Turning Red

Set in 2002, the movie follows Torontonian teen Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang). She loves her mom, Ming (Sandra Oh), and wants nothing more than to live up to her ...

“What’s hard is that [behind the scenes] you know that it’s coming, and you want to tell the world, ‘Wait! It’s happening, you just haven’t seen it yet.’ I think what’s coming from Pixar in the next several years…you want to make sure [that Asian representation] keeps going. “What you’re seeing with Turning Red is the work that started five, six, seven years ago,” she says. There has been a wave of Asian stories coming to the fore in movies and TV over the past year or so, including Shang-Chi, Minari, and Squid Game. Shi feels proud to be one of the emerging voices in the industry. Producer Lindsey Collins adds that Billie and Finneas took the gig seriously and immersed themselves in the music of the time. “They could make the songs feel like the boys were singing directly to the girls. To capture the vibe of the time, the team at Pixar hired Finneas and Billie Eilish to write original songs for 4*Town, the movie’s fictional boy band. “So much of the story felt real not only to Domee, but to them. “I was Mei in the early 2000s Toronto. I was that dorky, 13-year-old girl,” says director Domee Shi (Bao) tells Den of Geek. Apart from its supernatural elements, the movie is based on Shi’s experience growing up in Canada, and struggling to relate to her immigrant mother as she came into her own as an adolescent. “I grew up watching so much anime and manga,” Shi says. And she doesn’t want that, so it’s more of a struggle for her.” “[Our story is] different from a lot of Western stories, where it’s more black and white,” Shi explains. But she’s going through a lot of big changes that threaten to throw her off of her life’s course.

The film, directed by Domee Shi, tells the story of Meilin (played by Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese Canadian 13-year-old, battling the ups and downs of the early ...

"The story of all of these friends and the family is so universal... There's emotions in 'Turning Red' that are absolutely part of a human story," she said. "It's not like I could relate to Ratatouille... I didn't even know Ratatouille was a dish," she said. That's what it kind of felt like," Wang Yuen said. Which is fine — but also, a tad limiting in its scope," O'Connell wrote. The film, which premiered Friday on Disney+, been widely hailed as a refreshing, creative look at tweendom and the awkwardness of growing up.

We exclusively talk to Turning Red director Domee Shi and producer Lindsey Collins about the messiness of puberty...

“And call their mums maybe and have that conversation with them like ‘hey, remember when I yelled at you and you misunderstood this?’. Just hopefully to spark more conversation.” Alongside that positive message, they wanted to educate young people, too, by depicting a warts-and-all tale of growing up: “Animation is unique in its ability to address tricky stories or tricky moments in life in a way that feels more acceptable or palatable or entertaining than if you just wrote it down,” Collins says. “Our hope is that you’re super invested in seeing this relationship between this mother and daughter,” says producer Lindsey Collins who tells us that their relationship “gets to a place where they’ve evolved a little bit. The movie depicts an important time in a young person’s life, which is why it was incredibly important for Shi that the movie had a positive message: “I really wanted to make this movie for that [13-year-old] version of myself,” Shi explains. “All of the messy relationships that we have with ourselves and with our parents and to be okay with that.” “Because there just wasn’t and maybe still isn’t enough stories in media that deal with that specific time period of a girl coming of age.”

Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution announced that Disney and Pixar's “Turning Red” would premiere exclusively in homes worldwide on Disney+ on March ...

“Turning Red” introduces Mei Lee (voice of Rosalie Chiang, “Clique Wars”), a confident, dorky 13-year-old torn between staying her mother’s dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence. The El Capitan is located at 6838 Hollywood Blvd. “Turning Red,” which is rated PG, runs through March 17. This marks the first time that a Pixar feature has had an Asian protagonist and centered mainly on Asian characters. The voice cast also includes Ava Morse (“Ron’s Gone Wrong”), Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (“Never Have I Ever”), Hyein Park, Orion Lee (“First Cow”), Wai Ching Ho (“Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens”), and veteran actor James Hong (“Blade Runner,” “Big Trouble in Little China”). And as if changes to her interests, relationships and body weren’t enough, whenever she gets too excited (which is practically ALWAYS), she “poofs” into a giant red panda! Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution announced that Disney and Pixar’s “Turning Red” would premiere exclusively in homes worldwide on Disney+ on March 11, along with a simultaneous limited run at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.

Vulture's Alison Willmore reviews 'Turning Red,' the Domee Shi–directed Disney and Pixar film about the relationship between the first-generation Ming ...

