#frozen 2 analysis

And I hear y'all saying it's a shame that she didn't attend the statue unveiling ceremony but tbh I'm more and more convinced that Elsa wasn't there for meta reasons; the writers needed the sisters doing different activities in the epilogue to show that they're separated with their new roles yet acting together in the same direction.

I myself found strange and kind of daredevil how Elsa choose to run across the Dark Sea when I first saw the teaser. But I found it a bad decision because the risk of doing that was too great, but then we found out she had a very good reason: she had to reach the Ahtohallan in order to find answers about why was Arendelle and the Enchanted Forest cursed and what had to be done to lift the curse upon the two kingdoms. Good reason indeed; daredevil was actually corageus.

But in the other hand, there was the method she used that was questioned. I have found it's considerated pretty.... non smart, by some.

But, the truth is she had no other choice.

To understand why she choose to just ran across the sea, and only using her powers to freeze the water she lays the foot on, and with some swimming, when Elsa is powerful enough to freeze an entire fjord, we have to be aware that there is certain limits to what she can do.

In the previous movie, she turned summer into winter, a extremely hard one. White out and everything.

But you might notice here, all she could freeze on the water of the fjord was the surface.

Turns out the sea never freezes entirely, you might find a large extention of frozen water on the surface or icebergs, but a HUGE amount of moving water won't turn solid. That's why rivers, even small streams, will be the last freezing on winter.

Turning all the Dark Sea into ice was not an option. In fact, imagine she turned into ice a wave that was just about to fall on her. She would have died by broken bones and internal bleeding.

Then, why not just freeze the parts where she was going to pass, you may ask?

This is what happened when she tried.

Explanation: it's not just impossible to freeze moving water, she had to considerate as well it was a freaking STORMY SEA. Do you know how much weight a regular wave has? The spots she freezes would be turn over, or if the ice was large but the wave was just huge, then the force of it would easily break the ice on that moment, as you can see.

That's on the things aplied to the method she used. Now let's get the imagination wild for more options!

Create a bridge? NOPE. Where would she put the supports for it? On the moving water? It would break.

Do something with her powers to the storm? The method she uses to make her snow storms is whe air pushed by snowflakes moving furiously through the air, and the clouds are made of microscopic ice. So, not much for control the weather. If anything, she could added her own element to the storm, and that would only have made it more dangerous.

Make a surf table to surf her way across the waves? That could have worked only if she knew how to surf. Ice-skating is her thing, and I bet it's not all a skill you can use for surf. This applies to all the other aquatic sports that are similar.

Which leads us to the following: Elsa is self-taught, so she can't do anything new if she doesn't know it's possible. She's limited by her imagination.

She wouldn't even have discovered how to see the past in the frozen water if it were not by Olaf's trivia and her experience in the battle against Gale.

The emails are long, so let me quickly explain the context first. About two months ago in the Frozen fandom there was a lot of discussion about the Northuldra and how accurate their character designs were. Specifically people wondered why Iduna looked so different from the other Northuldra, how much input the Sámi community had in F2, etc. So I decided to email one of the members of the Sámi Advisory group (Professor Veli-Pekka Lehtola) and ask!!!!

My question - Were the Sámi really as diverse as Frozen 2 depicts them (conscerning skin color and other characteristics)?

Answer - Yes. The Sámi come in many different, diverse groups, and while some may be considered "white", there are very real and valid darker skinned Sámi.

He not only answered this question, but gave me many fun facts about Sami history, the writing process/collaboration with Disney, and lots of other stuff like reindeer circles, herding dogs, and even a cut storylines!!!!! Which you can read all about in the screenshots below ->

On the road to F2 there were tons of leaks and I saved as many of them as I could in the fear that Disney would delete them (because they loved to shut down whole websites because of that back in the day). As a result I have a lot of pictures saved on my phone and looking back on them... some don’t sound quite right because it’s definitely not what I saw in the movie. So here’s everythinggg I have. I did my best to organize stuff a bit but there are so many things it was... hard. Feel free to add more stuff in reblogs, replies and such!

