Entertainment- "Phineas and Ferb The
Movie : Candace Against the Universe" is a brand-new "Phineas and Ferb" movie premiering this Friday, August 28, on Disney+. - In the new film, Phineas and Ferb must once again travel to outer space to save Candace after she's kidnapped by aliens.
- Insider spoke with "Phineas and Ferb" creators and "Candace Against the Universe" executive producers Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh about the new film.
"Phineas and Ferb," the Emmy-award winning, beloved
Set in the same time as the "Phineas and Ferb" series, the movie is all about Candace, her relationship with her brothers, and her fear that compared to them, there's nothing that's too special about her at all.
After Candace once again fails to bust her brothers, she and Vanessa, Dr. Doofenshmirtz's daughter, are abducted by aliens. In an unlikely turn of events, Phineas and Ferb (along with Buford, Baljeet, and Isabella) team up with Dr. Doofenshmirtz in order to rescue them, blasting off into space with Perry the Platypus sneakily in tow. Meanwhile, Candace has found a surprising paradise — one free of the stress caused by her younger brothers.
Insider spoke with "Phineas and Ferb" co-creators and "Candace Against the Universe" executive producers Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh about Candace getting her due diligence.
'Candace Against the Universe' is a story 'driven by jeopardy'
The decision to focus on Candace in this film stems back to the fact that Candace has always been the driving force of the show's story. While Phineas and Ferb's antics provide a setting for each new episode, Candace is "the only character who ever really sort of has an arc in an 11-minute episode," Povenmire said.
For several weeks in the writers' room, Povenmire said that they were consistently pitching ideas that they had done in previous seasons of the show, which has 222 episodes and seven hour-long specials.
"The stories of 'Phineas and Ferb' were always sort of driven by what spectacular thing Phineas and Ferb were doing on any given day, and they're all driven by fun," Povenmire told Insider. "We had never had a story that was driven by jeopardy. Taking Candace, getting her kidnapped, and having the boys find her and rescue her felt like a new story that we had not explored with them."
The movie features unlikely character team-ups that lead to novel dynamics
That narrative allowed for the creators to break the mold of previous "Phineas and Ferb" formats. Most "Phineas and Ferb" episodes deal with two separate plots — one involving Candace and the boys, and another involving Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Perry.
While the plotlines frequently intersect in serendipitous ways, Phineas and Ferb rarely interact with Doofenshmirtz himself. In one notable instance where they did ("Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the Second Dimension"), it ended with a mind wipe in order to preserve Perry's secret identity.
"[Phineas and Ferb had] met Doofenshmirtz before… but they were just sort of all put in the same place," Povenmire said. "This, they're actually working together towards a goal. What that does to Isabella and Doofenshmirtz's relationship, which they've never had at all — they got to sing a song together, which was bizarre."
"We've never gotten to do a lot of banter between some of those characters, so it was a brand new sandbox," Marsh said.
The combination also provided a unique challenge when it came to one of the series' most iconic characters. With the series' main cast all working together, Perry — the most salient link between Doofenshmirtz and the kids — couldn't appear as Phineas and Ferb's pet or Doofenshmirtz's nemesis, or he would risk exposing his identity to both groups.
"We were like, 'Okay, how can we keep him alive in the series? Well, why don't we make a joke of the fact that this would be the worst possible place for him to be?'" Povenmire said. "To go with both of them, but he's not allowed to be either of those things."
As a result, Perry's role is more action-oriented than before.
"It was really fun to have Perry be this force off-screen, and we specifically designed some set pieces for him to show what a heroic character he is," Povenmire said.
Fundamentally, 'Candace Against the Universe' is about Candace, Phineas, and Ferb's relationship
Even with the novelty of infrequently seen character interactions and an off-planet setting, the film is fundamentally about Candace's relationship with her brothers. While plenty of "Phineas and Ferb's" specials dig deeper into the relationship between Candace and her brothers — "This must be a special episode, [Phineas is] yelling at his sister again," Buford remarks in "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" — the new movie cuts to the core of the siblings' relationship with each other.
Povenmire said that the moments in the show where Candace comes around to Phineas and Ferb's point of view were always the hardest-hitting emotionally for him, citing the finale of "Summer Belongs to You" as an example.
"We always stress to people, Candace doesn't hate her brothers," he told Insider. "She's a fan of her brothers. She knows how special they are. To have her be put in this place where she ends up doing something that she feels has harmed her brothers, and come back from that spot to realize that they've always been there for her — to me, that was like, let's get it really low so we can get it really high, and give people a little bit of a lump in the throat."
"It was Candace's turn," Marsh said.
"Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe" premieres on Disney+ on August 28.
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