Fish

Finding Nemo: Marlin’s Character Arc

An entertaining analysis of how Marlin goes from overprotective “helicopter” fish to finding a balance between careful and carefree. June 5, 2020 by the Editors Leave a Comment An entertaining analysis of how Marlin goes from overprotective “helicopter” fish to finding a balance between careful and carefree.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:07
finding nemo tells the story of marlon
00:10
an erotic clownfish who is
00:12
overprotective of his only remaining son
00:14
Nemo after the rest of their family is
00:16
killed Marlin begins his character arc
00:18
as an overprotective helicopter fish I
00:21
was right you know what we’ll start
00:22
school in the earth and ends his arc by
00:24
finding the right balance between being
00:26
careful and carefree in this scene
00:29
Marlin and Dory must cross a swarm of
00:31
jellyfish to get to a shortcut to Nemo
00:34
naturally Marlin is panicked and must
00:36
think of the safest way to get across
00:37
which Dory unintentionally discovers is
00:40
by bouncing on the tops of the jellyfish
00:44
sting you to get Dory to focus he turns
00:47
the dangerous crossing into a game the
00:49
game again looking as the two rays
00:53
Marlin becomes noticeably less stress
00:55
and even starts being competitive
00:57
why don’t they
00:59
this is important for his character grow
01:02
as Marlon must learn to be less
01:03
protective and avoid letting his careful
01:05
nature steal the fun from his life
01:07
however Pixar adds complexity to the
01:09
scene by creating a red herring
01:11
at first the message seems to be that
01:12
Marlin should relax and overcome his
01:14
extreme caution in order to have fun oh
01:16
this is the winner we did it but here he
01:20
goes too far in the other direction by
01:22
being too carefree and forgetting the
01:23
very real danger around him and Dori
01:26
once he reaches the other side and sees
01:28
that he left an injured Dory behind we
01:31
realized that extreme carelessness is
01:33
not the right answer either Marlin grows
01:35
as a character as he fearlessly rushes
01:37
to doors rescue I’m concerned with his
01:39
own safety in ignoring countless
01:41
jellyfish stings
01:42
this shows that Marlin is willing to
01:44
accept risk for those he loves he
01:45
demonstrates us later when he lets Nemo
01:47
go to save dory you’re right oh you
01:55
can’t the message is clear in the face
01:58
of what we fear most we can surprise
02:00
ourselves with our own bravery in a vast
02:02
ocean with many actual threats not
02:05
unlike our own world one must judge each
02:07
situation finding a middle ground
02:09
between hyper-vigilance and letting go
02:11
when safe fun is okay
02:16
you

This post was previously published on Youtube.

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Photo credit: Screenshot from video

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