‘Frozen 2’ fights to overcome sequel pitfalls: Preview

“When you’re there, every second you feel like you’re going to die.”

Strangely, this sentiment could apply to any number of adventures behind making Frozen 2. In this case, director Chris Buck is talking about a research trip across Iceland, Norway, and Finland. There, Buck and half a dozen other high-level Disney creatives descended into caves, trekked across glaciers, and skirted the edges of volcanoes. 

“When you’re there, every second you feel like you’re going to die.”

As you might guess, that’s not standard practice when making a princess movie. But according to Buck and fellow director, writer, and chief creative officer Jennifer Lee, this time around going to extreme lengths was a necessity. 

“I think that trip not only inspired visuals in the world, but it did something else,” Lee tells reporters gathered at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California. “Just immersing us twenty-four hours a day in that environment, our imaginations truly were piqued, and so a lot of story ideas developed during that trip as well.”

Like road-weary relatives, Buck and Lee are immeasurably excited to share photos from their 2016 voyage, unveiling each with relentless enthusiasm. 

There are the leaves that inspired the enchanted forest’s autumnal palette, the dark sea responsible for Elsa’s tumultuous predicament seen in the trailer, and a rather inspirational pile of rocks next to an even more inspirational grouping of trees. The rocks, as we would later learn, become sentient in the film. The trees do not.

“I haven’t seen that in a while,” Lee laughs, as a video recap of the trip goes dark. “I got a little emotional.”

During their travels, Buck and Lee consulted with historians, regional cultural specialists, and even botanists. At home, they pulled from Scandinavian and Norse mythology, meticulously examined the works of Hans Christian Andersen, and spent hours ruminating on the future of Frozen’s beloved characters. 

In an early phase of development, both Buck and Lee took psychological tests role-playing as characters for inspiration; Lee embodying Anna and Elsa, and Buck taking on Kristoff. Lee noted for reporters, “He took a lot longer to do it than I did, and I did two characters!”

Image: mark von holden/disney

In the presentations that followed, animators, designers, and musicians tasked with carrying out Buck and Lee’s vision regaled journalists with more behind-the-scenes antics. 

There was indoor skydiving crucial to animating a wind character, a visit to an equestrian center necessary for modeling a horse-shaped water spirit, and finally, studio-wide vocal lessons essential to getting Elsa and Anna’s breathing just right. 

“For us, breathing shows effort, and effort feels earnest.”

“The inhale and the breathing that sets this up makes everything feel a little bit bigger,” says animation supervisor Justin Sklar, sitting up in his chair to demonstrate proper singing technique. “For us, breathing shows effort, and effort feels earnest.” 

That effort, as Sklar puts it, helps “sell the idea that something impossible is happening.” 

In the clip he’s referencing, Elsa awakens a mysterious spirit that could change Arendelle forever. Sklar and the rest of the Disney team are doing something similar, tacking a sequel onto one of the most successful projects in the studio’s history. It’s a move that could awaken the kind of transparent commercialism powerful enough to ruin the magic of both films. 

At least, that seems to be what everyone fears.

Walking through the Disney offices, signs of Frozen 2′s impending release are everywhere. 

Portraits of Anna and Elsa plaster surfaces like cheery wanted signs. A mural of Kristoff and Sven dominates the staff cafeteria, as a life-size Olaf figure lounges in the stairwell. 

Head towards the lobby and you’ll see a full-scale photo op with Anna and Elsa in the enchanted forest, complete with towering trees donning hundreds of hand-painted leaves. When it was my turn to pose, I’ll admit I teared up.

Producer and senior vice president of production Peter Del Vecho is quick to remind the press that Disney doesn’t do the sequel thing often. 

“We never make sequels unless the filmmakers themselves have an idea for a film and a desire to tell it.”

“At Disney Animation we never make sequels unless the filmmakers themselves have an idea for a film and a desire to tell it,” Del Vecho notes in a prepackaged video presentation shown upon arrival. “That’s why even though Frozen 2 is our fifty-eighth animated feature, it is only our fourth sequel.”

It’s hard to believe, but The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Fantasia 2000 (2000), and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) are the only sequels to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios thus far — and with good reason. Pulling off the same creative trick twice is notoriously burdensome, and occasionally impossible. “Sequel” has long been a synonym for “probably not very good;” and “part 2” code for “set your expectations low.”

It explains why so many of the folks at Disney, creators and PR reps alike, seem to shy away from actually saying “Frozen 2” — opting instead for phrases like “continuation on” and “exploration of” and “next chapter in” the Frozen legacy. 

Of course, they don’t want to distance themselves from Frozen. The runaway success earned the company $1.27 billion at the box office and God knows how much more in merchandising sales — not to mention, it’s a classic. 

But there seems to be an understanding that the pesky “2” linking these films could spell trouble. Big, franchise-threatening trouble.

To keep the nerves at bay, Lee says she fought to see the film not through her or the audience’s eyes, but through Olaf’s — the iconic snowman Lee describes as a three-year-old with an impressive vocabulary.

“What I always love is how children have this strange way of cutting right to the heart of the matter, and they reveal things and expose things about you that you hadn’t thought of or won’t admit,” Lee says. “We had to reground and not think about the zeitgeist of Frozen or of the characters at all, and just keep going back to, ‘How would Olaf feel and say these things?’” 

“Children have this strange way of cutting right to the heart of the matter.”

Lee makes this self-aware observation with immense joy. Whether that’s her putting her best foot forward or just the kind of confidence Oscar winners walk around with these days is hard to say. Either way, she seems comfortable leaving her project in the hands of a frosty toddler. 

She’s genuinely excited about this story, like so many of the creators we met.

In the set design presentation, the environments department gushed over the opportunity to use virtual reality technology to “physically” walk through the kingdom they’d created. Along the way, they pointed out statues across Arendelle modeled after their fellow designers, one of them art director of environments David Womersley who was also presenting. 

“I didn’t know they were doing that,” he chuckled. “I’ve been immortalized.”

During a closer look at the creation of Anna and Elsa, artists discussed the Martha Graham inspiration behind Elsa’s spell casting style and the hand-me-down nature of Anna’s Frozen 2 costume. (The purple cape and dress combo was originally designed for Elsa, but it was ultimately decided the snow queen deserved something a bit more regal and icy.)

When it came time to see Frozen 2’s new inhabitants, their respective designers displayed the kind of nervous giddiness often seen in first-time parents. Even the woman charged with watching hundreds of hours of salamander footage — oh yes, Frozen 2 features one adorable salamander — seemed ready to do it again in a heartbeat. 

(OK, his name is Bruni. Yes, he’s very cute. No, Disney would not give us pictures, but we did get one sketch.)

All this attention to detail is promising. While we can’t vouch for Frozen 2 quite yet, we have it on good authority these creators couldn’t be trying harder to deliver what was promised: another heartwarming classic from the Frozen north. 

Frozen 2 arrives in theaters Nov. 22.