The sad ‘Finding Nemo’ scene that almost was even more traumatizing

Arriving in cinemas in 2003 under the Disney and Pixar label, ‘Finding Nemo’ presented the story of the clownfish that gives the plot its title and his father, Marlin. In the work, Nemo does not take his overprotective father’s advice seriously and ends up leaving the ocean after being captured by a diver, which causes Marlin to embark on an adventure alongside a patella surgeon with recent memory loss called Dory in an attempt to bring her son back to his underwater home.

The narrative is full of truly scary and emotional moments, such as when Marlin and Dory are chased by the giant shark Bruce, or when the young girl Darla, who appears in the dentist’s office where Nemo started to live after being taken from the sea, almost adopts the little clownfish, making him live a real nightmare in a plastic bag.

Still, even before all this happens, another scene, presented in the first minutes of the film, is also capable of awakening the same sensations. That’s because Marlin and his wife, Coral, were about to become parents, with plenty of eggs to hatch in an anemone on the Great Barrier Reef. However, they see their dream of building a large family threatened when a barracuda approaches where they live.

As a result, Coral desperately swims to the eggs in an attempt to protect her future offspring. Upon realizing, Marlin tries to follow her, but is hit, becoming unconscious. When Marlin wakes up, he realizes that Coral’s effort was in vain, as she and the eggs were eaten by the barracuda, finding only a broken egg – which would become Nemo. Remember!

However, what many may not know is that this dramatic scene could have been even more traumatizing if it had not been altered before the final version of the animation.

The original version

It turns out that the Pixar animator, Jason Deamerwho worked on ‘Finding Nemo’, revealed in an interview with UNILAD that the scene would not be shown at the beginning of the film, in fact, it would appear as a flashback at another point in the story.

However, when displaying the animation, Deamer he realized that no one expressed their opinion about what they had just watched, making him think that they had failed.

Originally you discovered [sobre a morte da mãe de Nemo] through flashbacks. We left the cinema and no one said anything… [Pensamos] ‘Did we just make our first bad movie?'” Deamer said.

However, everything was resolved when the co-director Lee Unkrich decided to reposition the scene, placing it in the first few minutes of the title, preventing the audience from having conflicting feelings regarding Marlin, as well as making the emotional impact much easier to process.

When you didn’t know [sobre a morte da mãe de Nemo] At first, you thought Marlin was an overprotective and annoying character,” he said. “It was the same footage. We don’t encourage anything new. [Unkrick] just told the audience earlier. I know it’s heartbreaking, but on the other hand, you just couldn’t empathize with their overprotective behavior. [de Marlin].”