Sequels are a way of life in Hollywood, where any successful film can lead to a follow-up, even if continuing the story makes absolutely no sense. But that’s not the case for Finding Dory, a sequel that no one can say was rushed into production, and exists for a very specific reason. Nearly a decade after the release of Finding Nemo, director Andrew Stanton and producer Lindsey Collins realized that Dory – the blue tang with short-term memory loss who helps a clownfish named Marlin rescue his son – never got a proper “thank you.”
In fact, there were a lot of things about Dory that remained unresolved until Finding Dory, and Andrew Stanton and Lindsey Collins were more than happy to talk about the gaps in the narrative that their new movie strives to fill. In the following interview, I sat the filmmakers down to discuss why Finding Dory was actually important to produce, why the film feels so very different from Finding Nemo (even though they have very similar plots) and how one of the film’s most powerful themes – overcoming and owning what others might perceive as disabilities – came about almost by accident.
Disney / Pixar
Crave: I want to start here. Obviously it’s been a while since Finding Nemo…
Andrew Stanton: Yeah.
Why was Finding Dory “necessary” for you?
Andrew Stanton: Well, I wouldn’t have guessed this ahead of time but it wasn’t until I watched it [again] that I realized she’s unresolved, from the writer’s standpoint. I’m like, she still carries a misconstrued point of view about herself. We love her at the end of Finding Nemo and everybody’s grateful for her, but she hasn’t been gifted with how everybody else sees her. So I felt like that, on an internal level, was very dissatisfying for me. And also just from a plotting standpoint I was like, I really did want to know… not where she was from, but that she would be gifted with knowing where she was from.
Was this a complaint that you had heard from other people over the years?
Andrew Stanton: No.
Lindsey Collins: No, no…
So you could have just not brought it up and gotten away with it.
Lindsey Collins: Yes, if he had kept it all to himself!
Andrew Stanton: Yeah, and I couldn’t drop it! I recognized as a writer that there was more meaty, juicy material – of contradiction and conflict – under the hood of her, still, than there are in some main characters that I’ve been striving for years to make work in other films. So I thought this is just really good material.
Disney / Pixar
Did you have any idea where she came from when you did the original?
Andrew Stanton: Nope.
Lindsey Collins: No.
Did you try? I’m curious why that didn’t come up…
Andrew Stanton: Why it didn’t come up?
Yeah, as a writer.
Andrew Stanton: The story never asked for it so I didn’t have to.
Lindsey Collins: But you knew… What he did know, as was funny because it actually didn’t come up for a while on this film, was that she was wandering the ocean for a very long time by herself before she met Marlin.
Andrew Stanton: Yeah.
Lindsey Collins: So you knew that, as a writer. Like you were like, “Oh, I’m pretty sure she was alone before she met Marlin.”
Andrew Stanton: I knew she had this imbalanced sense of abandonment, that she and probably wandered the ocean and people had ditched her because she was probably annoying with her short-term memory loss, that she had probably strayed away from people that she had attached to, and that that’s what made her so optimistic and such a caregiver and so friendly, is it was protection. Maybe she’s tipping the insurance that, if I’m that helpful to you, maybe you won’t ditch me. So I think that’s why everybody didn’t think it was out of the blue when 50 minutes later in the film of Finding Nemo, she starts crying and saying “don’t leave me” when we’ve laid no track for it. And yet you accept it. I think it’s because you unconsciously know it can’t be good. This can’t be good that you’re alone in the ocean with this disease.
Disney / Pixar
One of the key differences between Finding Nemo and Finding Dory… they’re both kind of quest movies about reconnecting with family, but there’s an immediacy to the threat, to the separation in Finding Nemo.
Andrew Stanton: Yes. That’s very different in that one, yeah.
Finding Dory is obviously emotional, but…
Andrew Stanton: It’s more introspective.
Yeah, how do you deal with that? I feel like there’s a level of intensity that’s very different.
Andrew Stanton: Yeah, and you just have recognize that. And then part of the four-year journey is not only recognizing it but learning how to approach it, so that you find tension by some other means, you know? And you don’t have the luxury… it’s actually a luxury to have something as blatant and as obvious as “somebody kidnapped my child and I’ve got to get him back.” Not every movie… most movies don’t have that luxury, you know? That’s why a lot of people like to make westerns because it’s so barebones and it’s one level above survival. Like, “If I lose my store or the farm we all die.” So it’s so immediate, you gain tension right away. But when you have more complicated movies that have layers and they’re not as much… it’s always, that’s part of the struggle. That’s part of the reason you get into storytelling, or story writing, is you’re just trying to find where the tension comes from.
One thing I noticed that I thought was interesting was, even though Marlin and Dory are in some respects parents to Nemo now, you never go for the romantic subplot.
Andrew Stanton: No! And that’s why I liked it in the beginning, in the first movie, when Ellen suddenly inspired me to do short-term memory loss via the way she deconstructed things, it made me go, “Wait a minute, why can’t this guide fish be female?” It doesn’t have the follow the stereotypical trope of, just because they’re opposite genders there should be romance. I loved breaking that rule, so…
Was there ever a temptation?
Andrew Stanton: No.
Lindsey Collins: No.
Andrew Stanton: No, I thought that was cliché and too easy.
