At the turn of the 21^st century computer animation films were hitting the spot of the American audience. A few hits were Toy Story (the trailblazer), Bug’s Life, and The Incredibles. Along with these well known Disney and Pixar stories came Finding Nemo in 2003. Directed by Andrew Stanton, who also makes an auditoria “appearance” by voicing as Crush the surfer sea turtle, the film approached America and blew it away with one-liners and a wonderful plot. One of the key elements I chose to investigate further was the direction. Andrew Stanton does a wonderful job on creating the story and presenting it in such a way that it has the most impact. In the film, Andrew Stanton reveals characters through out the story and each has a slightly different quirk that leads us to embrace their “stereotype”. One of the ways that Stanton reveals the certain stereotypes is through their voice. Crush for instance is the surfer type because he slurs his words and has a laid back effect as does the typical surfer from California that has long blonde hair. This is also true with many of the other characters including Marlin (Nemo’s fatha). Marlin in this case is the worrisome father because he lost ALL of his children except for Nemo, he also happened to lose his wife at the beginning of the story. Anyway, Marlin’s voice has a slight croak to it and is usually very quite, or very loud. Not to mention 90% of the time he is talking about how Nemo can’t and that it is too dangerous to do anything.

On the other hand Andrew Stanton also happens to be the story writing and bundles Finding Nemo with many literary elements such as symbols, characterization, and conflicts/resolution. Many of the symbols lie within trying and failing, one of the most prominent symbols is the “lucky” fin that Nemo has to deal with. This is a symbol for all disabilities across the world and the literary element shows that you can do whatever you want and no one can tell you otherwise. Marlin constantly brings Nemo down by limiting what he can do and say the simple word “can’t”. What Andrew Stanton is trying to do is recreate the thought of “you can’t do anything” and change into “you can do anything”. This is commonly told to children across America, that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. Andrew Stanton’s deep psychological symbol and constant conflict/resolution leads the mature and immature audience to realize that we can all do everything no matter what others say. I believe this is an important message and Stanton did a wonderful job in depicting Nemo as the little hero.

Obviously Andrew Stanton played a very large role in the creation of this movie considering he was a voice, the director, and the story writer. Many of his other works include the movies I mentioned above. Andrew Stanton will probably continue to go with the style of many conflicts with one large resolution to show that anything is possible -- “to infinity and beyond”.