Pixar movie ‘Onward’ pays tribute to director Dan Scanlon’s family
DETROIT: Pixar has made movies about toys, fish, robots in space and cars. Now the hit animation studio is venturing into the world of fathers and sons with “Onward.”
Although the film is set in a fantasy world populated by elves, unicorns, pixies and centaurs, the story is deeply personal for writer and director Dan Scanlon.
“Onward,” is the story of elf brothers Ian and Barley Lightfoot, who on Ian’s 16th birthday are given a magic wand to bring their long dead father back to life for a day.
However, the spell goes wrong and their dad returns only from the waist down, leaving the brothers with a pair of animated trousers without the ability to speak or see, unless they can find another magical object to summon up the remainder of their father.
Scanlon said he based the film on his and his brother’s desire to get to know their father, who died in a car crash when he was only 1 and his brother was 3 years old.
“It’s totally therapy that I can’t believe Pixar paid for,” Scanlon said with a laugh.
“It’s so indicative of Pixar to want to do something so small and real and true. I can’t think of anywhere else where we could have done something like this and been as supported as we were the whole time,” he added.
Scanlon took his brother to see a preview of the film, and emotions ran high afterwards.
“He gave me the longest hug of his life, and my life. We’re Midwestern guys, so there weren’t a lot of tears shed right away, but in our own weird punch-on-the-shoulder way, it was pretty special and wonderful,” Scanlon said.
Imagine unicorns prowling garbage cans in middle-class neighborhoods, and a winged centaur cop who’s forgotten how to fly and must instead cram inside a regular-police car.
Voicing the brothers are “Spider-man” actor Tom Holland and “Guardians of the Galaxy” star Chris Pratt, who plays Scanlon’s older brother.
“I’ve kind of always wanted to be a bit of a bigger brother. I never had an opportunity. I was always the youngest,” said Pratt.
Holland, who is the oldest son in his family, said it was “actually really nice to be the younger one for a change.”
Cautious, book-smart ian and row dy, wizard-buff Barley (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) lost their father when they were toddlers. Together, they set off on a dangerous, yet often slapstick quest to bring their dad back to life for one day through a magic spell — with their loving, fiercely devoted mother (Julia Louis-dreyfus) in pursuit.
The result is the most personal film yet from director-co-screenwriter Dan Scanlon (“Monsters University”), a Pixar veteran who’s in the middle of a world tour for the “Onward” premiere.
Speaking by phone from Berlin, Scanlon discusses how the movie pays tribute both to the father.
Scanlon’s father was an alumnus of Brother Rice High School and Lawrence Technological University and worked as a chemist for the auto industry. He was just 30 when he passed away.
Scanlon’s brother Bill, a computer programmer who lives in East Lansing, is more scientific, like his late father. He got a master’s degree in chemistry at Lawrence Tech (and had some of the same teachers as his dad) before switching to his current career. “It doesn’t take a therapist to realise, maybe, that he had to see that through,” says Scanlon.
Scanlon was inspired by the creativity of his mother, who now lives in Rochester Hills. “She wrote poems for people as a job. She’d write for people who had birthdays or anniversaries. I’d watch her write these comedy poems, and I learned so many about comic timing and pacing and callbacks and all this stuff.”
Growing up inc lawson, scan lon seemed destined to work in animation. He was making scribbles of recognisable things by age two. By the time he was 12, he was drawing caricatures at parties.
A budding filmmaker even before high school, he won several awards for his entries at the Michigan Student Film and Video Festival. In 2013, he spoke to the Free Press about the thrill of winning a prize that led to one of his 8-millimetre films being screened at the Detroit Film Theatre.
By the time Scanlon got to Clawson High School, his mother was making an hour-long trip with him to Westland for evening classes in media production. She waited patiently while he spent three or four hours focusing on the art of animation.
After graduating from the Columbus College of Art and Design on Ohio, Scanlon worked for a few years in animation in Ohio before fulfilling his dream of joining Pixar. His first animated feature as a director, “2013’s “Monsters University,” earned more than $743 million globally.
Scanlon says that early in the journey of “Onward,” there were talks about using human teens who would build a machine to bring their father back.
“But to be honest, it felt a little cold and not as romanticized as the idea of bringing someone back with magic, which felt kind of more beautiful. I think. For my brother and I, talking about our dad and thinking about our dad and meeting people who knew our dad is magical.”
He credits Louis-dreyfus, the mother of two sons in real life, with vividly portraying the movie’s elf mom as a relatable figure who also is a courageous protector.
“My mom was everything to us. She was inspiring, supportive. The three of us were a team. We owe everything to her ... . She was our mighty warrior,” says Scanlon.
As for his brother’s reaction to his cinematic version, who’s voiced by Pratt, a star of the “Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchises, Scanlon laughs.
“Barley is the least like a member of my family at all. Barley is a big, wild, crazy, chaotic metalhead guy who’s into fantasy. My brother is a very logical, smart, thoughtful, funny computer programmer.”
For Scanlon, one of the keys to the movie is the laugh-out-loud humor that comes from the father coming back to life as, essentially, a pair of legs.
“It pretty quickly takes this very sensitive and delicate topic and puts it in an uncomfortable, kind of funny place. If you really want to get to know a human being, it’s going to involve humour and discomfort and weird, awkward situations. I loved that about it.”
The situation speaks to the connection between grief and comedy. “It’s kind of like those laughs you get at a funeral, where you know you shouldn’t laugh but you can’t help it,” says Scanlon. “I think that’s when life’s at its best.”