Finding Dory,
Rad, quickly, what's the premise?
Okay, so in
who goes searching for his son across the ocean,
and he has the help of Dory, this Blue Tang
who has short-term memory loss.
And in that movie, Dory was more of just
kind of this clownish sidekick.
This movie, she takes centre stage.
And as you heard in the clip, she starts getting
fragments of her memory back
and she realizes she has a family
that she lost a long time ago
and she goes out in search of her family,
despite the fact that she could barely remember them.
Um, and you know what really struck me about this movie
is just kind of this intimate and really emotional way
that dealt with her memory loss as a disability.
Kind of the struggle she has to just perform basic functions,
the sense of isolation she feels because of that struggle.
It-- I haven't seen a kids movie tackle that
with such maturity, or tackle anything with such maturity.
It's been praised for exactly that,
how it treats living with disability.
How did you find, Rachel, the way that the film treated
Dory's condition?
Yeah, similarly, like overall, what's interesting
is that she's not the only character.
So there's an octopus who's missing a tentacle,
there's a beluga whale that's had an injury
and has lost his ability to echolocate.
Um...
and Nemo himself was born with, or has a damaged, small fin.
And so there are all these characters
who are dealing with, with a disability
of some kind or another.
And so, you know, the film itself, you know,
in not a heavy-handed way kind of presents this world
in which it's not so much overcoming,
um, but living with and being accepted.
And I think it's, it's interesting
because there is this rising movement,
particularly around conditions like autism, say,
which diagnoses are growing,
about representation, you know,
and how conditions are treated.
And I remember when the old
and Data, the character, was seen by a lot of people
with Asperger's and autism as being someone
who represented that, and so I think it kind of,
the film I think kind of speaks to the fact
that there aren't a lot of images
of people with disabilities, and this is one.
I mean, there is one character that's been getting
some criticism, it's one is a sea lion,
Gerald the sea lion, which is sort of depicted
in the kind of--
I mean, a lot of kids movies often have like a dumb character
who's played for laughs, and in this movie,
it's that sea lion who still has that role.
So there's how this film treats disability,
there's also this trend we're seeing, in this film included,
towards more complex emotions in kids films.
Of course,
I mean, that was very complex-- too complex for me.
Yeah. [laughs]
Unfathomable. Yeah.
Rachel, what do you think is driving that trend
towards representing more complex emotions
in kids films? We've talked about, you know,
Zootopia
political and social issues, but complicated emotions,
what do you think is driving that?
I think part of it is demanding adult audiences
that are seeing films with their kids.
And so I think part of it is the expectation
that you're actually making movies that aren't just for
an under 13 audience, you're making it for
the people that are going to see the movies with them.
I think part of it is the kind of storytelling
that you can do now, as, as um,
animation gets better and better and better.
And I think, you know,
and people find this resonance in it;
Inside Out
um, even sometime like, which didn't get a ton of attention,
but
that is like levelling in how emotionally painful
it is, the separation.
I hated that movie. [laughs]
It killed me!
So I think part of it is, you have, you know,
a very savvy generation of parents
who want to feel something, too,
and are pushing back against all the princess movies, as well.
Um, and I think--
things like
Like that series of books and the series of films
had a huge adult audience.
So I think part of it is filmmakers aren't thinking about
just speaking to kids;
they're thinking about speaking to generations.
Stephen, you say you love these
Why's that?
Well, I mean, I think they're some of the best scripts
that are out there. I mean, I think when you're in this
environment of going to the movies,
the chances that you're going to find a real story
and some kind of psychological realism in these stories--
actually, the animated movies are probably the most likely
you're going to get, they're often the deepest.
They have-- like as you say,
um, psychological portrait of adolescence,
which, you know, you're not going to find
even in the art house movies, right?
And so I mean, part of it I think is
we kind of underrate the previous generation
of children's films.
Like, you know, I think...
these children's stories, these fables,
have always been about complex, psychological things.
And they've always also had a lot of pain in them.
You know,
your dad is too poor, so he leaves you out in the woods
to starve to death.
That's the beginning of the story, right?
So like, there's also a lot of emotional pain there.
But I think there is this--
this is where some of the best storytelling
in film-- or really anywhere, I think is found,
is in these animated films, these
They really have taken it to a point where,
I mean, there are almost no bad ones now, you know?
Rad, what impact do you think
this new
on young viewers?
Well I mean, I mean, when it comes to young viewers,
I've got to say, I took my six-year-old son to
and it went over his head.
So I mean, I hope that as he grows with these movies,
they will be more sensitive, and you know--
like you were saying, I think this is coming out
because we are more open to discussing emotions,
we are more open to discussing kind of mental health and stuff.
Um, I mean, especially with
I mean, the climax of that movie deals like,
explicitly with fighting depression, right?
So when you have kind of the canon for young children
dealing with these complexities,
I just hope that, you know, they'll grow up
and be more aware of what's going on inside of them.
And I think a lot of movies will probably follow suit.