Elsa

Development

Origins and concept

Attempts were made as early as 1937 by Walt Disney to adapt Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Snow Queen", into a film. The tale focuses on two children, one named Gerda, who served as the basis for Princess Anna, and the other named Kai, who is "cursed with negativity" after his eyes are pierced with shards of glass from an enchanted mirror and is later kidnapped by the Snow Queen. However, Disney struggled with creating a believable, multi-dimensional adaption of the fairy tale's title character, who was intended to be a villain. In the story, she is described as "a woman, dressed in garments of white gauze, which looked like millions of starry snow-flakes linked together. She was fair and beautiful, but made of ice—shining and glittering ice. Still she was alive and her eyes sparkled like bright stars, but there was neither peace nor rest in their glance." Disney was unable to find a way to make the Snow Queen more real and eventually abandoned film plans.

Several film executives later made efforts towards the project, including Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Dick Zondag, Glen Keane, and Dave Goetz. In 2011, director Chris Buck began work on another attempted adaption and also faced challenges with the Snow Queen character. Producer Peter Del Vecho explained that this was primarily because she was not relatable and too isolated, having no personal connections. As a result, they could not explain her motivations. After several changes were proposed, someone on the writing team suggested making the Snow Queen Anna's sister. "Once we realized that these characters could be siblings and have a relationship, everything changed," Del Vecho relayed.

The Snow Queen, now given the name Elsa, continued to be cast as a villain, and Disney released the following synopsis for Frozen in May 2013:

When Anna is cursed by her estranged sister, the cold-hearted Snow Queen, Anna's only hope of reversing the curse is to survive a perilous but thrilling journey across an icy and unforgiving landscape. Joined by a rugged, thrill-seeking outdoorsman, his one-antlered reindeer and a hapless snowman, Anna must race against time, conquer the elements and battle an army of menacing snowmen if she ever hopes to melt her frozen heart.

Earlier manuscripts included more antagonistic actions by Elsa, such as intentionally cursing Arendelle with an eternal winter. Additionally, she is shown creating an army of snowmen similar to the original Snow Queen's army of snowflakes; the comedic character of Olaf was at the time written as a smaller snowman who was cast out by Elsa for being too unintimidating. Within two months, however, scripts were altered to give emphasis to her lack of control over her powers. Olaf was reduced to the only snowman created by Elsa, and he instead serves as a reminder of the sisters' childhood friendship. In the final version, Elsa creates a single giant snow creature that Olaf nicknames "Marshmallow" to act as a guard after being branded as a monster for her powers. According to director Jennifer Lee, the character ultimately became more of a composite of both Kai and the Snow Queen, enhancing her increasingly sympathetic portrayal. Del Vecho added, "There are times when Elsa does villainous things but because you understand where it comes from, from this desire to defend herself, you can always relate to her."

Voice

Eva Bella and Spencer Ganus were cast to portray Elsa as a young child and as a teenager, respectively. Actress and singer Megan Mullally was originally cast to voice an adult Elsa, but was replaced by Idina Menzel. Menzel already knew Kristen Bell, who voiced Anna, and had previously auditioned for a lead role in the 2010 Disney film Tangled. She was not cast for the part, but the casting director recorded her singing and later showed the recording to Frozen's film executives. Menzel was surprised when she was subsequently asked to audition, and she received the role after reading the script out loud. In interviews, she acknowledged similarities between Elsa, her then-current role, and Elphaba from Wicked, her previous role. Namely, she said, they were both very powerful and very misunderstood individuals.

Director Chris Buck believed that Menzel's vocals would help in the portrayal of the character, saying, "Idina has a sense of vulnerability in her voice. She plays a very strong character, but someone who lives in fear—so we needed someone who could portray both sides of the character, and Idina was just amazing." Menzel was unaccustomed to working with animated films and being required to portray her character's feelings with her voice alone, though she did not find it particularly challenging. While recording, she was able to "play" with her voice, trying various tones to establish the ranges in Elsa's emotions. For example, Menzel wanted there to be a difference between the ways she sounded when she was being bold and when she was angry. She would also physically restrict her hands from moving as she recorded the film's early scenes in order to project how her character was "so afraid to move and feel anything that it would come out and hurt people".

