The latest Frozen short film, Once Upon a Snowman, recycles a joke from the previous Olaf short, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. Both of the Disney tales follow Josh Gad’s Olaf as he roams the great outdoors; however, the timelines are significantly different.
In 2015, Disney gifted Frozen fans with an eight-minute follow-up called Frozen Fever – a story about Anna’s birthday featuring the original franchise characters. Two years later, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure chronicled the titular snowman’s attempt to establish a Christmas tradition for Anna, Elsa, and their friends. The 2020 short, Once Upon a Snowman, takes place during the events of Frozen and follows Olaf’s journey right after Elsa belts out “Let It Go”. There’s a sense of familiarity with the narrative crossover, and there’s also some practical filmmaking, too, as the filmmakers build upon a plot point established by Olaf’s Frozen Adventure.
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During Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the snowman questions Arendelle residents about their holiday traditions. After a fiery sleigh accident separates Olaf from Sven, the snowman is surprised to find a salvageable holiday item that he collected – a piece of “indestructible” fruitcake. With her screenplay, Schaeffer foreshadows imminent danger when Olaf muses about taking a “seemingly harmless shortcut,” which leads him to pack of hungry wolves. For Once Upon a Snowman, writers Dan Abraham and Trent Correy detail Olaf’s original story at Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post. Not long after Kristoff can be heard singing “Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People” - a connection to Frozen – Olaf learns about the wonders of summer and decides to wear a summer sausage for his nose. He’s later chased by wolves, presumably the pack that will later chase him in Olaf’s Frozen Adventure.
Thematically, both sequences set up later moments that underline the snowman’s give-and-take relationship with the outdoors. And what’s interesting is that this isn’t the first time that Olaf has been used to repeat a joke; in Frozen 2, Olaf steals a joke from the MCU when he recounts the events of the first movie. This time it was at least a joke he was himself a part of.
In Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the wolves don’t actually consume the snowman’s fruitcake. Instead, it’s a hawk that swoops down from above and destroys Olaf’s holiday dreams. By the end, however, Olaf learns that his very existence has long been a holiday tradition for Anna and Elsa - in fact, it’s what strengthened their bond as sisters. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure ends with a holiday surprise from the outdoors, as the hawk drops the fruitcake onto the snowman’s carrot nose. In this timeline, Olaf receives a holiday gift. In Once Upon a Snowman, Olaf gives his summer sausage nose to a hungry wolf. And so the snowman’s actions in the 2020 short are rewarded in the 2017 short.
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