Back to the Drawing Board: "Finding Nemo 2"

Like many, I was skeptical when it was announced that PIXAR was making a sequel to Finding Nemo. Knowing Disney's track record with sequels, combined with Cars 2 being... well, Cars 2, there was a very good chance that it could turn out lousy. What if they had the film be a rehash of the first one, with Nemo searching for his daughter or Marlin searching for Nemo AGAIN or some crap like that?

Then, in 2016, the sequel was released. And y'know what? It was actually quite good. It focused on Dory, Marlin and Nemo going in search of Dory's family, featured Ed O'Neil as an octopus, and culminated in Dory hijacking a truck. How can you go wrong with Dory hijacking a truck?

Despite receiving positive reviews from critics and making mucho moolah at the box office, nowadays Finding Dory seems to be considered one of PIXAR's weaker films. You usually see it lumped in with Cars 2 and Monsters University (which I personally liked as well) when people are talking about how much PIXAR's post-Toy Story 3 films suck. But I have something to say to those people - we could've had a far, far worse sequel to Finding Nemo. And I can sum up why in one word and one number: Circle 7.

I've talked about Circle 7 before on this blog. Here's the "Too Long, Didn't Read" version of what I said - Disney set up an animation studio to produce awful direct-to-video sequels to PIXAR's movies that they'd distributed, but then they bought PIXAR in 2006 and cancelled said awful direct-to-video sequels. I've already looked at what their version of Toy Story 3 was going to be like, but they were also planning on making sequels to Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.

And what luck - at one point the script for their Finding Nemo 2 was posted online, allowing me to read it and see how lucky we were to get Finding Dory instead. Unfortunately, the script has since been taken down, but you can still find it on a site that requires you to download something called "ePaper" to read it. Good thing I write these posts months in advance, huh?

I would do one of these posts for Monsters Inc. 2 as well, but the script for that hasn't wound up online yet. The good news is, somebody online managed to find the script and did a video detailing its plot (it honestly doesn't sound like it would've been too bad).

Now that that's out of the way, let's look at the script for what would have been Circle 7's Finding Nemo 2. A main plot point is that this time MARLIN gets captured and NEMO has to find him. Y'know, since in the first film NEMO was captured and MARLIN had to find him, so inverting it is automatically clever?

Actually, no. No, it isn't. That's literally just as lazy and trite a sequel idea as having Nemo searching for his daughter or something. But, on with the script itself...

NOTE: To my knowledge, there is no concept art for this film online, so I had to create drawings of certain scenes from the script to prevent this post from being really, really boring to look at. I'll also include some random Finding Nemo-related memes I find online for the same reason.

Finding Nemo 2 begins... exactly the same way as the first movie did. With Marlin and Coral looking over their eggs. Then a ferocious barracuda comes along and gobbles up Coral and the eggs... except for one, containing Nemo. But what's this? There's ANOTHER egg that survived the attack. It's sent drifting with the current through a vast landscape of coral and nooks and crannies before landing in a soft nest of yellow fish eggs. Didn't Dinosaur open in a similar way?

Cut to present day. Nemo's classmates consider him the fish equivalent of Chuck Norris after his little adventure being taken to Sydney Harbor. It helps that he did a bit of exaggerating and told them that he beat the crap out of humans with one fin tied behind his back. I don't remember a scene like that in Finding Nemo. Marlin, who's watching this all go down with the other students' parents, is concerned - Nemo's been acting like this ever since they got back from Sydney. Dory and the parents are all, "Chill out, Marlin, wasn't that your entire character arc in the first movie?"

It should be obvious that I'm not very good at drawing fish...

After that, Dory goes for a little swim and encounters Percy, a bottlenose dolphin with one of those tracking device things that scientists put on sea life when they want to study them. "Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I feel like I'm being followed," he claims. Dory then proceeds to spout a bunch of information about bottlenose dolphins, then proceeds to forget everything that she just said. Dory's shtick in this movie seems to be that she's trying to improve her memory but is failing at it.

Later, Nemo is swimming along minding his own business before he encounters another clownfish that looks exactly like him. I know what you're thinking - does this result in the cliched Mirror Routine gag? The answer to that is YES. Yes, it does. The other clownfish, according to the script, is named Remy. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Remy is also the name of an actual PIXAR character.

