Frozen was developed for decades as an adaptation of The Snow Queen, and Andersen is credited on screen as its inspiration. What survives from the tale is the figure of a woman of ice whose touch freezes a heart, a shard of ice lodged where it cannot be reached, and a journey north to find and thaw somebody who has been taken. Andersen's ending, in which the rescue is achieved by tears and by a girl who simply keeps going, is the ending the film keeps. What the film discards is the moral architecture: Andersen's cold comes from a devil's broken mirror and the story is about faith, and the film replaces the Snow Queen as antagonist with a sister who cannot control what she is. That change is why it took so long to make, and it is the reason this is an influence worth stating rather than a straight adaptation.
