When Idina Menzel first started performing \u201cLet It Go\u201d live in concerts, she thought the lyrics and soaring vocals would empower all those young girls in the audience dressed up as Elsa.<\/p>\n
Instead, Menzel said she often walked away from those performances feeling just as inspired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel an extreme sense of pride about it,\u201d said Menzel, the Tony Award-winning performer who voices Elsa, a fiercely independent queen with the magical ability to manipulate ice and snow. The song especially resonated with her because at the time she was juggling several shows on Broadway and going through a divorce while \u201ctrying to put one foot in front of the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you see a little girl in a blue dress in the second row,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat\u2019s when you realize the song and movie represents them. It\u2019s giving them permission to take ownership of who they are, and everything that makes them unique and different. But it\u2019s a reciprocity. It\u2019s coming back to me exponentially because I need to hear it too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel believes \u201cFrozen 2,\u201d which arrives in theaters Friday, has the capacity to empower young girls, boys and others of all ages in the same way. The new film comes six years after the original broke box office records for an animated film, amassing $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. It was bolstered by \u201cLet It Go,\u201d which won a Grammy and two Oscars.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Lee, co-director and writer of both films, said she didn\u2019t anticipate the success of \u201cFrozen.\u201d Lee said a conversation with a stranger demonstrated the film\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met a woman wearing a handmade \u2018Let It Go,\u2019 necklace, but she didn\u2019t have any idea who I was,\u201d Lee said. \u201cShe was talking, and I observed. She embraced the movie for herself. She felt the music spoke to her. It seemed to empower her. That\u2019s our goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel is unsure if the sequel can generate the same astronomical numbers as the original. But she is hopeful the story and music can resonate with viewers and further the themes of the original, including showing that female characters don\u2019t necessarily need their male counterpart to rescue them from distress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019ll move people,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the film is powerful. I don\u2019t know what the success of the music will be outside the film. But I know how I felt when I heard (the songs). I know how much I loved recording them and getting inside of them. I think people will learn from Elsa who is always overcoming her fear to take the next step and risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cFrozen 2,\u201d Elsa finally embraces her powers, but she finds herself haunted by an unsettling voice from afar that no one else can hear. She ends up going on a dangerous journey to seek answers with her sister Anna, played by Kristen Bell. Also joining them are Anna\u2019s boyfriend Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer friend Sven and the bubbly snowman Olaf, voiced by Josh Gad.<\/p>\n
Co-director Chris Buck said the sequel has moments of being \u201cfun and humorous,\u201d but the story also delves deep into Elsa and Anna\u2019s emotions. He said the main characters are trying to find their meaning in life. The film expands on challenges facing Elsa\u2019s kingdom of Arendelle, with Sterling K. Brown joining the cast as a military officer and Evan Rachel Wood voicing the sisters\u2019 mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first film is more like Act 1 of a musical where you\u2019re setting up the characters\u2019 wants and who they are,\u201d Buck said \u201cIn this one, we can do Act 2. Usually, those songs go deeper and they\u2019re more emotional. You find out more. The struggles are harder. We had that sort of template. That helped us shape it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several deadlines were \u201cblown past\u201d while creating the story line that had at least 50 versions of rewrites, the directors said.<\/p>\n
Bell applauded the creative team for taking their time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t just try to come up with the follow up for whatever monetary or marketing sake,\u201d the actress said. \u201cYou can see a follow up from anything and you know in your soul, in your gut whether or not you connect to it. Like \u2018Oh those are the same characters I loved but didn\u2019t connect to them.\u2019 They waited to find something that people would connect to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee said the biggest breakthrough came when husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez delivered the song \u201cInto the Unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat changed everything,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIt was the most active song. It\u2019s a song that says to Elsa \u2018You\u2019ve got to act. You\u2019ve got to have the guts to follow what your life could be.\u2019 You see the change in her from the beginning to the end of the song. It started the whole engine for the whole movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson-Lopez agrees. She said the music and film should compel women to trust their instincts in times of conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re continuing to say that women need to listen to their gut and follow their gut,\u201d said Anderson-Lopez, who won two Oscars with her husband for \u201cLet It Go\u201d and \u201cRemember Me\u201d from the film \u201cCoco.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are powerful in your own unique way by speaking truth and rising up from the floor,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhen the worst thing happens to you really does happen, you learn to do the next right thing. You take one step then another step, then another and stumble blindly toward the light. One breath. One step at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Idina Menzel first started performing \u201cLet It Go\u201d live in concerts, she thought the lyrics and soaring vocals would empower all those young girls in the audience dressed up as Elsa. Instead, Menzel said she often walked away from those performances feeling just as inspired. \u201cI feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[56,53],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-56","tag-frozen-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/800.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-eA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}