The forgetful blue fish who won hearts in Pixar’s blockbuster animation “Finding Nemo” is going on another journey, this time to find her own origin story.
“Finding Dory,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday (June 17), picks up a year after the events of 2003’s “Finding Nemo,” and sees Dory, a chatty blue tang fish with short-term memory loss, living in the peaceful ocean habitat alongside Nemo the clownfish and his father Marlin.
Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, suddenly begins remembering glimpses of her past and the parents she left behind in California, setting her off on a quest to be reunited with them.
But does Dory remember whether her name was short for Doreen or Dorothy? Ellen DeGeneres said “I think it is just Dory, I don’t think there is a longer version. She may have a middle name but I don’t think it is Dorothy or Doreen. I think she is just a Dory.”
Andrew Stanton, who returned to co-write and direct “Finding Dory,” had the answer. “Dory is actually a term for a row boat. It’s a nautical term – Dory,” he said before admitting that all the characters in the sea are based on nautical terms.
The sequel comes 13 years after the original smash hit “Finding Nemo” and Stanton explained why there was such a long delay, saying “You spend four years on these films. So, now somebody is saying, ‘Now that you spent four years on these fish, do you want to spend another four years on fish?’ ‘No !’ So, I moved on to robots and moved on to Mars. I surprised myself watching Nemo after six or seven years of not watching it. I had to see it in 3D to approve it. I walked out of the theater worried about Dory. I felt she had a hole inside her and didn’t know where she was from. She was apologizing still for her shortcoming that she thought she had for her short term memory loss and she could easily forget Marlin and Nemo and not find them again. I felt that she was completely unresolved.”
“Finding Nemo” grossed more than $900 million worldwide and won an Oscar for best animated feature. Unlike the rescue mission in “Finding Nemo,” in which Nemo was captured and taken across the world as his father chased after him with the help of Dory, “Finding Dory” mostly takes place in the confines of a marine institute and introduces a host of new animal characters.
Dory finds friends in a grumpy but stealthy Hank, an octopus missing a tentacle, the short-sighted whale Destiny and Fluke and Rudder, two goofy sea lions.
“You don’t make these things because they’re easy. You makes these – and artist goes into stuff because he wants to discover something new. I don’t expect the Beatles to go make an album of exactly the same songs. What’s the fun in that. The fun is discovering new. Sometimes I discover things about old characters and that is why they made it into the film. Many times I kind of wanted to know where Dory is from, I wanted to know what that world was,” said Stanton.
After a recent trailer launch, avid viewers noticed that Pixar had perhaps introduced their first gay couple in “Finding Dory”. However, Stanton was quick to point out that it was not intentional. “I don’t think there is or isn’t, we just didn’t ask. They can be whoever they want them to be. We don’t ask the extras in our shots exactly what their history is,” he said.
The film contains many references to pollution of the oceans, with man made waste scattered among the sea life and even Dory herself gets caught in plastic debris.
“I don’t want to get sad about it, but there are giant trash fields the size of a city, floating in the ocean” said DeGeneres. “We have to be really careful because the ocean is a world that probably has all kinds of answers for us. There are probably cures for diseases in the plant life down there. There are probably places we haven’t even discovered. So, I care deeply about the ocean, deeply- not a pun. I care about the ocean deeply – that is still a pun.”
Pixar’s “Finding Dory” is expected to open with around $115 million at the North American box office this weekend according to Variety, and is a strong awards contender for its owner, Walt Disney Co.
Stanton and his producer Lindsey Collins aren’t expecting another “Finding” movie any time soon. “Right before that would be ‘Finding Andrew (Stanton).’ Where is he? He was just here,” joked Collins, before adding “It will be a while, I would imagine.”
“Finding Dory” goes on release in North America on June 17.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016
