Olaf is back, but this time it’s all about him
‘ Frozen’ short ‘ Once Upon a Snowman’ fills in a story gap, explains his love of summer.
Olaf, the summer- loving snowman of “Frozen” fame, has been stealing scenes since Queen Elsa conjured him with her ice powers in Disney’s Oscar- winning 2013 animated blockbuster.
Now, the toothy favorite gets the spotlight to himself to reveal his back story in “Once Upon a Snowman,” the latest chapter in the “Frozen” franchise. It’s filled with the same zingy oneliners and emotional insight that made him Anna’s and Elsa’s lovable sidekick in the feature films.
The idea for the eightminute short, now streaming on Disney+, dates to writer and codirector Trent Correy’s crowd animation days on “Frozen” when he was a trainee.
“[ Elsa] creates life, and she walks away, and I was like, ‘ There’s got to be a story there,’ ” Correy said. “I want to see what Olaf ’s first steps are like.”
As fans will recall, we don’t see those f irst steps in “Frozen.” After Olaf ’s created, we don’t see the threetufted snowman for another 20 minutes in that movie. It’s during that gap in which “Once Upon a Snowman” unfolds — between Elsa’s “Let It Go”- tuned liberation and before Olaf encounters her sister, Anna, in the icicle- f illed mountains outside Arendelle.
What “Snowman” is missing in original songs it makes up for in visual and musical references calling back to the feature f ilm. The creative team pulled sketches from the original feature and began the reanimation process, opening with Elsa’s throwaway cape, which slaps Olaf into existence during the short.
In the vein of “Bambi” and “Pinocchio’s” iconically animated f irst steps, Olaf takes his f irst as well, then proceeds to search for his sense of self in the giggling, chuckling, savant- like way that only Olaf ( and Josh Gad’s improvisation) can pull off.
He realizes that he’s made of snow and that he’s also somehow walking on snow, tries out names like Fernando and Trevor and brief ly tests out a f ish for a nose. Along the way, he learns a major lesson in kindness that comes by way of a “warm hug.”
The creative team re- ani
mated existing “Frozen” scenes from the snowman’s perspective for the short, f illing them with familiar faces, plenty of physical comedy and sight gags involving Olaf ’s near- misses with other characters and his easily collapsible body.
The short also gives a nod to those already clued in on the anagram for Wandering Oaken’s trading post — something Disney animation studio head Jennifer Lee has been trying to work into the pictures since directing “Frozen.” ( Hint: It’s “Naked Norwegians.” Olaf f igures it out right away.)
At the heart of the short is the snowman’s “little bit
of crisis of identity.” In those moments before Olaf encounters Anna, audiences learn how he comes to love summer. Without spoiling the reveal, it involves a retro stereoscope contraption in Oaken’s shop, which is filled with Easter eggs from codirector and writer Dan Abraham’s work on “Moana” and “Tangled.”
“He is obsessed with summer, yet he doesn’t know he would melt,” Abraham said of Olaf ’s inexplicable love of the warm season. “How does that work? How does he know what summer is? He was just created. So there was a very logical explanation for that ... it kind of wrote itself.”
Eagle- eyed fans will also learn what became of Anna’s green coronation gown and how Olaf ’s high jinks with deli meat catalyzed the wolf chase that led to Kristoff ’ s cliff- diving sled.
That’s a moment that calls back to a previous short in the franchise, “Olaf ’s Frozen Adventure,” in which the snowman was established as the embodiment of love between the sisters.
Olaf ’s widespread appeal is one reason he keeps making his way back to the screen — aside from animators loving to work on his amorphous body — and why he enjoyed a generous amount of screen time in last year’s follow- up, “Frozen 2.”
“If I could work with Olaf the rest of my life, I’d be quite OK with that,” Correy said.
At a minimum, the f ilmmakers are becoming Olaf specialists. In spring, during the COVID- 19 lockdown and around the time “Frozen 2” landed on Disney+ months earlier than originally planned, Correy and Abraham crafted 20 “At Home With Olaf ” shorts to show how the fan favorite was keeping busy in isolation.
“The studio really wanted to do something to help people struggling to f ind some happiness and stable ground and familiarity,” Abraham said.
By that point, they had already f inished “Once Upon a Snowman,” which was greenlighted for Disney+ as “Frozen 2” was being f inalized. “Snowman” was completed in January, and cast and crew were able to celebrate with a wrap party in February, just before stay- at- home orders went into effect.
And just as in the f ilms, when it seems like things can get only worse, Olaf was there to make them a bit better.
“Olaf has this overwhelming optimism and sincerity about him. And that just never gets old. It’s something that we all sort of aspire to and sometimes fall short,” Abraham said. “But Olaf is always there charging ahead with just this eternal optimism and sweetness that I think is a part of all of us, but maybe we wish we had more of.”