Turning Red is set in 2002, and as such, it has a bunch of references to pop culture and more from that era, including a Twilight Easter egg that shows why the story is so good. Pixar continues to be a powerhouse in the world of animation and keeps bringing family-friendly stories with a heartwarming message at its core. Pixar also continues treating its audience to at least one movie per year, and in 2022 it’s bringing two very different stories, beginning with Turning Red, directed by Domee Shi (writer and director of fan-favorite Pixar short Bao).
Set in Toronto, Canada, Turning Red introduces viewers to Meilin “Mei” Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a dorky 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who one day discovers that, whenever she gets too excited or stressed, she turns into a giant red panda, but she can turn back if she becomes calm and learns to control her emotions. This “quirk” turns out to be linked to her ancestors, who have a shared history with the species as a family curse, but the curse can be contained by performing a special ritual on one specific night – unfortunately for Mei, that night coincides with a concert of her favorite boy band, 4*Town. If that wasn’t enough, Mei also has to deal with everything puberty throws her way, along with her overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh).
Turning Red is different from other Pixar movies in different ways – from its animation style to the topics it addresses, which has made it a divisive movie, but it has been mostly well-received by critics and viewers. Some of the strengths of Turning Red are its story, approach to puberty and life as a teenage girl, and its many fun references to pop culture from the early 2000s. Among those is a Twilight reference in the shape of the book Mei’s friend, Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), carries around, titled Nightfall and with the exact same font, color palette, and characters on the cover as the Twilight saga, and this fun Easter egg further proves why Turning Red is so good, as it shows how well the writers understood its characters and its target audience.
Mei and her friends Priya, Miriam (Ava Morse), and Abby (Hyein Park) unapologetically enjoy the things that pre-teens/teenage girls are often made fun of in movies and TV shows: boy bands like 4*Town, fan-art/fanfiction (this through their fantasies about 4*Town and also through Mei’s drawings), and stories like the Twilight saga/Nightfall, which are aimed at this young audience. Through an Easter egg as seemingly simple as Priya reading Pixar’s version of Twilight, Turning Red shows that it understands its characters, what they’re going through, and what they like and it actually respects it. Even when it’s revealed that Tyler (Tristan Allerick), who initially picked on Mei, is also a 4*Town fan, instead of making fun of him, the girls take him in as a friend, and there’s no need to mock what each of them likes – whether boybands, skateboards, or stories about vampires and werewolves.
Turning Red has been labeled as “unrelatable” by some due to how straightforward it is about puberty and menstruation and for having a 13-year-old girl as the lead, but these, along with those subtle details like Nightfall, are what make it a great movie and exactly what Pixar needed. Turning Red respecting the things that teenage girls care about and that in media are often mocked and rudely labeled as “for teenage girls” is quite refreshing, and it does more good than it might seem.
