My Reaction to Finding Dory · 12:13am Nov 25th, 2015
In 2003, Pixar unveiled one of its most successful films, Finding Nemo. The film was a smash hit, raking in a whopping $930 million dollars at the box office. It’s easy to see why this film was so popular for its time. What wasn’t there to love about this film? Lovable, memorable characters, great comedy, and a story that practically anyone can relate to, whether you’re a kid or an adult. Plus, the score for the film was really good. I still consider the soundtrack to Finding Nemo one of the best out there, and it’s still one of my personal favorites.
The breakout character for Finding Nemo was Dory, a regal blue tang fish who suffers from short-term memory loss. No, I’m not kidding. As silly as this concept sounds, the writers manage to pull it off quite well. Given this character’s popularity (seriously, she has over 25,000,000 likes on Facebook), it seemed natural that she would get a movie starring her, very much like Mater the tow truck got a film starring him in Cars 2.
We’ve been hearing a bit about Finding Dory for the past couple of years. Finally, on Tuesday, November 10, the official trailer for this film was released, thanks to Ellen DeGeneres, the woman who voiced Dory. If you’re a fan of Ellen, then you know she’s been pining for a sequel to Finding Nemo ever since Finding Nemo was released. It’s clear that she had a blast with the cast and crew with making it.
But you’re probably asking yourself how I felt about the trailer. The title alone has me worried. I am very perplexed as to why this is called Finding Dory and not Finding Nemo 2. Yes, I know that this character is immensely popular. Dory was so popular that you could argue that she was responsible for pretty much reinvigorating Ellen DeGeneres’ career. And I know some people reading this are probably going, “Oh, calm down. We don’t even know what the story is going to be yet. We don’t know where they’re going with this. Let’s just wait and see.” Well, the problem with this idea is that it’s putting Dory front and center. Dory works very well as a supporting character, but I honestly don’t know if her character is capable of carrying an entire movie. As Cars 2 showed us with the character of Mater (and, yes, they are coming out with a Cars 3), putting a supporting character in the role of the protagonist can have disastrous results. If you’re going to do that, then you really need to have a good, creative, smart idea.
And that’s why I don’t see this film working. From what I saw of the trailer, this film just looks like your standard journey of self-discovery that we’ve seen lots of times before. Bolt had a plot similar to this.
Furthermore, the writers seem to be taking elements from the first film that were merely there to be funny (such as Dory’s talking in her sleep or her wondering where her family is) and using them as a vehicle for the plot. I don’t know about you, but I’m not particularly interested in what Dory’s family is like. This film seems to be just a plot of Dory having a memory about her mother and going off on an adventure to find her family.
If the writers have Dory recalling memories from her past through her dreams, I think that would be very interesting. Dreams are one of those things that really fascinate me for some odd reason. It’s believed that our dreams are a gateway into our subconscious and that may be the idea that the writers are toying with here.
One plot element that I would like to see explored here is the idea of Dory being sort like a surrogate mother for Nemo. I will say that I was very grateful that Finding Nemo didn’t end with Marlin and Dory falling in love in the end, like so many other Disney features. The writers kept them strictly as friends.
I do have to question as why Dory is living next door to Marlin and Nemo instead of living with them. Given that she’s prone to swimming away in her sleep, wouldn’t this become a real serious problem, especially in regards to her safety? She could get eaten by a predator or end up getting herself lost or who knows what else?
Regardless of what I think of the trailer, I will sure be heading down to the theater to watch this when it is released. I was a huge fan of Finding Nemo and given that it grossed nearly a billion dollars, I am hoping that Finding Dory will break Frozen’s record of being the highest-grossing animated film of all-time. However, I’m not holding onto that hope too much because we have Frozen 2 to look forward to, and I’m pretty sure Disney is going to hype the ever living crap out of it. Great.
I'll go see Finding Dory if I hear good things about it, same thing with Cars 3 and Frozen 2. Disney's track record with sequels usually isn't very good.
3566678 If you're referring to the direct-to-video sequels that were like a plague back in the '90s, those were done by a separate animation studio of Disney's. With John Lasseter now the President of Disney, I think the sequels will be good, though I probably won't bother to check them out. So far, the only one I'm interested in is Finding Dory, and I've heard the plot to Toy Story 4 is going to be a romantic comedy involving Woody and Bo Peep. Somehow, I seriously doubt that.
3566803 Well, at least Toy Story 4 doesn't sound like a complete trainwreck anymore, but I probably still won't go see it. Toy Story 3 was the perfect end point for the series, and the two specials we've gotten since were a fine enough continuation.
3566868 I agree that a fourth should not be made. It works so well as a trilogy, why would you want to risk ruining it by making a fourth?
3566893 My reaction to it being announced was somewhere along the lines of this: