One Of The Most Bonkers Scenes In Pixar’s Hoppers Was Almost Much Wilder [Exclusive] – SlashFilm

This article contains lizard, lizard, lizard … err … major spoilers for “Hoppers.”

In Daniel Chong’s new animated film “Hoppers,” a teenage conservationist named Mabel (Piper Curda) uses a new miracle “Avatar”-like technology to shunt her consciousness into a lifelike robotic beaver. As a beaver, she can communicate with other animals and aims to find another beaver to move back into a specific glade on the brink of being paved over, but will be saved if a beaver builds a dam there. Mabel finds other beavers to converse with, and eventually ingratiates herself into the animal world, making friends and learning the rules of the biome. 

Surprisingly, Mabel finds that animals have royal rulers. The mammals, for instance, are ruled by a laidback beaver named King George (Bobby Moynihan) who organizes his subjects under practical rules of self-preservation, and who wears a cute little crown. Mabel eventually meets the kings/queens of the birds, the amphibians, the insects, and the underwater creatures.

There is a dramatic plot development when Mabel meets the collected animal royals, a development I daren’t spoil. Needless to say, Mabel’s actions incur the wrath of the entire animal kingdom, forcing the kings and queens to contact their own animal assassin — an apex predator — to hunt down and kill another character. This leads to an absurd scene wherein a flock of seagulls gathers together, reaches into the ocean, and extracts a great white shark. They fling the shark at a passing car. It’s the most amusingly weird scene in the movie. 

/Film’s own Bill Bria recently spoke with Daniel Chong, and he revealed that the shark scene, while pretty crazy, was once intended to be a lot more elaborate. Chong revealed that the shark scene was once meant to star dozens of apex predators. 

The idea that the animal world often enlists predators to take out hits on their enemies is a pretty amusing thought, and the appearance of the shark assassin halfway through the film marks a glorious turning point in “Hoppers.” It becomes weirder than expected, a development that filmgoers will likely welcome. Daniel Chong himself compared the conceit to another notable spy film, acknowledging that, yes, this is all very strange. 

He also said that he and his creative team initially wanted the apex predators to be numerous. But after considering the amount of animation that would take — and the sheer number of man-hours required to pull off such a feat — he decided to winnow it down to the one. In his words: 

“I think what we initially were thinking is, ‘Oh, we’re doing a kind of action spy thriller, and this is like when the guy’s on the run and then the assassins get called.’ It’s like in ‘Bourne Identity’ or something like that. We used to have a version where they called a bunch of apex predators, and it was, like, the signal went out and then they called everybody that was a killer animal. But ultimately it was getting too complicated and too big. So we just [determined] which is the most scary one and it turned out to be Diane. So, that’s how that came about.” 

The shark’s name is Diane, and she was voiced by Vanessa Bayer. Diane is scary, as she is a great white shark, but she is also very polite, adding a surreal softness to the shark attack scenes. 

“Hoppers” is currently playing in theaters everywhere.