Recreating the sequel to an iconic film can be tough, especially when its song has become an anthem for empowering people. Idina Menzel talks about the power of Let It Go
When Idina Menzel first started performing Let It Go live in concerts, she thought the lyrics and soaring vocals would empower all those young girls in the audience dressed up as Elsa.
Instead, Menzel said she often walked away from those performances feeling just as inspired.
“I feel an extreme sense of pride about it,” said Menzel, the Tony Award-winning performer who voices Elsa, a fiercely independent queen with the magical ability to manipulate ice and snow. The song especially resonated with her because at the time she was juggling several shows on Broadway and going through a divorce while “trying to put one foot in front of the other.”
“But you see a little girl in a blue dress in the second row,” she said and continued, “That’s when you realise the song and film represents them. It’s giving them permission to take ownership of who they are, and everything that makes them unique and different. But it’s a reciprocity. It’s coming back to me exponentially because I need to hear it too.”
Menzel believes Frozen 2 has the capacity to empower young girls, boys and others of all ages in the same way. The new film comes six years after the original broke box office records for an animated film, amassing $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. It was bolstered by Let It Go, which won a Grammy and two Oscars.
Jennifer Lee, co-director and writer of both films, said she didn’t anticipate the success of Frozen. Lee said a conversation with a stranger demonstrated the film’s impact.
“I met a woman wearing a handmade ‘Let It Go’ necklace, but she didn’t have any idea who I was,” Lee said. “She was talking, and I observed. She embraced the movie for herself. She felt the music spoke to her. It seemed to empower her. That’s our goal.”
Menzel is unsure if the sequel can generate the same astronomical numbers as the original. But she is hopeful the story and music can resonate with viewers and further the themes of the original, including showing that female characters don’t necessarily need their male counterpart to rescue them from distress.
“I think it’ll move people,” she said. “I think the film is powerful. I don’t know what the success of the music will be outside the film. But I know how I felt when I heard (the songs). I know how much I loved recording them and getting inside of them. I think people will learn from Elsa who is always overcoming her fear to take the next step and risk.”
In Frozen 2, Elsa finally embraces her powers, but she finds herself haunted by an unsettling voice from afar that no one else can hear. She ends up going on a dangerous journey to seek answers with her sister Anna, played by Kristen Bell. Also joining them are Anna’s boyfriend Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer friend Sven and the bubbly snowman Olaf, voiced by Josh Gad.
Co-director Chris Buck said the sequel has moments of being “fun and humorous,” but the story also delves deep into Elsa and Anna’s emotions. He said the main characters are trying to find their meaning in life. The film expands on challenges facing Elsa’s kingdom of Arendelle, with Sterling K Brown joining the cast as a military officer and Evan Rachel Wood voicing the sisters’ mother.
“The first film is more like Act 1 of a musical where you’re setting up the characters’ wants and who they are,” Buck said. “In this one, we can do Act 2. Usually, those songs go deeper and they’re more emotional. You find out more. The struggles are harder. We had that sort of template. That helped us shape it.”
Several deadlines were “blown past” while creating the story line that had at least 50 versions of rewrites, the directors said.
Bell applauded the creative team for taking their time. “They didn’t just try to come up with the follow up for whatever monetary or marketing sake,” the actress said. “You can see a follow up from anything and you know in your soul, in your gut whether or not you connect to it. Like ‘Oh those are the same characters I loved but didn’t connect to them.’ They waited to find something that people would connect to.”
Lee said the biggest breakthrough came when husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez delivered the song Into the Unknown.
“That changed everything,” Lee said. “It was the most active song. It’s a song that says to Elsa ‘You’ve got to act. You’ve got to have the guts to follow what your life could be.’ You see the change in her from the beginning to the end of the song. It started the whole engine for the whole movie.”
Anderson-Lopez agrees. She said the music and film should compel women to trust their instincts in times of conflict.
“We’re continuing to say that women need to listen to their gut and follow their gut,” said Anderson-Lopez, who won two Oscars with her husband for Let It Go and Remember Me from the film Coco.
“You are powerful in your own unique way by speaking truth and rising up from the floor,” she continued. “When the worst thing happens to you really does happen, you learn to do the next right thing. You take one step then another step, then another and stumble blindly toward the light. One breath. One step at a time.”
Frozen challenge
Frozen 2 co-directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee say creating a sequel of the 2013 blockbuster hit Frozen was very tough, as they wanted to explore new places and introduce new characters without losing the essence of the story.
Set in fantastical land of Arendelle, Frozen is a story of two sisters Elsa and Anna who are on a path of finding acceptance and love, while trying to save their kingdom infused with heart-touching music and emotions. Elsa is struggling to accept her magical icy powers and effervescent Anna is trying to find a bond with her sister.
Frozen 2 brings back their story as they continue on the journey of finding their own self, by tracing their past and piecing it together with their present.
“Making the sequel was extremely challenging. We wanted to have our characters go to a different place and go outside of Arendelle. And we knew we wanted to have new characters to expand this world a bit,” Buck said.
“The challenge is how to stay true to the characters and let them grow. We have a map going on in our head of all these things,” he explained further.
Frozen won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It became the highest-grossing animated film before remake of The Lion King took that position in 2019. And with great success comes great responsibility.
“When Frozen came out, it wasn’t just our movie but the movie of the world. That was exciting to us and but that comes with a lot of expectations for the sequel. But truthfully, we agreed that we would keep that pressure outside the room and build Frozen 2 the same way we built Frozen, which is really talking about character first and then plot and then having the songwriters get involved and let the songs come from the story,” Buck noted.
To this, Lee added: “It was the exact same team who built ‘Frozen’ and we made a pact that we’re going to build it exactly as we did the first one. The challenges were much greater in terms of where do you go from here. But you have the foundation of these characters. The characters were a little bit of us and we all knew them so well.”
The second part of the Disney franchise promises to be more intense as it traces the past of Princesses Anna and Elsa, voiced by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel in Hollywood version, respectively, and piece together their present. Frozen 2 will release in India in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on November 22.
What’s the message for children in the second part? “The thing I love about my characters is that they never give up, no matter how many challenges we throw at them. They’re incredibly strong. I think that’s a really powerful message for everyone, not just young people,” Buck said.
Lee feels Frozen doesn’t tackle good versus, but looks at fear and love.
“The first one looks at that through being different and I think the second one looks at that with change. Change is one of the hardest things in life to cope with. The fear of change can make you not act on the thing that’s most important to you. So, that’s the rustle of love and fear,” she said.
