#3 TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE ARENDELLE CASTLE CONVOLUTED ARCHITECTURE
It's time to talk about Arendelle's castle biggest mystery: the north balcony (or the "Into the Unknown" balcony if you prefer).
First, a bit of history about this balcony... that didn't exist in F1.
That's right! Even though we don't see the north side of the castle much in the first movie, the balcony just doesn't seem to exist at all, instead we have a roof and wooden walls, just below the triangular stained glass:
Also, F2 makes it clear that the north balcony depends on the Council Chamber, which already had windows in F1:
Seems to match, right? So far, so good. Only one problem: the balcony appears a lot smaller compared to later in F2 at the end of "All is Found":
How can we tell it's supposed to be the same balcony? They both face north, and we can't see any other balcony above this one. Also the room behind is the same.
Sure, there's a balcony below, but no windows, and it's too low for Elsa to see the fjord:
We can still verify on OFA and FF screencaps:
See? No ITU balcony here either. So we can deduce the 2 north balconies were built AFTER Frozen Fever.
WHICH is where we could start to find an explanation. Remember in my previous post, we could never define clearly what was behind the West balcony windows (since we established we only see it briefly at the end of "Love is An Open Door" and the balcony at the beginning of the song is in fact Anna and Elsa's parents bedroom.
WHAT IF the council chamber was originatelly located on the west side, explaining also why dignitaries would retire there during the ball? The windows do seem to match:
So no balcony on the north side until F2, which required one for the plot of Elsa being called by Ahtohallan. Which means it was built later, and the Council Chamber was moved there.
SURE, but doesn't explain the change in the balcony's size, right?
And why has the wooden structure disappeared? It should be right below the balcony! Sure, it could have been removed between FF and F2, but yet it appeats on F2 wide angle shots during the flood:
Well... I wouldn't be so sure!
See, it's easy to assume the charades night happens the same evening as the harvest festival. But in fact, we never get a CANON confirmation it does. Even "Forest of Shadows" remains vague about it. They say they want to restablish the game night tradition and them BOOM! epilogue.
Ok, there's this Kristoff line which says "are you telling me TONIGHT you're gonna get down on one knee". But maybe Kristoff didn't find the right time or already tried to ask to Anna without success (would become a leitmotiv!) So what if they removed the wooden structure to facilitate the work, rebuilt the balcony in the week between (timeline according to FOS) and replaced the wooden structure, all with help of a little magic of course? Would also give more time for Elsa to hear the voice, giving more impact to her dilemna!
So there! Problem resolved 😂 I'm fully aware all the things I mentionned previously were probably mistakes from the animators, because this is a hard job and we should never blame them for that, even more in a franchise so rich in its environment as Frozen! These people are working hard to bring our beloved Arendelle to life and they've done an awesome job in its wordbuilding. My goal was only to make all these mistakes explainable lore-wise, especially considering it's a universe where things get built and destroyed easily (the castle, the dam, Elsa's ice palace).
BONUS : ANNA ON THE BALCONY
We face another continuity problem as soon as Anna arrives on the north balcony. Not in the number of windows or the size of the balcony, but in the background which isn't the Council Chamber anymore, but Elsa's room:
And yes, fair enough, she could be on Elsa's room balcony. Alas! the windows don't match:
Could be the West balcony I guess? If we follow my theory that the Council chamber has been displaced between F1 and F2, we don't know what's behind it now, and if it hasn't been reshaped as well!
This scene seems to have been reworked multiple times, because in the first teaser trailer the background DID match the Council Chamber... but with the old shape of the West balcony. AAAAGH!
But considering the teaser was mostly animated only for Internet according to the making off, we can pass on that.
But then, if Anna opens the West balcony, then she teleports on the North side: you can spot her (but only if you zoom closely) standing there looking at Elsa when her sister turns back and crashes the crystals:
Yet "Forest of Shadows" tells us Anna opens the balcony of Elsa's room (with Iduna's scarf btw) and we know for a fact it was written during the film's production, so maybe they couldn't decide which balcony Anna would stand on and they mixed up the two.
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