Lilo & Stitch

Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 American animated action-adventure comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 21, 2002. The 42nd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, it was written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, and features the voices of Sanders, Daveigh Chase, Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Ving Rhames, Jason Scott Lee, and Kevin Michael Richardson. Lilo & Stitch was the second of three Disney animated features produced primarily at the Florida animation studio located at Walt Disney World's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. The film received positive reviews and was nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which ultimately went to Studio Ghibli's film Spirited Away, which was also distributed in the United States by Walt Disney Pictures.

The 2002 film eventually started a franchise: a direct-to-video sequel, Stitch! The Movie, was released on August 26, 2003. This was followed by a television series, Lilo & Stitch: The Series, which ran from September 20, 2003 to July 29, 2006. A second direct-to-video sequel, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, was released on August 30, 2005. A third direct-to-video sequel, Leroy & Stitch, was released on June 27, 2006 as the nearly conclusion to the TV series. Unlike Lilo & Stitch, its sequel features and series were produced by Walt Disney Television Animation.

Plot
Dr. Jumba Jookiba is arrested and put on trial by the Galactic Federation for "illegal genetic experimentation", as evidenced by his Experiment 626, a living creature which is capable of creating untold chaos. Jumba is imprisoned while Experiment 626 is supposed to be exiled on a desert asteroid. 626 manages to escape in a spaceship and activates the hyperdrive, causing its guidance systems to malfunction and randomly set a course for Earth. The Grand Councilwoman dispatches Jumba and Agent Pleakley, the Council's Earth expert, to the planet to have 626 captured discreetly. 626 lands on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, but is knocked unconscious by a passing truck and taken to an animal shelter.

On Kauai, Nani has been struggling to take care of her rambunctious younger sister, Lilo. A social worker named Cobra Bubbles expresses increasing concern that Nani has not been able to take adequate care of Lilo. Seeking a change, Nani decides that she will allow Lilo to adopt a dog and they go to the animal shelter, where Lilo immediately takes a keen interest in Experiment 626, who is impersonating a dog in order to escape. Lilo names 626 "Stitch" and shows him around the island. As Nani attempts to find a good job, Lilo tries educating Stitch about Elvis Presley, whom she calls a "model citizen". Despite this, however, Stitch's antics, including foiling Jumba and Pleakley's attempts to capture him, ruin Nani's chances of getting a job every time.

David, a friend of Nani's, invites Nani and Lilo to take a break and enjoy a day of surfing. While Nani, Lilo, and Stitch ride on a huge wave, Jumba makes one final effort to capture Stitch from underwater, causing Nani to wipe out, and Stitch unintentionally pulls Lilo down with him. Although everyone gets safely to shore, Cobra witnesses this unfortunate event, telling Nani that although she means well, Lilo's best interests mean she has to be placed with a foster family. After seeing how much trouble he has caused, Stitch leaves. Meanwhile, the Councilwoman relieves Jumba and Pleakley of their assignment, freeing Jumba to pursue Stitch using less covert methods.

The next morning, David tells Nani of a job opportunity, which Nani rushes to pursue. Stitch, hiding in the nearby woods, encounters Jumba, who chases Stitch back to Lilo's house. The two fight, destroying the house in the process as Nani returns and Cobra arrives in his attempt to collect Lilo and take her away. As Nani and Cobra argue, Lilo runs away and encounters Stitch, who reveals his true form just moments before they are captured by Captain Gantu, who has been given the task of recovering Stitch after Jumba and Pleakley are unable to do so. Stitch manages to escape before the ship takes off and is confronted by Nani. Before he tries to explain everything, Jumba and Pleakley capture Stitch themselves. Nani demands they had better rescue Lilo, although Jumba insists they only came for Stitch. Though Nani breaks down over losing her sister, Stitch manages to tell Nani about ohana, a term for "family" he learned from Lilo, in order to convince Jumba to help rescue Lilo. As Jumba, Pleakley and Nani give chase in Jumba's spaceship, Stitch is able to drive a tanker truck full of fuel into a lava flow and use the exploding tank to launch himself into Gantu's cockpit, distracting Gantu enough to crash-land the ship and rescue Lilo.

Back on land, the Grand Councilwoman appears and is about to take Stitch into custody and retire Gantu, but when Stitch explains that he has found a family in Nani and Lilo, she discovers that he has become a civilized creature; Lilo also shows her the adoption paper, declaring she owns Stitch and that taking Stitch would be theft. The Councilwoman, before leaving, decrees that Stitch will be exiled on Earth and entrusted into the care of Lilo and Nani, and asks Cobra, whom the Councilwoman seems to have met before, to keep an eye on them. Together, they rebuild the house, and Jumba and Pleakley become members of Lilo and Stitch's family as well.

