Finding Dory,
Pixar’s long-awaited sequel to fan favourite Finding Nemo (2003), is due for release in June 2016. And people
are excited. Very excited. Ellen DeGeneres, who lends her vocals to our
forgetful fish friend, has been constantly promoting the film in the media,
including premiering clips on her chat show, much to everybody’s enthusiasm.
But I have to admit that I have reservations myself. To begin with, even the
title alone makes the sequel sound like a cheap, ill-thought-out follow-up. And
Pixar’s reputation of late doesn’t exactly keep my hopes afloat.
Now I appreciate that it is unfair to deride and criticise
something prior to seeing the finished product, and those of you who’ve read
many of my former posts will know I’ve a tendency to voice my scepticism when
as little as a teaser trailer has been unveiled. But in this case, my concerns,
I think, are justified. I’m not saying Finding
Dory will necessarily be a bad movie – it actually looks alright from what
has been revealed so far. But my scepticism is grounded in previous experience
of movie franchises that took a nosedive into the mediocre, the disappointing,
and the downright catastrophic.
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| Finding Dory, Disney/Pixar, 2016 |
In their 20-plus years in the animated feature film industry,
Pixar have rarely let us down. Even now, in the post-Disney-takeover era, when
criticism is rife, they still continue to churn out enjoyable produce, even if
many of their latest efforts aren’t quite up to scratch. The trouble is that,
for a company as renowned as Pixar, any noticeable decline in quality of their
output would inevitably bring their reputation crashing down. The truth is, no
company is infallible. Whether their recent lacklustre efforts such as Brave (2012) and The Good Dinosaur (2015) are indicative of a permanent diminishment
or a temporary lapse, there’s no denying that they’re currently representing a
shadow of their former selves.
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| The Good Dinosaur, Disney/Pixar, 2015 |
Furthermore, there’s been far too much focus on second-rate
sequels of late. While Toy Story 3 (2010)
turned out to be of equally high quality as the previous two movies in the
franchise, their subsequent effort Cars 2
(2011) proved to be a major bump in the road, so to speak. Though a
moderate box office success, the former king of story-telling had been knocked
from his pedestal thanks to a middling, well-worn and frankly bizarre narrative
concerning espionage and a shameless attempt to boost merchandising profits by
blatantly appealing to an international market. Monsters University (2013), too, while hardly catastrophically
‘bad’, just didn’t resonate with me as much as its original counterpart.
Visually, creativity abounds, but story-wise it’s nothing special, and
ultimately conveys itself as a rather bland college movie. It’s not awful, but
it’s not great either. With a slew of sequels in the pipeline, this doesn’t
exactly instil me with confidence.
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| Finding Dory, Disney/Pixar, 2016 |
A major issue I have with Finding Dory conceptually is its predominant focus on one of the
original movie’s secondary characters. Sure, in Finding Nemo, Dory had a fairly major role, but all the same, she’s
best utilised as a form of light relief – a side character. In the original
movie, she does indeed share the spotlight with Marlin (Albert Brooks), but the
fact that she is now expected to carry the plot of the sequel all by herself
does not fill me with hope. Just look at the Cars franchise. Now, I’m aware the first Cars (2006) movie continues to receive a lot of criticism, mostly
because of the fact that the characters are cars, and cannot emote in the same
anthropomorphic way as toys, bugs or monsters, for example. And I’ll agree
that, while the film has heart, it falls flat in its attempts to draw an
emotional connection with its audience. Regardless, the story is actually very
pleasing; it’s ultimately very enjoyable and, at times, lightly touching. Its
sequel, however, turns its focus away from the exploits of racing car Lightning
McQueen (Owen Wilson) and instead lets comic relief Mater (Larry the Cable Guy)
take the wheel, with disastrous consequences. The story is a mess, the lead
character is annoying as all hell, and it’s littered with gratuitous violence;
put simply, it’s completely devoid of the finesse and narrative drive that
saved the original movie from being a car crash. Now, Finding Nemo does not suffer from the same problems as Cars, and is conversely regarded as
being a Pixar masterpiece. But that’s all the more reason to leave it alone.
Supporting cast generally do not carry a narrative well on their own, and
that’s what worries me.
As I stated before, these criticisms are merely concerns in
anticipation of the movie. I love Finding
Nemo – everything about it; the characters, the story, the emotional
impact, the humour… But I love it so much that I’m deeply concerned that
they’ll continue the undersea saga with a lacklustre follow-up. If Pixar’s
recent output is anything to go by, these fears are hardly unfounded. Dory in
the role of protagonist might not be a bad thing, but ultimately the movie
needs a decent narrative to stay afloat, and a damn good one if it intends to
meet the standards of their original effort. Put simply, Dory needs story - something that many Pixar movies have been lacking lately.
That’s pretty much all that can be said for now. Until the film’s release, there’s no
knowing whether Finding Dory will
sink or swim.
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