During production, Menzel and Jonathan Groff, who portrays Kristoff, went to the animation studio to explain to the animators how they were approaching their characters. Animators asked Menzel questions about her singing, observed how she breathed as she sang live, and made videorecordings of her recording sessions; they then animated Elsa's breathing to match Menzel's breathing, for further realism. Her voice supplied inspiration for Elsa's most prominent song, "Let It Go". According to composer Robert Lopez, Menzel's vocal range was able to clearly convey Elsa's "low, vulnerable, fragile side" as well as her power and self-realization. Menzel commented that it was "an honor" to have the song and that she enjoyed recording it. "It's a collision of a bunch of forces that are all coming together in the right way," she explained. "The character, what she is singing and what she is experiencing; beautiful lyrics, beautiful melody and a little bit of me." Buck and Lee were also surprised by how compatible Menzel and Kristen Bell's voices were. At one point during a table read, they sang a ballad (later revealed as "Wind Beneath My Wings") back and forth to one another with so much sentiment that it reportedly left everyone who was present with tears in their eyes. Subsequently, Lee wanted Menzel and Bell to be in the same room when they were recording the important emotional scenes of the film.

Design and characterization

Following the casting of Idina Menzel, Elsa's characterization underwent several alterations. According to Menzel, she was originally scripted as a one-dimensional antagonist but was gradually revised as a more vulnerable, multifaceted figure. Menzel further described her character as "extremely complicated and misunderstood". Director Jennifer Lee stated that Elsa is largely driven by fear throughout the film, while Menzel added that she was also struggling with her potential to be "a strong, powerful, extraordinary woman". Executive producer and animator John Lasseter became very "protective of Elsa" and was adamant about portraying her in a more favorable, sympathetic light. Writer and director Jennifer Lee stated on Twitter that Elsa's body language and mannerisms were "intentional to show anxiety and depression". In July 2013, Disney released images of the film's main characters along with outlines of their roles in the story. Elsa received the following description:

From the outside, Elsa looks poised, regal and reserved, but in reality, she lives in fear as she wrestles with a mighty secret—she was born with the power to create ice and snow. It's a beautiful ability, but also extremely dangerous. Haunted by the moment her magic nearly killed her younger sister Anna, Elsa has isolated herself, spending every waking minute trying to suppress her growing powers. Her mounting emotions trigger the magic, accidentally setting off an eternal winter that she can't stop. She fears she's becoming a monster and that no one, not even her sister, can help her. This results in her ultimate fear being herself. Elsa’s uncontrollable powers leads her to fear herself as she is scared of hurting others and causing danger.

Elsa's supervising animator was Wayne Unten, who asked for that role because he was fascinated by her complexity. Unten carefully developed Elsa's facial expressions in order to bring out her fear as contrasted against Anna's fearlessness. For their work on designing and animating Elsa, Unten and three other Disney Animation employees later won an award for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture at the 2013 Visual Effects Society Awards: Joy Johnson, character technical director (rigging); Alexander Alvarado, look development artist (Disney's job title for texture artists); and Chad Stubblefield, modeling supervisor. FX technical director Yoo Jae-hyun worked for a year and a half on creating Elsa's ice-based special effects, including effects associated with her dress.

International versions

A major challenge was to find sopranos capable of matching Menzel's warm vocal tone and vocal range in their native languages. Rick Dempsey, senior executive at Disney Character Voices International regarded the process as "exceptionally challenging", explaining, "It's a difficult juggling act to get the right intent of the lyrics and also have it match rhythmically to the music. And then you have to go back and adjust for lip sync! [It]... requires a lot of patience and precision." Just like Idina Menzel, three of Elsa's dubbers also played the role of Elphaba in Wicked, that is: Maria Lucia Rosenberg (Danish), Willemijn Verkaik (Dutch and German), and Hyena Park (Korean). Serena Autieri, along with the whole Italian version of Frozen, was awarded best foreign dubbing worldwide.

Dutch singer and actress Willemijn Verkaik dubbed Elsa in Dutch (both speaking and singing) and German (singing only), Spanish singer Gisela sang both for the European Spanish and Catalan versions and French singers Anaïs Delva's and Charlotte Hervieux's singing lines from Frozen and Frozen II respectively were also used in the Canadian French version, while Canadian actor Aurélie Morgane voiced Elsa's spoken parts in both films in the Canadian French version. Both Anaïs Delva (French) and Jelena Gavrilović (Serbian) had originally auditioned for Anna's role, but were eventually called back to dub Elsa instead. Priyanka Chopra and her cousin Parineeti Chopra voiced Elsa and Anna respectively in the spoken parts in Frozen 2 in Hindi.

Given the success raised by the song "Let It Go" not only in Menzel's version, but also in its 41 versions originally issued worldwide, on April 15, 2014, Walt Disney Records released a compilation album titled Let It Go: The Complete Set, with all 42 foreign-language film versions of "Let It Go" and nine end credit versions. On the wake of the success of international versions of the first film, on February 9, 2020, when Menzel and Aurora performed the song "Into the Unknown" during the 92nd Academy Awards, nine of Elsa's international dubbers were also called to sing one line each in as many different languages: Maria Rosenberg in Danish, Willemijn Verkaik in German, Takako Matsu in Japanese, Carmen Sarahí in Latin American Spanish, Lisa Stokke in Norwegian, Kasia Łaska in Polish, Anna Buturlina in Russian, Gisela in European Spanish and Gam Wichayanee in Thai. A Sami language version was released as a special dubbing of Frozen 2, with Marianne Pentha voicing Elsa, chosen for the inspiration the film took from the Sami culture.

Appearances

Frozen filmography

Elsa first appears at the age of eight, coaxed out of bed one morning by Anna to build a snowman, which they name Olaf. In the course of their play, she accidentally freezes Anna's head. The King and Queen take the sisters to a tribe of trolls. As the tribe's chief Grand Pabbie heals Anna and alters her memory, Elsa learns that her power will grow and she will need to learn to control it. But she fails to gain control and is locked in the castle for many years, separated from her sister, and mostly confined to her room to contain and conceal her power. She is given gloves to help contain her power, but still it grows and she becomes afraid of harming others.

Three years after her parents die at sea, Elsa is crowned as Queen of Arendelle. Despite her worry that her power will be revealed and she will be feared, the coronation occurs without incident. During the reception, although she appears happy with the company of Anna and everybody else, she rejects Anna's request that it be like this all the time. When Anna reveals her engagement to Prince Hans and asks for Elsa's blessing, she refuses and forbids their marriage. During the continuing quarrel, Anna pulls off one of Elsa's gloves, and she unleashes her power in anger. She then flees, unknowingly freezing Arendelle in the process.

On the North Mountain, Elsa casts off restraint, embraces her power where it will not harm anybody, and builds a palace of ice in which to live in solitude. In time Anna, aided by Kristoff and Olaf (whom Elsa had unknowingly recreated and brought to life), arrives at Elsa's palace. But Elsa, concerned for Anna's safety, tries to make her leave. Elsa then learns from Anna that Arendelle is covered in snow, but when Anna pleads for Elsa to return and thaw the kingdom she confesses that she doesn't know how. Elsa again unleashes her power in anger, accidentally freezing Anna's heart before creating a giant snow monster to make Anna, Olaf and Kristoff leave.

Later, the Duke of Weselton, Hans and a group of soldiers invade Elsa's ice palace. She attempts to fight them off with her ice power, but is ultimately captured, placed into a dungeon, cuffed and chained. In time, she manages to free herself.

Outside during a break in a snowstorm, Hans attempts to kill Elsa with his sword, but Anna jumps in at the last moment and blocks the attack, her body freezing solid in the process. Elsa feels sorry for Anna, who then thaws in her arms. Anna confesses her love for Elsa, who finally gains control of her power, realizing that love is the key. The sisters reconcile and return to Arendelle together.

Miscellaneous

Although not members of the group, Elsa and Anna appear with the Disney Princesses in the 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet. In one scene, Vanellope Von Schweetz accidentally breaks into the Princess room, where Elsa and other princesses gather together. After a panic, they surround Vanellope and ask why she's here. After learning that Vanellope was a princess, Elsa asks "(Do you have) Magic hands?" while conjuring ice in her hands in front of her. In the climax, Elsa and the princesses spot Ralph about to plummet to his doom from the air. The princesses rally together to rescue the bad guy, using their individual abilities to do so. Moana summons the ocean, which Ariel dives into to swim upward and create a spiral. Jasmine and Elsa fly towards the top using Carpet, from which they are able to join with Ariel. Elsa then uses her powers to create an ice slide for Ralph. After he is saved, the princesses introduce themselves as friends of Vanellope, with Elsa adding that anyone who is Vanellope's friend is their friend as well.

Elsa is also one of the several characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios that appears in the 2023 short film Once Upon a Studio.

In December 2013, Disney began releasing "Musical Magic Elsa and Anna Dolls", which played their signature songs that appear in the film. Numerous other doll versions of Elsa were released for purchase, including fashion doll sets, mini dolls, plush dolls, and Elsa-as-a-toddler dolls. A dress up costume for children was modeled after Elsa's ice gown along with gloves similar to ones she wears in the film. Together with Anna, she was depicted on various Frozen-inspired dishware such as plates and coffee mugs. Other Elsa-inspired merchandise includes luggage, nightgowns, and home décor. Additionally, simplified versions of the film were adapted to children's storybooks, including one with voice audio and another called A Sister More Like Me that was illustrated by Brittney Lee. Elsa and Anna also both appear as playable characters in Disney Infinity through the use of their corresponding figurines.

