportunity to conduct his cryptological studies, but ultimately has his research stopped for cost reasons. When Fries opposes the closure of his laboratory, where he is working on a drug to cure his cancerous wife, he is thrown into a scuffle into a container of chemically treated coolant. The contact with this means that from now on he can only live in great cold. In order to take control of his sick wife Nora, who is being kept in a storage container at GothCorp, and to get revenge on Boyle, Fries, who now calls himself Mr. Freeze, carries out various attacks on GothCorp employees. His attempt to take revenge on Boyle calls Batman on the scene: while Boyle survives the attack unscathed in the cartoon series Freeze and "only" goes to prison for his criminal activities, he is killed in the comics by Freeze when he gets him with his Cold cannon transformed into a living block of ice.

Mr. Freeze in other media

movie theater

In the movie Batman & Robin , Freeze is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger . It is there that Freeze and Poison Ivy ( Uma Thurman ) team up to pursue a plan to transform Gotham City into an ice desert. Their intentions are ultimately foiled by Batman, Robin and Batgirl , and both villains end up in the Arkham Asylum . At the end of the film, Freeze seems purified and leaves Batman a cure for the seriously ill Alfred.

watch TV

Mr. Freeze in live-action series

In the Batman "Live Action" series of the 1960s - in which Batman ( Adam West ) was responsible for Victor Frie's transformation into Mr. Freeze - Mr. Freeze was played by actors George Sanders , Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach, among others shown.

Since 2015 Mr. Freeze has appeared in the crime series Gotham , played by Nathan Darrow . The prequel series takes place many years before Bruce Wayne's transformation into Batman and, in the second season, tells, among other things, the origin story of Mr. Freeze. In this continuity, the largely established Origin story of the character is first retold, but there is an unexpected turnaround when Nora Fries dies during the cryonic conservation process. She had deliberately sabotaged her husband's experiment so as not to benefit from the suffering of those harmed by Victor's unethical attempts. Devastated, Victor tries to kill himself with coolant, but is unintentionally turned into Mr. Freeze. Although he is pronounced dead, he wakes up a little later under mysterious circumstances in Professor Hugo Strange's laboratory . From this, Victor receives a new suit that allows him to survive despite his vulnerability to temperatures above zero degrees Celsius. From this point on, Freeze tries in vain to reverse his physical condition through experiments in order to be able to lead a normal life again one day. In the third season, Mr. Freeze teams up with the penguin to stop the Riddler together with Poison Ivy and Firefly . In the season finale, on the orders of the penguin, Mr. Freeze is responsible for freezing the Riddler alive in a block of ice with the cold cannon. Later in season four, Mr. Freeze is recruited by Jerome Valeska to become part of an alliance of Gotham City's worst criminals, including Scarecrow and the Mad Hatter .

Mr. Freeze in cartoon productions

In the Batman animated series by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini ( Batman: The Animated Series ), Freeze appears as a villain of the more sympathetic kind and as an overall tragic figure who pursues reprehensible goals, but is driven by noble motives. The design for Freeze in this series was by Mike Mignola , who designed it at Timm's request, based on that of Vincent Price in the film " The Cabinet of Horrors of Dr. Phibes ”represented figure of Dr. Phibes supported. The original dubbing voice for Freeze was actor Michael Ansara .

In the Animated Series subsequent animated film Batman & Mr. Freeze: Ice Age (Original title: Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero ) lives as a hermit Freeze with two bears in the Arctic. The worsening condition of his wife eventually compels him to return to Gotham City to find an organ donor for her. Since Nora has a very rare blood group, only a few people are considered potential donors, including Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Police Chief James Gordon. Freeze kidnaps them to get them to save his wife.

In the cartoon series Batman of the Future (original title: Batman Beyond ), which relocates the Batman scenario in a fictional dystopian future, Mr. Freeze also appears in several episodes. There it is revealed that he is practically immortal due to his accident and thus survived his accident in the last episode of the Animated Series. In Batman Beyond, his remains are recovered by villain Derek Powers and Freeze's dislocated head is given a new body. He then worked briefly with Powers, but eventually turned against him and sided with the new Batman. At the end of this series it also appears as if Freeze died (from the injuries Powers inflicts on him in a fight). The corpse nevertheless remains missing.

In the animated series The Batman , Freeze is an ordinary criminal (originally dubbed by Clancy Brown) whom Batman pursues after stealing jewels in a cryptology laboratory. An accident occurs in the process: Freeze is captured by electrical charge, but at the same time frozen. He then walks on earth as a living dead person who is always surrounded by an aura of cold, which means that things around him freeze. He had a suit made for him that enabled him to use his ability to generate cold in a targeted manner. In a later episode he teams up with the villain Firefly, but is defeated again.

Console games

Mr. Freeze has appeared in various Batman video games. He was a villain in "Batman: The Animated Series", "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" for Sega Mega Drive , the film adaptation "Batman & Robin", as well as in "Batman: Chaos in Gotham", "Batman Vengeance " And " Batman: Dark Tomorrow " and " Batman: Arkham City ". Mr. Freeze also appears as one of the main opponents in the video game " Batman: Arkham Origins " . The corresponding story-expanding DLC was released on April 22nd, 2014 and bears the title "Cold, Cold Heart" based on Freeze's original story. Also in Batman: Arkham Knight Freeze appears in the DLC "Season of Malice", but cooperates with Batman instead of fighting him. During the episode, his terminally ill wife Nora is freed from her cold room. Although she only has a short time to live, she begs Freeze not to freeze her again, and they both leave Gotham City to spend their last days together.