Something to note is that we won’t take into account the “officially” released deleted content, which would include everything that’s in the Blu-ray, because basically everyone already saw that (Home, I Seek the Truth, Get This Right, Unmeltable Me, the Secret Room scene, Hard Nokks, etc). Generally, we won’t be analyzing deleted scenes from the official trailers, either, because of this very reason. Something “official” that we will consider, though, are the deleted clips animators have been releasing on Instagram and other sites, because those aren’t that popular.

Before starting here’s the link to all the deleted F2 lines I could find as well as some other additions. The post itself has even more links to other posts containing deleted content so have fun clicking on links. 

Last thing to mention, none of the merch photos here are taken by me. I got most of them from the leaks channel of the Arendelle Kingdom server during 2019. If any image in this post belongs to someone here and you want to be credited please let me know and I’ll edit the post.

This post is long. Like really, really, lagging-my-browser-as-I’m-writing-it long. So grab some popcorn and get comfortable or just take a look at what interests you.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

First, since I’m going to be comparing Kristoff singing about Anna with Anna singing about Elsa, I’ll preface with incest shippers do not interact.

Despite the songs’ very different tones, it’s interesting to compare Anna and Kristoff’s emotions when they feel like they’ve been left behind by someone they love.

Similarities

Kristoff: I'm left behind Wondering if I should follow

Kristoff: And I don't know what path you are on

Anna: I follow you around I always have But you've gone to a place I cannot find

Kristoff and Anna both portray themselves as the one who follows, not the one who leads. Now the person they put their trust in has disappeared out of sight, and they don’t know how to find them.

Kristoff: Who am I, if I'm not your guy? Where am I, if we're not together?

Anna: How to rise from the floor When it's not you I'm rising for? 

These lines show a loss of purpose or sense of identity without the person they used to rely on. Anna and Kristoff both wonder ‘What do I do without you?’

Kristoff: Up is down, day is night When you're not there Oh, you're my only landmark So I'm lost in the woods

Anna: I can't find my direction, I'm all alone The only star that guided me was you

Everything seems out of place and upside down. There’s no clear way to go. Kristoff describing Anna as ‘(his) only landmark’ mirrors Anna calling Elsa ‘the only star that guided (her)’.

Differences

Kristoff: Up 'til now The next step was a question of how I never thought it was a question of whether

Anna: This next step This next choice is one that I can make

Kristoff is now uncertain that the ‘next step’ is the right thing to do, or that he can take it. Anna, however, knows what the correct 'next step’ is - she must only summon the strength to take it.

Kristoff: But I'll wait For a sign That I'm your path 'Cause you are mine Until then I'm lost in the woods

Anna: So I'll walk through this night Stumbling blindly toward the light And do the next right thing

Anna: Then I'll make the choice To hear that voice And do the next right thing

By the end of their respective songs, both Kristoff and Anna have decided what to do. Kristoff chooses to ‘wait for a sign’. He trusts Anna to come back to him when she’s ready, and until she does, he’s willing to wait. Anna, on the other hand, can’t stay still and wait. As far as she knows, Elsa isn’t coming back. She has to move forward - and she does. Anna promises to ‘walk through this night’ and ‘make the choice... to do the next right thing’.

Kristoff ends his song on a more passive note, and Anna on a very active one. This is fitting, because Kristoff has recognised he needs to be content to play a supporting role in this particular quest, whereas Anna has accepted that she has to be the one to step up and take control. This culminates in Anna instigating the collapse of the dam, and Kristoff arriving just in time to offer crucial assistance.

I shared this on twitter, but wanted to talk about it here, too. I keep thinking about the campfire scene, and why Honeymaren joining in when Elsa sings the lullaby is so significant. 

