First Photo From Pixar's COCO Features a Pivotal Moment in the Story
Disney has released the first photo from Pixar's upcoming new animated film Coco. According to EW, it gives us a look at a pivotal moment in the story, which follows a 12-year-old boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) who dreams of becoming an accomplished musician despite his family's ban on music. As the previously released synopsis explains:
Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the stunning and colorful Land of the Dead following a mysterious chain of events. Along the way, he meets charming trickster Hector, and together, they set off on an extraordinary journey to unlock the real story behind Miguel’s family history.
It's explained in the report that his family is an average family of shoemakers that has completely banned music for generations. Why? Because Miguel's great-great-grandmother Imelda was abandoned by her husband to pursue a "life hitting high notes." That doesn't stop Miguel from being inspired by his idol Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt) to live out his dream, and this is where the new image comes into play.
In the shot above, you’re catching Miguel in a beautiful, pivotal moment: He’s just committed a literal grave act and borrowed — just borrowed! — the guitar hanging in De La Cruz’s tomb. Unfortunately, it’s Dia de Muertos, and Miguel’s well-intentioned deed of grave robbery is badly-timed, and he’s about to be inadvertently sent to the Land of the Dead, where he’ll come face to face with the same great-great-relatives who banned music in his family. Just guess how happy they’ll be when they find out how he got there.
Director Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) explained that it's not “a break-out-into-song musical,” but rather, one “set against the backdrop of musical performance.” He also said:
“The day John Lasseter gave the thumbs up for this movie, I immediately felt this huge weight drop onto my shoulders because I knew that we were doing something different than we had ever made at the studio and that for the first time, we were going to have this enormous responsibility to do right by this culture and not lapse into stereotype or cliché.”
He went on to say that they reached out to a lot of on experts on Dia de los Muertos and wanted to involve as many people as they could to make sure that the story they tell is accurate to the holiday.
"This is a story we want to share with the world, but it’s also been particularly important to us that when the Latino community sees the film, that it resonates and it feels like we got it right, and that’s what we’re really trying to do. We all feel the gravity.”
Coco will be released on November 22, 2017