And this was written before Ratatouille was released. Ironic, isn't it?

Remy looks similar to Nemo, but his cheeks are leaner, his face is "a little more handsome" (what does that mean? How could a fish's face look "handsome"? What, were they gonna slap Brad Pitt's face on the character model or something?), and he has more "swagger" and "attitude" (I don't like the sound of that) than Nemo. Also, he doesn't have a "lucky fin" like Nemo does. When Nemo mentions that his father's name is Marlin, the clownfish says that he thinks he's Nemo's brother!

I doubt they were actually going to give Remy sunglasses, but I figured putting them
on him would help convey how he has more "swagger" and "attitude" than Nemo.

Marlin is extremely shocked, but also overjoyed, when Nemo introduces him to Remy. He can't believe that he has another son. It took forever for Remy to find them (he found out about them because of how Marlin's story about how he was looking for Nemo got passed around the ocean in the first film - you remember that scene, right?). Remy also says that he was raised by a clan of "Fighting Fire Fish". But, what's this? Marlin is so preoccupied with Remy that he's starting to ignore Nemo. And all the other kids... er, fish... at school are thinking that Remy is awesome while ignoring Nemo, too. This, predictably, makes Nemo feel left out.

Surprisingly, Marlin doesn't do much to help with the situation. He tries to cheer Nemo up by saying, "We can't all be athletic. You're a great student." And then when Nemo asks if they can really be sure that this new clownfish is his brother, Marlin says, "Are you kidding? Look at him! He could be your twin. Well... except for the fin." Wow, way to put your foot, which you don't even have, in your mouth, Marlin.

As if Nemo wasn't feeling crummy enough, he also has to share his birthday celebration with Remy. So, what I'm getting from this script is that they're trying to tell the kids at home that being a twin stinks. Marlin continues to play favorites, then Nemo storms off. Remy swims after him, leaving Marlin to complain to Dory about how can't handle this situation. "I feel like I need a drink. Do fish drink?" he asks. Oh, good, our first example of out of place "edgy" humor! I was wondering when that would show up. It's scary how close we were to having Marlin say that he needs a drink and Buzz looking up a doll's dress.

That's supposed to be Marlin in a bar with a can of beer.

Nemo and Remy start arguing. "I see what you're doing. You're trying to make everybody think you're so cool," Nemo says. "But just showing up here doesn't make you my brother. You don't belong here. There's millions of clownfish in the sea! Your father could have been any one of them. So leave mine alone!" Then Remy tells him to shut up and charges at him. Marlin has to stop their fight. Then Remy turns on Marlin, demanding to know why Marlin "left [him]" before swimming away.

Then a gigantic drag net shows up out of nowhere and heads Remy's way. "Not again!" Marlin moans, because even HE knows that this script is rehashing the first movie. He bats Remy out of the way, only to get swallowed up by the net himself. Oh, and remember Percy? He gets caught by the net too.

Dory shows up, and Nemo and Remy fill her in as to what happened. Fortunately, Dory says that she thinks she knows where the boat is going. You see, earlier Percy mentioned that the boat he was picked up by was a "Planet Blue" boat. So Nemo and Remy follow her, continuing to bicker with each other all the way. Why do I have the feeling that Nemo and Remy bickering is going to take up a large percentage of this script?

Planet Blue turns out to be some sort of SeaWorld-esque marine park. Marlin and Percy are dumped into a large tank of water, where a bunch of other dolphins are taking part in an aquatic chorus line (the script's words, not mine).

Here's some concept art for the dolphins that appeared in the first Finding Nemo.

A few days later, Nemo, Remy, and Dory arrive at a bay close to Planet Blue. How will they get there now? Well, Dory says, "If we could just get the ocean level to rise... we need some global warming. Anybody got a match?" Yep, this is a script written in the 2000s all right. Then again, global warming is still a problem so I can't say that it DATES the script. It's still not very funny, though...

Remy spots a three-foot diameter intake pipe in the distance and swims towards it, Nemo and Dory chasing after him. When they get closer, they discover that the pipe has an impeller that it uses to suck in the sea water - and before they can swim away, they get caught in its suction. Uh-oh, something tells me that this is gonna become GRINDING Nemo in a second...

