Lilo & Stitch

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Template:Infobox Film Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 animated film and the forty-first film in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on June 21, 2002. It is one of the few animated feature films to use watercolor paintings for its backgrounds. It was also the second of three Disney animated features produced primarily at its animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An extra-terrestrial mad scientist, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) is imprisoned for illegally experimenting and creating creatures to cause chaos and destruction. His latest experiment is Number 626: a cute little blue alien who is deceptively strong, fast, intelligent and destructive. On his way to a penal colony, 626 escapes and crash lands on a small Hawaiian island on Earth. Masquerading as a dog, 626 is adopted by a little girl named Lilo Pelekai (voiced by Daveigh Chase) who is living with her sister Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) after their parents died in a car accident. Lilo is lonely and a bit of an outcast until she finds a new friend in 626, who she names "Stitch" (voiced by Chris Sanders).

Lilo tries to teach Stitch to behave using Elvis Presley and his music as a model for good behavior, but Stitch's destructive tendencies make it especially difficult for everyone, especially Nani, who is attempting to provide a stable home environment for Lilo by finding steady employment. Since they are constantly being monitored by social worker Cobra Bubbles (voiced by Ving Rhames), Lilo is at risk of being placed in foster care if their living conditions do not improve.

Making matters even more difficult are Jumba and Galactic Agent Pleakley (voiced by Kevin McDonald), who have been given the task of capturing Stitch. After their failure and subsequent dismissal, a shark-like alien named Captain Gantu (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) is assigned the task of Stitch's capture.

Throughout the movie, the message provided tells the audience that family must stick together in all cases, however difficult. It also stresses the importance of Lilo's Hawaiian culture and how it must be kept alive. Furthermore, it is also meant to remind children of the importance of good behavior as well as adults that not all children are "rotten to the core", and that every child has some goodness deep inside. Early in the film, it is decided that "Stitch" has absolutely no goodness in him because of his destructive tendencies, and is labeled "Public Nuisance No.1", a pun on "Public Enemy No.1" which may or may not be an exaggeration of the way some parents (and other adults) think of their or any children because of their "tendecies" to "misbehave" and "cause trouble" (like Stitch does in this movie), leading to the possibility that the film have also been conceived as a metaphor for domestic family life with the intention of presenting a moral to both child and adult viewers (previously stated).

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Parodies and references

Image:PreStitch.jpgThe teaser trailers for this film parody trailers for other recent Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King (two of these were animated by Sanders). They begin like actual scenes from the movies they parody, until Stitch comes in and disrupts the action. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on the official site.

Social Worker Cobra Bubbles, formerly of the CIA, is obviously one of the mysterious "Men in Black" (of urban legends and a couple of hit movies) who work to prevent an alien takeover of Earth and to persuade humans that aliens do not exist.

Some of the aliens on the Federation spaceship bear resemblances to classic Disney characters, including Piglet and Tigger from the Winnie the Pooh series of films and television programs. Agent Pleakley appears to have been patterned after the walking brooms from the Fantasia sequence, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

In the backgrounds of both Lilo and Nani's rooms are references to Disney movies. Lilo has a stuffed Dumbo doll on her art easel while Nani has a movie poster for Mulan in her room. In addition to this, during the scene where Stitch sees the black and white footage of a spider destroying a city in a shop-window television, the establishing shot includes a restaurant called "Mulan Wok."

Famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and his film Kiki's Delivery Service is given a nod by the appearance of a "Kiki's Coffee House."

At the end of the movie snapshots of the future "family" life of Stitch with Lilo and the others are presented, with each of the still pictures being variations of classic images like famous Norman Rockwell illustrations.

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Setting

Image:Movie lilo and stitch hula.jpg The movie was originally intended to take place in rural Kansas, so that Stitch could interact with other characters while still being isolated from wreaking greater havoc. A decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kauai was an important choice in defining the plot more clearly. No other feature-length animated movie had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before. In Sanders's words:

"Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe—so many fairy tales find their roots there, that to place it in Hawaii was kind of a big leap. But that choice went to color the entire movie, and rewrite the story for us."

