Lilo & Stitch

Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on June 21, 2002. The film was written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, and was the second of three Disney animated features produced primarily at its animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. The film was rated PG for mild sci-fi action.

Plot
An extraterrestrial mad scientist named 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 (voiced by Chris Sanders): a cute, little, blue alien who is deceptively strong, fast, intelligent, destructive and indestructible, resembles a cross between a bipedal shark, a chimpanzee and a mutant koala with huge bat-like ears, huge eyes, a Pac-Man-like mouth full of sharp Gremlin-like teeth, four arms, two insect-like antennae on his head and three porcupine-like spines that run down his back, behaves like a Tasmanian Devil and moves like a cross between a spider and a crab.

On his way to a penal colony, 626 escapes and crash lands on the small Hawaiian island of Kauai, on Earth. Masquerading as a dog (but looking more like a koala), 626 is adopted by a little girl named Lilo Pelekai (voiced by Daveigh Chase) who is living with her 19/20 year-old 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, whom she names "Stitch." She treasures a doll (which she made herself) named Scrump and a photo of her family.

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

Making matters even more difficult for Lilo and Nani are Jumba Jookiba and Galactic Agent Pleakley (voiced by Kevin McDonald) attempts to capture Stitch. After their failure and subsequent dismissal, a shark-like alien named Captain Gantu (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) is assigned to capture Stitch. After Captain Gantu captures Lilo by accident, Jumba and Pleakey manages to capture Stitch, but they are stopped by Nani after she finds out that Stitch shows emotions of o'hana, which means family and that nobody gets left behind or forgotten. She pleads Jumba to save Lilo from Gantu, and he reluctantly does so.

Eventually, Stitch runs rings around Gantu, laughing all the way, and managed to save Lilo. The Grand Councilwoman appears on the beach and would arrest Stitch, but becomes reluctant to do so when she sees that he has reformed into a civilized creature. Lilo, prodded by Cobra Bubbles, presents her certificate of adoption which makes her Stitch's owner, causing the Grand Councilwoman to release the little creature. Stitch's sentence to life in exile provides a loophole; he is now in Lilo and Nani's care.

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 and Nani'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.

Production and promotion
Disney Adventures originally ran comics predating the movie, and gave a little information on Lilo's character and Stitch's history. However, some differences exist. Myrtle 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 subsequent television series, with the exception of the fur color.

In the comics, the experiments were completely harmless and bore little/no resemblance to Stitch. In comics created after the series, new experiments were added but not numbered to lessen the chance of continuity mistakes. Check to see the List of Experiments

Some of the film's promotional posters were lenticular. One image had Stitch in his dog form (that is, with two arms for a total of four limbs), the other had Stitch in his experiment form (that is, with four arms for a total of six limbs).

Lilo & Stitch is one of the few animated feature films to use watercolor paintings for its backgrounds, and the first Disney film to use them since Dumbo in 1941. There is even a poster for Dumbo in a character's room as a reference to this. 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.

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 rides it down the crater of a volcano. This original un-edited version is set to be included on the upcoming special edition DVD release.

Having endured a pair of increasingly large box office disappointments with its previous films (The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire) Disney decided to pull out all the stops in advertising Lilo and Stitch, by drawing on its stable of beloved characters from past hit films. For the first time, characters from prior films were featured prominently in ads and even on the movie poster, even though none of them appear in the film. This approach not only helped promote the new movie, it also reminded viewers of Disney's past successes, at a time when audiences and insiders were beginning to lose faith in the studio.

Parodies, references and trivia
The 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 with 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 Disney's official site. The Little Mermaid trailer was the most difficult to parody, as it wasn't animated in the CAPS system and had to be cleaned up by hand. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. Each trailer ended with the original characters telling Stitch to "Get your own movie."


 * 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.


 * When Lilo first meets Cobra Bubbles, she looks at his imposing stature and asks him if he's ever killed anyone. Cobra deflects the question by muttering in response, "We're getting off the subject." Cobra Bubbles was voiced by Ving Rhames, who famously played ruthless mob boss Marcellus Wallace in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, where he ordered the death of (or was directly involved in the killing of) many characters.


