Frozen II

Jennifer Lee, directing alongside Chris Buck, delivered a sequel carrying a first from outside the cinema itself. Walt Disney Animation signed a written agreement with the Saami Council and the Sámi parliaments of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and a six-person advisory body called Verddet came out of it. The Sámi side describes this as the first time real negotiation produced an organised collaboration. The deal also covered a version dubbed into North Sámi and a traineeship at the studio for Sámi youth, which drew twenty-one applications. The second production fact visible on screen is how late the film changed. After the first test screening in San Diego the team learned that children could not follow the story; animators produced sixty-one new shots and remade thirty-five more, and the big third-act number was finished last, after being considered for removal altogether. That scramble shows. The climax carries the heaviest musical set piece and the heaviest exposition load at once. The single winter palette of the first film gives way to autumn, so every location has to be introduced rather than recognised. Good for a viewer who wants the origin of Elsa’s power named and closed. Poor for a family who valued how a small child followed the first one without dialogue; this turns on a dam and an old injustice.