After getting away from the pipe, just barely managing to avoid getting shredded like taco beef (kind of like that one scene from the first film where Nemo was nearly shredded like taco beef by that one pipe in the aquarium filter. Coincidence? I think not), Nemo yells at Remy for being so reckless. How will they get to Planet Blue now? Well, they find an overflow pipe with water gushing out of it. Nemo's assumption is that they can channel the intrepid salmon and "swim upstream". But Nemo is not a salmon, he is a clownfish, and the overflow is too strong, so he winds up failing epically at it. Multiple times.

Then guess who shows up? Gill! Nemo fills him in as to what's going on. Dory mentions that she thinks she's been there before. Gill claims, "No fish has ever come out of there." And then Dory starts rapping. It's just as dumb as it sounds.

Gill finds a piece of a map of Planet Blue. Since trying to take the intake pipe didn't work and trying to take the outflow pipe didn't work either, Gill says that they have to "make the 'out' the 'in'." This requires the help of a pack of sea lions.

Not these guys, unfortunately.

The sea lions steal a parasail and shove it the intake pipe, breaking the impeller. Nemo, Remy, and Dory head in, and discover that the pipe has an echo. Then they have a burping contest. I'd complain about how incredibly disgusting that joke is, but the first movie DID have a gag where Bloat burps and I know that if I don't bring that up, I'm going to get a lot of people pointing it out to me and demanding to know why I'm complaining about a burp joke in this script when there was one in the first movie. To which I say, that was just ONE burp, not MULTIPLE. And, honestly, I don't even think Bloat's burp was that funny either.

Eventually, they come to a fork in the pipe, multiple pipes veering off in different directions. Which one do they take? Remy decides to pick one at random, and they follow him into a dark aquarium tank... to be precise, the octopus tank. Uh-oh...

This octopus isn't a comedic character with the voice of Ed O'Neil. It grabs Nemo and Remy with its tentacles so it can... eat them, I'm guessing. Fortunately, the bottom of the tank is full of squeaky toys, so Dory just grabs them and starts throwing them at the octopus, resulting in it letting go of Nemo and Remy. Blah-blah-blah, chase sequence, blah-blah-blah... eventually, they escape back into the pipe. And since Remy's the one who chose the pipe that led to the octopus tank (by the way, how come the octopus doesn't talk in a script where all other sea creatures talk?), we get - you guessed it - more of Remy and Nemo arguing!

Dory gets them to stop fighting (for now, anyway) and then we check back in with Marlin. He has to deal with Percy and two other dolphins, one a stereotypical diva and the other a stereotypical Shakesperian actor. After Marlin brings up that Nemo and Remy might kill each other if he's not there, Percy offers to splash him over the fence - the ocean's just on the other side. So he does that... only for Marlin to land in a bucket of water left on the cement next to the fence. Belonging to the janitor. You had ONE JOB, Percy. ONE JOB!

Meanwhile, Gill and the sea lions see some divers trying to get the parasail out of the pipe. This could be a problem. Fortunately, Nemo, Remy and Dory have arrived at the dolphin tank. Just after Marlin was hurled out of it. Talk about lousy timing. Speaking of Marlin, the bucket that he's in has been wheeled into a kitchen full of people chopping up salmon. I honestly thought the script was gonna go all "Les Poissons" on us for a second, but then the bucket is wheeled out of the room. Eventually Marlin falls out of the bucket and into a pool, where he encounters a polar bear. It promptly gobbles Marlin up. The end.

Just kidding. The polar bear's name is Blanca. She tells Marlin that she has to eat him because if she doesn't, the other polar bears, Brad and Louie, will laugh at her. They're always picking on her. Marlin tells her to just stand up to them, one shouldn't let their life be dictated by fear and anxiety, which is something he knows from experience.

Back to Nemo, Remy, and Dory. They're interrogating the dolphins on what happened to Marlin. The dolphins are all, "Yeah, he's probably polar bear food by now." Then we cut back to Marlin, who's still talking to Blanca, amazed that he's finally met someone more neuronic than HE IS. And then we cut back to Nemo, Remy, Dory, and the dolphins. Well, that cutaway to Marlin was completely pointless, then. Could've just had the polar bear ask Marlin if she was fat BEFORE cutting back to Nemo, Dory and Remy. But nope, gotta be disjointed. Nemo and Remy start bickering again, Dory gets scooped up by a pole net, and we get some WHACKY SHENANIGANS involving the dolphins.

