Happy Feet: 'It just ain't penguin'

The film was inspired in part by the BBC’s 1993 nature series about Antarctica (Life in the Freezer) and it sticks close to biological reality about the life cycle of the Emperor penguin, the largest species of penguin and the only one that breeds in winter in Antarctica. Male Emperors do protect their egg, and then the hatched chick, by balancing it on their feet, while the female is at sea, feeding. The winter fast for the males can last up to 134 days, during which they must keep the egg off the ice.

Memphis’s fear when Mumble is late to hatch is that he has doomed the egg, because he dropped it briefly during the long winter. He later blames his son’s behaviour on the same fear. This highly developed sense of psychology is one of the hallmarks of the film. Many of the characters have vulnerabilities, as well as strengths, and a large part of the meaning of the film is concerned with conquering fears and developing these innate talents. The messages may seem at first contradictory – the film endorses both a strong sense that communities need to work (and huddle) together to survive, and that the individual must go his or her own way, standing out from the crowd – but the two ideas are not really exclusive. Happy Feet is partly about being free to express yourself within a community that’s tolerant of difference.

Happy Feet Synopsis

Mumble is the only Emperor penguin chick in Antarctica who can’t sing. His friend Gloria (voiced by Brittany Murphy) has a glorious voice, but Mumble can never hope to attract a mate without a ‘heart song’, the personal tune that all Emperor penguins must have. He knows he can dance better than any penguin alive, but as his father Memphis (voiced by Hugh Jackman) tells him, dancing ‘just ain’t penguin’. Worse, Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) is banished by the elders, who think his dancing is responsible for their shortage of fish. His mother Norma Jean (voiced by Nicole Kidman) is heartbroken.

A dejected Mumble leaves the colony, determined to find out why the fish are disappearing. He has heard a rumour from the large and frightening Boss Skua (voiced by Anthony LaPaglia) that aliens inhabit the earth. He is adopted by five fun-loving Argentinian Adelie penguins, led by the pint-sized Ramon (voiced by Robin Williams), who teach him how to party. A fat Rockhopper penguin called Lovelace (also voiced by Robin Williams), who’s slowly being strangled by a plastic tie around his neck, joins their quest. Mumble will see many amazing things before he returns to his home.

Happy Feet Curator's Notes

Happy Feet is much more than an extension of the winning formula that George Miller discovered with Babe. There are obvious similarities in the overall shape of the story – a pig that wants to herd sheep, a penguin that wants to dance – but Happy Feet leaps much more wholeheartedly into the digital possibilities of computer animation. All of the film, except for a few shots of humans, was generated in computers. Miller sees the growth in digital effects as the greatest change in film technology since the coming of sound and Happy Feet set out to take that technology further than any film had done before.

There were a number of direct inspirations for the film. Miller was amazed and moved by the story of how the Emperor penguins breed, which he saw in David Attenborough’s BBC series Life in the Freezer, made in 1993. He was also impressed by the advances in digital motion capture technology developed by Peter Jackson’s company Weta Digital, for the Lord of the Rings films. These techniques made it possible to conceive of Happy Feet as a musical, where the moves of some of the greatest dancers in the world – notably tapper Savion Glover – could be digitally captured and rendered onto the penguins. At the same time, Miller wanted the film to be ‘photorealistic’, reasoning that the beauty of the Antarctic landscapes did not need augmentation so much as accurate rendition. An expedition led by Antarctic tour guide Howard Whelan spent two months in Antarctica photographing landscapes and icebergs and fauna from every conceivable angle. These images were fed into computers at the digital effects house, Animal Logic in Sydney. The level of detail allowed Miller to simulate camera movement from any angle and with any lighting condition. This made Happy Feet more visually flexible than previous computer animations and more spectacular. The film uses a lot of flying camera techniques to accentuate the grandeur, but the power of the technology also made it possible to animate the penguins at a micro level, to an extraordinary degree. Mumble has six million individual feathers, for instance. One scene of the Emperor colony, according to Miller, shows half a million penguins, all independently animated.