Disney / Pixar
There’s this campaign – and I know it’s a separate issue – to “give Elsa a girlfriend.” I wonder why she needs a romantic plot to begin with. Why do we feel the need to shoehorn romance everywhere? I feel like we almost have too many of them in movies.
Lindsey Collins: [Laughs.] Yeah!
Andrew Stanton: I think it’s just easy. It’s just easy thinking.
Lindsey Collins: It’s an easy understanding of a relationship dynamic, and I think that’s part of the other thing that felt unresolved in the first one, is that… One of my favorite scenes in this film [Finding Dory] is the scene where Marlin actually thanks her.
Andrew Stanton: Yeah.
Lindsey Collins: Because it does feel like on the first film, yeah he does a quick thank you, but it’s in the middle of a tragedy and he’s….
Andrew Stanton: He’s not really in the right state of mind.
Lindsey Collins: …he’s not really in his right state of mind, so to have that also get kind of given to her as a, “You’ve changed my life. You make me do things that I would never have done before,” that’s a huge gift to her. And that scene was one of the first scenes we animated because it was such a strong… everybody knew that that scene needed to be in there because somehow that was another hole that we kind of left from the first film. It just didn’t feel right to stop and thank Dory in that film, but in this film it was like, no, she deserves that moment.
You’ve talked about how this new film fills in the gaps that were left from the first one. What gaps are in here for Finding Marlin…?
Andrew Stanton: I know. Well actually, we’ve had most people petition for Finding Hank, simply because he’s missing a tentacle. People want to know where that’s coming from.
It’s like Luke’s lightsaber.
Lindsey Collins: That’s exactly right. I made that same analogy.
Andrew Stanton: You did! To her credit.
Lindsey Collins: [Laughs.] To my dork credit I did make that same analogy yesterday.
Andrew Stanton: Her joke always is, if they suggest a Finding Hank they’re going to have to do Finding Andrew.
Lindsey Collins: Yeah, the prequel will have to be Finding Andrew because…
Andrew Stanton: I spent eight years with fish now. That’s a quarter of my life.
Disney / Pixar
Are you done with fish?
Andrew Stanton: I am, yeah. Yeah, so…
I am curious though. Do you feel like there’s anything unresolved on Finding Dory?
Andrew Stanton: Oh, you could make a story about anything it’s just whether or not it’s that good or that… that…
Lindsey Collins: Compelling?
Andrew Stanton: …compelling to spend four years of your life on it. [Laughs.] Seriously, it’s like that with any of the films, whether they’re sequels or originals. Do you want to spend four years with this haunting you, not working?
What do you want to spend the next four years of your life on?
Andrew Stanton: I don’t want to spend four years on anything anymore. I’m too old. I want to spend like two years or one…
YouTube clips…
Andrew Stanton: Yeah.
Lindsey Collins: Small movies.
That’s the thing, your movies are all huge. You went off and did John Carter, which I thought was really fun, but even that was a huge, epic production…
Andrew Stanton: I know…
What’s small? What can you do that…?
Andrew Stanton: Well, there’s a lot of small it’s just whether or not people are willing to pay money to let you make something small these days, you know? A lot of that ends up on TV now, so who knows?
Disney / Pixar
Has there been a temptation to continue Finding Nemo in that medium?
Andrew Stanton: Not that I’ve heard of. Unless you’ve heard something…
I have not heard something.
Andrew Stanton: Oh, okay.
From a technical perspective you’re making a sequel thirteen years later, and technology has evolved by leaps and bounds…
Andrew Stanton: Yeah.
But you’re stuck with the original character models…
Andrew Stanton: We had this funny… we never brought this up, but we had this funny thing where there were no iPhones when we made Finding Nemo, and so even though we’re saying in the movie it’s one year later, our temptation was to give people iPhones in the film. But we realized, “Oh, we can’t!”
Lindsey Collins: Because they wouldn’t have iPhones.
Andrew Stanton: It wouldn’t really work, so we just kind of avoided the whole technological advancements.
Lindsey Collins: Yeah, I think that… I mean look, we always have to do re-do our characters. There’s no mythical digital backlot, unfortunately, in our vault.
Andrew Stanton: No…
Lindsey Collins: So we always have to rebuild them, but the interesting thing [is] we had a perfect test. That scene where you actually replay the scene from Nemo where they meet for the first time was our test, to kind of go like, okay, this is a scene that everybody knows. It’s a set piece that everybody knows, that’s in the first film. So let’s see, what are our kind of parameters to improve upon the look of this film and make it feel like we have evolved and do all the things we want to do, but still feel like it’s the movie and the characters that everybody remembers that’s in that same world. So we kind of took that as a good looks test, where we improved enough of it that nobody hopefully notices, but it feels like it’s sitting in the right world.
There’s something I don’t know about fish. I was watching the movie and I was like, “Wait a minute, how long does it take for clownfish to become adults?”
Andrew Stanton: Uh…
Lindsey Collins: I don’t know.
Andrew Stanton: Probably days, knowing our luck! [Laughs.]
Lindsey Collins: Yeah, exactly.
Nemo’s kind of small still.