Cast

 * Christopher Michael Sanders as Stitch
 * Daveigh Chase as Lilo Pelekai
 * Tia Carrere as Nani Pelekai
 * David Ogden Stiers as Dr. Jumba Jookiba
 * Kevin McDonald as Agent Pleakley
 * Ving Rhames as Cobra Bubbles
 * Kevin Michael Richardson as Captain Gantu
 * Zoe Caldwell as Grand Councilwoman
 * Jason Scott Lee as David Kawena
 * Amy Hill as Mrs. Hasagawa
 * Susan Hegarty as Rescue Lady

Development
Production of Lilo & Stitch began with then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner deciding that, in the wake of a number of high-profile and large-budget Disney animated features during the mid-1990s, the studio might try its hand at a smaller and less expensive film. The idea was inspired by the production of Dumbo, an economically-made 1941 Walt Disney film produced in the wake of the more expensive Pinocchio and Fantasia. Chris Sanders, a head storyboard artist at Disney Feature Animation, was approached to pitch an idea. Sanders had created the character of Stitch in 1985 for an unsuccessful children's book pitch, and developed a treatment for an animated feature featuring the character. The story line required a remote, non-urban location, so the movie was originally intended to take place in Kansas. Sanders' 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 animated feature had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before. In Sanders' words:

"Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe — 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."

Writing
Dean DeBlois, who had co-written Mulan (1998) with Sanders, was brought on to co-write and co-direct Lilo & Stitch, while Disney executive Clark Spencer was assigned to produce. Unlike several previous and concurrent Disney Feature Animation productions, the Lilo & Stitch pre-production team remained relatively small and isolated from upper management until the film went into full production. The character and set designs were based upon Chris Sanders' personal artistic style.

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 those from the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians lived during the then-recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty. The actors voicing the film's young adults Nani and David, Tia Carrere, a native of Honolulu, and Jason Scott Lee, who was raised in Hawaii, assisted with rewriting the Hawaiian characters' dialogue in the proper colloquial dialect and adding Hawaiian slang.

One innovative and unique aspect of the film was its strong focus on the relationship between two sisters, Lilo and Nani. Making the relationship between sisters into a major plot element is very rare in American animated films.

Design and animation
In a deviation from several decades' worth of Disney features, Sanders and DeBlois chose to use watercolor painted backgrounds for Lilo & Stitch, as opposed to the traditional gouache technique. While watercolors had been used for the early Disney animated shorts, as well as the early Disney features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Dumbo (1941), the technique had been largely abandoned by the mid-1940s in favor of less complicated media such as gouache. Sanders preferred that watercolors be used for Lilo to evoke both the bright look of a storybook and the art direction of Dumbo, requiring the background artists to be trained in working with the medium. The character designs were based around Sanders' personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style. The film's extraterrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs.

Marketing
Teaser trailers for this film parody trailers for other Disney films (two of these were animated by Sanders) from recent years: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Lion King. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on Disney's official site as well as on the film's respective DVD release. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. The trailers also include the AC/DC song track "Back in Black."

In the United Kingdom, Lilo & Stitch trailers and TV ads featured a cover of Elvis' song "Suspicious Minds", performed by Gareth Gates, who became famous on the UK TV program Pop Idol.

As a promotional campaign, comics of Lilo & Stitch were run in Disney Adventures prior to the film's release. The comics detailed events leading up to the film for both title characters, including the creation and escape of Stitch. These events were later contradicted by the sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch rendering the comics non-canonical, but is notable to the series as introducing Experiment 625, Reuben, who was made a main character in the subsequent movies and TV series.

The comic series has been released as a collective volume titled Comic Zone Volume 1: Lilo & Stitch.

However, the online versions and current international trailers featured the song "Tutti Frutti" performed by Little Richard replacing Hound Dog.

Deleted scenes
Several major elements of the film changed during production. Originally, Stitch was the leader of an intergalactic gang, and Jumba was one of his former cronies sent after Stitch by the Intergalactic Council to capture him. Test audience response to early versions of the film resulted in the change of Stitch and Jumba's relationship to that of creation and creator, respectively.

The biggest change came to the film's third act, which had Stitch, Nani, Jumba and Pleakley hijacking a Boeing 747 jet from Lihue Airport and flying it through downtown Honolulu to save Lilo. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, this sequence was revised so that Stitch instead flew a spaceship through the mountains of Kauai. This revision was done primarily by replacing the CGI model of the 747 with that of Jumba's spaceship, with only a few shots in the sequence fully re-animated.

Another scene that was deleted was one of Lilo's attempts to make Stitch into a model citizen by notifying tourists on the beach about the tsunami warning sirens, which she knows are being tested that day.

The original version of Jumba attacking Stitch in Lilo's home was found to be too violent by test audiences, and was revised to make it more comedic.

