By the time Frozen 2 hits theaters this fall, it’ll have been five years since the original took the world by storm, and transformed every child’s birthday party at a chain restaurant into a never-ending “Let It Go” karaoke hellscape (seriously, every time we ate at an Applebee’s since 2014 — all three times, mind you — inevitably included a bunch of kids singing “Let It Go,” and while adorable the first time, we assume that’s the soundtrack awaiting you in the depths of hell once you go there). To put it plainly, as part of a generation raised on Disney direct-to-video sequels of diminishing quality, this feels like a bit of a long time between movies.
We understand not wanting to dilute the brand or anything, but forcing Frozen holiday specials in front of Pixar movies didn’t work, and the vacuum allowed for the internet’s creepiest phenomenon — the afternoon-ruining Elsagate — to temporarily (and horribly) fill that void. So, we can safely say that we’re glad that Frozen 2 is coming out to give these kids what they want free of ugly interference, and Disney finally dropped a trailer for the long-awaited sequel on Tuesday. It’s not what you’d expect, that’s for sure.
Take a look:
Well, we don’t know if that was the right approach. As far as we were concerned, at least, the main draw of these movies was the fact that they had some great songs, penned by smart songwriters and performed by incredible talent, and an action-heavy trailer suggests two things: One, Disney wants to save the songs for the theater, or two, they don’t have the same faith in the songwriting as they did in the original. And no matter how excited we are for the remixed version of that opening Elsa bit soundtracked to “Running Up That Hill”, we can’t help but be let down a little bit by this, even though we’re not really the target audience (we just like musicals, dammit!).
In lieu of an official synopsis, we’d just like to say that we agree with Wired and all of the fans: just go ahead and let Elsa have a girlfriend, Disney.
Frozen 2 hits theaters on November 22.