“Onward”, the latest movie of Disney & Pixar, and the movie known to be the most emotional work, is about to release.
This movie is about 2 boys go on for a journey to look for magic ,which revives their father completely. One boy is named Ian, a shy boy who wishes “to see his father once again” and another boy is called Barry, who is the older brother of Ian and who has a thing to tell his father.
During the movie, the protagonist Ian uses magic which brings back his father only for 24 hours, and what he has gotten is his father's “foot”.
The staff of Pixer commented that they tried to make “the father only with his foot” sympathetic over and over, and the most difficult thing was to “express the emotions with a foot”. In order to make it real, they asked for help to the real actor, doing researches on the movement of the lower body, and finally found the way to express the emotion with only a foot.
Whom Pixer staff asked for help was Dick Van Dyke, the experienced actor from Hollywood who is famous for playing Bert in “Mary Poppins”.
He became popular also in Japan with “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” released in 1968, and later appeared in “Night Museum” series. He showed a rhythmic tap dance in the musical movie “Mary Poppins” released in 2019. Although he was 91 years old at the time of filming, his sense of dancing was continuing to be demonstrated until now, where is becoming 94 years old.
The animator director Alison Latland commented on the character of “the father with only a foot” with the cooperation with Dick Van Dyke by saying, “The ability of expression was required to show that the father has a unique personality with honesty and dignity only with foot and that he can communicate with Ian and Barry. The father can neither look nor listen, but he can feel it by touching. We express that he loves Ian and Barry only with movements of the foot, and it was an interesting challenge. It was such a fun experience that we cooperated with many people to depict the character of the father”.
The Pixar staff created a father to be a family-loving character who loves Ian and Barry so much, although he does not have a facial expression.
Could Ian and Barry revive their father within 24 hours and see him one more time? The expectation is increasing in this movie which is said that the most emotional ending is waiting for the viewers.
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