#ask;misc

Why not both?

It is indeed commonly believed and I think it would be true because Elsa is like the “eye of the storm”. 

For example, during the whiteout scene in the movie the blizzard happens around Elsa. There is this space around her where it’s a bit calmer. The way we can see this is how Hans gets to Elsa and how he has to go through this sort of snow whirl around Elsa.

Another example are the snowgies. If Elsa does not sneeze then there’s no snowgies. 

Elsa does love Anna and everything she does, good or bad, she thinks she’s protecting her little sister. When Elsa strikes Anna’s heart during For The First Time In Forever Reprise it’s all an accident. Elsa wasn’t even looking or aiming at her. 

It is not like when they are younger where Elsa does aim at Anna to try to save her and that she accidentally strikes her head. At the Ice Castle, Elsa doesn’t know that she hit Anna until she turns around and sees her on the ground holding herself. 

Then Elsa realizes that she’s a “monster” and she can’t bear to have Anna close to her since she can’t stand to know that she could hurt her. That’s why she creates Marshmallow– to escort Anna, Kristoff and Olaf out of the castle. 

Now, there’s this thing about Olaf and Marshmallow in which Olaf represents Elsa’s joyful and childish side of her powers (and her hidden but true personality) and Marshmallow represents the fear and the “monster” that her powers are. When Marshmallow first appears he’s a sad creature, his only line being what Elsa used to say when she was younger “Go away”. 

It is not until Anna attacks him by throwing the snowball at him that he grows mad; like Kristoff tells Anna “See! Now you made him mad!” Then it’s Marshmallow’s choice to attack Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven. He was already leaving!

We can parallel this moment with Elsa– when Hans and the guards attack her at her Ice Castle at first she’s afraid and hesitant but as soon as she realizes that she’s in danger and that they’re in for the kill, she grows mad and attacks back. 

Usually on animation movies there are scenes that get done but later cut out because they don’t work for the movie or they are making it too long. On this case, this quote comes from a scene that got done very early in the development of the movie and changed multiple times. 

This scene was first animated when Elsa was the villain of the story. Anna’s character was much different that what it ended up looking like.

Then as the movie’s development progressed it got changed again but it kept some of the original material. This time being the scene where the quote comes from. This scene was shown back on Summer 2013 as a teaser of the movie. 

They decided to show this scene because it showed enough of the plot, introduced the characters a bit and also made people interested on the movie. Elsa looks “evil” because during the pre-release of the movie when trailers and teasers came out Elsa was always shown as the possible villain to keep Hans a complete secret and make people even more surprised about it. Hence that she’s shooting ice and creating the blizzard.

However, the scene was not final and it got changed to the scene on the movie where Marshmallow is chasing Kristoff, Anna, Sven and Olaf. 

Variants between this scenes are Anna’s feistiness, Olaf calling Kristoff “Kristoff” and not “Sven”, Marshmallow’s design, some angles on the takes, Elsa actually creating the snow blizzard, and of course the colors and lighting.

When developing the movie the animators decided that Arendelle should be a place where they could have both summer and winter at the same time but still have that contrast, and next to that have the winter storm/wonderland that Elsa creates. Between their options were Iceland, Quebec, Denmark and Norway, among other places.

They chose Norway because its geography allowed to have a very warm and inviting fjord and cold and snowy mountains very close and have that summer-winter contrast they wanted. 

However, Denmark is still present as The Southern Isles where Hans comes from. 

While you got a point here, you don’t. I’ll try to explain why:

One of the things that the respiratory system does is warm up the air for the body. However, it doesn’t mean you’re immune to freezing your lungs out. According to my small reseach, everything is fine over -40ºF (not saying it’s fine to breathe at that temperature but you would live). That temperature happens to be Norway’s average winter temperature (in the southern and northern parts). 

Elsa has said that the cold doesn’t bother her so she would be definitely fine. Kristoff would be too since he would be used to the cold. Olaf doesn’t even have a respiratory system for starters, and Sven is a cold-weather animal (he is specially adapted to survive). 

Anna would definitely have the most trouble surviving out of all but her clothes would help more than you think. The air we exhale happens to be the same temperature than our body temperature. So if she isn’t cold, her body temperature is fine. To show how her outfit does influence, when she first goes out looking for Elsa, Anna is wearing her coronation dress was made out of silk and she’s freezing cold. With her wool dress, she doesn’t seem to complain about the cool, until Elsa strikes her heart. 

They don’t. They are just Queen Elsa of Arendelle and Princess Anna of Arendelle. (Unless the directors did give them last names but were taken away, like Hans Westergaard)

Arendelle is a made up town; however you could say it still does exist because it is inspired by two things that are nowadays in Norway. 

The fjord the one in the movie is inspired of is called Nærøyfjord. It’s located on the southern part of the country where all the fjords are.

(The church from which the castle is inspired off is also close in Lærdal) )

However, the name of the kingdom, Arendelle, is inspired by another little town called Arendal, also in Norway, but on the other side of the fjords.