Posted on

“Frozen 2” Trailer!

Disney is preparing two last box-office juggernauts for the end of this very profitable year – but in the event that Star Wars is a wildcard disaster, there’s one franchise you can always count on to turn in a profit, whether through ticket sales, accompanying merch, and Olaf waffle-makers: Frozen.

This new trailer finally delivers some of the classic hallmarks of the first film, including, of course, Olaf himself. As someone who intensely dislikes Olaf (when I’m not secretly laughing at all his jokes) it gives me great joy that this trailer ends with a brief scene of him running through a forest being pursued by every imaginable danger. Melt, you over-commercialized snowman! Melt!

There are no songs to be heard, which is something of a disappointment, but in place of that we get lots of action, epic visuals, and an interesting little mystery. Finally, we have some idea of what the film’s plot might be – Queen Elsa is being called to an enchanted forest far away in the north, somewhere her father once visited, before war broke out, and some sort of tidal wave of Autumn leaves drove everyone away. Now, those Autumn leaves sweep through the city of Arendelle, threatening to….um, well, I can’t actually think of why leaves would be so terrifying, but then again, Stephen King has a horror novel about killer grass, so what do I know? Maybe these leaves refuse to be raked. That would be evil.

To understand the calling, Elsa, her sister Anna, along with Kristoff, Olaf, and the reindeer Sven, travel north to the magical woodlands. They immediately run into some high-stakes danger: we see Elsa leaping over ice pillars through what might be a cave; the whole team getting picked up by a tornado; Anna and Kristoff on the run from a stone giant; Elsa surrounded by a raging pink wildfire in the forest. But we also get to see them fighting back – and the visual spectacle is wild. Elsa’s underwater battle with the ghost-horse from the second trailer, for instance, here leads to her literally rising above the waves in what looks like an ice-chariot before looping electric-blue reins around the horse in a stunning display of sparkle and shadow, before riding off across the surface of the ocean.

Oh yeah, and apparently there’s people who want to take over Arendelle for some reason? They might be connected to the attack of the Autumn leaves, so maybe they’re the ones who drove everyone away to begin with – or maybe they want Elsa’s powers for themselves? Do they have anything to do with Elsa’s powers? That bit is still a little unclear. I guess we’ll have to find out when Frozen 2 hits theaters this November.

So what do you think? Are you prepared to go into the unknown with Elsa and Anna, or does all this sword-fighting and epic magic miss the point of Frozen? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Trailer Rating: 8/10

Posted on

“Frozen 2” Official Trailer!

Brisk and tightly-paced, the first Frozen 2 full-length trailer gives us some interesting food for thought, but not a whole lot of answers to our burning questions. We do know, now, that the story will indeed focus on Queen Elsa’s magic, specifically its origins, as many suspected after the first teaser trailer.

So, right upfront we see the same beach-scene from the teaser, with Elsa running across the ocean, apparently trying to escape – but this time we see what happens after she plunges underwater, seemingly crushed by tons of falling ice. Obviously, she doesn’t die (thank you, plot armor!), but she does have a really weird encounter with a blue glowing horse…underwater. The horse seems to scare her, before it disappears in a cloud of bubbles. I don’t know what that’s about.

Vague exposition is then provided by my absolute least-favorite characters from the first Frozen movie: the Trolls. I mean, yeah, it makes sense that they might know what to do, since the chief Troll (his name is Pabbie, apparently, but I refuse to use that ridiculous name) was the one who originally made Elsa and Anna’s lives miserable. The Trolls sound concerned about Elsa’s powers and helpfully remind her that “the past is not what it seems”, while also providing flashbacks of a young Elsa staring out of the palace window, at the Northern Lights in the sky. The Trolls don’t seem to be the only people concerned for some reason, though: we can clearly see a whole bunch of citizens of Arendelle standing around in the background while Pabbie is talking – it seems clear: Elsa must have done something truly horrible with her ice-powers again, and she needs to figure out how to make it stop.

But…we get a glimpse of what she’s up to these days, and honestly it seems pretty innocent. She’s using magic to conjure up beautiful spectral horses (like the one she encountered earlier, perhaps?), giants, and amazing firework-displays – and she looks really happy about it. Who wouldn’t be? It looks pretty harmless. But no, for some reason, Elsa, Anna, Anna’s boyfriend Kristoff, and their snowman Olaf, all have to pack up and head north, on a journey “across the enchanted lands”, according to them Trolls. Like, seriously, Trolls? You couldn’t even give them a map, or decent directions? Go north across the enchanted lands. What does that even mean? And why do they have to go north? Is there something there that will explain Elsa’s powers?

Clearly, something goes wrong with their little road-trip (thanks a lot, Trolls), because we see Anna and Olaf off on their own, boating down a river in a charming little ice-canoe – and plunging over a waterfall. There’s a pink wildfire spreading through an autumnal forest, and interestingly we can people in gray outfits running away from it: do they live here? Then it looks like the fire was caused by Elsa, as it takes the shape of some hopping, glowing, star-burst thing. Kristoff swoops in on a reindeer to save Anna – except…wait a moment. It’s a quick scene, but we clearly see Anna running towards Elsa, who is curled up on the ground, motionless, when Kristoff rides in and grabs Anna. Why would he do that? Is Kristoff evil? What is going on?

Oh I see, we’re going “into the unknown”, now, thanks to Troll-narration.

Then we get more Trolls, and now they’re talking about how they “always feared” that Elsa’s powers were “too much for this world”. Again, though, the scenes used to back up this preposterous claim are happy, beautiful ones of Elsa conjuring giant snowflakes and stuff – though I’m really confused about one particular scene of her skiing up an ice-ramp and then just standing still, staring up at thousands of tiny crystal-diamonds falling from the sky. But on a side-note, the city of Arendelle has never looked as beautiful as it does in this trailer.

The trailer ends on an ominous note. Elsa and Anna walk hand-in-hand into a foggy circle of standing stones: as someone who knows my Celtic history, I can tell you for a fact that nothing good comes of walking into a circle of standing stones. Those are places of sacrifice, typically of the ritualistic variety.

And the last shot is of Elsa cowering behind a tree, as, in the background, something huge rises up from the darkness.

So, yeah. Something has gone wrong in Arendelle. I’m blaming it on the Trolls, personally, but it definitely looks like we’ll see the mysterious origins of Elsa’s power: is she the only one out there like her? If there are others, what can they do? After the first teaser, there was a lot of speculation that Elsa would run into somebody with Autumn-powers, since that trailer featured so much Autumn imagery, like falling leaves and stuff. Not as much of that shows up here, and we don’t even see the strange boy and girl that we glimpsed in the teaser.

So what do you think? What’s going on? How can Elsa fix this situation – and, what exactly is the situation? Too many Trolls, not enough answers.

Trailer Rating: 7/10