"Look, you're really cute, kid, but I don't know what you're saying! Say the first thing again!"
72. Marlin
Finding Nemo
Anyone who's ever been a child faced with even a modicum of danger knows that a parent can sometimes, well, overreact. They soon become clingy for a short while, watching over you to make sure you don't have some sort of breakdown after a scare. And once in a while, these overreactions will tend to carry for a longer time. Marlin, the neurotic clown fish of "Finding Nemo" is one of those parents.
Losing his wife and all but one (now damaged) egg to a fierce (ooooh) barracuda, Marlin puts his over-protective parent mode into overdrive and constantly fears for his son's life. Nemo, fed up with his father's worrying, goes against Marlin's heed and ends up getting captured. A now frantic Marlin begins tracing him down before quickly running into a blue tang named Dory who lacks a short-term memory. Dory, a cheery, dopey yin to Marlin's tired, fearful yang, offers her help to the exasperated clown fish.
Of course, Marlin's own worrywart lifestyle leads to many of the disasters he must face. His urge to leave a vegan shark meeting gets Dory's nose broken, causing the blood to rouse a reformed great white. His distrust of those around him leads him to ignore what a school of fish told Dory and almost kills the both of them from jellyfish stings.
Marlin, even though he's searching for his son, finds a childlike figure in the forgetful Dory. Constantly telling her what is or isn't a good idea or what she can or can't do. In fact, one of the best scenes in the film (and what could have been the defining moment for him if it wasn't for the actual moment) comes when Marlin realizes he's been treating Dory exactly like his son. Inside a whale, Dory, an expert whale linguist, hears the whale tell them to drop down his throat. An obviously scared Marlin yells as he hangs for dear life, "No, you can't! You think you can do these things but you can't, Nemo!" It's a brilliant scene that changes Marlin for the rest of the movie.
Defining moment: Take a look at the picture above. The death of his kids and wife breaks Marlin so bad, that when he sees one remaining, albeit broken, egg, he gently clutches it in his fin and promises his unborn child that he'll never let anything happen to him. It's two minutes into the film and we bond with a character and gain a deep understanding of what he goes through for the rest of the movie. Pixar is an honest-to-god factory of beauty and the fact that they have us connect with something as odd as a fish is absolutely astonishing.
I was literally tearing up as I was writing that last paragraph.
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