Andrew Stanton: I know. This is where you just kind of go more with instinct of like the human analogy, because that’s what people’s…
Lindsey Collins: Time has to [pass]…
Andrew Stanton: Yeah. We’re saying he’s only a year older but he’s probably ten years wiser because of what he’s been through.
Disney / Pixar
At what point did you realize – or was this always the intention – that this film is very much about people with disabilities? There are so many characters throughout the film…
Andrew Stanton: Yeah, it’s funny, I never consciously thought that. I thought… I did short-term memory loss because it was funny in the first one, so I had to deal with it, and I inherited that for this film. And then I wanted to deal with the fact that everybody has something that’s a flaw with themselves, or everybody has a point of view about something about themselves that they think is a flaw but it turns out that’s just what makes you unique and you need to just accept it. You don’t have to go be as extreme as having an obvious handicap to do that. That counts, but there’s also just personality, ways you think, ways you look at the world that make you, set you apart, that maybe you’re teachers didn’t get or your relatives didn’t get. So I feel like I was trying to speak to the universal of it. But portraying something in a general term never comes across well in the film. You want to hit with specificity. So you dealt with what logically exists out there with fish and problems they might have.
Has it surprised you on other films, where people would come at you and say you were obviously getting at this, and then…?
Andrew Stanton: Well, I don’t think that they’re wrong. They may be wrong that they think I had an agenda. Like, everything I do is in service to just the narrative emotions of the story and the universal truth I’m trying to make. And I may use specifics. Not everybody’s a fish but somehow they all get this. So I’m sure like, not everybody’s handicapped and hopefully they’ll all get this.
Lindsey Collins: I think that, I mean I’ve said this before because I think it’s true about your films in general, is that you come at it from a character standpoint and at a certain point the character is telling you – based on what you’ve written and who you’ve come up with – who they are and what they’re going to do in the world. Right? Whether that’s very small or whether that’s big. And I think that as much as it was not your intention, it’s not any surprise to me – and I don’t think to you – that Dory as a character is a poster child for people who are struggling with disabilities. I mean…
Andrew Stanton: I’m honored! It’s wonderful. I wish I could take credit and say that was my intention, but it wasn’t.
You could have though. This was the moment.
Andrew Stanton: Well, it’s the same in WALL-E. “You must be making an environmental statement.” Well, great if I am. I wasn’t conscious of it. I was just going with what felt truthful to me.
Lindsey Collins: But I think Dory is somebody who doesn’t… I mean honestly, and I know it’s weird to talk about Dory as if she’s a real person, but it’s like look, the fact of the matter is she never talks about Nemo’s little fin. She never talks about Destiny’s near-sightedness. “You swim beautifully.” She is that filled with grace…
Andrew Stanton: She’s accepting.
Lindsey Collins: …when it comes to everybody else, which is what I think people really love about her, why she resonates with everybody. And I think the fact that she then, her journey is to find that same grace for herself, or with herself, is the story you wrote and the fact is that actually speaks to, I think, people who are struggling. You know?
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 50 Best Disney Movies Ever Made:
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney
The 50 Best Disney Movies Ever Made
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50. Ratatouille (2007)
From the company that turned a mouse - that scurrying thing that shot your grandmother on top of a chair, holding a broom for dear life - into a national hero, comes the story of a rat. A disgusting, disease-ridden rat, who dreams of being a gourmet chef. Underdog (underrat?) stories don’t start much lower, and in Brad Bird’s fanciful, romantic and wholly unlikely Ratatouille, that just makes Remy’s ascension taste sweeter. The plot is a little absurd, but the point - that great talent can come from the most unexpected places - will always be lovely.
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49. Never Cry Wolf (1983)
Disney's kiddie-friendly fare was a key to their success, but it did occasionally hamstring their ability to tell more mature stories. In 1983, Disney released a comparatively harrowing feature called Never Cry Wolf, a quiet story about a Canadian researcher (Charles Martin Smith) who must live in the wilderness, studying how wolves may or may not be thinning the local caribou herds. In addition to his research, our hero much also learn a few basic survival skills. I defy you to forget the scene wherein he eats mice. The ultimate conclusion of Never Cry Wolf is that humans are actually a greater threat to the land than wolves could ever be. This is Davy Crockett by way of Terrence Malick. Never Cry Wolf's contemplative content ultimately led to the formation of Touchstone Pictures, a more mature branch of the Disney machine.
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48. Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
Every kid’s favorite fantasy is the one about possessing secret power or information, resulting in an urgent task that will allow the child to be The Only One Who’s Right and triumph over whatever adversity stands in her or his way. The kids in this wickedly exciting adventure are not only telekinetic and telepathic, they’re also aliens who have to flee some bad people to get home to their superior race of extraterrestrial beings. So it’s perfect. And it stars Disney veteran Kim Richards, which makes it the perfect antidote to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the unhappy spectacle of the actress in perpetual, screaming, middle-age meltdown.
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47. Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
For my money, Muppet Treasure Island is the best Muppet movie after the 1979 original. In the 1990s, it looked like the Muppets had found their toe-hold in their newly Disney-acquired brand: feature the Muppet performers as characters in classic literature. A Muppet Christmas Carol was an excellent start, but Muppet Treasure Island takes it to 10, mutating Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel into an impeccable slapstick spoof. This film makes me chortle heartily. It's a pity that the Muppets followed this with the not-at-all-good Muppets from Space. To think what we could have had instead. Muppet Midsummer Night's Dream, Muppet 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Muppet Dracula, etc.
