**warning this post contains spoilers for Disney's Frozen**
I have been thinking about the plot of Frozen, and why it failed as a story for me. I did really enjoy watching it when I was younger, but then I got older and started noticing plot holes in the story here and there. Admittedly, Frozen did inspire some things in my writing (e.g. evil prince characters). However, I feel as if some elements of the story telling failed. While from an animation stand point the animation is the highlight of the movie, there are some elements of the story that need improving.
I am also using this as an exercise in rewriting, given that with one of my novels that I am editing, The Mystery of the Body Thief has some elements that need changing and I was stuck on what to change to get across the point I wanted. Sometimes when you have that difficulty, it is much easier to rewrite someone else's writing than your own. This allows you to look at your writing challenges from a different perspective.
I am also probably going to turn this into a series called "my rewrite of [blank]" so if you know of any TV shows, movies, or books that you feel like need improving story-wise that you would like me to see rewrite in another installment, I'd love to hear it in the comments. (It has to be one I've seen though, so I may not be able to do every suggestion.)
Let's begin:
Hans would not be a villain. Instead, he would be misled-
The problem I had with Hans was that he suddenly (out of the blue) became a villain, wanting to rule the kingdom and tricking Anna into loving him. I could not find a way to make it so the twist made sense in the story. So, in my rewrite, he would instead be the person he was showing Anna he was: kind, generally trying not to hurt anyone, and slightly awkward.
Instead of wanting to claim the kingdom, he would believe Elsa was evil and was hurting Anna. And in doing that, his motivation would be to defend Anna from her sister. Because his kiss wouldn't work on Anna, he would think to go to extremes to have to kill Elsa in order to free Anna from the curse.
This would backfire, but instead of Hans getting punished for his actions (or Elsa getting punished for almost killing her sister), they would make up in the end and resolve to be friends. Also, they would resolve that they should communicate better in the future.
Elsa and Anna would not be fully separated from each other-
Anna has more scenes with her love interest than she does with Elsa. In my rewrite, Elsa and Anna would have several more scenes together. This would not just tell the audience, but show them that they love each other as sisters. And since the story is much like Cupid and Psyche, where someone has to fight to get the person back who they love, showing their sisterly love for each other would be necessary in making the story work.
The problem is, the scenes we do get of Elsa and Anna show how aloof Elsa is from Anna and that she is ignoring her. Instead, we need to see scenes where they actually talking to each other and interacting in a loving way, in order for the audience to believe they really love each other.
And while Anna wouldn't know Elsa has powers until later, there would be some comedic moments of Elsa going out of her way to hide her powers. This would also show how hard it is for her to lie to her sister.
There was actually a deleted scene from the original movie that I feel would fill the gap for this, which was "the dressing room scene":
You can also watch it here
We would see their bond, and because of that in the end it would confirm to the audience that the true love they saw was really sisterly love instead of needing to be told that by Elsa.
Kristoff would not bring Anna to Elsa's castle. Instead, he would be replaced by someone else-
The problem I had with Kristoff was that as a love interest he overshadowed the sisterly love of Elsa and Anna. So, he would be entirely cut out of the movie and instead be replaced with three different characters. Each of these characters would help Anna in getting to the castle, without one being more important than the others.
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| (Quick sketch of what she could look like) |
The second person to help Anna would actually be Sven, and he would help her by leading her the second part of the way. This I took from Fairy Tales since in a lot of fairy tales, princesses or princes have animal helpers who help them or come in when they're needed.
The final person would be Olaf. Anna would get to see what Elsa is able to create with her powers, but also she would see that not everything that she creates is bad and that there is good in Elsa's magic.
These friends who helped her, would then come back to lead her back to the castle after she got hit in the heart with ice magic by her sister. But they wouldn't overshadow the relationship.
Anna would face some real dangers in finding her sister-
The wolves from the movie would remain, of course, but there would be more dangers than the wolves and the monster Elsa created. Anna would have to go through challenges presented by people along the way, each trying to steer her away from rescuing her sister but pushing her forward to doing so in the end.
The guy with the sauna, Oaken, who appears briefly in the movie, could serve as a challenge for her. He wouldn't be evil per se, but he would tempt her and try to stop her from continuing on her journey.
Because the sauna would be welcoming and warm, she would want to stay there instead of venturing out into the cold. So, she would have to fight to get back to the quest to save her sister. This would act as a challenge like the island of the lotus eaters in The Odyssey.
And given the addition of the thief girl, Anna may even get robbed by bandits (because she is a princess, the richest person in the kingdom, going alone on a journey). Eventually she would get the help of the thief girl who is part of the gang of bandits. The Thief girl would decide to help Anna eventually, after having to be convinced.
All these events would happen in an episodic way and then lead up to Anna's finding Elsa.
There would be scenes jumping back to Hans taking care of Arendelle-
Because there would be a lot of intense and stressful scenes of Anna fighting against the urge to turn back and go home instead of finding her sister. As relief scenes, we would see Hans trying and failing (and sometimes succeeding) in taking care of Arendelle, while the princess and queen are missing.
Since Hans is the youngest in line (with twelve older brothers), I doubt that he has much experience with taking care of a kingdom. He would know how to provide food and shelter for people (as we actually see in the movie), but we would see him failing at other things.
And that would provide comic relief from time to time. It would also serve to enhance the plot, because it would show what was going on in Arendelle and how eternal winter hurt it. But it also would show how unsuited Hans actually is at ruling a kingdom.
But despite all this, some of the citizens would make comments throughout (perhaps in song form) that he seems like a better ruler than either Elsa or Anna, who abandoned Arendelle when it was at its weakest and not sending someone else out to find Elsa. While Hans would be protesting that he's just taking care of the kingdom until Anna return, there would be some citizens questioning the whole situation.
While (if) there were to be a song within in the sequence (the sequence itself would appear much more than just once), I don't imagine it being exactly like the song "Prince Hans of the Southern Isles (Reprise)" that appears in the broadway musical version of Frozen:
Since that song takes a more serious tone than I imagine this subplot having, I could imagine taking some of the elements and just turning them around into being more like complaining from the citizens point of view.
Here's what I imagine the song being like (the chorus that is). Interestingly, I imagine it sounding a little like this song and having it be sung by the ensemble:
🎶 Our queen froze our kingdom,
Our princess left us to die,
Now all we can do is groan and sigh,
But the thirteenth in line,
Seems very fine,
Compared to our royalty who decided to resign. 🎶
Of course, but this not the whole song, but it is the gist of what I feel like it would be.
The trolls would be used briefly-
They would show up in the beginning to erase Anna's memory of Elsa's powers and make Elsa insecure about her identity and her abilities. And they would show up to tell the heroes what to do about Anna's frozen heart. But they would not have a musical number, because it feels like it drags on a little too much and because in this version of the film Kristoff is nonexistent.
They may, though, hint that Anna needs to find her true love. Of course, the characters would assume her true love was Hans. And in the end the audience and characters would find out it is in fact Elsa. This change has to happen, since with the original plot, the movie tells us that Elsa is Anna's true (sisterly) love. However, that version of the movie shows Kristoff as her romantic love more often, and that really confuses the audience.
-Quinley
