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Brynn Gorney

Mrs. Storer

English 3H, block 4

January 14th, 2020

“So, the Big Blue, What’s It Like?”

It’s common knowledge that a lot of things have an unspoken meaning to them, such as

the color yellow being used in a happy situation. A widely-known film from the early 2000s,

Finding Nemo, was very aware of these “archetypes”, as they are called, and made keen use of

many of these common and subtle hints throughout the animated movie. The plot follows two

separate threads at the same time; One of these focuses on a young clown fish named Nemo, who

is taken from his coral reef home to an office across to ocean by a diver who works as a dentist.

Taken against his will, Nemo desires to escape back to the ocean and to his widowed clown fish

dad, Marlin. At the same time, an unlikely pair, his dad and a blue tang fish named Dory, cross

the entire ocean and its most dangerous obstacles to find Nemo and bring him home safely,

which they do successfully in the end. In Finding Nemo, the director of the movie used

stereotypical images and hidden archetypes to show the audience development of the

characters and to help them make immediate assumptions about a character or

environment. These easy-to-recognize messages are revealed by using certain colors on a

character or their surroundings, the presence of specific natural elements themselves, and

the lighting of each scene.

Color played a big part in swaying one’s initial perception of characters’ personalities

and creating a mood that was fitting for the big events in the scene. Dory is a great example of

this, as her character design fights for the attention of the audience’s eyes from her first moment
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on screen, when our eyes are drawn to her Egyptian blue-colored body, lemon yellow fins and

fuscia eyes. (Stanton, 00:16:37 - 01:32:25). According to the Literary Critical Theory

PowerPoint (slide 49), these three colors tend to subconsciously persuade viewers that the

character having these colors is innovative, liberating, and a comical jester. Dory is not only the

comic relief of the movie, but she manages to save both Marlin’s and her own life quite a few

times with her creative thinking. Additionally, her carefree lifestyle eventually rubs off on

Marlin, liberating him and convincing him not to live in fear as much as he did at the start. Even

though we might not have been aware of it, the director’s use of these colors in Dory’s character

design very well could have given off that personality to the audience’s subconscious brains. In

doing this, they would get the vibe that he wanted Dory to have off of her character alone and

fall in love with her from the start. This was not the only time that color cued the audience to feel

a certain way about something in the movie. When Nemo is invited by his fellow aquarium

fishes to attempt to swim through “the Ring of Fire”, to receive a new name, and to join in the

“fraternal bonds of tankhood”, the entire scene is cast in a pink-red light coming from the lava

rocks of “Mt. Wannahockaloogie”, the tank volcano decoration. As Nemo completes his trial,

Gill says in a proud voice, “Welcome, brother Shark-bait!” (Stanton, 00:37:06 - 00:39:01). Also

referencing the Literary Critical Theory PowerPoint (slide 49), that same pink-red color is

supposedly a color that emanates belonging. By adding in this small touch, it seems that the

director attempted to further highlight Nemo’s new sense of belonging with the other fish by

tapping into the audience’s subconscious recognition of fitting in.

While color may be less easy to recognize, there are some blatantly obvious moves that

the director pulled using natural elements to convey certain themes. Throughout the entire

beginning of the movie, but especially before the main trio’s adventure begins, the director put
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special focus on the abundance and variety of sea life. In one such instance, a hearty pirate

shanty about living creatures in the ocean is paired with several scenes of hundreds of colorful

fish and plants passing by Nemo and his classmates (Stanton, 00:11:16 - 00:11:50). Naturally,

water is seen as a source of life; this is an old and very obvious archetype that audiences should

have made an immediate connection with, but if they did not, the scene drew special attention to

how many different creatures exist within Nemo’s community. Through the highlighting of the

variety and abundance of ocean life in this scene, the director emphasized the old archetype that

water is a source of life. Also, after the scene where Marlin learns to trust Dory by letting go of

the whale’s tongue as she suggests, they are released into a harbor at night and turn around to see

the whale’s tail lift up and touch the bottom of a full moon (Stanton, 01:13:46 - 01:13:49). The

moon, pictured brightly to capture viewers’ attention, has for a long time been seen as something

that controls (human) events and marks the passage of time. The contact between the whale tail

and the moon seems to signify the fact that the large trial of being stuck inside the whale led to

the dramatic change in Marlin’s character. At that exact moment, the audience definitely sees a

positive change in Marlin’s personality, which has been developing since he began spending

time with Dory. By referencing the moon as a marker of a character change, the audience comes

to realize how much Marlin has grown up during the time he has spent on his adventure, which

one could assume was an intentional move made by the director.

A final crucial element, perhaps one of the biggest pieces to creating the desired moods

during a scene, is the lighting of the environment; As a general rule of thumb, lighter scenes

portray happy times and darker ones convey sad events. For example, while Marlin’s wife

(Coral) is alive, the scene is well lit. Rays of sun wave through the water and coat their home, the

reef, in pastel colors. However, the minute the audience suspects Coral’s death, the whole ocean
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has become so dark that the color has almost faded entirely (Stanton, 00:00:49 - 00:04:56). The

scene’s lighting was dictated by Coral’s presence and the positivity that her life brought into her

environment. By dimming and brightening scenes like this, an audience’s mood can be swayed

to better fit the tone of a scene better and help them make a correct assumption about skipped

over events, such as Coral’s death. For Finding Nemo, the director used physical darkness to

communicate the concept of death and sadness to the audience. Years after his mother’s death,

when Nemo is first taken by the dentist (Philip Sherman), it appears to be midday, as the scene is

still lit well. After the boat disappears, the audience gets a glimpse of a setting sun in the sky as

Marlin surfaces and dives back under, yelling, “Has anybody seen a boat? Please - a white boat?

They took my son, my son! … He’s gone, no, he’s gone, he’s gone. No, no, they took him away”

(Stanton, 00:16:12 - 00:17:40). As the realization of losing his son forever sets in and his mission

seems to get more complicated because of Dory’s memory loss, the scene’s lighting becomes

darker and darker. The audience can feel Marlin’s hopelessness and grief over losing his son

because of the aid and perfect communication of the archetype of growing darkness on screen.

Color, nature, and light are crucial elements to the telling of a story. Through extreme

emphasis in lighting, more clear hints in nature, and subtle color influences, the director seems to

have touched on the audience’s assumptions and their acknowledgment of change in a character

in the film, Finding Nemo. Those with a passion for writing or directing should make note of

how important every element of a story can be, from the character design to a scene’s lighting.

Works Cited

Stanton, Andrew, director. Finding Nemo. Disney, 2003.