One of the dolphins fills Nemo and Remy in as to which way in the pipe goes to the polar bears. They head back into the pipe... just as the divers have gotten the parasail out of the impeller. Lousy timing rears its ugly head once again.

Fortunately, instead of being shredded they wind up in some sort of pirate-themed tank, with a sunken pirate ship and animatronic pirate skeletons and all that. Meanwhile, Brad and Louie decide that if Blanca's not gonna eat Marlin, THEY will. Blanca tries to stop them, but they're only stopped by the appearance of buckets of salmon. After they leave, Marlin asks why Brad and Louie are so mean to her. According to Blanca, she's not from the Arctic like them, she's from Cleveland, and they never let her forget it. Also, when she got there, she tripped and fell down, breaking a claw in the process. That's another thing they give her a hard time about.

Remy meets an oyster, a crab, and a clam. The crab asks if he wants to "pull [his] claw" (real classy, guys...). The clam acts like some sort of Zen master. The oyster has a stick up its rear end. Back at the polar bear habitat, Blanca introduces Marlin to watermelon while Brad and Louie crack bad jokes. For example, what do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal? A polar bear. Depressingly, while that joke is lame it's still the funniest joke in the script thus far.

Gill and the sea lions are trying to block the pipe by stuffing more trash into it. Remy nearly ditches Nemo in the pirate tank to go back into the pipe, but Nemo spots him in the act and flips out. "Hey, don't mess with me. I'm a fighting fish. You're just a wimp with a little fin," Remy replies, making it hard for me to feel sympathy for him when Nemo angrily swats him into some rocks.

Remy tries to swim off, but runs afoul of a sea snake. He's too scared to get away from it, making Nemo realize that Remy's all bark and no bite (or whatever the fish equivalent of that saying is). Nemo and Remy work together to outwit the sea snake and then get the heck out of there, the snake in hot pursuit. Eventually, they wind up in a shallow pool.

And guess who's there? The seagulls! Remember those guys? Two of them are perched on the ledge. They spot Nemo and Remy in the water and of course start shouting, "MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!" And then the snake pops up, hissing furiously... and the seagulls turn to each other and say, "Yours." Okay, I will admit that was pretty funny.

So, after getting away from the snake, Nemo and Remy start arguing again, and then Remy is scooped up by another net. Nemo jumps into the net with him, and it takes them to the isolation tank. We cut back to Gill and the sea lions... then we cut back to Marlin and Blanca. Marlin admits that he was prejudiced towards mammals... ouch, Marlin was racist? Or in this case, species-ist? What is it with these Circle 7 scripts and making beloved PIXAR characters racist (need I bring up "Me no speakey Taiwaneesey!" or whatever that awful line was?).

Disturbingly, it seems as though Blanca is falling in love with Marlin. Despite the fact that she's a polar bear and he's a clownfish. Why does a polar bear have the hots for a clownfish? Why is this a thing that we very nearly got? Maybe I'm just looking too far into this...

Then again, he DOES look a lot like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson...

Changing the subject, Marlin admits that he hasn't done right by his boys. "I didn't know how to handle two at once. They should have been friends, but they're at each other's throats. Everything I said just made it worse," he points out. And y'know what? He's right. He didn't handle the situation well at all. So after that, Blanca swims over to the grate covering the overflow pipe and tries to pry it off. Alas, she doesn't have any luck.

Back to Nemo and Remy. Remy's got a fever (of a hundred and three... sorry, couldn't resist). He admits to Nemo that "Everybody thinks you're so smart... I could never be like you... I had to be something..." Also, he wasn't raised by fighting fish. He was raised by weed fish. Hundreds of them. "Too many mouths to feed..." he says. "I never fit in." That's why he went looking for Marlin. He's all Remy had. And now, Nemo is all he has.

The next morning, Remy is feeling better. But then he and Nemo are suddenly grabbed by a giant hand with a plastic bag! They wind up in a tank decorated to look like a coral reef. And guess what? Dory's there too. Yeah, she's still in this movie. And she's also come across her brothers and sisters. Turns out this is where she's from.

So, now we have Dory's family in this script too. Funny how many similarities the script has to Finding Dory. Like I said in my post about the Circle 7 Toy Story 3 scripts, I highly doubt anyone at PIXAR actually read this script or would've wanted to steal plot elements from it, so I'm guessing it's just a coincidence.