Thematically, the film has a strong environmental message, although it’s never as dark as Babe. Penguins eat fish, just as humans eat pigs, but the fate of a fish never becomes an ethical concern, except in the overexploitation by humans. There is a big difference, of course, in that humans don’t have to eat pigs, while penguins do have to eat fish. The fear of being eaten drives the drama in Babe and dictates the style. The imperative in Happy Feet is still on food production (the shortage of fish for the penguins), but the emotional core of the film is about fitting in, more than feeding. Both films are about the need to pursue one’s talents, to develop one’s creativity – an important theme in Miller’s work, but also the kind of message that Hollywood studios can readily understand. Happy Feet is probably the first international blockbuster digital animation made largely outside the United States, but most of the reported US$100 million budget still came from a major studio (Warner Bros).

The need to appeal to an American audience shows through in both the accents of the characters (American, even when voiced by Australian actors) and the racial diversity of the character types (which have a strong Hispanic and African-American influence). The diversity is not simply an attempt to attract a diverse audience in the US: the film also makes tolerance of diversity its main theme. The Emperor penguins in Happy Feet have lots of different backgrounds and spiritual beliefs, but they won’t survive except in a tight huddle, clinging to each other for warmth.

Notes by Paul Byrnes

Education Notes

This animated clip opens with a colony of Emperor penguins singing as they wait for the winter to end. It shows the arrival of spring in Antarctica with the first rays of sunshine and the breaking of ice as it thaws, followed by the hatching of Emperor penguin chicks and the first dancing steps taken by Mumble when he finally emerges from the egg. Penguin colony members notice Mumble’s dancing and Memphis warns his son about the inadvisability of such un-penguinlike behaviour.

Educational value points

• Memphis’s advice to his son, 'it just ain’t penguin’ introduces a central theme of the film, that of conforming and non-conforming behaviour. Mumble is a misfit in his colony, a tap-dancing penguin with no ability to sing his 'heart song’. Later in the film Mumble is banished from the colony for his non-conformist behaviour. A group of Adelie penguins befriend him and through his adventures with them he finally comes to accept his unique gifts.

• The story is told cinematically through carefully considered camera angles and movement and, although animation, the viewpoint is that of a 'virtual’ camera. From the extreme close-up of the baby penguin’s beak cracking the eggshell, the 'camera’ pulls back, gaining speed as it does so to reveal the penguin world the chick is about to enter. Viewpoints shift to indicate the height and role of the adult penguins compared with the chicks.

• The opening scenes of the clip show how visuals can be used to support a narration, set the scene and provide links between different sections of a film. The narration, which describes the end of winter, is supported by images of icicles and melting glaciers as the Sun begins to light up and warm Antarctica. The cracks on an ice floe and the cracking of the egg are cleverly linked as a way of taking the audience from a general scene to a specific one.

• The clip shows how animators use light to signify life and to change the mood of the film. The scenes of the Emperor penguins in winter are almost completely dark and the mood is sombre. Light comes gradually to Antarctica, the bathing the landscape in a pink hue. Then the shadows disappear, and under a clear blue sky the ice begins to melt. The rushing waters of melting ice cliffs advance towards and wash over the camera, signifying the story’s beginning.

• Extensive research was undertaken in preparation for making Happy Feet. Two film research crews went to Antarctica to observe and photograph the territory. Over 80,000 images provided the reference material needed to re-create the icy landscape in all its moods, with all its textures and colours. The director, George Miller (1945–), hoped that audiences would wish to protect Antarctica having seen its beauty in the film.

• The film attributes human characteristics to the penguins. This is called anthropomorphism and is an ancient storytelling device. The characters Memphis, the father, Mumble’s friend and the newborn chick Gloria are all given names, which humanise them so that an emotional connection is made between the viewer and character. Such use of anthropomorphism often softens stories concerned with human dilemmas and predicaments.

• The crucial role of music and sound in Happy Feet is revealed in the clip. The soulful singing of the colony reflects its attempt to ward off the long night of winter and leads into the coming of spring. Orchestral music then heralds the melting of the ice. Gloria’s entry to the world starts with the amplified sound of a beak tapping. Excited voices together with a musical soundtrack accompany visuals showing the life and activity of the penguin colony.

• The clip gives an accurate picture of the breeding behaviour of Emperor penguins. Male birds group together for warmth while incubating the eggs throughout the cold winter months while the females are away at sea feeding. The eggs are kept warm enclosed in the belly fur of the male and balanced on their feet until they hatch in the spring.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia