Universal and DreamWorks Animation's Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken brings the massive mythical sea creature into an entirely new light -- one that most people will be more familiar with than living as under the sea. Recasting the creature as a teenager going through life changes as she realizes her destiny -- and her true potential -- Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken plays with conventions of the high-school teen comedy and recasts it into a much larger space -- with the frequently funny and even occasionally beautiful animation bringing it to life.
During an interview with CBR ahead of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken's theatrical debut on Jun. 30, Director Kirk DeMicco broke down what caught his attention about the film's tonal balance of huge kaiju battles and relatable teenage angst, the way the film's animation designs reinforced the characters, and why it was so important to ground the film in emotional truths even as the story becomes bigger and bigger.
CBR: Ruby Gillman is juggling some very different tonal elements -- how did you approach the balance between the film's more fantastical elements and the more grounded, teenager beats?
Kirk DeMicco: We had a beautiful story that we wanted to take care of. This is the first female title lead in DreamWorks history. We wanted Ruby to have an adventure, as strong, powerful, and dangerous as any of the ones we ever threw at any of the guys. At the same time, that teenage spirit of Ruby, her friends and this world -- even with the mother-daughter story through a teenage lens, that was the heartbeat of [the film]. That was what was relatable about it, what grounded it.
It was [really] about pulling her into a world that was not only dangerous but beautiful. Our production designer, Pierre Olivier Vincent, who worked on all the How to Train Your Dragon films, and our head of animation, Carlos F. Puertolas, really wanted to make something that had an epic scale. But again, the approach to Ruby and keeping her true to her teenage-ness, how she would react to all of these situations -- that was all something that we had to dial back and forth to keep those stories alive. It was important to us to give Ruby a journey that was befitting of a movie that she is the lead of.
Speaking of the animation, I did want to talk about the underwater sequences. They look absolutely gorgeous, but there are also a lot of really fun, interesting parts of that film that play with the framing and movement in clever ways.
The framing -- because obviously, the scale difference between [the land and the sea] -- our head of layout camera, Jon Gutman and his team, pre-visualization helped us so much over the years. That's one place with animation where it's really improved. The tools are fast, and the artists are amazing. Trying to keep that speed and the scale and the scope, and at the same time keeping a connection to the characters. It is a story about Ruby.
The other part really was in the animation. A Kraken on land is clumsy, a giant mess. It's funny, but underwater, they're elegant. When you meet GrandMama, Jane Fonda's character, there's an elegance to the way they move. We were very inspired by octopuses and the way they move. I think that that sort of spoke to the spirit of making a movie about three generations of women, who have superpowers, who are protectors of the sea -- giving them that grace, and that sort of beauty that they deserved.
I also loved the fluidity of motion in the animation. Was that baked into the film from the beginning?
There's a fluidity to the design language. We put curves into everything, everything in Oceanside has a curve to it. There are no straight lines, and underwater, it's all organic. The fluidity of it... we had a test by Guillermo Careaga, who was one of our animators who did a test of the giant Kraken. Even early pencil tests, they had this motion. It's part of the DNA in animation, you know? It was great for comedy. But what was nice about this was it was motivated.
[The Gillmans] are cephalopods. We're playing with that. At the beginning, as you get to know the characters, the family is almost defined by their level of agreement or acceptance of that fluidity, right? Mom's the most upright and uptight. Dad's sort of in the middle, Ruby's kind of having to deal with it, and the little boy just lets it go. I think that that was that's really fun when the character's story is told, and even through Ruby's story -- being the girl who's hiding under her hoodie hiding in her room, and then crescendoing through becoming stronger, back straight with shoulders back upright... having those visual cues tell the story of the arc of the character. So yeah, it was really well done by the animators. They're magicians.
What was it about Ruby as a character that really got her hooks into you?
Lana Condor, the way she plays [Ruby] -- she has such an ability to keep her vulnerability, her insecurities, but then find such amazing little comic timing. These turns and twists are along the way in her performance. Honestly, I think the coolest thing about it is that Ruby, throughout every frame in the film, her greatest superpower is her immense capacity for empathy.
She cares about everyone, and it's rare in this day and age to have a hero that just cares about everyone. There's sincerity to it. There's a genuineness to it that is that it makes you root for her, because she wants nothing else than for everyone else to be happy. I think that that's what's so special. It has a lot to do with [what] teenagers can teach us. It's good to listen to teens, sometimes [they can] be role models.
I'd be remiss to not mention the film's other aquatic character, Chelsea -- our resident little mermaid. What excited you about getting to play with that archetypical kind of character, and subvert it with this film -- especially considering how close it came to another version of that kind of character?
[Laughing] We didn't know -- we don't make the release schedule. The one thing we did have, in flipping the script on the Kraken and flipping the script on the mermaid, we were returning the mermaid to where they were historically sirens. And that really is that role. [Chelsea] is deceptive. She lures people in.
That kind of thing was really fun. The other part was, you know, what would make the most stunning impact of the most popular girl coming to school in a high school movie? If it's Mean Girls or something, it's when she turns and flips her hair, you need it to be the girl, right? Of course, the whole world would fall in love with her, and poor Ruby. Chelsea's having her best day while Ruby having her worst day. And that's where you really want two characters to come face to face.
What would you say was the biggest surprise of this experience?
I would say that the most surprising -- when we pulled focus on Ruby, when you really listened to the story? That's where all the energy was. It was all around Ruby and her mom. When Toni Collete stepped in to be the Mom, and then Jane Fonda stepped in, the emotional ballast that they brought to the movie, their performances elevated to a place that I found surprising in the best possible. It was a good surprise, because they had a level of gravitas that they bring, because of who they are as actors, which served as a nice balance. It really holds the movie and grounded it in a way that was surprising.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken comes to theaters Jun. 30