u/Joseph_Gribbin

I’ve watched all of Stanton's movies recently to follow along with the podcast, and noticed that many if not all them revolve around multiple parallel stories, oftentimes separated by time, that intersect towards the back half in way that tries to recontextualise everything you've seen so far.

Griffin has talked on multiple occasions about the original draft of Finding Nemo which didn't work: where the reveal about what happened to Nemo's mother and the other children would have happened at the *end* of the film, being intercut with the climactic fish swimming down in the net sequence. Eventually though they realised that the audience sort of hated Marlin because they didn't understand why he acted the way he did, so they moved it to the beginning.

I think the intention in the original draft was that the audience would put two and two together and have an epiphany that would finally make them understand the movie up to that point. I think this is an idea he keeps coming back to and trying to make work, with varying results! Sometimes it creates clever and layered stories, and sometimes makes the emotional throughlines of his movies hard to follow (imo).

Some examples with spoiler tags cos some of the films are recent (would hate to spoil In the Blink of an Eye for anyone!):

Wall E :>! The film involves multiple characters with individual and incomplete perspectives finally coming together and understanding the full story:!<

>!WALL.E works on an abandoned earth ruined by BnL, but has no idea what happened to the humans.!<

>!EVA is sent to earth by BnL to find signs of life but seemingly has no idea what's going on earth.!<

>!The Captain runs the ship on behalf of BnL but doesn't know about earth and its history, or even the history of the ship.!<

>!When the captain watches the last Fred Willard tape and sees AUTO in the back of the portraits, we suddenly realise what the whole story is and what the BnL corporation had planned along (I.e. the story of the past and the story of the present suddenly click into place and recontextualise everything we've seen so far). Also, apparently an earlier draft had the residents of the Axiom being weird alien goo creatures, which would have been revealed to be human later - so the reveal that WALL.E and EVAs worlds were linked to each other would have happened later too.!<

John Carter - >!Lots of parallel stories with unclear purpose cut into the wrong order. The ‘present day’ stuff with the nephew, the flashbacks to Carter's civil war days, the cold open on mars that only really makes sense later when Mark Strong gives his monologue. Stanton even intercuts a big fight scene with the reveal of what happened to John Carter's wife and kid in a way that's very similar to the original draft of Nemo.!<

Finding Dory - >!The whole film is structured around intermittently revealing scenes of Dory's (highly marketable) childhood until the past story and the present day story finally intersect when she is reunited with her parents.!<

In the Blink of an Eye - >!We follow three disparate stories that only thematically mirror each other, until the climax of the movie reveals that all the stories are linked by a golden acorn / inventing the cure for immortality. I think it's supposed to make you go ‘Oh so that was the point of all that!’!<

Toy Story 5 - >!This one's a bit of a stretch, but I think the parallel story of the Buzz's making their way across the world feels similarly like ‘how is this going to pay off?’. I would also say that the 'human' story and the 'toy' story run parallel and intersect, but this happens throughout and in every Toy Story film. Also also: the film ends up being about two seperate lonely children that the toys *must* make intersect. I must admit though: this story does take place in the right order.!<

Anyway, I don't know if that means anything but it's just something I observed and thought was interesting!