Recently, I was blessed to attend the press junket Disney / Pixar’s Onward. As the cast shared their thoughts on the film, I discovered 3 lessons you will learn from Disney / Pixar’s Onward.
The movie is a beautiful film about two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, go on a journey to discover if there is still a little magic left out there in order to spend one last day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him. Before sharing the lesson you will learn from Disney / Pixar’s Onward, it is important to know the origin of the story based around filmmakers Dan Scanlon’s very personal story.
“It’s is a very personal story. Much like the characters in the movie, my father passed away when I was about a year old, and my brother was three. So as you can imagine, we don’t remember him at all, but we always wondered, who he was and how we were like him. I think that question became the setting of Onward. Which is what if you could meet him? What, if you could have one day and what would you learn? What, would you ask? …” ~ Dan Scanlon
Here are 3 lessons you will learn from Pixar’s new film Onward from the cast and filmmakers.
Tom Holland and Chris Pratt were asked how they relate to each of their characters.
1) Have confidence and believe in yourself
“…The similarities between Ian and myself go back to more when I was sort of in my early teens, 12, 13. I was a little bit of an introvert. I was a very nervous kid and I had a hard time in school. And it wasn’t until I went on this adventure that was “Billy Elliot” where I sort of came out of my shell and I became more confident in myself and I believed in myself. And what drew me so much to this character was that we get to see that entire journey that I went on as a kid in him throughout this film.” ~ Tom Holland
2) Celebrate Other’s Strength’s
“I’m not sure that that was ever intentional or if I just noticed this while watching the movie,… Barley was never jealous of the fact that he didn’t have the magic gift. And I think that that, to me, I didn’t realize until seeing the movie was something very similar to my own relationship with my brother, in which I was the Ian. But, I was Ian and my brother was Barley. My brother for instance always wanted to be an actor. He was an actor. The first time I ever saw my mom cry was watching him do a play. He was a Pooh Bear in the first grade, Christmas play, and I was like “Wow, that’s amazing. Being an actor is awesome. I wanna be an actor.”. so I like followed in his footsteps. Anyways, he went into the army, he didn’t become an actor, but I became an actor. There was that moment where Barley realizes that Ian has the gift… I was like “Do you think Barley wishes that he had the magic gift? Because he’s the one who loves magic, he wasn’t able to do this, but his younger brother was.” And I think this was really the heart of the film, is he loves his brother so much that he’s just so proud of him that he has this gift… And when I saw that in the movie how it was expressed, it really made me appreciate how my brother was with me. because he’s always only ever been super encouraging and positive about what I’ve been able to do as an actor.” ~ Chris Pratt
3) Encourage and Support the people around you
“I think it’s a film about support and the people that go above and beyond in our lives to help us become the people we are today… And they don’t necessarily have to be family members. A lot of times, they’re friends or teachers… how can you be that for someone else…” ~ Dan Scanlon
I hope you were able to take away a few keynotes from today’s post on what lesson you will learn from Pixar’s new film Onward from the cast and filmmakers.
Disney-Pixar’s Onward in theaters now
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