Unkrich: First of all, we don’t make movies for kids, we don’t think of it that way. We try to make good movies, period. We know that kids are going to be part of the audience, and we have a responsibility to make it appropriate for them, but we’re not trying to create quote-unquote kids’ entertainment. Yes, I think a lot of kids’ entertainment has gotten more antiseptic over the years, and parents have gotten more and more protective — and for a lot of good reasons — but I think it has been too much.

When you look back at the origins of children’s literature and entertainment, you have stuff like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which are very dark, and they were about teaching kids about the world, and that there are bad things about the world, and gave examples of kids overcoming those bad things. We’re not trying to teach anybody any lessons in this film, we don’t have a message, but we do put characters in situations where they do behave in a very emotionally truthful way, and I think it’s good for kids to see something like that.