Is it safe to talk about Frozen again? After audiences fell in love hard with the latest Disney princess classic, Frozen fatigue became a very real thing as Olaf’s warm hugs were wherever you turned, and “Let It Go” was stuck in everyone’s heads for at least a year. Everyone except for Disney superfans were pretty burned out. However, during last year’s Reddit AMA with the Frozen crew, co-director Jennifer Lee dropped a bomb on fans when asked about the fate of Anna and Elsa’s parents, who were the victims of a shipwreck in the beginning of the film:
According to Chris, they didn’t die on the boat. They got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard…
This is a reference to her co-director Chris Buck’s other Disney film, Tarzan, which begins with an unnamed man and woman enduring a shipwreck and washing up on the shore of a jungle island with their young son. Fans latched onto this theory, and a new topic of fan art was born.
When he spoke to MTV News at a showing of the Walt Disney Animation Studios Shorts Collection on Sunday, Buck addressed the rumor directly.
“I said, ‘Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he added. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan — but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, ‘Surf’s Up.’ That’s my fun little world.”
So, while the isn’t going to be a sequel about Tarzan and Elsa battling it out over who is the official heir of Arendelle, it is a nice little bit of headcanon from the director. Buck seems to have an excellent grasp on the nature of fandom, and encourages viewers to have fun with what they’re watching.
“I say, whatever people want to believe, go for it,” Buck said. “If you want to tie them all together, then do it. That’s the spirit of Disney.”
Chris Buck, endorser of fan fiction.