All is Found is sung together twice before: first when Iduna sings to her daughters, then when Elsa & Anna sing together. It represents their close familial bond & love, but this moment with Maren tells us the lullaby doesn’t belong solely to Iduna, but to her people. What Elsa thought was her mother’s lullaby is now more than that - it’s a part of Northuldran culture that Elsa is able to discover and share for the first time. So this moment transforms All is Found from the personal/familial, into the cultural. When Elsa connects with Maren here, she’s connecting with her lost heritage, and that’s so important. It reflects how many indigenous people often only rediscover their heritage later in life.

Forced assimilation and the stigma surrounding their cultures has led to some indigenous people only being able to reconnect with their culture in adulthood. Iduna, trapped away from her home and hiding her culture even from Agnarr, represents that forced assimilation, and Elsa and Anna, discovering their heritage only now, represent the generational consequences of that. Elsa and Honeymaren singing the lullaby together is Elsa’s first real moment of cultural connection, and one of the hints that Elsa really does “belong up here”, as Maren says.

I also think a song that represented a close familial bond & love being shared again with Honeymaren paints her as someone who’ll become part of Elsa’s family. First it’s mother/daughter, then between sisters... then something else.

That doesn’t have to be interpreted romantically - maybe it’s a moment painting the Northuldra, as a whole, as Elsa’s family. But there’s so much tenderness in every frame and every line, to me it feels like something deep and personal between the two of them.

We often see Anna acting like an older sister to Elsa, and this is exactly one of those moments, and it’s such an obvious moment. The anger in her voice... the sternness when she knows her sister is being reckless shows how much, especially in those three years, that Anna has taken care of Elsa. Being an older sister isn’t easy, but Anna seemingly takes that responsibility like it’s nothing.  Hearing her angry tone when she talks to Elsa like that shows how mature she’s gotten, perhaps, a lot more like their mother. Maybe she even acts a lot like their mother as well. Anna usually goofs around, but times like this makes me appreciate that a lot of the times, she is compassionate and shows a lot of care for Elsa, acting like a big sister, when she’s just three years younger than Elsa. 

But not only does she have sternness. She’s so kind and caring for Elsa’s wellbeing that she even lets Elsa have a shoulder to lean on and fall asleep comfortably. We don’t see the scene, but Anna even hums her a song and runs her fingers up and down between Elsa’s eyes to make her fall asleep. That’s usually not something a younger sister would do, and the wonderful thing about this is that Anna puts a lot of love for her sister, making up for all the years that they’ve lost. 

So it’s no wonder why Anna would act as an older sister - she wants Elsa to have everything that she’s never gotten, and if Elsa has gotten into dangerous situations alone, where’s that ever going to lead them? 

Elsa was only given the title of queen due to her parents’ death. She was not prepared.

Elsa fled into the mountains by herself instead of working through the issue at hand as a monarch.

Elsa threw her crown as a symbol of “letting go”

“Yes I’m alone but I’m alone and free.” (While Let It Go was an unhealthy coping mechanism, the meaning behind it is just that Elsa wants to be free, and she doesn’t stop feeling that way even into F2)

She did not want to come back to Arendelle and this only caused her distress after learning that she froze the entire town.

Elsa ONLY came back to Arendelle because she had been captured by Hans.

After three years of being Queen, she was still wildly uncomfortable in her position, often daydreaming and startling easily.

She also still confides in Anna about not wanting to “mess this up” even tho she had already been a strong leader for years.

Elsa says she’s not where she’s meant to be and a part of her longs to go into the unknown and have an adventure

Additionally, her only reason for not leaving was her family. She didn’t even consider her duties as queen.

Elsa made it clear that she does not want anyone relying on her, including Anna.

However, Elsa needs Anna by her side to rule.

Elsa found her true self in Ahtohallan, away from Arendelle. “I’m arriving, and it feels like I am home.” (This directly parallels Anna’s song Home, about her love for Arendelle)

Elsa was Arendelle’s queen for 3 years, and she was great, however she knew right away that Anna would be what’s best for the people, which in itself shows that Elsa was indeed a good leader. She just knew that her needs were not being met as queen, and that would hurt her abilities to be what Arendelle needed.