Sanjay's Super Team | |
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Film poster featuring (on the bottom) Sanjay and with (from left to right) Durga, Vishnu and Hanuman
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Directed by | Sanjay Patel |
Produced by | Nicole Paradis Grindle |
Written by | Sanjay Patel |
Music by | Mychael Danna |
Edited by | Kevin Rose-Williams |
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Distributed by | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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7 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Sanjay's Super Team is a computer-animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Written and directed by Sanjay Patel, and based on his childhood, it premiered on June 15, 2015 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, and accompanied the theatrical release of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur on November 25, 2015.
Inspired by Patel's own childhood when he felt conflicted by the modern world and the Hindu traditions of his family, Sanjay's Super Team follows the daydream of a young Indian boy, bored with his father's religious meditation, who imagines Hindu gods as superheroes.
An intertitle card at the start of the short states that it is based on a (mostly) true story.
A young boy, Sanjay, is watching his favorite superhero cartoon, Super Team, while his father is trying to meditate at a small Hindu shrine in the same room at home. Each is annoyed by the other's activity until Sanjay's father shuts off the television, confiscates his son's Super Team action figure, and makes him participate in prayer. Sanjay retrieves the toy while his father is distracted, but accidentally sets its cape on fire from the shrine's oil lamp. While putting out the cape, he extinguishes the lamp as well and is transported to a temple with three stone statues. Suddenly, Ravana appears and begins to steal the statues' weapons, shattering them in the process. Sanjay breaks the light-up mechanism in his toy and uses it to light the giant lamp in the middle of the room, bringing the statues to life as the gods Vishnu, Durga, and Hanuman. The gods begin to fend off Ravana's attacks and ring their bells to drive him back, but he retaliates. Sanjay recognizes the giant lamp as an upside-down bell and breaks his toy on it to ring it aloud, calming Ravana so that he departs the temple. Sanjay receives a new toy from Vishnu as well as his blessing, then finds himself back in the real world, the cape on his action figure unburnt. His father allows him to continue watching Super Team, and Sanjay surprises him with a drawing that shows the gods watching over the cartoon heroes.