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46. The Lion King (1994)
It may come as a surprise to find The Lion King ranked so low on a list of the best Disney movies ever made. Maybe it’s a generational thing. When The Lion King came out in 1994, the most recent Disney animated films were all about dreamers and magic. And then came, essentially, Hamlet, a harshly dramatic tale of murder and corruption. Yes, yes, “hakuna matata” to you too, but for all the fun to be had in The Lion King, it’s the melodrama that really stands the test of time: jealousy, betrayal, and a young hero whose self-doubt threatens a kingdom. For young audiences in the early 1990s, this was a revelation in Disney animation.
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45. The Incredible Journey (1963)
Two dogs and a cat travel 250 miles through the Canadian wilderness after being separated from their humans. Along the way they encounter harsh elements and non-domesticated creatures, such as bears, that they must flee and sometimes fight. The cat gets lost (who knows, maybe the dogs conspired to ditch it) and nearly starves to death, but they all make it home by the end. With three animals as leads, though, the lingering logistical question remains: HOW DID THEY EVEN MAKE THIS? And that, of course, brings up a second lingering question: After all the horrible revelations about Milo & Otis, do you really want to know the answer to the first lingering question?
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44. Midnight Madness (1980)
And sometimes Disney throws off the shackles of warm, humble, homey, suburban bliss, and delves into the urbane, the silly, and – dare I say – the crass. 1980's Midnight Madness, while rated PG, still has the air of an R-rated National Lampoon farce lingering over it. Various teams of college students – nerds, jocks, sorority girls, “good guys,” and “bad guys” – are enlisted by a mad game master to play an all-night, L.A.-wide scavenger hunt, complete with oblique clues and notable L.A. landmarks. The movie is unadulterated, playful, adolescent fun. It also features small roles from Michael J. Fox, Scott Bakula, and Paul Reubens, and features the incomparable Eddie Deezen.
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43. The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964)
The title alone gives it away. The cat dies. How many times does the cat die? Does it matter? THE CAT DIES. As a five-year-old watching this one on Sunday night’s The Wonderful World of Disney, that fact was enough to send me into sobbing hysterics. But Thomasina marked a shift in Disney’s presentation of harsh reality. No more Old Yellers or Bambis, where death was simply death, kid, so get over it. This particular animal’s demise was magical, imbued with atheism-defying resurrections and lessons learned. Thomasina was a messenger of faith and love, earning her next life and saving human souls along the way. I know, weird; not as trippy as The Gnome-Mobile, maybe, but still pretty strange.
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42. The Muppets (2011)
Muppet super-fans Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller used their post–Judd Apatow clout to bring the Jim Henson creations back to the big screen in a movie that’s both a loving throwback to the 1970s Muppet Show and spin-off films, and a post-ironic celebration and updating of everyone’s favorite felt family of entertainers. Armed with snappy new songs by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords, this witty, affectionate redux of Kermit and company set the tone for a whole new set of adventures on film and (starting this fall) TV as well.
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41. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
As a kid, you just knew that there were monsters in your closet. Evidence be damned, it was an indisputable fact. So what does Disney do to charm the hearts of children everywhere? It confirms your greatest fears, and then turns the monster into… your dad. One of Pixar’s most mature films tells the story of hardworking, blue collar men who are thrust into fatherhood against their will, and learn - in turn - that kids aren’t scary either. Monsters Inc. is that rare Disney movie that helps parents and children grow up in equal measure, with manic wit and visual ingenuity.
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40. Freaky Friday (1976)
There’s a case to be made for the Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis remake of this film. It’s certainly more warm-hearted. But being first means a lot, meaning that this is the wacky body-switching movie that set the tone, the one others wish they could be. In spite of her future Oscar-winner status, the main attraction here isn’t really Jodie Foster; she’s always been more comfortable in drama than comedy (a point made by Taxi Driver, released the same year). So this is Barbara Harris’ show. As a wife and mother pulled in too many directions, she plays her own daughter as though she were on a blissful bender, before realizing that it sucks to be an adult.
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39. Pollyanna (1960)
Disney's carefully manufactured squeaky-clean wholesomeness serves as its greatest asset (they have built their entire brand around comforting, nonthreatening idylls) as well as their greatest detriment (they have no sense of weight, reality, edge, or grit). But in 1960, the Disney wholesomeness actually managed to appear as a life philosophy in their Hayley Mills vehicle Pollyanna. Pollyanna herself is a benevolent soul whose determination to see the good in the world infects and overpowers the cynicism around her. Wholesomeness, Disney declares, is no bad thing. Pollyanna would feel perfectly at home in Frank Capra's canon.
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38. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Somwhere amongst the scratchy, vertical London cityscape, into the wholesome, sleepy story of two urban newlyweds and their pet humans, enters Cruella De Vil. She’s not an all-powerful sorceress, she’s a sadistic fur-fetishist who kidnaps puppies and fully intends to skin them alive. Although the scope of One Hundred and One Dalmatians may be dwarfed by Disney's many other productions, the simple, primal viciousness of one great villain turns an adorable widdle dog story into the studio’s most brutal saga of survival. And Cruella’s wonderful theme song, sprung entirely out of a hero’s childish spite, has gotta be the most toe-tapping hate tune ever written.