In early 2014, most Frozen merchandise, including dolls and dresses, were sold out nearly everywhere, including Disney stores and theme parks. In early November 2014, Disney announced that it had sold over three million Frozen costumes in North America alone, of which Elsa was the no. 1 best-selling Disney costume of all time, followed by Anna at no. 2. Hallmark created a Queen Elsa Christmas tree ornament after much interest was expressed when the Olaf ornament was announced in 2014.

Reception

Critical reviews

The character of Elsa was widely praised by reviewers for her multifaceted, evolving personality. Matt Goldberg of Collider.com commented that she was "an incredibly sympathetic character", while Deepanjana Pal of Firstpost praised the decision to rewrite her as a protagonist and said, "Elsa is no evil, frosty vision of twisted and toxic maternity like the original Snow Queen. She's a young woman in difficult circumstances, frightened, trying to understand her abilities and burdened by expectation and convention. It's easy to sympathise with her and marvel at her ability when she builds her spectacular palace in the mountains. Next to her, Anna is very much a child who needs to grow up and she does in the course of the film." Stuff.co.nz's James Croot compared her "humiliation and exile" to that of Simba in The Lion King. Katherine Webb, a reviewer for Wall St. Cheat Sheet, said that the scenes depicting Elsa gaining confidence and individuality delivered "an exciting message to send to young girls looking for a new princess role model". Gary Wright of Rotoscopers stated "Her mental anguish and uncontrollable powers define modern feminism. Elsa represents the boundless female spirit- strong and graceful, with the power to change the world."

Travis Bean of Cedar Falls Times suggested that Elsa's ice powers, a "personal oddity" that made her self-conscious, as well as her selflessness in withdrawing into isolation in order to avoid hurting others allowed children to connect more with the plot of Frozen. Laurie Levy from Chicago Now wrote that her young grandchildren "admired Elsa for being smart, strong, magical, and powerful" and did not care that she had no romantic subplot. Magdalena Lachowicz, a film critic for The Heights, opined that Elsa's relationship with Anna was the most important part of the film, and Stephen Holden of The New York Times liked that, in departure from traditional Disney formula, it was a sibling's love rather than romantic love that was able to "thaw the icy heart of the frightened Elsa". Tony Hicks of San Jose Mercury News wrote, "[Anna's] confusion and Elsa's anguish as she shuts herself away from the world—and her sister—is palatable." Emma Koonse of Christian Post opined that together the sisters were Disney's "most lovable and charismatic characters yet", and Debbie Lynn Elias of Culver City Observer commented, "Elsa and Anna are like two sides of a coin, both strong, albeit one through power and confidence and the other through clumsy sticktuitiveness and love." Polygon staff ranked her as one of their "69 biggest crushes of the last decade" and stated it "That moment in 'Let it Go' when she lets her hair down, changes into her ice dress, and does that little shimmy."

Mental health

Frozen has been used to promote mental health awareness for children. Jay Boll described Frozen as "a story of emotional dysregulation", with Elsa being the perfect metaphor for mental illness. "For the first time in a Disney animated feature, the villain is really the enemy within. Frozen has a minor bad guy whose true colors do not show until late in the story but the real antagonist is Elsa herself, as she battles with her inner demons."

Psychologist Nadia Ali of The Washington Post states that Elsa's behavior was strongly identical to her patients, trying to control and hide the evidence of their struggles for mental health – and the loneliness they often feel in doing so. "She [Elsa] sits slumped against the door of her room, forlorn and in despair... In this particular shot, Elsa and her bedroom are colored in dark shades. She sits alone with her demons after having tried unsuccessfully for most of her life to control and hide her powers, a task which has isolated her and torn her family apart."

"Self-isolating, immobilized by the weight of personal expectations, and largely unable to experience joy, Elsa is the Anxious Girl's heroine", stated Jenny Singer of Glamour magazine. "Cinderella is an indentured servant, Moana is tasked with saving her people from mass starvation, and Belle is both a kidnapping victim and an adult literacy instructor, but they each maintain the cheeriness of Mrs. Maisel after an extra-large cold brew. That's the way some people function, and how nice for them! But... Elsa is the queen of feeling fear without succumbing to its darkness. She doesn't conquer her fear. She doesn't vanquish it. She lives with it."

Accolades

In December 2013, Elsa and Anna were both nominated for Best Animated Female by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, with only Anna winning the award, a few weeks later. Elsa won all three awards out of three nominations at the 2013 Visual Effects Society Awards, including Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture for her ice palace, and Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture for her blizzard. Her signature song, "Let It Go", won Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, a Grammy Award, the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards and the Critics' Choice Awards, and also received Golden Globe Award, the Satellite Awards, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, and the Houston Film Critics Society Award nominations. Time ranked Elsa as the most influential fictional character of 2014.