Above you can find Schaffrillas Productions’ video, commenting on the creation of Frozen II (2019). I highly recommend watching it to understand what I will be writing below.
It seems that Frozen II had a number of issues even just before release. Among them was the question about who the voice calling to Elsa is. Is it her mother? or something else? The team never managed to answer this, and into retrospect, this makes many of the lyrics for ‘All Is Found’ make a lot of sense (which lyrics I have been extensively covering in days past). Yet it seems so strange that the voice is actually Elsa’s mother – she is not, as far as I believe, a spirit. If I believed that Elsa and Anna were jointly spirits (which I don’t! – bah-dum-tss), Iðunn could not be a spirit. If Elsa and Anna were not spirits, there is still no reason why Iðunn would be a spirit. The link above will bring you to my blog post about this.
And it seems that Frozen II was not so well liked by young children when they did a test run of the movie. This led to them slicing out many scenes and adding in some more 6 months before release. I wonder what a darker, more mature, more sombre Frozen II would have been like. Sure, not enjoyable for kids as much, but already in the existing version of Frozen II we see shades of deeper themes – betrayal, generational disputes, death and sacrifice, doing the right thing. Yet these themes seem too many all at once. A 1.5 hour movie probably could never do it justice. While I don’t mind exposition in movies, although many modern movie critics do, it is true that Frozen II never quite dives into these themes. In hindsight, the conflict between the Norðaldra people and Arnadalr never seems serious, for example. They are at war, but when Elsa and Anna show up, the people sort of just…stop fighting? But there is bad blood there that has not been settled for decades. It should not just take the appearance of a magical maiden to end the intense hatred both groups have for each other.
I have, for a very long time, focused on Elsa and Anna, and their dynamic with one another. To be honest, I really don’t care about Kristoff or Sven, or the 4 new characters introduced and named in Frozen II (Rider, Honeymaren, Yelena, Lt. Matthias). But in the interest of writing a good story, I am going to pay them more attention in my Saga, Book II. I will give them more to do in the background, while Elsa and Anna are off seeking spirits and chasing truth.
I started writing the Saga as a way to reconcile the epic mythological overtones of Frozen II with the more down-to-earth sisterly drama of Frozen. But thanks to this video, I now notice that there is much more that my Saga can accomplish.
When it is published, I hope you will read it.
Fylgi!
P.S. I promise the next post will be about Iðunn’s letter. Stay tuned!
Queendom of the Crocus 
That’s an idea some production house could use. When the kids who watched Frozen and Frozen 2 grow up, and get to watch the same movies in grown-up versions, wouldn’t that be cool?
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