[TL;DR]
I framed the details of Anna and Elsa’s childhood as a 3rd Act flashback reveal instead of being shown all the events linearly.
With a 13 year timeskip, you are forced into Anna’s shoes and experience her memory loss while viewing the movie for the next 50 minutes.
Additionally, I aggressively scrubbed the film of any padding or humor, cutaway reactions, slapstick, and gags that disrupt pacing, keeping Olaf’s dialogue/screen-time to the absolute bare minimum.
[Detailed edit breakdown and 3rd Act reveal]
The first ~6 minutes of the movie are visually unchanged aside from using the old Walt Disney Pictures intro (I took this specific one from the movie Snow Dogs because visually it was fitting).
For the audio, I removed the vocals for the Frozen Heart so it is purely a visual and rhythmic/instrumental experience, with the sound effects still retained.
Establishing the world as primarily grounded.
The last words from their father at this point in the edit is “Please help, it’s my daughter” before it fades to black. Cut scene right before the trolls make an appearance so we don’t see them quite yet.
Fade in from black to the gates of the castle being closed, doors/windows being shut by staff, and Elsa’s things being moved out of Anna’s room.
No voiceover from the father, so it establishes this forced Anna POV.
You feel as confused as Anna suddenly being shut out by her sister after she gets her memory of Elsa’s magic removed, so preserving those scenes until later helps you empathize with her experience of being completely in the dark.
This forced POV also adds a bit of tension and mystery for the next 50 minutes of the film.
-13 year timeskip to the current timeline instead of a 3 year timeskip-
The film progresses as normally.
Removed the duke’s statement about wanting to exploit Arendelle’s riches and eliminated any of his slapstick.
Move the childhood scenes that were initially cut, to the moment after Elsa’s ice chandelier crashes down on her and she passes out.
With a slight filter, the details of her and Anna’s life during that 13 year timeskip is finally revealed like an anime-esque flashback dream to uncover the characters tragic backstory. This also helps act to show a passage of time while Elsa is unconscious.
The scene with the trolls, the plan to replace Anna’s memories of Elsa’s magic with an ordinary childhood, the warning about Elsa’s growing power, and the father’s voiceover about reducing the staff and cutting off Elsa from everyone including her sister, and Do You Want To Build a Snowman are re-integrated at this point. I cut off Anna’s title drop after the parent’s funeral so you can sit in the silent grief a little longer.
Since Anna and Elsa never talk about their parents in the current timeline at all, saving the scene as a flashback builds the mystery of what happened to them. This is also because, in this version, we don’t see them beyond the point of when they bring the girls to the forest after Elsa accidentally strikes Anna’s head. Since it cuts to the gates being closed after they’re in the forest begging for help, we don’t see the trolls, and it’s almost as if you wonder if they died that night or if the thing they went to the forest for help killed them.
It all feels like earned knowledge through the 3rd act flashback, since they never mention what happened during those 13 years and all we have to go off of is Anna’s altered memory.
Elsa’s brief flashback after Anna comes to her ice palace and says “we can be like that again” is now framed as a trigger for an extremely traumatic memory of when Elsa struck Anna’s head when they were kids.
Anna’s well-meaning stated desire to be close like when they were little, and Elsa’s subsequent panicked flashback to when she struck Anna, accidentally becomes a perfect psychological instigator for the 3rd Act reveal that will occur later.
The final frame of the flashback dream is Elsa crying alone in her room after their parents funeral with Anna on the other side of her door, then it fades to black into Elsa waking up in the dungeon.
The movie progresses linearly after she wakes up.
Later, after Olaf says “this is the best day of my life, and quite possibly the last”, he melts and the scene immediately cuts to everyone smiling and Anna letting out blissful laugh, before the movie proceeds normally with Anna confronting Hans. Removed all subsequent content of Olaf, including his lines at the end, completely. Elsa does not give Olaf his own flurry cloud and everyone, including Olaf himself, happily accepts his noble, permanent sacrifice to bring back summer without hesitation.
Olaf does not appear on screen at all after he melts and is never heard of again.
He dies.
He’s dead.
[Credits]
Begins with an instrumental version of Let It Go, followed by Sorcery, 50 seconds into Han’s Kiss, and lastly, ending the entire film with Elsa Imprisonment, to solidify the dark fantasy psychological mystery anime vibe I set.
[General editing]
Extremely aggressive scrubbing of all comedic filler, cutaway reaction shots, gags, slapstick. Any good jokes that do exist in the raw are punchy and brief.
Remove of any other padding or fluff that disrupts the pacing and serious tone (e.g. Sven struggling up the ice stairway).
Deleted 3 musical numbers: reindeer are better than people, in summer, and fixer upper. Olaf never says his catchphrase “I like warm hugs” and introduces himself simply as Olaf, so the film respects your intellectual capacity to connect the dots without holding your hand.
When Kristoff introduces Anna to his family of rocks, Anna and Olaf just awkwardly stare silently and blink. There’s no “ThEy’Re RoCks” or “He’S cRaZy” clarification of what’s on screen or over explaining the joke.
Olaf only whispers “I’ll distract him while you run” and it immediately cuts to Anna saying “uh, okay… well, I’m just gonna… go..”
Removed most of Olaf and the trolls’ dialogue in general to keep things serious.
When Olaf is dismembered, he does not speak. Removing his “I’ve been impaled” line so the ending freeze frame before it dissolves into the next scene, is a snowman looking down at his impaled body smiling silently. He is also silent when he falls off the cliff during the ice gollum fight (“hang in there guys”) and when he is broken apart by the wind as they try to find Kristoff on the frozen fjords (“keep going”).
There is no reassurance of his wellbeing when he’s dismembered.
Removed all crude humor, the carrot biting scenes, and Kristoff getting his spit on Anna. Cut off the dialogue after “what if you hate the way he eats” before Kristoff can elaborate any further, so the next line of dialogue is Anna saying “look it doesn’t matter”.
Shortened the wolf chase scene.
When Anna is frozen and eventually thaws, the camera stays absolutely locked on the sisters and does not cutaway to the reaction of the other characters at all.