- Frozen's got an alternate ending.
What the what?
Find out on today's Nerdist News.
(murmuring)
(upbeat electronic music)
Well, guys, it's been nearly four years
since Disney's Frozen came knocking at our door
asking, "Do you want to build a snowman?"
But unlike a certain sullen snow queen,
the world answered with a resounding, "Yes,"
and also, "Shut up and take my money."
The way Frozen brought the Disney princesses
into the 21st century was to subvert
a lot of our expectations
about what it means to be a Disney Princess.
Frozen's primary antagonist
isn't your traditional, teeth gnashing Disney villain.
She's a sympathetic young woman
struggling with powers that she doesn't understand.
Frozen's main love story
isn't between a star crossed couple.
It's between siblings trying to reconnect with each other,
and Frozen's opinion on princes
is that they're all royal assholes,
but what if Frozen had taken the more traditional route?
Would Anna and Elsa be as beloved
if instead of doing their own thing,
they played into the stereotypes set out for them
by Snow White, Cinderella,
and so many of the princesses before them?
It is an intriguing question,
and if things had gone slightly differently,
we would have known the answer.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly,
Frozen producer Peter Del Vecho revealed details
about a version of the movie
that almost made it to production,
and it wasn't quite the feminist fairytale
that the whole world fell in love with.
Now it's pretty common knowledge
that Disney had been tinkering with the big screen adaption
of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen,
the story that inspired Frozen,
since the early '30s,
but even back then,
the studio had trouble finding a way
to make it relatable to modern audiences.
The project was dropped and picked up dozens of times
over the decades
until it was definitively revived
after the success of Tangled
when Disney was hungry to get back
into the princess game full time,
but still the new filmmakers struggled
with the same thing that gave
all their predecessors problems,
namely, the Snow Queen herself.
In the original Andersen story,
she was a villain,
and no one could figure out a way
to make that work,
but that didn't stop them from trying.
In the interview, Del Vecho claims
that in the original screenplay for Frozen,
the one that came very close to getting made,
Elsa was still a straight up evil queen,
and the differences didn't stop there.
"When we started off, Anna and Elsa were not sisters,"
the producer explains.
"They weren't even royal,
"so Anna was not a princess.
"Elsa was a self-proclaimed Snow Queen,
"but she was a villain and pure evil."
He goes on to say that Elsa's villainy
was the result of being ditched at the altar by a dude,
and that the original finale
featured Hans triggering a devastating avalanche.
He also mentions Kristoff having a bit
of a Han Solo moment,
which we think means Kristoff cuts open Sven at one point
to keep Anna warm.
(laughing)
- I thought they smelled bad on the outside.
- But all Tauntaun jokes aside,
Del Vecho says this ending didn't work
for a myriad of reasons,
not the last of which being
it required a last minute change of heart from Elsa
when she uses her powers to stop the avalanche
from destroying Arendelle,
which no one seemed to buy
after a whole movie of her
acting like a full on Snow B.
So from there it was a slow process
of redefining the characters and the relationships
until they landed upon the versions
the world would eventually fall in love with.
Still the question remains
would this alt version been nearly as big of a hit
as the one that we got?
And we think the answer is pretty obvious
with a hells no.
First of all, (laughing)
where would Let it Go have even fit into this draft?
But maybe even more importantly,
the idea that our Elsa
would ever let a man get to her like that seems insane.
Heck, there's even a significant portion of people
who don't want her with a man period,
hashtag, Give Elsa a Girlfriend.
Now Elsa and Anna blazed new paths
for the Disney princesses,
and the excitement of that is what made the film
such a must see,
and now like the song says,
they're never going back.
The past is in the past.
Frozen's success can be felt in last year's Moana,
which strays even further from the princess model
and will probably be felt
in all Disney films moving forward,
so in the end,
it may have taken Disney nearly 80 years
to find their way to Frozen,
but thank goodness they took the time.
But what do you guys think?
Would you have liked to have seen this version of Frozen?
Do you miss the more villainy Disney villains
like Ursula and Gaston,
or are you all about these postmodern princesses?
Let's discuss.
(upbeat electronic music)