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37. The Jungle Book (1967)
Toward the end of Disney’s first era of classic animation came this breezy adaptation of Rudyard Kipling, one armed with a healthy dose of cool. (If this movie were a person, he’d be holding a cigarette in one hand and a bourbon in the other while standing poolside at Sinatra’s house.) Between Phil Harris’ rendition of “Bare Necessities,” Louis Prima going to town on “I Wanna Be Like You,” and the chilly villainy of George Sanders, the second bananas definitely steal the show.
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36. Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
Describing this film is a bit like being held captive by SNL’s Stefon has he doles out information about New York’s hottest nightclub for children. This one has everything: witches, war refugees, flying beds, Nazis, people being turned into rabbits, talking cartoon animals interacting with live humans, soccer matches, medieval suits of armor coming to life and waging war. And it’s a musical. And it’s two and a half hours long. What worked so seamlessly for Mary Poppins became, here, a discombobulated splatter of kid-entrancing hijinks. Still crazy watchable, though.
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35. The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
Fans of the Marvel movies may be surprised to hear that Disney has been doing this whole shared-universe thing for ages: Medfield College, which would eventually be the setting for the beloved Dexter Riley series of films starring Kurt Russell, first emerged as the institution where Flubber was invented, in this lark starring Fred MacMurray as the titular teacher who creates chaos with his anti-gravity goo. This film set the tone for decades of wacky, family-friendly, effects-heavy comedies from the studio.
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34. Aladdin (1992)
The 1990s were, as has been said by many critics, a great time for Disney, and is often called the Disney Renaissance. They went back to their old model of re-purposing fairy tales, hired some brilliant songwriters, and produced a long string of amazing and memorable movies. Nestled right in the middle of the Renaissance is Aladdin, a retelling of one of the most famous tales from One Thousand and One Nights. The story is fine, but the presence of Robin Williams as the wisecracking, intentionally anachronistic genie is what made the film fly, allowing Williams' trademark mania more ample elbowroom than it has ever had.
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33. Tron: Legacy (2010)
28 years after the release of Tron, Disney’s most ambitious box office dud, director Joe Kosinski brought us back into this electronic universe, refined it, and pumped it up with an amazing score by Daft Punk. Like the original, Tron: Legacy is not a cheerful adventure, it’s a stylish attempt to turn big ideas into popcorn entertainment, with heady notions about God, free will and existentialism. The action doesn’t fly, it glides, evoking a potent, hallucinatory mood, readying our minds for more unexpected and lofty philosophies. Tron: Legacy is one of the most intriguing and beautiful films to ever come out of the studio.
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32. Old Yeller (1957)
Ok, so you showed that kid Bambi, right? Tears for a week, right? That means it’s time for Old Yeller, the devastating film that demonstrates just how much more insanely tragic it is when it’s not the main character’s mother that gets shot and killed, but the main character himself. That’s right, the climax of Old Yeller involves the brave and loyal Labrador/Mastiff mix contracting rabies and being “put down” by his teenage owner (Tommy Kirk). You thought you got choked up during Marley & Me when the dog just got old and kicked it from natural causes? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This film has been known to cause children to take up whiskey and cigarettes after surviving an initial viewing.
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31. Tangled (2010)
In the modern age, Disney has become ambivalent about their “princess” products. On the one hand, they embrace their ownership of early fairy tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but they are also constantly attempting to subvert their well-known “shrinking violet” princess characters with “strong” females like Mulan and, uh, Tiana. With Tangled, their 2010 reworking of Rapunzel, Disney struck a perfect balance, making a film that is magically princess-ly, while making an energetic – not to mention hilarious – character study. Tangled is perhaps the best Disney animated feature of recent years, in many ways surpassing the far more popular Frozen.
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30. Return to Oz (1985)
Disney’s darkest adventure, and the only film ever directed by Apocalypse Now editor Walter Murch, begins with Dorothy Gale (Fairuza Balk) committed to an asylum and forced into electroshock therapy. It gets creepier from there, as she journeys back to Oz and finds only a wasteland. But somewhere amidst the giggling, homicidal wheelers and hallways filled with severed heads is a powerful story about conquering your fears, and accepting eccentricity into your life. Unforgettable imagery abounds in Return to Oz, a film that is part family-friendly adventure, part revisionist fantasy, and all psychotic break.
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29. Popeye (1980)
Perhaps the most bizarre of all of Disney's output, I still cannot fathom the enjoyable oddness of Robert Altman's 1980 film version of Popeye. The character of Popeye was well-known in the funny papers, and through the utterly amazing 1930s Fleischer cartoon shorts, so I suppose an eventual live-action film adaptation was strangely inevitable. But Altman was better known for his casual, conversational naturalism, and not for his stylized color or musicality. But when one blends the high cartoon style of Popeye with Altman's casual chattiness, one finds a fascinating – and utterly amusing – curio of the ages.