The shame comes from Ming. She had it instilled in her by Mei’s even more iron-willed grandmother, who eventually shows up with a battalion of aunties for a ceremony meant to seal Mei’s inner beast away forever. Effervescent and ridiculous and grounded in a pastel-shaded Toronto and the nearby throwback details of 2002, it has texture and specificity to spare, and the only person it cares to speak on behalf of is its 13-year-old heroine, Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang). The panda, fluffy and free, represents Mei at her most unfettered, dancing up a storm and posing for pictures and serving as the life of the party once Mei and her friends figure out that they can monetize Mei’s metamorphosis to buy 4*Town tickets. Mei is an unabashed dork who loves Canada; her grade-eight crew of Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park); the boy band 4*Town; and her parents Ming (Sandra Oh) and Jin Lee (Orion Lee), though her suffocatingly close relationship with her helicoptering mother is more complicated than she’s willing to acknowledge. Maybe it’s that the simplicity of Bao (which, like most of the animation giant’s shorts, is wordless) gave it the feeling of a fable that we were supposed to take ownership of, whether those were its intentions or not. For all that we measure out recognition in pangs, the experience of seeing some fragment of yourself onscreen is usually assumed to be a positive one.

An allegory for puberty that manages to deal with teenage girl sexuality without ever overtly sexualizing the main character, this is a film that feels ...

Each of the female characters in “Turning Red” are unique and well-rounded. In “Brave,” Merida and her mother are at odds; in “Inside Out,” Sadness, Joy and Disgust often are, too. “Turning Red” is all about girls who like each other — and remarkably, for a Disney product, a mother-daughter pairing who genuinely love and respect each other even as they struggle with conflicting desires. And “Turning Red” is no exception. Should she be a dutiful daughter and complete the magic ritual, or should she discover herself — wherever that leads? In what feels like a Lisa Frank-meets-Kafka moment, she wakes up one morning to find herself inexplicably transformed into a huge but cuddly red panda.

This week in Polygon's newsletter Patch Notes: more Batman, Elden Ring, and hundreds of games for a good cause. Subscribe here and learn about the latest ...

A teenager partners with a future version of himself to apparently save the world from time travel. Many of us have put dozens of hours into the game and have no clue if we’re even close to the ending. We prefer a more leisurely approach, slaying beasts one by one with our big, dumb jellyfish and pausing the game for the occasional snack break. To start, we’ve collected the most pertinent history of Riddler and Batman’s conflict. Jenna Stoeber walks through the history of walks and walking cycles in video games, and how they got to where they are today. And one of the most important but underappreciated aspects of games is the walk cycle. Here’s a fun, concise explainer of everything you need to know — and how to spot the tech marketing nonsense. A no-bullshit guide to the metaverse So game developers have found a ton of cool ways to implement walks in the games we play — making them both accurate, and flavorful. Radulovic says that Turning Red ”unabashedly and jovially embraces its own identity in such a tender way that it aches” and calls the film one of Pixar’s best. Last month, we spoke with the creators of Turning Red about the film’s open portrayal of puberty and periods. Polygon’s Patch Notes is a weekly newsletter that tells you about the best stuff to watch, play, and read.

Turning Red, the new animated Disney Pixar movie starring Sandra Oh, has now been released on Netflix — but what happens at the end?

However, as Mei waited for the next blood moon to come around, she learned to control, love, and live with her ‘panda’ side — and arguably also changed for the better. The question of whether Mei would ‘get rid’ of her panda like her other female relatives did was one of the biggest conflicts of the movie’s second act. To get her mother’s panda back under control, Mei and her other female relatives all release their respective ‘pandas’ in order to perform the ritual one last time.

Domee Shi's debut feature is a celebration of Chinese culture. Here, illustrator Stanley Chow chats with her about the importance of telling diverse ...

The Chinese-Canadian animator, storyboard artist and director has worked for Pixar since 2011, contributing to films including Inside Out and and Toy Story 4. Domee Shi’s debut feature is a joyous celebration of Chinese culture. In 2020, more than half of the scripted shows on Disney, Nickelodeon and their respective junior channels featured people of colour or members of the LGBTQ+ community as main characters, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Pixar's fun new animation sees a 13-year-old turn into a giant red panda, while Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star in Quentin Tarantino's love letter to ...

Midway between Get Out and Netflix series The Chair, Mariama Diallo’s ambitious film uses a ghost story template to interrogate the racial realities of academia for female African American students and teachers alike. Regina Hall plays Gail, the first Black house-master at a New England college, while Zoe Renee is Jasmine, a new pupil placed in a room possibly haunted by a girl who killed herself. With such a larger-than-life character, the film struggles at times to glean insight but it’s a victory on points. A bloody serial killer is rampant, and out-of-favour Scotland Yard detective John Kildare (a maudlin Bill Nighy) is given the poisoned chalice of trying to close an impossible case. When he starts taking heroin to alleviate his aches, memories of his childhood and mother (Penélope Cruz) flood back – at the same time as figures from his past reappear – revealing a richly creative existence that should be far from over. It’s 1969, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s actor Rick Dalton is negotiating a declining career alongside stuntman best pal Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, never more laid-back). They live next to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski, so the Manson “family” cast a shadow, but for the most part it’s a nostalgic ride saturated in the pop culture of the time.

