Disney’s Frozen II will arrive in theaters later this year, and Disney is taking a real galaxy brain approach to the marketing campaign.
I, a simpleton, would probably choose to market Frozen II like a cute children’s movie that will give people more of everything they liked about the first movie. People liked the dancing snowman from the first Frozen in 2013, right? So probably I’d show a snowman dancing! People liked the song about Elsa not being cold, didn’t they? Maybe I’d show Elsa singing!
But Disney’s market department, a genius, is marketing Frozen II like a goddamn tone poem: heavy on the atmospherics, light on the details. Here’s what we can grasp from the trailer:
As in the teaser released earlier this year, the new trailer opens with Elsa trying to freeze-blast her way across the ocean — only now, we see her get menaced by … some kind of ghost horse made out of frozen ocean water (?).
We also see Elsa throwing frost around and making a frost horse! Horses all around! Ice horses forever!
Then the trolls appear (and, look, I know these are children’s movies and I know kids like a lot of silly stuff, but who was looking for more trolls in the Frozen franchise?) and murmur vaguely about the past, before apparently sending Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf on a journey “across the enchanted lands.”
“We have always feared that Elsa’s powers were too much for this world,” says the troll. “Now, we must hope they are enough.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Anna vows.
Elsa says not a single word throughout the whole thing. Also, at no point does anyone sing or dance!
But based on this trailer, the colors in Frozen II are noticeably more muted and autumnal than they were in the 2013 original, suggesting a darker, more melancholy tone. Magical ice horses aside, the movie promises to be more than a little grim.
Frozen II is set to hit theaters on November 22, 2019.
