The original 'Frozen' ending was terrible

Would Frozen have become the salient cult of a kids' movie that it now is if it had a different ending? Who can say, really -- but in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, producer Peter Del Vecho revealed details of the movie's original plot.

In the old version, Anne and Elsa weren't sisters; Elsa, a spurned woman, is seen as a threat to Arendelle, a prophesied "ruler with a frozen heart" who "will bring destruction to the kingdom." Anna is still a hero, Kristoff is still awesome, and Hans is still a dick -- but this version's Elsa is a one-dimensional yawn.

“The problem was that we felt like we had seen it before,” Del Vecho told EW. “It wasn’t satisfying. We had no emotional connection to Elsa — we didn’t care about her because she had spent the whole movie being the villain. We weren’t drawn in. The characters weren’t relatable.”

More discussions among the creative team led to making Anna and Elsa sisters and making Elsa more relatable.

“[Co-director Chris Buck] said, ‘Does it always need to be true love’s kiss that solves that problem? Does it always have to be the man who comes in and rescues the female? Could it be something different?’ and that led to a different ending," Del Vecho elaborated in the interview. "Now that they’re related, Elsa had her own fear and it was Anna who would save the day instead of Elsa by rescuing her sister — and it would be that selfless act that thawed Elsa’s heart. Once we landed on that idea for an ending [Disney animation chief] Ed Catmull called in [co-director] Jen Lee and said, ‘If you can make that ending pay off and if we can really feel it, I think we’ll have a successful film.”

$400 million later, it was certainly the right call.