Director Domee Shi is excited as she discusses one of her favorite scenes from her first feature: when Meilin Lee, her 13-year-old protagonist, ...

Although “Bao” was also a story about a mother and child, Shi felt she still had more to explore about the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship. Beyond specific scenes, the anime influence is also reflected in the way that Mei and her best friends, like the teen warriors of “Sailor Moon,” have their own signature colors. This specificity of Mei’s story is one of “Turning Red’s” greatest strengths. But it was a challenge that “everyone on the crew was really excited to explore.” It “felt like the perfect style to draw from to make us feel what Mei is feeling, because she feels so many big emotions in the story,” Shi added. But at the same time, growing up in this environment, in this culture, that’s turning them into different people [who] are naturally moving away from their family.” Below, she discusses how four key influences helped shape the unique expression of “Turning Red.” “Turning Red” follows Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) as she wakes up one morning to discover that because of a secret family quirk, she has turned into a large red panda. How they really exaggerate facial features and character reactions, and you really feel what the characters are feeling at any given moment.” As she was wrapping up work on her Academy Award-winning 2018 short “Bao” at Pixar, Shi knew she wanted her next film to be a girl’s coming-of-age story. Set in and around Toronto’s Chinatown in 2002, “Turning Red” is a celebration of teenage girls, their experiences and their interests. “So she draws [him with] a mermaid tail, because it’s easier to imagine.”

Pixar's Turning Red is skipping cinemas for Disney Plus, but movies like West Side Story and Shang-Chi took months to stream. What's going on?

Putting Pixar movies directly on Disney Plus is, at its core, a strategy to both lure in more streaming subscribers and keep the ones it has. Some Disney movies -- typically midbudget live-action movies and Pixar films like Luca and Soul -- skipped theaters entirely and were available to stream on Disney Plus at no extra cost. It became available to stream on Disney Plus on Dec. 24, at no added cost to all subscribers -- one month after its theatrical release. That's one of the main reasons Disney moved back to theatrical exclusives for its biggest films. Then as vaccinations widened, Disney reintroduced theatrical exclusives -- but with a shorter commitment to stay in cinemas exclusively than before. When the pandemic first hit, Disney made a big change to its movie release practices. But in all countries where Disney Plus hasn't launched, the company said it would release Turning Red in theaters. West Side Story's streaming release was more than 80 days after the film was released in theaters -- that's back to the prepandemic norm for theatrical exclusives, which was typically 75 to 90 days. Some people refer to this as the date it will be streaming "free," but everything on Disney Plus requires a paid subscription. Pixar's last two movies -- Soul in late 2020 and Luca in the middle of 2021 -- were released this way, too. Turning Red, Pixar's latest feature film, skipped theaters to stream exclusively on Disney Plus Friday. But Encanto spent a month in theaters before streaming. In the two years since, Disney reimagined the service as an outlet to release big new movies while cinemas were shuttered or limping.

The studio's early works were lauded for their “universal” storytelling. Its new approach champions personal stories—and audiences are the richer for it.

Inside Out is about a girl whose family moves from Minnesota (home of director Pete Docter) to San Francisco—but if you swap Riley’s love of hockey out for something else, there’s little rooting the story to those places. This focus on personal experiences has become something of a trend in Pixar’s recent works. The movie, which lands on Disney+ on Friday, is largely faithful to her initial pitch—there are scenes from her early storyboards that now exist in much the same form. Its rules of storytelling (there are 22) are handed down in earnest screenwriting blogs like the Ten Commandments. In its early days, Pixar was notorious for polishing and tinkering and crafting—boiling a story down to its very essence, trying to speak to universal themes like love and loss and family. “For me, I just want to go fast because my worst fear is to overthink and overdo and overpolish something until it loses all of its uniqueness.” It’s an allegory for puberty—and one of the most personal movies Pixar has ever made.

The studio's early works were lauded for their “universal” storytelling. Its new approach champions personal stories—and audiences are the richer for it.

The movie, which lands on Disney+ on Friday, is largely faithful to her initial pitch—there are scenes from her early storyboards that now exist in much the same form. Its rules of storytelling ( there are 22) are handed down in earnest screenwriting blogs like the Ten Commandments. In its early days, Pixar was notorious for polishing and tinkering and crafting—boiling a story down to its very essence, trying to speak to universal themes like love and loss and family. It’s an allegory for puberty—and one of the most personal movies Pixar has ever made.