In the process of him trying to solve it, everybody winds up learning a lesson that’s bigger than they ever anticipated. He’s the one going out and saying, let me solve this. Because really at the core of what this movie’s about is, it’s about an emptiness that they’re trying to fill that Olaf is sort of the vessel to fill. In many ways, even though it’s called Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, I would argue that it’s their story. It’s an opportunity to dig deeper and discover more about these character’s that we’ve all fallen in love with and in particular these two girls, Anna and Elsa.
And with Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, it’s not an opportunity to just exploit a bunch of characters that people fell in love with. The brilliance and the beauty of what these incredible artists and these creative geniuses at Disney, and by extension, at Pixar do is, they never tell a story that isn’t worth telling. What was it like going from a supporting character to being at the center of the narrative? For him, it’s about, “Woah, this is as cool as summer is.” It’s not about one or the other it’s about, “Oh my god, things just keep getting cooler and cooler.”Īt least according to the title, this is very much Olaf’s story. And so the audience is seeing him go through this season for the first time in his life and they’re getting to see the joy of him discovering all of these wonderful elements including these traditions. And when he discovers these things, whether they’re elements that stem from summer or now elements that stem from winter, it’s essentially his first time experiencing these things.
His entire existence is coming from a place of just innocence. For Olaf there isn’t any mention of summer because, again, the thing that makes Olaf a unique and special character is he’s driven by pure wonderment. There happens to be a tundra in the middle of summer in our first film, but now we’re actually getting to see this seasonal change happening in real time for these characters. The world of Frozen has been actually limited to summer. It is funny because a lot of people don’t remember this, but we’ve never actually experienced winter in Arendelle. Is this difficult for Olaf - is he still longing for summer? In the northern hemisphere, we very much associate the holidays with winter. The hardest task going into this was, how do you follow up on the incredible iconography of the original songs from Frozen? And how do you not disappoint? And the girls, Kate and Elyssa, did such an incredible job of not only delivering on that promise of creating iconic new songs, but I really do believe that these are, unfortunately, going to be earworms that parents are going to find as unforgivable as “Let it Go” in their households throughout the holiday season as their kids repeat these songs over and over. That, to me, is the fun of “That Time of Year.” It’s a completely different comedic engine than “In Summer.” And that’s the joy, in many ways, of this entire short.
These are things we all take for granted, but in Olaf’s eyes learning about all of these new things, he’s going, “Oh wow, that’s fascinating,” and it’s making people take a step back. This is a journey of discovery and in the process of him discovering things, he’s being given information, being presented with all these things, these traditions, as it were, and when he sees these traditions, he’s reflecting them back at us, the audience, in a way where we go, “Oh yeah, that is strange.” Whether it’s a man who once a year comes down chimneys without permission - Olaf looks at that and says, “Okay, so breaking and entering is okay on Christmas,” or it’s the idea of the cutting down a living tree and putting lights on it. What’s different about “That Time of Year” and, by extension, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure is now he’s being taught new things. And so that’s Olaf sort of having a perception that he shares with us. But his perception being new to this world was, Oh my god, if there’s one thing that I could do, it’s chill in summer. Everybody else knew that summer would destroy this snowman. I actually don’t think it’s a holiday version of “Summer.” “In Summer” was all about a character who believed one thing that was undeniably incorrect.
Would you say it’s like the winter version of “In Summer”? We can expect several fun new songs and “That Time of Year” is Olaf’s big song here.
0 kommentar(er)