 * 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, for instance, appears to have been patterned after the walking brooms from the Fantasia sequence, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Others resemble Earth animals, such as the Grand Councilwoman, who resembles a kind of Hadrosaur, Stitch's "warden", who looks like a hammerhead shark, an unnamed crew member with a Y-shaped horn resembling that of a prehistoric Brontotherium, and guards who resemble Deinonychus.


 * When the Grand Councilwoman finds out that most of Earth is covered in water, she says that Stitch won't survive in water as "his molecular density is too great." This is basically a scientific way of saying that Stitch is heavy enough that he'll sink in water.


 * Items in the backgrounds of both Lilo and Nani's room reference other 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 these items, a restaurant called "Mulan Wok" can be seen during the scene where Stitch sees "Earth vs. the Spider" in a shop-window television. The directors had worked on Mulan.


 * Famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's film Kiki's Delivery Service is given a nod by the appearance of "Kiki's Coffee House". Another reference to Miyazaki's work is the scene following Stitch's crash-landing on Earth, which is reminiscent of the bus stop scene from My Neighbor Totoro.


 * At the end of the movie features snapshots of the future "family" life of Stitch with Lilo and the others, each of them variations of classic images like famous Norman Rockwell illustrations.


 * Hawaii-born cast members Jason Scott Lee and Tia Carrere helped the writers and dialogue and accents.


 * Chris Sanders, one of the directors of the film, also served as co-screenwriter, co-character designer, and provided the voice of Stitch, a character he first created in 1985.


 * Earth is referred as being in Section 17, Area "51" in the Galactic charts, one of several references to Area 51.


 * When Lilo and Stitch walk past the store selling calendars with images from around the world, the "Orlando" calendar has a picture of the Magic Kingdom.


 * There are several "hidden Mickeys" in the movie - one can be seen in the Grand Council scene, on Jumba's platform. Another can be seen as a logo on the shorts of one of Lilo's photographic subjects on the wall of her room.


 * Near the beginning of the film, during the trial, Stitch is asked by the council woman to provide some sign that he understands what's going on. He responds by licking the inside of his glass cage. The saliva trail is in the famous "D" shape in the Walt Disney logo.


 * The sign on Lilo's door is a Hawaiian word loosely translated as "keep out".


 * All of the license plates in the film (VW, Nani's car, the fire engine, and Cobra Bubbles' car) are A113, the same as the code found on Mrs. Davis's plate number in Toy Story, Mater's plate number in Cars, and also used in many other Disney and Pixar films. It is a reference to a room number at California Institute of the Arts, where many of the animators at those two companies received their educations.


 * The two hover car presents given to Lilo and Stitch make the same sounds as the flying cars in "The Jetsons".


 * According to Stitch's dog license at the shelter, the adoption official is "Susan Hegarty", the name of the actress who voiced the character. Also, according to the license, Lilo and Nani's last name is "Pelekai".


 * The words on Stitch's dog license at the shelter are part of a resolution thanking people for their support during the making of the movie. The words are difficult to make out, but the last part reads, "as well as our partners at Disney MGM Studios for their participation and support during the making of Lilo and Stitch." You can see a close-up of the end of the last few lines in the scene where "Susan" stamps the Seal on the form.


 * In one scene, a pink jeep car can briefly be seen in the lower left corner of the screen. This is a reference to Elvis' movie Blue Hawaii, in which he drove such a car.


 * The live action monster footage that Stitch watches on television is from Earth vs the Spider.


 * The scene where Stitch is walking down a path after leaving Lilo is taken from the Disney film version of The Ugly Duckling. The illustrations in Lilo's storybook are also based on scenes from that film.


 * Near the end, the tracking image Captain Gantu uses to track the location of Stitch on Hawaii is the icon for the Disney theme park in Florida, EPCOT Center - Spaceship Earth.


 * The name "Lilo" means "Generous One" and its origin is Hawaiian. It can also be interpreted as "Lost" and this would give the song title "He Mele No Lilo" a loose translation as "Lullaby of the Lost".


 * The name Nani means "beautiful" in Hawaiian.


 * Running Gag: Every time Pleakley looks at or attempts to show someone information about Earth, the device used is a "Viewmaster". Viewmasters create the illusion that the viewer is looking at a three-dimensional image that's actually created by each eye looking at a slightly different pictures. Its basic premise is that the person looking in it has two eyes to create the effect, but Pleakley is a one-eyed creature and therefore would not see the 3-D effects of the Viewmaster. Adding to the gag is when he hands the ViewMaster to Dr. Jumba - a one-eyed alien handing a four-eyed alien a viewing device intended for two-eyed humans.