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28. Tron (1982)
Tron is nerd training wheels. The story of a guy lost inside a video game that’s part Pong, part Rollerball, and all neon motorcycles, it’s a triumph of the bizarre, jump-starting the tech imaginations of tween geeks nationwide when it was released in 1982 to disappointing box office. The practical mysteries of its production process - and the emotional pull of a story of a trapped man breaking free - brought that cult audience back again and again. Overlooked, underloved, and slighted by the Academy Awards special effects nominations for “cheating” with digital imagery, it more or less defines the expression “ahead of its time.” And it invented Daft Punk. Recognize its significance.
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27. The Love Bug (1968)
When Volkswagen designed the Type 1 Beetle back in the 1930s (which was, incidentally, put into heavy production by Hilter's Reich), they probably could not have predicted how much the world would fall in love with the cute little car's face-like layout. Disney essentially wrote a love letter to Volkswagen with The Love Bug, a truly surreal, bright, and incredibly fun comedy film about Dean Jones, Michele Lee, and Buddy Hackett winning big races and finding true love with the help of a sentient Bug named Herbie. It's charming, yes, but it's just weird enough to have something of a retrospective edge, a quality most Disney films lack.
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26. The Rocketeer (1991)
Years before Disney bought Marvel Studios, and a few years after the disappointing Condorman, came this stalwart, sexy, always romantic superhero drama starring Billy Campbell as The Rocketeer, a naive flyboy who stumbles across Howard Hughes’s experimental jetpack and fights Nazis atop a blimp. Meanwhile, Timothy Dalton simmers as the villainous Errol Flynn knockoff Neville Sinclair, and Jennifer Connelly smolders as the buxom and capable damsel. Joe Johnston directed a handsome feature - the flying effects still fly, even by modern standards - and although The Rocketeer wasn’t a big hit, you can still find its DNA in nearly every successful superhero movie made in its wake.
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25. Up (2009)
From a distance, Up looks like a fairly rote story of a crusty senior citizen making friends with a lonely boy as the two of them take flight in a balloon-house. It also has that Pixar sheen, another visually breathtaking, eye-dazzling feat of meticulous animation from Disney’s identical cousin. Until you lay eyes on it, it seems as though it might be as perfunctory as Cars. But Up is actually a secret weapon, breaking your heart early with its dialogue-free preamble of old-people love. Then it spends the rest of its running time mending the pieces, gently and comically warning you not to waste days on stupid stuff when the people around you are what matter most.
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24. The Straight Story (1999)
This is not a typo – David Lynch directed a G-rated movie for Disney. What it lacks in mutant babies and dead prom queens, it makes up for in a straightforward and moving character piece anchored by an unforgettable performance by legendary character actor Richard Farnsworth. Based on a true tale of a man who drove his riding lawn mower across two states, the film takes an unsentimental look at the lives and the sacrifices of the elderly; a bar scene in which Farnsworth’s character meets a fellow World War II veteran is a masterful moment of things left unsaid.
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23. Finding Nemo (2003)
The horror: a child’s first step towards independence, after years of overprotective parenting, are met with disaster when Nemo - a little clownfish - gets fishnapped by an overzealous scuba diver. Now Marlin, voiced by a perpetually panicked Albert Brooks, must conquer his own fears and traverse the whole flipping ocean to save his son. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich’s film is so overwhelmingly emotional you almost forget to wonder at its many visual marvels: the inside of a whale, a breathtaking mid-air pelican chase, and a cast of wonderfully colorful characters who make one of Disney’s most intense motion pictures a joy for the whole family.
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22. Frozen (2013)
Before you and I and everyone else got sick of “Let It Go,” this animated musical came as a delightful surprise after two decades of Pixar-dominated cartoons from the studio. In this celebration of sisterhood and of female empowerment, the male characters take what would traditionally be roles for “The Girl,” from the devious, plotting double-crosser to the attractive love interest. Its massive popularity amongst the princess-besotted girl demographic speaks volumes about how underserved young ladies are for role models in contemporary pop culture. Now where’s that Black Widow movie?
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21. Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Lilo & Stitch is a land mine of sorrow, hidden under a booger joke. What appears at first to be one of Disney’s flightiest, jokiest movies - about a destructive little alien who uses a destructive little girl as a human shield - is actually steeped in raw loneliness, and misplaced love. Lilo is a weird child, Stitch is a weird alien, and although their family is broken (and on the verge of being ripped apart by a well-intentioned yet threatening social worker), it’s still good. Damn it, it’s still good… cue the waterworks! Not many movies can jerk your tears while attacking you with a chainsaw. Actually, Lilo & Stitch is the only one.
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20. The Incredibles (2004)
Brad Bird’s wonderful adventure owes a mighty debt to The Fantastic Four, illustrating as they both do a vibrant family dynamic, made all the more complicated by the addition of superpowers. But The Incredibles finds a voice all its own, thanks to characters who respond to their repression in unique and heartfelt ways. Mr. Incredible longs for the days of youthful heroism, Elastigirl embraces her retirement and their children - Ultraviolet and Dash - suffer the unexpected consequences of never embracing their real natures. Bird gets a lot of mileage out of their domestic unhappiness, but once they finally cut loose, The Incredibles is a wonderful explosion of family bonding, and of finally-unbridled individuality. (Bonus points for introducing the world to Edna Mode.)
