New Frozen II trailer - Sep 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The Americans, however, tend to put their own spin on this fact. No, I’m not talking about the Donald – after all the months and years of his fellow American politicians blathering about the Russian interference in the last election, he openly half-offered half-tried to force the current Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son; given that the Ukrainian-Russian relations are still very bitter, (though there is something of a thaw between them now that Ukraine has a new president), this feels something like a joke that is done badly and gone badly. Does the Donald want to be impeached? In the years past, since he ascended to the White House, sometimes it did feel like this sometimes, but maybe it’s just the Donald being himself. We will just have to see if or how he gets out of this one. (In addition, the same goes for the Biden family, actually). No, rather, I am talking about George Lucas – the man of the week has opened his mouth and proclaimed that no, he did not like how ‘The Last Jedi’ the movie depicted his world.

Sigh. Lately it feels as if the Disney/SW juggernaut is doing its’ damnedest best to change the public’s opinion regarding it, (remember, ‘Solo’ the movie only brought in millions of dollars, not billions that the juggernaut is used to, these days), by flooding the comic scene with the SW comics that often have some, mmm, ‘insightful’ essays in the conclusion of each individual comic, and by bringing forth, (well, it’s about to bring forth), ‘the Mandalorian’ on Disney+, a show that is supposed to show how the First Order came to power – a Sequel Trilogy’s prequel, if you will. And then along comes Mr. Lucas and makes his statement, and the juggernaut is in hot water again. Maybe they really should quit while they are still ahead after the upcoming SW9 movie – nah. They will ride this franchise until it can run no more, and then they will boil it for glue and sell this glue, and patent this glue, and use this glue in their new money-making programs – ahem. The new trailer for the upcoming ‘Frozen II’ movie has come out. Let’s talk about some of its’ aspects.

In this adventure, Elsa and her team go into some enchanted forest, because some magical music/singing/humming is haunting Elsa and it makes her own innate frost magic go berserk. Ergo, Elsa and her team go into an enchanted forest, where she meets (or will meet) various new characters, some human, but others certainly not.

First, there are stone giants, bigger even than the ice monster that Elsa created in the first ‘Frozen’. Normally, I would say that those are trolls – in the post-antique Scandinavia, trolls were humanoid creatures of giant size that were made from stone or turned to stone in daylight, or both. However, in the world of ‘Frozen’ trolls are smaller than humans are, and are rather reminiscent of dwarves of the Norse myths instead.

In the pagan Norse myths dwarves themselves tended to turn to stone in sunlight, which was why they lived below ground, (duh); as Scandinavia turned from paganism to Christianity, (and that was a painful process in itself), the lines between dwarves and trolls blurred – but the height difference remained. Trolls were human-sized or larger, while dwarves were smaller. In-between the two was the huldra – a humanoid creature that looked like a human in the front, but had a hollow back as well as a fox’s or a cow’s tail. (There’s a possibility that huldra has reached the Russian lands and assimilated into Russian folklore as mavka – a variant rusalka that looks human in the front, has a hollow or a transparent back, and is an undead rather than a fey creature). The Scandinavians treated the huldras not unlike how the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh treated fairies and elves – they were not inherently evil, but much more powerful than ordinary humans are, with plenty of tricks up their sleeves and a short temper. Sometimes huldras married mortals and took them into their land beneath the hills. Other times they would go and live with their human husbands, (huldras usually are depicted as females), but usually those stories ended badly for both sides. Where were we?

Oh yes, the new ‘Frozen II’ trailer. It’s unknown if it is a huldra is doing the humming that gets beneath Elsa’s skin literally, (unlike the Greco-Roman sirens huldras usually didn’t lead men to their deaths by singing), but as we were talking about, Elsa and her friends are encountering stone giants of some sort, and since those cannot be trolls, (not ‘Frozen’s’ trolls anyhow), they might be stone giants slash Jotuns of the Norse myths. Unlike the trolls of the Christian Scandinavian period, the pagan Jotuns were not affected by the sun; in fact, at the time of Ragnarok, a couple of Jotuns in shape of giant wolves will swallow the sun and the moon instead! The trailer of ‘Frozen II’ too has those stone giants walking around in daylight and throwing rocks around and being completely unaffected by the sun.

And then we have Elsa going against the sea, (as she had done in the first trailer for ‘Frozen II’, remember?), and fighting-slash-taming what appeared to be a sea horse. This may be Disney’s idea of a kelpie, or it is an each-uisge, instead. Both of those creatures were water spirits or water demons, shapeshifters – sometimes that appeared to be human, and sometimes to be horses – and man-eaters, (and the each-uisge was even more vicious than the kelpie was). Either way, Elsa can be in for some interesting times, if she decides to keep her new ride, no matter how sweet it may be. (Water horses were supernaturally strong and fast, duh). So this leaves us where?

In a reboot from the first ‘Frozen’ movie, of course. In the first movie, (vaguely based on Andersen’s ‘Snow Queen’ fairy tale), the theme was about a human, who thought that she was a monster, (Elsa), vs. a monster who thought himself as a human, (Hans). (Ok, the last bit might have been rather strong, but the bloke deserved it). In the final scenes of the first movie, his highness appeared to be more sympathetic than when he was at his worst, but now there’s no sign of him, (and I don’t think that too many people miss him either), and instead we have Elsa and her people going Norse, (re the Jotuns and co.) with a completely different feel to the new movie already. Where this will lead to within the universe of Disney animated movies? We will just have to wait and see.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!