The other blue tangs tell Nemo and Remy about another outflow pipe that the tank has, but then a human diver shows up and starts sealing the pipe for maintenance. Gill and the sea lions are still clogging up the pipe. And the chilly temperatures of the polar bear habitat are doing a number on Marlin. Fortunately, Nemo spots a giant protein skimmer up at the top of the tank. When they swim up to the top, he, Remy and Dory spot a large drain labeled "MAIN OUTFLOW PIPE" that the aquarium workers are dumping the contents of the protein skimmer into. All they have to do is jump into the protein skimmer and they'll be to Marlin in no time. Desperate times call for desperate - and disgusting - measures.

Dory hesitates for a second (should she stay with her siblings or go with Nemo and Remy?), then they all jump in. But Marlin is now pale and unconscious, and it's up to Blanca to keep this script from taking a turn for the depressing. So she grabs a bucket led by a maintenance worker, puts Marlin in it, and climbs up the back wall of the exhibit with the bucket's handle in her teeth. Marlin comes to. Brad and Louie are impressed.

Blanca runs around Planet Blue with Marlin in the bucket, resulting in multiple tourists panicking over the fact that there's a polar bear that escaped from its habitat. They're approaching a marshy landscaping pond... but then Blanca is hit by a tranquilizer dart. Fortunately, Marlin manages to flop over to the pond.

Meanwhile, Gill and the sea lions have succeeded in clogging up the pipe again. A diver shows up to investigate, but then another beloved Finding Nemo character shows up as a Deus Ex Machina. Specifically, this guy:

How did he get there? Who cares, the script's almost over.

Nemo, Remy, and Dory emerge from a pipe into the very same pond that Marlin wound up in. It's happy reunion time... except that Remy feels left out and tries to leave. He says that he doesn't belong with them. Nemo gives a big speech about how he's part of their family, then Marlin gives a big speech about how he can handle having two kids and yadda yadda yadda. But that diver who got scared off by Bruce is explaining to the Chief Park Engineer what happened, so the Chief decides that they'll just have to "back flush the intake pipe". Buttons on a control panel are pushed, and just as Marlin, Nemo, Remy, and Dory are about to leave through another pipe, they hear rattling and banging in the pipes overhead, then see valves slamming shut. "We've gotta go back!" Marlin exclaims. "Hurry! Or we'll be trapped!"

Okay, this technically isn't a meme, but upon finding this I knew I had to put it
in the post.

They manage to get out, but in the process Dory winds up slamming her head into a root, knocking her out cold. When she comes to, she has her memory back. Apparently, the reason why she suffered from short-term memory loss in the first place is because she hit her head while escaping from Planet Blue the first time. And she knows the way out of there, so they follow her... through a habitat full of hungry flamingos. But, thanks to Dory, they're able to escape from the flamingos and approach the way out of Planet Blue - a flume ride themed after a sawmill. With a water wheel and everything. "All we have to do is get to the top. Ride the track to the splash down lagoon," Dory explains. "Wait for the right moment. Then ride the giant splash up over the park fence. Into the tidal river. And out into the bay." Will they pull it off?

Yep. They go down the track and land in the lagoon, and the resulting splash sends them hurtling over the park railing and into a tidal river... where Dory hits her head on a rock. Oh, great, so now her memory's gone again, right?

Actually, no. She's just messing with them. But wait! Where's Remy? Oh, wait, there he is. False alarm. So they all head home, leaving Gill with the sea lions. The end.

Yeah, that wasn't very good. Not quite as bad as the Toy Story 3 scripts, but I'm still reaaaaaaally glad this wasn't the Finding Nemo sequel we got. Much like the aforementioned Toy Story 3 scripts, characters spend a good chunk of the script bickering with each other and acting like out of character tools. Most of the jokes fall flat. It falls into that pesky sequel trap of rehashing the first film and making zero effort to hide it. The new characters were dull. And why does a polar bear fall in love with a clownfish? Seriously, WHY?

I'm honestly glad that Circle 7 got shut down before they could whip up scripts for sequels to A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, and Cars. Who knows what they would've done for THOSE?

I don't want to end this post on a negative note, so... here. I found this on Google Image Search and I thought this was pretty funny: