Pixar’s Onward is the latest film from the acclaimed studio and it sees two brothers, Ian and Barley, off on a magical adventure to reunite with their deceased father for one more day. It stars Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, and is directed by Dan Scanlon (Monster’s University) from a screenplay he wrote with Jason Headley and Keith Bunin.
The idea for Onward is inspired by Scanlon’s own life, in where his father passed away while his brother and he were still very young. Years later, Scanlon would discover a recording that would allow him to hear his father’s voice for the first time and the moment became the inspiration for Onward. In the film, Ian and Barley receive a magic spell left to them by their father that will bring him back to life for a single day. Of course, when they attempt the spell, it backfires and they only bring back half their dad - and just the the bottom half - forcing them to embark on a quest in order to fix the spell so they can finally meet their (whole) dad.
Last fall, Screen Rant had the opportunity to visit Pixar Animation Studios and participate in a press day for Onward where we spoke with Scanlon and producer, Kori Rae, about the film.
It’s surprising that Onward is Pixar’s first real foray into the fantasy genre. Did either of you have any personal connections to that genre? And when did you decide that you wanted to use fantasy to tell this story?
Dan Scanlon: Both Kore and I had no connection. But we did know that we wanted to tell this personal story and we did know we wanted to tell the story about these kids getting this chance to meet their dad. And we thought, well, that’s magic. I don’t know how else you do it. And that did lead to the fun of like, ‘What if this was a fantasy story? And what if it was a very modern one?’ And that got me interested because then it was inherently a comedy-fantasy story. And a lot of the stuff I had read or seen was, was very serious and I thought, ‘I haven’t seen too much - I mean, people have done it but - too much done this way comically and done in a cartoon way where the designs are cartoony.
But we also knew we didn’t want to make fun of fantasy either, so we have so many people on the crew and at Pixar who are–super know their stuff and super love, have a deep love for fantasy. And we involved them a lot to make sure and they kind of educated us on what was great about fantasy and kind of got us more into it. But I do think there’s something fun about a story making sort of strange bedfellows with something like, this is a genre I never thought I’d do because I think you, hopefully, don’t bring with you some of the tropes. But then you can add on to your story some of the paradigms or, you know, or the pieces you want to see. And now they’re just inherently going to be done in a slightly different way. So, yeah, we were the noobs.
Pixar seems to really encourage collaboration. I mean, obviously, the process of animation itself is collaborative, as is the whole filmmaking process, but was there any moment while working on Onward where, either through working with a team or someone individually, that you had a breakthrough or an ‘A ha!’ moment?
Kori Rae: Oh, my gosh, I think we had hundreds of them. You know what I mean? I think they happened week in, week out. Because a lot of it, like, you don’t come in knowing what anything is necessarily going to look like, what it’s going to be like, what it’s going to feel like. You’re just kind of–you know what the story is and the story that you’re trying to tell. And then it’s all of those other people that, you know, throw amazing spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks and see what resonates. And so, yeah.
DS: A ha! moments always seem just, like, ‘A ha! We got it.’ But a ha! moments are usually more like, ‘A ha?’ And then over the next couple of days, you sleep on it, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s try that.’ And then in hindsight look back, like, that’s when it happened.
KR: Exactly.
DS: It’s never, it’s rarely that cathartic, like ‘Oh, yes, we nailed it!’ Which I wish it was. But there were definitely those moments.
KR: Yeah. Or if there are it’s like, ‘Oh there’s that thing but then that other thing doesn’t quite work.’ It’s never–
DS: It’s a puzzle.
KR: So it’s–there’s elements of it that are ‘A ha!’…
DR: But definitely, it all comes out of collaboration.
I’m curious about the title, just calling it Onward, because there’s certainly a trend now, especially in animation, of just one word titles. Did you have that title from the beginning?
DS: No, it was really hard movie to title because it is so unique. But, but no, we chose Onward just because it has this sort of positive feeling to it. It feels like a journey. It feels like something Barley would say, you know? And because it’s a coming of age story, and it really is about Ian moving forward. And it’s also a story about letting go of some of the hurt and things of the past. And so, it ended up being really perfect for that. That’s, that’s really where it came out of.
How far along in the process did you nail that title down?
DS: What would be considered the last second?
Was it like, ‘We need a title now. Merchandise is starting tomorrow’?
KR: Yes, there was some, yeah, some marketing that was like, ‘Okay, hurry hurry.’ But it was, it was tough because yeah, it’s such a unique world and, you know, we went around the whole studio to try and elicit ‘What do you guys think the title should be?’ And it just kept coming back to, you know, Half Dad or Pants.
DS: Right. Everything would sound king of funny and silly and it got to sound like the movie was a parody of something.
KR: Yeah. And with it, you know, we wanted to make sure that it had the positivity and the deep emotion, that it was somewhat serious and aspirational.
Was there anything you were really passionate about, really excited to include in the movie, but at the end of the day, it just had to be dropped because the idea or the character or whatever just wasn’t working?
DS: There was a lot of stuff. I think the way we work, we try a lot of things. And so we have a lot of deleted scenes and a lot of cut things. And it’s, it’s not just throwing, as you said, throwing spaghetti on the wall earlier, it’s things we really think will work and things we start to love.
But we had a character that was in the film with the boys going on the journey, and then we realized this person doesn’t need to be here. They were sort of getting in the way of the conflict between the boys. And that’s a pretty common thing. Here we tend to–it tends to be easier to write a secondary character than the main character because a secondary character can be goofy and weird, have flaws, and they don’t have to be the conscience of the audience. So you tend to write kind of a bland, boring, main character. You’re just so afraid to make them unlikable. And then you put all the fun in the secondary character. And so in this case, we sort of had a tertiary character and then we took all that, put it in them, and so realized, they don’t need to be there. Yeah, but there’s also two locations.
KR: There’s, yeah, there’s a main location and different ages of meeting.
DS: Yeah, meeting them earlier.
KR: When they we’re younger, the brothers, all kinds of stuff that was really great at the time. And we were like, ‘Yes, this will absolutely be in the movie.’ And then, you know, three months later, it’s like, ‘Nope, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t support where we’re headed now.’
Pixar is clearly a place like no other, how has working here made you better at your craft?
KR: It’s absolutely the people here and the talent level and the generosity of spirit. Everybody wants everybody else to succeed. And so it’s kind of like just the having the–what that allows is freedom and the ability to kind of take risks in whatever aspect of the job you’re doing. So I think it’s for me, it’s really, really the people.
DS: I agree. Yeah. I think just being around so many passionate people, even if they’re working on it in a department that’s not your department, just their passion and their intelligence and their curiosity inspires you to be the same. And as Kori mentioned, just that sense of knowing that you’re in a place where you can take a risk has really helped us grow as artists because we take chances and know that it will be okay if something goes wrong. And it always goes wrong.
More: Tom Holland & Chris Pratt Are The Perfect Pair To Play Onward’s Elf Brothers
- Onward Release Date: 2020-03-06
