Finding Nemo is one of Pixar's most beloved movies, but one of the animators behind the 2003 film has revealed that it was almost the studio's "first bad movie" – until one last-minute change was made.
"Originally you found out [about Nemo's mother's death] through flashbacks. We all went to the last screening before it was going to be finished, and we all walked out the theater and no one was saying anything," Pixar animator Jason Deamer told UNILAD. "[We thought] 'Did we just just make our first bad movie?' We were a little concerned, and [co-director] Lee Unkrick said 'Let me try something', and he took those flashbacks and he recut them all in the beginning."
The animated classic follows clownfish single father Marlin (Albert Brooks) who teams up with forgetful Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) in an attempt to find his missing son, Nemo, after he's captured by scuba divers in the Great Barrier Reef.
"When you didn't know [about Nemo's mother's death] in the beginning, you thought Marlin was an overprotective, annoying character," Deamer continued. "It was the same footage. We didn't animate anything new. [Unkrick] just told the audience that sooner. I know it's heart-wrenching, but otherwise you just didn't empathize with [Marlin's] overprotective behavior."
Next up for Pixar is Inside Out 2, which will reunite us with Riley and a brand new set of Emotions – namely, Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). That's right: Riley is a teenager now.
Inside Out 2 arrives on the big screen on June 14. In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of this year's biggest movie release dates.
