Retold

A while back I saw a hilarious BuzzFeed video featuring several different people who had never seen or read Harry Potter. They told their own story, based on the ideas they had gotten from seeing snatches of the movies or watching an episode or two of Potter Puppet Pals or gleaning impressions from popular culture references. The video makers had then animated some of these ideas and played them over the top of the narratives. The result was highly amusing to any actual Potter fans and even those people who have seen the films but aren’t necessarily hardcore Harry lovers: some of the story was right, but there were several glaring errors.

The general response after watching the video (after the laughter, that is) is usually “how can these people have missed Harry Potter?!”

Now is the time when I admit to being one of the three people in the universe who have never seen Disney’s Frozen. I have never hummed along to “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” or belted out “Let it Go” in my car. But, as one of those non-Harry Potter watchers said: “the social world has pushed Harry Potter intellect onto me against my will,” I have had Frozen trivia shoved in my face probably since before the movie even came out.

So without further ado: Frozen Retold by Someone Who Has Never Seen It, by me.

Frozen is the tale of two sisters. Two princesses who are sisters. Their parents were killed in a shipwreck while going to a wedding (Rapunzel’s from Tangled) (because no one on the internet would shut up about that for like, three months). Because of this, the older sister, Elsa, took the throne.

I’m not sure if it was an inherited thing or if it was brought on by grief over the death of their parents, but somehow Elsa got some kind of magic ice powers. I’m thinking it’s like a King Midas deal, only instead of gold, everything she touches turns to ice. So, understandably, she pushed her sister away and made her go live somewhere else so that nobody could get hurt by her ice powers. So she lives alone in her ice palace and rules the country from this isolated place.

But her younger sister Anna, the cute little redhead, doesn’t want to give up on seeing her sister. Not because she wants political power, but because it’s a Disney movie and they’re sisters. She makes several attempts to visit her sister in her ice palace, but Elsa never lets her come to see her. I think that’s when the “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” song happens, because Elsa wants her to go away but Anna wants to spend time together, like, “oh, this is something we can do together and nobody will get hurt” or whatever. (I’ve never actually heard the song, but there are parodies everywhere.) Anna is sad when Elsa tells her she has to go.

Elsa sings again later, but I’m not quite sure what it is she’s letting go of: whether it’s her fear that she’s going to hurt someone with her magic or her loneliness because she’s isolated herself due to being afraid of hurting anyone she might come in contact with.

There are some secondary characters: a couple of princes (obviously one for each, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair), a guy with a yak or something, and what I can only assume is a very annoying talking snowman (who was maybe animated by Elsa’s magic?).

But eventually, everything is wonderful and fabulous, and everyone lives happily ever after, because this is a Disney movie and it wouldn’t be right if everyone didn’t live happily ever after.

The End.

Maybe someday I’ll see the actual movie and come back and laugh about how wrong I was, but I hope that in the meantime, those of you who aren’t one of the three people in the universe who have never seen Frozen will enjoy what I got right and (mostly) what I got completely wrong.