The Animation Freak. Frozen 2.
King Agnarr of Arendelle tells his daughters Elsa and Anna that their grandfather, King Runeard, forged a treaty with the neighboring tribe of Northuldra by building a dam in the Enchanted Forest (their homeland). A fight occurs, resulting in Runeard's death and enraging the forest's classical elements of earth, fire, water, and air. The elements disappear, and a wall of mist traps everyone in the forest; Agnarr barely escapes, helped by an unknown savior.
Three years after her coronation, Elsa celebrates autumn in the kingdom with Anna, the snowman Olaf, the iceman Kristoff, and Kristoff's reindeer Sven. One night, Elsa hears a mysterious voice calling her. She follows it, unintentionally awakening the elemental spirits and forcing everyone in the kingdom to evacuate. The Rock Troll colony arrives, and Grand Pabbie tells them that Elsa and the others must set things right by uncovering the truth about the past. Elsa, Anna, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven follow the mysterious voice, and travel to the Enchanted Forest. The mist parts at Elsa's touch, while the air spirit appears as a tornado, catching everyone in its vortex before Elsa stops it by forming ice sculptures. She and Anna discover that the sculptures are images from their father's past, and encounter the Northuldra and a troop of Arendellian soldiers who are still in conflict with one another. When the fire spirit appears, Elsa discovers that it is an agitated magical salamander and calms it. Elsa and Anna arrange a truce between the soldiers and the Northuldra after discovering that their mother, Queen Iduna, was a Northuldran who had saved Agnarr (an Arendellian). They later learn about a fifth spirit, who will unite the people with the magic of nature.
Elsa, Anna, and Olaf continue north, leaving Kristoff and Sven behind. They find their parents' wrecked ship and a map with a route to Ahtohallan, a mythical river said to explain the past. Elsa sends Anna and Olaf to safety, and continues alone. She encounters and tames the Nøkk, the water spirit who guards the sea to Ahtohallan. Elsa discovers that the voice calling to her is the memory of young Iduna's call; her powers are a gift from nature because of Iduna's selfless saving of Agnarr, and Elsa is the fifth spirit. She learns that the dam was built as a ruse to reduce Northuldran resources, because of Runeard's contempt for the tribe's connection with magic and his intention to destroy them and incorporate their region into the kingdom. Elsa learns that Runeard began the conflict by killing the unarmed Northuldran leader in cold blood. She sends this information to Anna before she becomes frozen (causing Olaf to fade away) when she ventures into the most dangerous part of Ahtohallan.
Anna concludes that the dam must be destroyed for peace to be restored. She awakens the Jötunn, and lures them towards the dam. They hurl boulders, destroying the dam and sending a flood down the fjord towards the kingdom. Elsa thaws out and returns to Arendelle, diverting the flood and saving the kingdom. As the mist disappears, she rejoins Anna and revives Olaf; Anna accepts Kristoff's marriage proposal. Elsa explains that she and Anna are the bridge between the people and the magical spirits. Anna then becomes Queen of Arendelle; Elsa becomes the protector of the Enchanted Forest, who visits Arendelle since peace has been restored. In a post-credits scene, Olaf visits Elsa's ice palace and recounts the events to Marshmallow (a snow monster created by Elsa as palace guard) and the Snowgies, miniature snowmen inadvertently generated by Elsa on Anna's nineteenth birthday.
Iger, Lasseter, and actor Josh Gad announced at Disney's March 12, 2015, annual shareholders' meeting in San Francisco that Frozen II, a full-length sequel, was in development; Buck and Lee would return as directors, and Del Vecho as producer. The production team traveled to Norway; Finland; and Iceland for background research; they decided to make Elsa a "mythic hero" with magic ice powers and Anna a "fairytale hero" who lives in a magical world but has no magic powers. They concluded that the first film successfully combined the two elements. Allison Schroeder was hired to assist Lee with the script in August 2018 after Lee succeeded Lasseter as Disney Animation's CCO; Lee was credited as the film's screenwriter, and Schroeder was credited with additional screenplay material. The film's story contributions were made by Lee, Buck, Marc Smith, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Robert Lopez. Overall, the budget was approximately $150 million.
Voice recording began in September 2017, although Menzel started a couple of weeks later due to a concert tour. That month, Gad announced his role in the sequel with Buck, Lee, Del Vecho, and Lasseter. In July 2018, Variety reported that Wood and Brown were in talks to join the cast. Their roles were later disclosed as Iduna and Lieutenant Destin Mattias. Wood was cast because her voice resembled Menzel and Bell's. The voice of Agnarr was changed from Maurice LaMarche to Molina. The Voice's four-note call, derived from the Latin sequence "Dies irae", is delivered in a manner resembling the Scandinavian music form kulning.
