Since the release of Disney's Frozen I have heard a lot of crazy fan theories. Some logic, some wacky. I've even got one of my own, but that's a story for a different post.
This past weekend director Chris Buck confirmed one such fan theory: that Tarzan is the brother of Anna and Elsa.
Now, I'm all about connecting stories and having alternate, on-screen universes. Pixar has done a great job of intertwining its movies. (You can find an excellent theory connecting all of Pixar's movies here http://jonnegroni.com/2013/07/11/the-pixar-theory/)
And I'm all about movie studios giving the fans what they want (Jurassic World was definitely a movie made for the fans, and look how well it did at the box office!).
But sometimes it just doesn't work out. Some stories can't be related. Maybe they're set in different time periods. Maybe on different planets. And here is where I take issue with Chris Buck's statement. Though the idea of Tarzan and the Frozen girls being related is nice, the evidence works against the theory.
1). The couples have different hair colors.
This one's pretty simple. Tarzan's dad has brown hair and his mom has red. Anna's dad has red/blonde hair and her mom has dark brown. I could see people writing this off as a lighting issue, but we see both sets of parents in multiple types of lighting. Also, Tarzan's dad's facial hair. Though I admire it, I find it very hard to believe that lovely stach-and-chops was grown in just two weeks, assuming the ship sank on their journey home and the king didn't bother to keep himself clean-shaven for his niece's wedding (a theory I can, in fact, get behind).
2. "See you in two weeks."
This two-week limit really makes things awkward for the Tarzan-Frozen theory. When the queen boards the ship, she has no baby. She's not noticeably pregnant. There's never any mention of a young son, a possible male heir, the mourning of a brother. Nothing. This means that if the two stories are related, No one knew about Tarzan. Okay, so maybe she was barely pregnant? Maybe she had him while they were on the trip. But Anna clearly states they are expected to return in two weeks. That's not enough time to have a baby. Also, if the queen were 38 weeks pregnant and had somehow managed to keep her pregnancy hidden (literally), I highly doubt she would risk traveling on a ship to a foreign kingdom when she was so close to giving birth.
I will admit this one is possible if Tarzan is not Anna's biological brother, but is adopted. Why the king and queen would go to another kingdom to adopt, I can't say.
He could also be the illegitimate son of the king, but I'm guessing not.
3. Fire vs Water
This is the one I think most people forget/choose to ignore. Though the whole theory is based on the fact that both sets of parents include a sinking ship, the scenarios of the ship sinking are totally different.
Tarzan's parents are seen abandoning a ship that is ON FIRE. Blazing. Burning. Smoke, cinders, heat. There is a stork in the background, and it isn't crazy to imagine that lightning is the cause of the ship's burning, but ultimately it is fire that brings their ship down. We see it slowly sink below the relatively calm waters.
Anna and Elsa's parents' ship is also seen struggling in a storm, but it disappears underneath a particularly huge wave. There is no fire at all. There are mountainous waves and driving rain. Water, water, everywhere. But not a spark to be seen. The ship disappears all at once as it is swallowed up by the ocean.
Fire -- no fire
Little waves -- waves big enough to capsize the royal passenger ship.
See what I mean?
4. Location, location, location.
Based on other announcements made, artistic styling, costuming, architecture, and geography, Frozen is set somewhere in Scandanavia. And they are supposed to be back in two weeks. And yet, they somehow wash up somewhere on the coast of Africa? They clearly need to fire their captain....or just let him go down with the ship.
5. It's no less tragic
This one has less to do with the veracity of the theory than people's excitement about it.
Since the announcement this weekend, I have seen so many people show their excitement that Anna and Elsa's parents lived.
But no one seems to want to mention that Tarzan's parents GET EATEN BY A LEOPARD. Seriously, guys, how is that any better than drowning? It's not like they survive the storm and can somehow find their way home to be happily reunited with their daughters. The get eaten.
And if the kingdom of Arendelle didn't know the queen was pregnant/had a son, which they seem not to based on the brief mourning we see, why would anybody ever think to look for that baby?
If the crew of Jane Porter's ship returned to England with the story that Jane had stayed behind with a wild gorilla man, would anyone ever think "oh hey, maybe this random dude on this random beach just happens to be that baby we never knew about, all grown up"? And if by some chance somebody DID make the connection, what is that going to do to the kingdom of Arendelle? Will Elsa, after reigning for approximately twenty years, have to give up her thrown to a wild man who didn't even learn to speak English (which we assume is not the native language of the Scandanavian Arendelle) until his twentiesish? Is Arendelle going to accept their new-found Prince? Would Tarzan be able to handle living in the frigid north? Would Jane become the new queen?
I could go on and on with more questions like these, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say, things wouldn't be peachy.
All in all, I think declaring these two storyline a connected in this way is a long stretch that just has too many holes. It was a nice thought, but no, Disney, this one didn't work.
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