'Frozen 2' Trailer: 5 Questions We Have About Disney's Mysterious New Movie

Autumn is coming to Arendelle. The mysterious new trailer for Disney’s Frozen 2, the sequel to 2013’s monster hit Frozen, has arrived, and in a dramatic departure for most Disney movies, the wordless trailer leaves a lot of basic questions unanswered.

On Wednesday, Walt Disney Animation Studios released the epic trailer for Frozen 2 that reunites our heroes Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf for a new adventure. Looking more like a new Final Fantasy game than a sing-along Disney film, the trailer is totally devoid of songs, dialogue, and jokes. Instead, it’s all doom, gloom, and superpowers before ending with a sweeping (and utterly gorgeous) view of a world in the midst of autumn.

Here are five questions we have about Frozen 2, because we truly don’t know what’s happening in this vague but breathtakingly beautiful trailer.

5. What’s the story?

Although gorgeous and atmospheric, the lack of dialogue and exposition in the trailer is a bit maddening. There’s no actual sense of story or plot, which leaves a lot of basic storytelling questions unanswered. What do these characters want? What do they have to accomplish? What are the stakes? Your guess is as good as mine, and mine is, “They want to go to autumn.” (????)

There’s no doubt Disney is staffed by masterful storytellers, but it’s a bizarre decision to leave out fundamental questions just for dramatic effect.

4. What’s Elsa doing?

The beginning of the trailer starts at night, with Elsa staring down a violent ocean at high tide. She obviously still has her ice powers, which she cleverly uses to try to get across. But while Elsa has mastery over ice, the ocean is a completely different beast, and Elsa quickly succumbs to its awesome power.

It’s a great visual (seriously, the water looks beautifully rendered), but what is she doing? And why? Again, fundamental questions that trailers often answer or even tease are simply not even addressed.

My guess is that Elsa is looking for the site of where her parents died at sea. But Elsa is still only a few hundred feet from shore, whereas Arendelle’s former king and queen died in the middle of the dang ocean.

3. What’s Anna doing?

While Elsa was the face of the original Frozen, what with her infectious anthem “Let It Go,” Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) was the real hero and protagonist of the film. Now that the sisters have reunited in Frozen 2, it seems the film will be as much Elsa’s story as it is Anna’s, but like Anna, we’re not sure what her goals are in this outing. She’s definitely having some adventure of her own, in some shots reminiscent of Indiana Jones, but context is completely missing.

2. Who is this?

Seriously, who is that? Actress Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld, Across the Universe) is attached to star in Frozen 2 in a thus-far undisclosed role. Is this unidentified person Evan Rachel Wood’s new character?

1. Why isn’t Olaf melting? And is it about climate change?

It might be a bit chilly on that mountain at the end of the trailer, but there’s no snow. How is Olaf still alive and not yet a slushy puddle? Also, this movie is going to allude to climate change, isn’t it?

Let’s talk Olaf first. So, at the end of Frozen, Elsa solved Olaf’s melting issue with a little snow cloud of his own, but that cloud is now absent from his head. Has Elsa mastered some new magic to keep her chill friend alive? Or is Disney Animation still rendering it so they left it out of the trailer? (This has been done at least once or twice for the Avengers movies.)

On climate change: While Frozen 2 will probably, likely be about the changing of seasons, it’s just a little hard to ignore the bleak tone of the new trailer with the disappearance of winter. The first film took place in spring, with Elsa causing a surprise winter, but it now looks like winter is in straight up danger. This is, admittedly, a confusing reading, given the warm colors and general epic sense of hope that autumn looks to have when the characters are looking over that cliff.

Bonus questions:

• Sven leads a pack now?

• Is this a musical number or an action scene?

• Why is Anna tryna kill us?

Frozen 2 will be released in theaters in November 2019.