There was also a scene in which Lilo introduces Stitch to Pudge the fish, which ultimately leads to the fish's death. Lilo then takes Pudge's body to the same graveyard where her parents were buried, and thus Stitch learns the consequences of his actions and gains a better understanding of mortality.

There was a scene where Nani brings Lilo pizza and then Lilo tells herself a bedtime story about a friendly and stinky bear named Toaster. This was replaced with the scene where Lilo and Nani talk about being family because test audiences had mistaken Nani for Lilo's mother.

Box office
The film opened in second place with $35.3 million in its first weekend, less than $500,000 behind the film Minority Report. In its second week it fell to third, again behind the Steven Spielberg film coming in second. The film earned $145.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $127.3 million internationally, totaling $273.1 million globally.

Critical reception
Lilo & Stitch received highly positive reviews from critics. The film's success at the box office and on home video formats led to a Lilo & Stitch franchise, with three direct-to-video sequels and a television series spanning two seasons. The film has received 145 critical reviews on the site Rotten Tomatoes, giving it a positive total rating of 86%. The site's consensus reads "Edgier than traditional Disney fare, Lilo and Stitch explores issues of family while providing a fun and charming story." The film has also earned a score of 73 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and wrote "It's one of the most charming feature-length cartoons of recent years—funny, sassy, startling, original and with six songs by Elvis".

Peter M. Nichols states that through the character of Nani and her struggles, the film appeals to older children better than such attempts by the studio to do so as The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.

Home video
The film was released on VHS and DVD on December 3, 2002. In 2003, a 2-disc DVD version was announced alongside special edition DVDs of Alice in Wonderland and Pocahontas, which were released in 2004 and 2005 respectively. A 2-disc special edition DVD of Lilo & Stitch was released in the UK on August 22, 2005, alongside the UK release of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, but a release in the US suffered from continuous delays.

On March 24, 2009, Disney re-released the DVD, which they dubbed a 2-Disc Big Wave Edition. This set includes most of the bonus features from the original DVD and adds an audio commentary, a two-hour making-of documentary, more deleted scenes including the original climax with the plane hijacking, a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, and some games.

The film was released on Blu-ray on June 11, 2013 in a 2-Movie Collection with Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch.

Soundtrack
Lilo & Stitch: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack is the soundtrack to Disney's 2002, animated feature Lilo & Stitch. It contains two original songs from the film written by Mark Kealiʻi Hoʻomalu and Alan Silvestri (the film composer), and performed by Kealiʻi Hoʻomalu and the Kamehameha Schools children's chorus. Also contains five songs by American singer Elvis Presley, and two of his songs re-recorded by American singer Wynonna ("Burning Love"), British singer Gareth Gates ("Suspicious Minds", UK release) and Swedish group A*Teens ("Can't Help Falling in Love"). It was released by Walt Disney Records on June 11, 2002 on Audio CD and Compact Cassette.

Sequels
On August 26, 2003, Disney released a direct-to-video sequel, Stitch! The Movie, which served as the pilot to a TV series titled Lilo & Stitch: The Series. This series ran for 65 episodes between September 20, 2003 and July 29, 2006. The series carried on where the film left off and charted Lilo's efforts to capture and re-home Jumba's remaining experiments. This series almost ended with TV movie Leroy & Stitch, which was released on June 27, 2006.

On August 30, 2005, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, the "official" direct-to-video sequel to the film, was released. In this film (set between the first and second films), Stitch has a glitch because his molecules were never fully charged (this is contrary to an alternate opening, "Stitch's trial", which was seen on the DVD release of Lilo & Stitch). Lilo wants to win the May Day hula contest like her Mom did in the 1970s, but Stitch continues to have outbursts. Lilo gets increasingly mad at Stitch as his glitch causes more problems for her and ruins her chances of winning the competition. She thinks Stitch is not cooperating properly, until she finds out that Stitch is dying.

In March 2008, Disney announced a reimagined version of Lilo & Stitch, titled Stitch!, aimed at the Japanese market. The show, which began in October 2008, features a Japanese girl named Yuna (formerly referred to as Hanako) in place of Lilo, and is set on a fictional island in Okinawa Prefecture instead of Hawaii. The series is produced by the Japanese animation house Madhouse LTD.

Video games
There were two official games released to coincide with the film, Disney's Lilo & Stitch for the PlayStation and Disney's Stitch: Experiment 626 for the PlayStation 2. Stitch is also a summonable character in Kingdom Hearts II and appears along with his homeworld in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep for the PlayStation Portable. Lilo and Stitch both appear in the Nintendo 3DS game Disney Magical World. Stitch is also a playable character in Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, and was also a meet and greet character in Kinect: Disneyland Adventures.