Finding Dory with Zach Cherry

An unforgettable podcast. She probably won't remember. So that was one of three taglines for this film. An unforgettable journey she probably won't remember.

That one's kind of clever. I don't know if you caught this. It's a subtle thread, but the character of Dory and finding Dory has memory issues.

That's so true. Short-term memory loss. Second tagline. Have you seen her?

Yeah, that one I liked. I remember those are the teasers because she'd be hiding in the post. She'd be really small and it would be like

the manta ray migration or whatever you'd see sort of, or the stingrays. Is that right? And then the third one was, she just kept swimming.

She just kept swimming. Now, I like this movie. But those three taglines show why this movie needed to happen, which was basically the Walt Disney Company being like,

if we just put out a poster with a picture of Dory and any of those three jokes that are just right there for the taking, it will make $1 billion. All you need to do is be like, here's Dory again, and she's still Dory.

That is exactly what happened. Have you seen her? Great. She's gone missing. She just kept swimming. That's the thing she does.

Sure. An unforgettable journey she probably won't remember. Love it.

I'm laughing and my heart is warm. She's a fucking fish. Come now. The theater has seats.

You can sit down in any of them as long as you, you know, paid for your ticket and we'll show you the fish

and then our business is done. Right. That's how Pixar should advertise things. We've fulfilled our end of the bargain.

That's how sequel should... She's a fucking fish. Can you come? I'm really...

I got other stuff to do. She's a fish. It was one of those movies where there was a lot of marketing, but it didn't feel like there was audible hype or excitement for it.

No, because Monsters University had to be like, remember the monsters? They went to school. I'm like, I guess they did.

They're like, well, they did. Okay, listen to me. Okay, and they did, and it was called this. Monsters University was selling you a weirder take,

so there had to be more of a conversation with the public. It was like, we got the Nemo, the fish. And everyone was like, got it. I'll circle it on my calendar.

I won't talk about it until then. I'll show up. I'll give my money. I'll see it.

How far apart were monsters one and two? 12 years. Okay, so about the same amount of time. And Dory is 14.

13. I was shocked. I was shocked. In my memory of the timeline of Pixar,

it was Finding Nemo and then Finding Dory came out like two years later. Right. Like I had no recollection that it was a full 13.

Like you're sitting down to Finding Dory being like, I just found Nemo. Yes, I gotta find her too. In my memory, that's how it took place.

So then when I like, you know, when I plugged in to do my part of the podcast, I was shocked to learn that there was like a huge gap. I had no memory of that.

Yeah, I mean, first, we lost Nemo under the Bush administration. Yeah, W. And Dory was found under the Obama administration.

And was it like, what was happening with Pixar at the time? Trump has not had to deal with Marlon yet. He is the first,

well I guess Biden didn't either where's Dory yeah but I was gonna say Biden did have kind of a bit of a Dory brain

Biden kept asking for Dory and Nemo which one's lost well maybe this inspired him what were you gonna ask

what was happening with Pixar at the time like great question I'm so ready to answer this was it like we need a big win yeah for sure

I do remember it feeling like oh shit they're actually doing I'm gonna correct Sims here Coming back to Nemo.

It wasn't, you need a big win. It was, guys,

it's time to play ball. Well, you're right. The internal politics,

you're right. Totally. It was, we respect the artistic purity thing,

but once in a while, we're going to fucking do something like that. We got to cash a check. Yes.

Toy Story 95, Toy Story 2 99. They don't make another sequel for 11 years. From 99 to 2009,

it's all original films. Right. And then 2010 is Toy Story 3. 2011 is Cars 2.

That's true. 2013. 2013 is Monsters University. 2016 is Finding Dory.

2018 is Incredibles 2. You're forgetting in 2017. Is Cars 3. Cars 3.

And then 2019 is Toy Story 4. That's right. That's right. And suddenly a lot of sequels.

Yes. And it was just kind of the backlog of, we respect what you've done, but come on, guys.

Right. So Dory's right in the middle of this, sequel boom. I remember when it came out, my reaction

being like, ugh, fine. I guess so. I did see it. This movie was a ginormous success. I remember being very excited. It's a little memory hold

just how huge it was. But I do think this was the start of the kind of Pixar fatigue of

is this really what we're doing now? You know, Toy Story 3 was beloved. Monsters University less so, but it had novelty to it.

We haven't been sequelizing all of these. Cars had already kind of been written off as like, that's the junk one. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I consider that almost a different thing. Totally. But then the accumulation of it by the time you get to Finding Dory

is really already just... This did so much better than Monsters University. Yeah, huge. Monsters University, I don't like.

I know you do. I like it a lot. I defend it. How did the originals compare?

Like, was Nemo a much bigger hit than Monsters? Finding Nemo, when it came out, was the highest grossing animated film in history. It was the sixth highest grossing movie, period, I believe. Something like that.

It was in the top ten of all time. It was a big hit. All for that? Little Fish?

Yeah. It doesn't even have two whole fins. But that was their, it was like Toy Story, A Bug's Life does about the same, maybe a little less than the first Toy Story.

Then Toy Story 2, huge jump up. Monsters, Inc., huge jump up. Finding Nemo, ginormous jump up. And then they sort of hit a plateau.

Incredibles is down a little bit. It's like Ratatouille up and WALL-E are all in the like $200 to $300 million range.

And then when they pull the Band-Aid off the sequel thing, the numbers go through the roof. It's humongous because there had been

so much built up. You have successfully built these characters