“Once we cast LaKeith, there was something that changed about what I personally needed from the ending of the movie,” Simien tells. “Frankly, I didn’t want to see a Black man have a tragic end in a movie like this. I wanted him to have hope at the end of the movie, and a tragic end for a Black character would’ve been really hard to swallow, at least for me right now.”
Test screenings are a key step in Disney’s filmmaking process since they strive to make films that appeal to everyone. And while not every filmmaker is fond of testing, Simien values test audience feedback a great deal. There’s definitely a lot of Easter eggs in the movie, and a fun one that I honestly forgot that we had even put in the movie until I started seeing it again with audiences was the line partitions. You see the actual gargoyles outside of the ride as you’re queuing to get in. So there’s a moment where that’s kind of featured, but we tried to find a space for everything that truly made sense for the story.
So you had a very tricky task in this movie, as you had to have Ben grieve his loss, while Gabbie and Travis grieved their own loss. But you also had to open the door to a new family potentially being formed, without going too far until their losses are fully processed. Was this quite a balancing act?
You see a guy in Ben who really doesn’t want to open himself up again. There’s this quote about grief, and I don’t remember exactly who said it, but it talks about the mistake people make when they’re going through a grieving process. People say, “I’m never gonna open myself up again to love. I’m just going to hold really tight and build a statue around the parts of me that feel really vulnerable,” and I think that’s where LaKeith’s character is at the top of the movie.
The epilogue then allowed you to hint even more at a possible future for Ben, Gabbie and Travis. Was that a late addition?
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