Elsa and her group are friends are back for a sequel to Frozen (Wired Magazine)
Sequels have a bad habit of disappointing, but if the “Frozen II” movie is anything like it’s trailer, I’m ready to fall in love with Disney all over again. At first, I was skeptical that Disney could make a good “Frozen” sequel, given that they’re clearly just trying to build on the financial success of the first movie. However, the trailer for the movie, set to release in November, is not only visually and musically exciting, but also leads into a lot of intriguing questions.
For one, the animation promises to be spectacular again. Elsa using her powers to run into the ocean in the very first scene of the trailer immediately harkens back to the original movie, when she built her ice castle, ran across the fjords and froze fountains into statues. Just like the magical water in Moana, this animation is just so fun to watch.
Plus, the character designs are looking great. Anna and Elsa both change up their outfits and their hair throughout the trailer and the color scheme shifts slightly from the first movie, so even though we’re seeing the same characters, already they’re becoming more multidimensional; we’re not seeing them in the exact same way as the first movie.
Also, can we talk for a second about how intense this trailer was? It was like a trailer for “Game of Thrones.” With the army of reindeer Kristoff is leading, the scene where Anna jumps over a huge chasm, the dramatic overlook of the strange autumnal land, Elsa’s ocean scene and the final scene of the trailer where Anna grabs Kristoff’s sword and swings at a mysterious something, this trailer could be for a war film. This contrast to the first movie is a little exciting, but also a little nerve-wracking. We want this movie to be different, but not stray too far from the light-hearted humor of the first.
Now let’s talk theories. One of the major theories floating around right now is that we’re going to run into some new princesses with new powers. Clearly, this new movie is going to have a fall theme, evidenced by the scenes of fall foliage and the colorful leaves blowing around on the title screen. The question is if this new season is going to come with new superpowers, just like Elsa’s ice powers related to the wintery theme of the first movie. There’s even a character introduced, however briefly, that may be the wielder of these fall powers. For just a couple of seconds, a boy and a girl are shown as the boy is swept upward in a swirl of wind and leaves. Was this done by the girl? Was it the boy controlling the wind? Are these powers fall-related or wind-related or something totally different?
Some postulate that there will be a princess introduced with powers for each of the other seasons, to complement Elsa as the winter queen. Some go as far as to speculate that Anna will uncover her own summer powers in this movie. Personally, I think this is super lame. Winter powers are cool, but what would spring powers even look like? Oh yippee, I made a flower grow. The theory I find to be slightly more interesting is that the powers of new characters may be elemental. Elsa’s ice powers may stand in for water, the boy could have been lifted by air powers and then earth and fire could make an appearance as well. This is especially valid because there’s a scene in the trailer in which Elsa is fighting an oddly-colored fire with her iciness (remember I said this trailer was intense). Even this theory I find kind of restricting though. The beauty of Elsa’s power is its novelty. We’ve seen elemental powers before: Ever heard of “The Last Airbender”? If new characters with new powers are introduced, hopefully the movie doesn’t try to explain them in any of these frameworks, but rather introduces something that no theorist could guess at.
Many are also trying to discern the identity of these new characters. Given that the movie will be taking a closer look at Elsa’s character and where she got her powers from, some speculate that the boy and the girl we glimpsed are Elsa’s parents in a flashback. Many like the idea that Elsa inherited her powers from her mother. Personally, I don’t think this new girl looks enough like the mother we briefly saw in the first movie; their hair is different. I do, however, like the theory that this new girl could be a potential girlfriend for Elsa. Fans have petitioned for Elsa to be LGBTQ, and the idea is supported by Elsa’s voice actor, Idina Menzel. Whether Disney will have the guts to make this happen, we’ll have to wait and see. Speaking of new characters, Sterling K. Brown (“This is Us”) and Evan Rachel Wood (“Westworld”) have been hired on for this new movie, and we still have no clue who they’ll be voicing.
I could talk about this trailer all day—the music, the significance of the four-cornered crystal on the movie poster, the absence of Olaf, the geography, potential enemies and plotlines—but there’s no space for that. What I will say is that this trailer did its job: I’ll be preordering my tickets for “Frozen II” this November.
Alex Houdeshell is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at alexandra.houdeshell@uconn.edu.
