Frozen 2 is not based off of a fairytale but it uses an old format steeped in mythology as the structure of Anna and Elsa’s adventures.
WARNING: MAJOR FROZEN 2 SPOILERS.
In 1949 Joseph Campell described seventeen stages of what he called the monomyth, or the Hero’s Journey in his book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”. The monomyth is the story of a hero or heroine who leaves home for a quest and returns changed. Campbell based the structure off of his observations and the observations of scholars who came before him of myths across cultures that have been told for centuries and contain motifs that consistently repeat themselves. According to Campbel not all stories use all seventeen stages of the monomyth –in fact few do–but all stories contain at least one.
The Hero’s Journey offers a clear skeletal structure that has been taught in film school and literature classes for years. Hollywood has long used it as a template to manufacture their films and Disney’s Frozen 2 is no exception. In fact, I have seldom seen a more direct and literal manifestation of the monomyth. It encompasses at least eleven of the seventeen stages and contains a song (or two in some cases) to represent seven of them.
The monomyth begins with the “status quo” or ordinary life. This is where we meet the hero or heroes and learn what their life is like, who they are, and what they care about. They have no idea what is about to change their lives and push them into their great journey of discovery and self actualization. One could almost say that they believe that “Some Things Never Change” as Anna so blissfully sings in Frozen 2’s second musical number. Elsa and Kristof join in, clearly chronicling their goals and desires. Anna wants merely to frolic and enjoy life with her friends, Kristof wants to propose to Anna, and Elsa wants things to remain stable as she enjoys each moment. All three characters want to hold on to the hard earned connections with each other that they won in the first film. This theme of connection vs separation is repeated throughout the film.
Next comes the call to adventure (also called the unknown), often accompanied by a refusal to the call. These stages are woven together in Elsa’s flagship ballad “Into the Unknown”, in which a voice quite literally calls her out of her castle into the cold night air for reasons she can’t explain. She resists at first but in the end succumbs to the siren pull of the voice. This surrender enacts dangerous elements that quickly threaten the life she knows and send her and her sister off on a quest to seek answers. Here she has already taken the first step toward transformation and there is no going back.
The stages meeting the mentor and crossing the threshold are not sung about but they can be very easily identified in the moment Anna speaks to the troll king and the moment when Anna, Elsa, Kristof, and Olaf cross into the magic forest. The troll king gives Anna valuable advice that she will need later when things are at their darkest and and once the characters have entered the forest they are literally sealed in until they finish their quest. Both moments are very literal. Olaf even says as they cross into the forest “Forests are a place of transformation.” This cheeky, direct acknowledgement of the film’s format is another motif that is repeated throughout, creating a literal representation of things that are usually more metaphorical and symbolic.
The stage tests, allies, and enemies, is divided into two songs. In Olaf’s “When I’m Older” the snowman meanders through the dangers of the wood unable to make sense of it all without his friends near him.This is an ironic representation of his naivety as he becomes acquainted with darkness. He believes that his fear is because of his immaturity but in reality he is barely escaping destruction at every turn. Kristof’s “Lost in the Woods” is another metaphor turned literal turned metaphor again as he laments feeling lost without Anna while he is also, of course, quite literally lost in the woods. In both songs the real enemy seems to be division and separation as the trials only appear when the characters are separated from one another. This separation is in direct opposition to their mutual desires expressed at the beginning of the film to hold on to each other.
The stage known as the dragon’s lair is where the hero faces their biggest danger yet and gains wisdom.This stage is capsulized with Elsa’s song “Show Yourself”, a moment of self-actualization in which she uses her powers to find out the truth and the source of the voice that had been calling her -herself. Here she begins to come to terms with the idea of separation and change as she realizes how powerful she really is. She listens intently to her own voice and gains knowledge. At the end of the song, however, in another metaphor made literal Elsa goes too far and freezes herself to death with the cold, bitter truth.
Next comes the moment of despair. Anna takes this one with her dark, almost depressing, number “The Next Right Thing”. Here she remembers the advice the troll king gave her and rallies herself literally from the floor of a cave, completely alone, and finds the strength to make things right again. Not for herself but for the new friends and allies she has met in the woods. This marks a very real moment of growth for her as she must rely completely on herself for, possibly, the very first time. This growth and independence is the ultimate treasure. Both sisters have now undergone a complete internal transformation. They have traveled all this way to seek the truth of a mysterious voice but what they have really discovered is truths about their own inner strengths.
As Anna uses her new strength to set things right she enters the homeward bound stage of the sisters’ shared journey. She must return to the rest of the world with her new gift -her own independence. It is interesting that the phrase “homeward bound” is used in the only song in the film that does not correlate directly to a stage of the monomyth. “All is Found” is a lullaby sung by Anna and Elsa’s mother at the very beginning of the film and is, in a sense, the riddle the girls are trying to solve. So the story ends where it began. With both girls coming back home to themselves by learning self reliance from the very source that nurtured them in their infancy.
Finally, there is the resurrection and final transformation stage. When Anna puts things right Elsa is restored to life. She emerges with more power than ever and saves her kingdom from eminent destruction. This is the final threshold. The final ordeal. The transformation is complete and she kicks ass. As the film comes to a close both Anna and Elsa have overcome their fear of separation with independence and self trust and can now work together with their very different strengths. Because even though independence is their treasure interdependence is how they can use it. Elsa needed Anna to bring her back to life just as Anna needed Elsa to stop the raging waters from destroying their kingdom.
Frozen 2 is not the first or only film that uses the monomyth format but the directness with which it uses the archetypical story structure is charming and more than a little bit meta. It’s almost as if Disney is saying to its audience, “Yes, we know you’ve seen this story before but we also know you want to keep seeing it.”
Not every manifestation of the monomyth is good. There are plenty of flat and lackluster versions of the hero’s journey but there is also a reason we keep telling it over and over. We use stories to better understand ourselves so watching a character learn about themselves through an epic journey is already meta. We all want to understand the world and ourselves better so that we can be transformed and kick ass too. Perhaps that is why the monomyth has been frozen in time.