8 Early Drafts That Almost Ruined Great Movies
7. Elsa Was Going To Be The Villain Of Frozen
Disney aren't known for their all-too faithful adaptations of fairy tales; The Little Mermaid doesn't end with Ariel dissolving, Quasimodo doesn't starve to death at the end of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and Sleeping Beauty didn't have children of rape while unconscious (I'm not kidding).
Although nothing deviates so seismically as their take on The Ice Queen. Frozen took the basic concept - two sisters, one with ice powers plunging a land into eternal winter - but changed many of the fundamentals. And not just in a post-modernist move, either; in the original source the titular character is a straight-up baddie.
It took a long time for Frozen to get away from this. In fact, it was only when what was intended to be the "villain song" wound up making her far too sympathetic that things shifted and she become a more tragic figure. Let It Go helped Disney let it go.
The sisterly love was the backbone of the film, and absolutely necessary when there's a strong undercurrent of subverting Disney convention, so it's hard to see the film having been anywhere near as successful in the earlier form.