Pixar is well-known for producing great, even Oscar-winning films, yet there were once concerns that it had created a ‘poor’ movie.
Pixar has created a succession of great films that people of all ages enjoy, like Toy Story and Up, Elementals, and Inside Out.
By 2002, Pixar had published Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters Inc., so the pressure to produce another hit was on.
Finding Nemo, which arrived in theaters in 2003, came next in terms of release order. Of course, it was a big success, and the 20-year-old film still has a 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes today.
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However, as the picture neared completion, some Pixar employees expressed concerns that it would not be a commercial success, prompting them to make a little but substantial alteration.
In an interview with UNILAD, Pixar animator Jason Deamer, who worked on the 2003 film, revealed: “Originally, you found out [about Nemo’s mother’s death] through flashbacks. We all went to the last screening before it was going to be finished, and we all walked out the theater and no one was saying anything… [We thought] ‘Did we just make our first bad movie?’.”
“We were a little concerned, and Lee Unkrick said ‘Let me try something’, and he took those flashbacks and he recut them all in the beginning.”
Deamer, who has been at Pixar for 26 years, went on to describe how the minor change’made the whole thing work’.
“When you didn’t know [about Nemo’s mom’s death] in the beginning, you thought Marlin was an overprotective, annoying character,” he went on to say.
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“This was the same footage. We did not create any new animations. [Unkrick] had just informed the audience of this. I realize it’s heartbreaking, but you didn’t understand [Marlin’s] overprotective conduct.”
When asked why Pixar films include such emotional situations, such as the one in question in Finding Nemo, Deamer claimed that the filmmakers are ‘not aiming to hurt your feelings’.
“They’re trying to make you understand where characters are coming from,” he said.
In addition to Finding Nemo, Deamer has worked on the upcoming film Inside Out 2. The sequel arrives nine years after the first.
Before its June debut, Deamer revealed some Easter Eggs for fans to look for.
Noting fan favorite Bing Bong, who was tragically ‘abandoned’ by Riley in Inside Out 1, he stated, “Joy hasn’t forgotten [about Bing Bong]. Joy’s bedroom contains an origami version of himself and an origami facsimile of the Pizza Planet truck.”
“One more for you: there’s 4*TOWN poster in Riley’s bedroom,” he went on to say.
4*TOWN is the boyband that appears prominently in Pixar’s 2022 film, Turning Red.
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