Frozen 2 Cut a Big Part of Olaf’s Resurrection Scene

Olaf dies and comes back to life in Disney’s Frozen 2, but as revealed in the making-of documentary on Disney+, a key scene from his resurrection didn’t make it into the final version of the sequel. Since he first appeared in 2013’s Frozen, played by Josh Gad and a creation of Elsa’s magical ice powers, Olaf has been a firm favorite among the franchise’s fans, not least because of how he serves as the series’ main comic relief character.

However, while Olaf’s role is largely a funny one, that didn’t stop Disney from killing him off in Frozen 2 – albeit briefly. When Elsa is on Ahtohallan, she explores the depths of the glacier – going too far to where she should not tread in search of secrets, and ends up being literally frozen. While Olaf isn’t with Elsa when this happens, he is intrinsically and magically linked to her. With Elsa dead, Olaf’s connection to her powers is gone, and so he disappears because he can no longer exist. Of course, he is later brought back to life when Elsa is too, but the full sequence of events isn’t shown.

In episode 4 of Disney+’s documentary Into The Unknown: Making Frozen II, appropriately titled “Big Changes”, the resurrection scene of Olaf is highlighted as one of those that was trimmed down for the finished product. The episode features Trent Correy, Animation Supervisor for Olaf, discussing several shots he had cut from Frozen 2, including those from Olaf’s resurrection, which showed water droplets from leaves reforming as snowflakes. It’s a detailed sequence that shows the droplets breaking apart, which the lighting team had also worked on as well as Correy, but ultimately it was scrapped to better serve the story.

In Frozen 2, viewers do get to see Olaf’s resurrection, as the snowflakes gathered up by Gale, the wind spirit, are brought to Elsa so that she can re-make Olaf’s snowman body and bring him back to life. The cut sequence adds much greater understanding of how it happened, though, showing where the water that turns into snowflakes comes from, Gale getting them, and providing a much clearer picture of Olaf’s resurrection in general. The scene in Frozen 2 still works without showing the droplets on the leaves levitating and turning to snow, but it would’ve offered even greater clarity – and much lush animation – if it’d been kept in.

The cuts were particularly painful for Correy, who notes in the documentary that the shots of his removed amounted to around two months work. He says: “The first thing that goes through your head is definitely the hours you put in… It’s something you have to remember that when a shot gets cut it’s not just me. It’s the story artists, it’s whoever rigged these plants or the drops, it’s the lighters, the tech animators…” but goes on to note that his trust in Frozen 2‘s directors, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, meant that he knew they’d be doing it to make the story better.

Olaf’s role was one that was altered in a few ways in Frozen 2. Another key moment that was changed – or rather, added – was Olaf’s recap of the first Frozen movie, with the exposition originally given to the adult, human characters instead. As Lee notes in the documentary, “We had all this exposition of grown-ups going, ‘Why are you here?’ So now we gave the expositional stuff to Olaf.” Olaf proved to once again be a big hit with kids in particular during test screenings, so it made sense to give him even more to do in Frozen 2. Still, that could’ve been even better if they’d shown more of his resurrection scene.

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