 * When Stitch awakes at the dog pound, there are a number of dogs shaking in fear in the corner of his cell. They are all the same breed of dogs that Lady encounters in her trip to the dog pound in Lady and the Tramp (1955).


 * The grocery store Nani tries to get a job at is owned by a "Mrs. Hasegawa", a reference to the famous "Hasegawa's General Store" in the town of Hana on Maui.


 * After Stitch breaks the water gun apart, Cobra is shown looking on disappointed, as a crowd of people run by in terror. The last two people to run by are cartoon versions of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. Chris is the individual with blond hair and sunglasses. Dean is the big man with a beard.


 * In the subtitles for the Chinese version, a line spoken by Stitch in his alien language is translated into Chinese despite it having no corresponding English meaning. The reason for this is thought to be because Stitch's line sounded a lot like Ni Qu De (Go to your place) an offensive Chinese phrase used to tell somebody to go away. The actual Chinese translation was a lot more family-friendly. This line is a placed at an earlier point than the first understandable dialog spoken by Stitch in the English version of the film.


 * The voice of Stitch was a difficult one to dub for other languages and that's why Dutch voice artist Bob van der Houven does the voice of Stitch in the Dutch, German, Flemish and Italian version of the film.


 * The original version of the flying chase scene at the end movie included the space craft flying through Honolulu, crashing into buildings. The sequence was already animated with voices added early in production, but the whole chase was cut following the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001. The chase had to be re-written and drawn again, and the second version of the chase was is what is seen in the theatrical version.


 * Producer Clark Spencer has revealed the story was originally placed in an isolated town in Kansas rather than on Kauai.


 * During the ending credits the camera scans across various "photographs" of the characters. One of them is a "remake" of Norman Rockwell's 'Freedom from Want' Thanksgiving Day painting with Cobra as the grandfather and Stitch as the grandmother.


 * When Pleakley dresses in a female disguise it is an obvious reference to Kevin McDonald's days on Kids in the Hall.


 * When Jumba is ripping up the newspaper about him you can see pictures of what look like past experiments next to the bed 1 resembled Sprout (509), 1 resembled Woops (600) and one looked like a white loc ness monster it is a possible reference to how Disney Adventures Magazine showed several experiments that are Stitch's predecessor's so that could be to as why.


 * When the film was released it was praised as an accurate portrayal of Hawaii, its people and their lives, not only from the dialogue using accurate Hawaiian slang (using advice from Jason Scott Lee and Tia Carrere), but also from the realistic animation of the characters (i.e., realistic body shapes, noses, skin tones, etc.) and other touches in the film.


 * Kevin McDonald also played another alien. Almighty Tallest Purple from Nickelodeon's Invader Zim which makes a similarity.

Settings
Lilo and Stitch is the sixth Disney animated feature to take place in the present day, following Oliver & Company. 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' words:
 * "Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe&mdash;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 original Star Wars 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.

Jason Scott Lee, who has Hawaiian ethnicity, co-wrote the dialogues for his character.

Soundtrack
Lilo & Stitch draws largely from Hawaiian culture and makes extensive 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, as well as covers of Presley's "Burning Love" performed by Wynonna and "Can't Help Falling in Love" performed by Swedish pop group A-Teens, which were both played over the film's closing credits. 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 composed by Randy Newman. The soundtrack does not include AC/DC's "Back in Black", which was used in some trailers for the film.

Box office, spin-offs and sequels
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 of hope in the twilight of a series of early 2000s Disney traditional animation flops (The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire).

Due to its financial success, Disney created a franchise from the Lilo & Stitch film. 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 autumn 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 called Leroy & Stitch, which was first released in June 2006. Stitch's Great Escape!, a Disney amusement park attraction was made as an overhaul of a previous attraction. Tokyo Disneyland had an event in 2006 called "Find Stitch".

Stitch is also featured as a summon character in Kingdom Hearts II, appearing in Hollow Bastion. He appears in a lab, as per his being an experiment. He causes Sora to enter the computer, and afterwards becomes a summon. A short while later, he takes part of the war scene, helping the heroes by fighting the Heartless with a ray gun.