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19. The Little Mermaid (1989)
This hit helped launch Disney Animation 2.0, a reprise of the studio’s heyday of cartoon domination. After a slow decline in the 60s and 70s, this 1989 feature felt like a return to the Walt era, with a combination of breathtaking animation and a standout score from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who at that point were best known for the Little Shop of Horrors musical. Yes, it’s a bowdlerized version of a much creepier Hans Christian Andersen fable, and Ariel is hardly a poster-girl for female agency, but just try getting “Under the Sea” out of your head anytime soon.
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18. Toy Story 2 (1999)
The rare franchise in which the films improve with each new chapter, Toy Story 2 went straight for the sadness with a plot that involved toys being discarded and abandoned, then preserved in ways that negate their entire reason for existence. Woody learns he’s collectable, and the other toys seem excited by the prospect of living forever in a museum in Tokyo. However, as cool for a toy’s self-esteem as that sort of prestige may be, the movie knows that it can’t hold a candle to being loved and played with by a child. So when that Sarah McLachlan song rolls around, the one about “when she loved me,” expect to weep.
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17. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Something of an anomaly for the studio, featuring a bigger budget and bigger names than usual for them at the time, this adaptation of the Jules Verne novel paid off for Disney, becoming a big moneymaker in its original release and a perennial favorite for decades to come. James Mason makes a memorably mad Captain Nemo opposite Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre in this stirring undersea adventure, and the art direction – from the sleek submarine the Nautilus to the fantastic contraptions onboard – cements the film as a steampunk touchstone.
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16. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
At their best, Disney films are often about evoking a pure, emotional experience. So it’s a little odd that with Alice in Wonderland, the emotion felt most often is frustration. How apropos, of course, to this mostly faithful adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s indictment of circular, faulty logic, in which young Alice falls down the rabbit hole and into a world of absolute madness. The humor, as in Carroll’s work, stems from Alice’s befuddlement: every lunatic she meets is convinced of their sensibility, to the extent that the only way to beat them - for the audience, at least - is to join them. So just kick back and go a little mad, because Alice in Wonderland is one of the best and silliest flights of fancy Disney ever crafted.
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15. Cinderella (1950)
Just as Bela Lugosi taught us everything we know about Dracula, Disney taught us everything we now about classic fairy tales. Sure, the Disney versions were heavily re-worked through their ultra-wholesome lens, but they somehow snagged the attention of generation after generation, ensuring their their version of the story became the standard. Cinderella is a boldly 1950s version of the fable, wherein a heroine is rewarded for not only her nobility and purity, but also for her demureness and housewife-like qualities. And while the story came under fire from feminists a generation later, this Cinderella still has the ability to charm us and fulfill little girls' wishes.
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14. The Parent Trap (1961)
To understand the massive popularity of young star Hayley Mills in the 1960s, look no further than this mistaken-identity comedy, starring the effervescent actress as separated identical twins who accidentally cross paths at summer camp and then trade places to get to know, and eventually reunite, their estranged parents. Sure, this is one of those movies that indulges the kid fantasy of making your divorced mom and dad get back together, but what adult could resist the charm of two Hayley Millses? (The quite lovely 1998 remake made Lindsay Lohan a household name.)
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13. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
While it’s difficult to remember the actual plot of this opposites-attract romance between viewings, this film is loaded with standout individual moments, from the duplicitous Siamese cats to Peggy Lee’s smoky rendition of “He’s a Tramp” to the oft-referenced scene of the title characters accidentally kissing after consuming the same spaghetti noodle from opposite ends as the swoony “Bella Notte” booms out on the soundtrack. Essentially, it’s a rich-girl-meets-streetwise-guy rom-com played out among canines, but it’s all done so sweetly and skillfully that it’s become a love story for the ages.
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12. Toy Story (1995)
Right in the middle of the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s came this unexpected hit from a then-unknown studio called Pixar, which was doing something truly daring: making movies entirely out of CGI. And while many animation purists anticipated the flick with suspicion, all of our fears were put to rest by an unexpected defining quality of Pixar: warmth. Even Disney's traditionally animated fare lacked the particular flavor of heart that Pixar offered in Toy Story, a well thought-out tale about what a child's toys do when he's not looking. Toy Story is not only an excellent film, but it was a big hit, ensuring that the Pixar name would be known for years.
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11. WALL-E (2008)
WALL-E begins as bravely as any movie ever has, with a wordless, extended prologue about a little trash compactor robot living an isolated life on the planet Earth, centuries after the human race abandoned its uninhabitable surface. This exercise in pure cinema was met with cheers from critics and audiences alike, to the extent that they often overlooked the wonderful story that follows, when little WALL-E travels to the stars, and breaks up the dystopian monotony of the humans who no longer understand what they’ve really lost. A little spark of chaos becomes an act of revolutionary heroism, leading to a thrilling, inspirational climax and a potent message about who we all are, and where we should be going.
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10. Mary Poppins (1964)
Sophisticated and sentimental, extravagantly strange, a luxurious fantasy just dark enough around the edges to lend it gravity, Mary Poppins set the bar almost too high. It was the site where multiple bolts of lightning struck at the same time: fantastic songs from the Sherman Brothers, an enduring performance by Julie Andrews, wild invention that mixed animation with live action, intoxicating special effects, and a true depth of emotion. Did we ever need the Tom Hanks/Emma Thompson hard-sell of 2013 to justify its existence? So what if P.L. Travers hated it? She was wrong.
