Turning Red (2022)
A Pixar original story by Domee Shi.
Intro (“Turning Red”). In 2002 Toronto, 13-year-old Meilin "Mei" Lee lives with her parents, Ming and Jin. She helps take care of the family's temple dedicated to her maternal ancestor Sun Yee, who was a guardian of the red panda. She works to make her mother proud but hides her personal interests from her, such as the fact that she and her friends Miriam, Priya, and Abby are fans of the boy band 4*Town. One night when Ming, who is strict and overprotective, discovers Mei's crush on Devon, the 17-year-old local convenience store clerk, she inadvertently humiliates Mei in public.
That night, Mei has a vivid nightmare involving red pandas. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds that she has transformed into a large red panda. She hides from her parents and discovers that she transforms only when she is in a state of high emotion. When Mei reverts to human form, her hair remains red, and so she goes to school in a touque. Ming initially believes Mei is experiencing her first period, but learns the truth when she gets into an altercation with the school's security guard, causing Mei to transform from embarrassment and run home in panic and tears.
Ming and Jin explain that Sun Yee was granted this transformation by the gods and that during a red moon she could harness her emotions and transform into a red panda to protect her daughters and her village during wartime, and that all her female descendants have also had this ability when they come of age. This has become inconvenient and dangerous in modern times, so the red panda spirit must be sealed in a talisman by a ritual on the night of a lunar eclipse, which will take place in a month's time. Mei only has one chance to seal the red panda and the more it is released, the harder it will be to seal. Mei’s friends discover her transformation, but take a liking to it; Mei finds that concentrating on them enables her to control her transformations (“Nobody Like U”).
Ming allows Mei to resume her normal life, but refuses to let Mei attend 4*Town's upcoming concert. Instead, the girls secretly raise money for the tickets at school by exploiting the popularity of Mei's red panda form while lying to Ming about how Mei is spending her time (“U Know What’s Up”). To raise the last $100, Mei agrees to attend school bully Tyler's birthday party as the red panda. At the party, Mei is upset to discover that the concert will be on the night she is to undergo the ritual. In her rage, she attacks Tyler when he insults her family, frightening the other kids. Ming discovers Mei's activities and accuses her friends of corrupting and taking advantage of her. Ashamed of her actions and afraid to stand up to her mother, Mei fails to come to her friends' defense.
To Ming's dismay, Mei's grandmother and aunts arrive to assist with Mei's ritual. As Mei prepares herself, Jin finds videos she recorded of herself as the red panda with her friends and tells her she should not be ashamed of this side of her, but to embrace it. During the ritual, as Mei's red panda form is about to be sealed, she decides to keep her powers and abandons the ritual to attend the concert at the SkyDome; in making her escape, she breaks Ming's talisman, releasing her red panda form as well. At the concert, she reconciles with her friends and discovers that Tyler is also a 4*Town fan. However, an enraged Ming, having become a kaiju-sized red panda, disrupts the concert, intending to take Mei back by force.
Mei and Ming argue about the former's independence. As they quarrel, Mei accidentally knocks her mother unconscious. Mei's grandmother and aunts break their talismans to use their red panda forms to help drag Ming into a new ritual circle. Mei's friends and 4*Town join in singing to complete the ritual, sending Mei, Ming, and the other women to the astral plane (“Pandas Unite / Nobody Like U (Reprise)”). Mei reconciles with her mother. She helps her mend her bond with her own mother, whom Ming accidentally scarred in anger before her own red panda form was sealed. The other women contain their red pandas in new talismans; but Mei decides to keep hers and Ming accepts that she is finding her own path (“No Going Back”).
Later as the Lee family raises money to repair the damage to the SkyDome, Mei and Ming's relationship has improved. Mei balances her temple duties (where her red panda form is now an attraction) with spending time with her friends with Tyler now in the group.
TRIVIA
Visual Style
In terms of the visual style, the world is seen through the eyes of Mei. Everything is vibrant and colorful. The design is textured and tactile and chunky, and the animation style and, every now and then, facial expressions are pushed. The characters are caricatured, and the way they move and pose is fresh. The animation was influenced by anime with more exaggerated movements and expressions to capture the feeling as opposed to Western or Disney animation which emphasized arcs, smooth movement, slow-in-slow-out, and nothing that’s snappy.
To capture these anime influences, hand-drawn 2D animated effects were added atop Pixar's 3D animation.
To create the film’s representation of Chinatown and the Lee family’s ancestral temple, artists did extensive research—from careful analysis of two specific streets in Toronto’s real Chinatown to visiting the Asian Museum of San Francisco—and collaborated with a host of consultants.
Music
The music for 4*Town was written by Finneas and Billie Eilish. They wrote a love ballad, one you can sing with all your friends, and the number one dance hit.