Finding Dory (2016)
A sequel to Finding Nemo.
As a child, Dory, the regal blue tang, suffers from “short-term remembory loss” and lives with her parents, Jenny and Charlie, near an undertow. One day she gets separated from her parents. As she grows up, Dory attempts to search for them, but gradually forgets them and where she came from due to her short-term memory loss.
One day, she bumps into the clownfish Marlin, looking for Nemo, leading to the events of Finding Nemo.
One year after meeting Marlin and Nemo, Dory is living with them in their reef. One day, during Nemo’s school field trip with Mr. Ray to the sting ray migration, Dory has a flashback and remembers her parents. She decides to look for them, but her memory problem is an obstacle. She suddenly remembers that they lived at the “Jewel of Morro Bay, California" across the ocean when Nemo mentions the name.
Marlin and Nemo accompany Dory on her journey. With the help of Crush, their sea turtle friend, they ride the California Current to California. Upon arrival, they explore a shipwreck full of lost cargo, where Dory accidentally awakens a giant Humboldt squid that pursues them and almost devours Nemo. They manage to trap the squid and Marlin chastises Dory for endangering them. Dory travels to the surface to seek help, where she is captured by staff members from the Marine Life Institute, the Jewel of Morro Bay, California.
Dory is placed in quarantine and tagged. There she meets a rude but well-meaning seven-legged octopus named Hank. Dory's tag marks her for transfer to an aquarium in Cleveland, Ohio. Hank, who fears being released back into the ocean, agrees to help Dory find her parents in exchange for her tag. In one exhibit, Dory encounters her childhood friend Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark, who used to communicate with Dory through pipes (“pipe pals”) and reveals that Dory is from the Open Ocean exhibit, and Bailey, a beluga whale, who mistakenly believes he has lost his ability to echolocate. Dory subsequently has flashbacks of life with her parents and struggles to recall details.
Marlin and Nemo attempt to rescue Dory. With the help of two lazy California sea lions named Fluke and Rudder and a common loon named Becky, they manage to get into the institute.
With the help of Destiny and Bailey, Hank and Dory hijack a baby stroller and head to the Open Ocean exhibit however Dory gets sidetracked causing them to enter Kid Zone. Dory remembers how her family made up a song to “just keep swimming” and helps Hank escape Kid Zone. The two reach the Open Ocean exhibit where Hank receives Dory’s tag. Dory finds a trail of shells which lead her back home. She finally remembers how she was separated from her parents: she overheard her mother crying one night, left to retrieve a shell to cheer her up, and was pulled away by an undertow current out into the ocean. A group of crabs reveal to Dory that all the blue tangs are being shipped to Cleveland, Ohio for an exhibit and that they are located in the Quarantine area. Dory navigates the pipe systems with the help of Destiny and Bailey who is now able to use his echolocation. Nemo and Marlin regroup with Dory in the pipe system.
Other blue tangs tell them that Dory's parents escaped from the institute a long time ago to search for her and never came back, leaving Dory to believe that they are dead. Hank retrieves Dory from the tank, accidentally leaving Marlin and Nemo behind. He is then apprehended by one of the employees and unintentionally drops Dory into the drain, flushing her out to the ocean. While wandering aimlessly, she comes across a trail of shells; remembering that when she was young, her parents had set out a similar trail to help her find her way back home, she follows it. At the end of the trail, Dory finds an empty brain coral with multiple shell trails leading to it. As she turns to leave, her parents arrive. They tell her they spent years laying down the trails for her to follow in the hopes that she would eventually find them.
Marlin, Nemo, and Hank end up in the truck taking various aquatic creatures to Cleveland. Destiny and Bailey escape from their exhibit to help Dory rescue them. Once onboard the truck, Dory persuades Hank to return to the sea with her, and together, they hijack the truck and drive it over busy highways, creating havoc, before crashing it into the sea, freeing all the fish (“What a Wonderful World”). Dory, along with her parents and new friends, returns to the reef with Marlin and Nemo. Hank begins to adapt a happy lifestyle in the ocean and also becomes a teacher for Nemo's school (“Unforgettable”).
In a post-credits scene, the Tank Gang (from Finding Nemo), still trapped inside their plastic bags, after one year floating across the Pacific Ocean, reach California; they are picked up by staff members from the Marine Life Institute, much to their dismay. In the meantime, Fluke and Rudder’s enemy, a sea lion named Gerald, tries to sneak on to their rock.
TRIVIA
Visual Style
Hank, the octopus, was one of the most difficult characters to animate for Pixar. He originally had an addiction to drinking hot sauce. Due to octopi not having joints, Hank’s movements had to be very fluid and as a result had ~4,000 different movements compared to 700 movements of typical Pixar characters. Octopi also have non-uniform camouflaging so Hank was designed in a way to replicate this but in a way that looks organic. A special team was developed to work on Hank.
The Marine Life Institute is based on the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center, and the Vancouver Aquarium.
Technology
To make the light more realistic, RenderMan was completely re-engineered, its biggest change in 25 years.
Deleted Scene(s)
A deleted scene reveals that Dory sleep swims (i.e. fish version of sleep walking)
A deleted scene would have included a subplot where Nemo and Marlin meet up with the Tank Gang after being split up from Dory when they are attacked by the squid. Marlin is asked to join the gang as they discover that Dory was brought to the Marine Life Institute. Marlin’s overprotectiveness forced Gill to name him “Dream Crusher” and he must prove himself to the group by encouraging to go with Gill’s daring plans.
A deleted scene involves big foam bullets that they call “the pig” which they put into a pipe to clean the pipes from all the sea life that can grow in the pipes.