Warning: spoilers for Turning Red below
The intimate story of Turning Red takes a huge turn in the finale when it turns into a massive fight rivaling a tentpole superhero movie. The sequence, which both director Domee Shi and producer Lindsey Collins confirmed to be hardest to get right, shows a big kaiju fight among family members.
In an interview with both Shi and Collins, I asked how early in the writing process did they come up with such a left turn for the story. Collins had this to say:
A version of it was in there from the get-go. Not [the final] version but we always had this desire to have this kind of normal mother-and-daughter argument set against this massive monster scale. Especially if you’ve been bottling up that kind of argument for that long, it’s what that feels like. When you finally release all that pent-up anger, frustration, and sadness, it’s like a monster.
Turning Red’s finale almost makes the story collapse on itself but thanks to Shi’s incredible story instincts, the finale remains tethered to the movie’s most crucial themes. It’s a finale that will go down as one of Pixar’s most memorable ones undoubtedly.