While the animation team visited Kauai to research the locale, their tour guide explained the meaning of ohana as it applies to extended families. This concept of ohana became an important part of the movie. DeBlois recalls:

"No matter where we went, our tour guide seemed to know somebody. He was really the one who explained to us the Hawaiian concept of ohana, a sense of family that extends far beyond your immediate relatives. That idea so influenced the story that it became the foundation theme, the thing that causes Stitch to evolve despite what he was created to do, which is destroy."

The island of Kauai had previously been featured in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians and other Westerners lived during the recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty.

To give a brighter image to the film, the studio used watercolors to paint the backgrounds. This technique had not been used since Dumbo in 1941. Due to the production schedules, which have continuously tightened since Dumbo, watercolors were risky; one wrong stroke could ruin a piece, and with some 1,200 backgrounds for this movie, there was no time available to waste. Opaque gouache and acrylic paint, the current industry standards, are much more forgiving than watercolor because they let an artist paint over his mistakes. Using watercolors, the Disney artists had to carefully plan a background before they began working on it so as to avoid mistakes. Sanders and the studio's Backgrounds Department searched for easier ways to get the bright look, but finally decided that traditional watercolors were the proper way to go, and had the Orlando crew trained in the technique.


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Soundtrack

Lilo & Stitch draws largely from Hawaiian culture, and makes excessive use of typical features of Hawaiian music such as the slack-key guitar and hula dancing. Because of Lilo's infatuation with Elvis Presley, some of the songs used in the movie (such as Hound Dog and Suspicious Minds) were also included on the soundtrack. Hawaiian hula teacher and chanter Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu wrote and sang two songs especially for this film, Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride and He Mele No Lilo which he performed together with The Kamehameha Schools Children's Chorus.

The score material was also done by Alan Silvestri.

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Box Office

The film debuted at number two in the box office (behind Minority Report) grossing $35 million in its opening weekend. It went on to gross a total of $140 million making it one of the most successful Disney film openings since The Lion King. The film also was a spark hope in the twilight of a series of early 2000's Disney traditional animation flops (The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire).

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Spin-offs and sequels

Due to its financial success, Disney created a franchise from the Lilo & Stitch film with the Lilo & Stitch television series. Following the release of a direct-to-video feature titled Stitch! The Movie, the Disney Channel began airing Lilo & Stitch: The Series as a weekly series starting in the fall of 2003. A second direct-to-video feature, titled Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch was released in 2005. This movie features a trailer for another spin-off film, Leroy & Stitch. The movie will come out spring 2006 after the remaining episodes of Lilo and Stitch air, and it will wrap up the entire series and movies.

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Trivia

Image:Sora&Stitch.jpg

  • Stitch is featured as a summon character in Kingdom Hearts II, appearing in Hollow Bastion and participates in the war scene.
  • This film was originally scheduled for 2003.
  • Disney Adventures originally ran comics predating the movie, and gave a little information on Lilo's character and Stitch's history.
  • Mertle Edmonds was either mistakenly called Jenny or renamed from Jenny during the film's production.
  • Experiment 625 was exactly in the comics as he was in the series, with the exception the fur color. This may have been because the Lilo and Stitch series was planned, but it is more likely that the character was pulled into the TV series once it was put into production.
  • In the comics, the experiments were completely harmless and beared little/no resemblence to Stitch. This was changed to add a good plot to the series.
  • In comics created after the series, new experiments were added but not numbered to lessen the chance of continuity mistakes.
  • The original plan for the ending of Lilo & Stitch was completely changed due to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The original ending featured Stitch stealing a 747 then joyriding among the office and hotel towers of Honolulu; the revised ending uses a spaceship racing through clouds and through a tight valley with Dr. Jumba (the gradually friendlier mad scientist) at the controls while Stitch steals a full tanker truck and joyrides it down the crater of a volcano. This original un-edited version is set to be included on the upcoming special edition DVD release.
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See also

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References

  • Drawn and Quartered, from Star Bulletin
  • Lilo & Stitch: Collected Stories From the Film's Creators, 2002. Disney Editions. ISBN 0786853824. This book consists of a series of essays by the film's makers, an unusual format for a book in this genre.
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External links

Template:Disney animated featuresde:Lilo & Stitch it:Lilo & Stitch ja:リロ・アンド・スティッチ pt:Lilo & Stitch simple:Lilo & Stitch zh:星际宝贝

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