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9. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
The first animated film to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination (and the only one to do so under the five-nominee system), this sweeping romance dares to mess with the usual studio-imposed structure: the “princess” is a self-possessed young woman who loves to read, and the square-jawed male hunk turns out to be the villain of the piece. Skillfully matching some of songwriters Ashman and Menken’s finest work with visual shout-outs to Jean Cocteau’s legendary adaptation of the fairy tale, this is arguably the best of the studio’s fertile post–Little Mermaid period.
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8. Fantasia (1940)
Fantasia, rather notoriously, bombed upon its initial release in 1940, and has just as notoriously become one of the most beloved films in the Disney canon. It's easy to see why on both accounts. Disney had not made a film quite like this before, nor have they since (Fantasia 2000, and perhaps their Salvador Dalí short Destino notwithstanding). Here was an animation studio flexing its creative muscles, making a string of varied short films strung together by nothing more than some of the finest classical music known to the Western world. Animation is the sharpest tool for dissecting the imagination, and, with Fantasia, Disney delved more deeply than they ever had before.
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7. Bambi (1942)
It’s important for children to experience make-believe trauma. It prepares them for the cruelty of real life. That’s why every human being, before they’re old enough to process it rationally, should see Bambi. It’s beautiful to look at and listen to, every frame a gorgeous watercolor joy to behold. And it includes shocking scenes of Death and Abandonment, baby’s first cinema scars. Later in life, let’s say around the time of legal drinking, get that person watch it again so they can understand it for the mature, mournful, coming of age parable it really is. They’ll agree that it toughened them up.
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6. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Tim Burton’s signature affection for everything creepy shines through in this marvelous, eccentric fable about the King of Halloween going through an identity crisis and hijacking Christmas away from Santa Claus. Danny Elfman’s elaborate and curious lyrics, and a strikingly detailed stop-motion aesthetic make The Nightmare Before Christmas - which was actually directed by Henry Selick (Coraline) - a unique curio in the Disney canon. Originally shuffled off onto their Touchstone imprint, and later revitalized as a “Walt Disney Presents” classic after finding a dedicated and loving audience on home video. What is this? It’s marvelous, that’s what.
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5. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
One of Disney’s most gorgeously animated productions, Sleeping Beauty invites the audience into a distinctly vertical, colorful and magical world in which social impropriety dooms an infant girl to death by spinning wheel. Much has been made of the elegant malevolence of Maleficent, the mysteriously faux pas oriented villain whose popularity motivated Disney to revitalize her character with an ugly and problematic live-action feature. They eventually turned her into a feminist hero, seemingly oblivious to the fact that - although Sleeping Beauty herself is a bit of a non-character - the original movie already has three of them: Flora, Fauna and Merriweather, some of the most distinctly realized, selfless and remarkable female characters Disney ever brought to life (in animation or live-action).
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4. Dumbo (1941)
There is a man named Leonard Maltin in the world, and Leonard Maltin knows more about – and has more affection for – Disney animated features than any other human being who has ever lived. Leonard Maltin would be aghast that 1941's Dumbo was as low as #4 on this list, as he considers it the studio's finest, and who am I to argue? Dumbo, a brief, sweet fable about a baby circus elephant who learns that he can fly with his outsize ears, is perhaps the most immediately emotional of Disney's golden age. It's about a youngster taken from his mother, and about finding your hidden talent. Plus, it has that wonderfully surreal alcohol hallucination sequence.
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3. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Whereas Pixar’s Cars 2 seemed like just a craven attempt to sell more bedsheets, this third Toy Story film found new resonance in the tale of these beloved playthings. Allowing young Andy to age in real time, so that the college-bound freshman would have to say goodbye to his childhood and its trappings, made this threequel emotionally devastating for fans of all ages. It’s about loss, death, and moving on – not to mention what happens when Buzz Lightyear gets switched to Spanish mode – and the results are emotionally and narratively perfect.
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2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Most movie “firsts” (The Jazz Singer for talkies, Bwana Devil for 3-D features, etc.) tend to be famous for being technological breakthroughs without necessarily being acclaimed for their aesthetic qualities. Being the first feature-length cel-animated movie is just one of the reasons that Snow White remains so very important; take away its historical status, and you’ve still got a beautifully crafted film that set up so much of the Disney house style, from memorable villains and sidekicks to unforgettable songs. Feature animation starts here, in more ways than one.
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1. Pinocchio (1940)
It gave the world the Disney anthem, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a song that more or less created Steven Spielberg’s entire career. It also pushed all of animation forward with groundbreaking effects. It’s as lush and gorgeous as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but it goes even deeper. The world moved in Pinocchio, all that stuff surrounding those animated characters came alive, and afterward nobody could ignore a static background. But historical significance is never really enough; Pinocchio matters for interior reasons, for its ability to move us to be brave, truthful, and unselfish (or at least make us wish we could be), for its insistence on the idea that if we are good and work hard we will be rewarded with real change. Maybe that’s a big lie, but Pinocchio inspires belief.
