Disney/Pixar circulated the first trailer for Finding Dory today. The film is a sequel to Finding Nemo, which is Pixar’s most profitable film of all time, so really, a sequel was all but guaranteed, wasn’t it?
We’ve known the basic plot of the film for over a year now—that Dory, accompanied by Marlin and Nemo, sets out to find her parents—so there aren’t any great surprises in the trailer. But at least we have something to look at now as we await the movie.
More important than what Disney/Pixar wants us to see though, is what they want us to hear. The main voice actors have returned—it’s been thirteen years in our time, and Nemo hasn’t even gone through puberty, apparently, though maybe Finding Dory is a direct sequel in terms of story time as well—and, more importantly, Disney/Pixar has recycled music from Finding Nemo (Thomas Newman’s “Nemo Egg,” the film’s main title) and the film’s marketing campaign (Robbie Williams’ cover of “Beyond the Sea”).
More than anything else, the trailer wants you to think this new film is going to feel like the original. As Kutter Callaway writes in his book Scoring Transcendence, music in movies exists primarily for the audience to clue them into how they are supposed to respond to the film emotionally. Finding Nemo is as sentimental a film as Pixar has produced (and that’s saying something), and Finding Dory sounds like more of the same.
Of course, we won’t know until we see – and hear – the movie in June of next year.