Frozen II's first completed scenes were shown at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2019, where Becky Bresee and effects-animation head Marlon West said that the film was "still in production, with seven weeks of animation to be completed and 10 weeks of special effects". The filmmakers collaborated with Sámi experts on the depiction of the Northuldra tribe with Verdett, an advisory group which was the result of an agreement between the Walt Disney Company, the transnational Saami Council, and the Sámi parliaments of Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Anderson-Lopez confirmed that Elsa would have no female love interest in the film, despite some fans' desire for one. Lee later explained to The New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd that Elsa's main audience did not seem ready for such a relationship. Lee said in a press conference that Frozen II would not acquire elements from the television series Once Upon a Time's non-canonical Frozen storyline:
Frozen II underwent significant revisions after its first test screening in San Diego; Disney Animation discovered that although adults liked the film, children found it hard to follow. The production team realized they needed to clarify the identity of the Voice and the point of Elsa's transformation, and add more comedy and shots of Bruni (the fire salamander). A scene of expository dialogue in which the lead characters explained to the people trapped in the Enchanted Forest why they had come there was replaced with Olaf's humorous recap of Frozen. Due to the changes, the animators needed to create 61 new shots and redo another 35. An undisclosed number of shots were cut from the finished film; about a dozen animators and artists worked for two months on an elaborate resurrection scene for Olaf before it was cut.
The last major animation scene completed before the production team locked the picture was "Show Yourself", the musical number in which Elsa enters Ahtohallan and learns all the secrets she has been seeking. According to Del Vecho, the scene "required all of the resources at the studio" to get the film done on time. Lopez said that the first draft of "Show Yourself" was very different from its final version. Megan Harding directed an official documentary series on the production of Frozen II, which depicted the process of Del Vecho and Lopez determining The Voice's identity. Once the production team settled on Queen Iduna, the lyrics of "Show Yourself" finally began to come together, but then the studio's artists, designers, and animators needed to quickly figure out how to stage the dramatic culmination of Elsa's journey towards becoming the Snow Queen. The film was edited by Jeff Draheim.
About 800 people, 80 of them animators, were involved in the production of Frozen II. Tony Smeed and Becky Bresee were the film's heads of animation; Hyun-Min Lee replaced Bresee as supervising animator for Anna, while Wayne Unten again served as supervising animator for Elsa as he had done on Frozen. Steve Golberg was the supervising animator for visual effects. Scott Beattie was the director of cinematography layout, while Mohit Kallianpur was the director of cinematography lighting.
Frozen II made use of advancements in technology, artistic performance, and skeletal animation. Before the animation began, Unten showed scenes of superheroes like Frozone to Elsa's animators as examples of what to avoid. Creating the personal flurry effect was so difficult for the animators that the directors had Elsa put a permafrost coating on Olaf in Frozen II instead. Elsa's graceful movements were modeled on Frozen and modern dance, particularly Martha Graham's work.
In accordance with Disney's preference for a different style for each film and the directors' and production designer's artistic vision, the multi-departmental animation team was instructed to reconstruct the characters so they were slightly different in tone and style from Frozen. They differed in "very subtle ways", with a "through line from the first movie to the second". As well as making the Enchanted Forest vegetation autumnal, the effects team applied two internally developed applications (Vegetation Asset and Fire Tree) to enhance the film's vegetation and fire animation. Lighting and special effects were applied to glacial ice, spirit magic, and memory.
The first step for the animation team was to study the screenplay and understand the characters. Blocking (creating key poses) was next, followed by effects and layout. Effects were proposed for layout before animation process to choreograph the dam-collapse scene. Although Frozen's greatest difficulty for Frozen was the winter snow, Frozen II is set in fall; its main challenge was how to consistently depict the wind and "pass that downstream".
Frozen II's animation software was influenced by the software in several other Disney films. Anna's hair was animated with Quicksilver, developed for Moana (2016) to deal with wind; for Elsa's hair, the lighting software Beast was used. A vocal coach instructed the animators on how a singer would breathe. The animators then spent about eight months creating Nøkk, which has a liquid appearance, with effects supervised by Erin Ramos. Jötunns had a long rigging process to avoid making rocks distracting. The water simulation was intended to be more realistic than in Moana. To create Gale, the wind spirit, a tool called Swoop was developed. They later received real-time feedback from the supervisors, directors, and producer.
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