The Ending of Dog Man, Explained by Director Peter Hastings (EXLCUSIVE)
The writer/director of Dog Man explains why the last few minutes still bring tears to his eyes.
**SPOILER WARNING! The following contains major spoilers for Dog Man!**
If you know any grade school kids, there's a good chance you've heard of author and illustrator Dav Pilkey's wildly popular Dog Man books. Grade school readers are simply mad about the series, and have made them bestsellers for a decade.
Still ongoing, the graphic novels debuted in 2016, and were "created" by Pilkey's Captain Underpants characters, George Beard and Harold Hutchins. Their "handmade" comics tell the adventures of Dog Man, a crime-fighting, half man/half canine that came to be after Officer Knight and his loyal pooch, Greg, were victims of a freak accident. Doctors fused together their bodies and a fuzzy "suppa hero" was born.
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Now, the much-anticipated Dog Man feature film from DreamWorks Animation is arriving in theaters (get tickets here). Written and directed by Peter Hastings, who developed and executive produced the successful animated series The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, it features characters from the books -- like Petey the Cat (voiced by Pete Davidson), Chief (voiced by Lil Rel Howery), reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) and Flippy the Fish (voiced by Ricky Gervais) -- and storylines inspired by the first three Dog Man books.
Writer/director Peter Hastings explains what happens at the end of Dog Man
In the final 20 minutes of Dog Man, all heck breaks loose as Mecha Flippy (Gervais) asserts himself as the true threat in town when he kidnaps Petey the Cat's clone/son Li'l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) and concocts a plan to erupt the local volcano and destroy everything.
The only way to defeat the tiny terror is for Dog Man and former villain Petey to band together to create a massive mailman kaiju to fight off Mecha Flippy. It's the weirdest wrestling card you'll ever see, with Li'l Petey eventually escaping inside the mech suit known as 80-HD and joining the fight. What ensues is an onslaught of famous action film homages and kid-friendly adjusted classic lines, like "Get away from him, you fish" and "Flippy ki-yay!"
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Hastings told NBC Insider that the last act of Dog Man is brimming with so many Easter eggs that even he's still catching new ones with every watch.
"I've seen the movie 100 times and I'm still seeing things that the art departments stuck in there," he said. "There are book characters that are hidden in there. George and Harold appear multiple times in the movie. There's one very obvious cameo, but they appear a bunch of other times. It's kind of a really fun game."
Easter eggs and blockbuster callbacks in Dog Man
As for the callbacks to famous action films and their taglines, Hastings said they were layered into the movie at every phase of production. "They could [come] in the writing of the script, or improvisation with an actor," he said. "They could [come] much, much later in the editing room. They could be out of desperation because whatever else you had didn't work."
Asked for his favorites, Hastings said, "Li'l Petey saying 'flippy ki-yay!' is kind of a killer moment because that moment appears, and then you go, like, 'Oh my god, he's about to take control!' So that was really fun. And then the other one is the Aliens reference. That was a little more subtle. I did a drawing on the whiteboard of Petey inside this big mechanical rig and I was like, 'Oh, we should do that.'"
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After the fight, there's a volcano confrontation between Mecha Flippy and Li'l Petey who asks why the fish is so angry all the time. Turns out, he was bullied and never got over that pain and sadness and lashed out because of it.
Sorry for his behavior, Mecha Flippy is arrested and thrown into jail for his reign of mayhem over the city. The Mayor (Cheri Oteri) pardons Petey for swapping teams and becoming a "do-gooder" to save everyone. Unsure what to do with that praise, Petey walks Li'l Petey back to Dog Man's home and along the way, for the first time, sees things in the positive light that his son always does. He leaves Li'l Petey to stay with Dog Man, and tells his son that, "Everything is going to be okay."
"The ending of the movie, those last five minutes, I just love it," Hastings said, welling up a bit. "It's so rich. I just had this desire that somebody sitting in a theater with their kid would watch that and then just look and smile, thinking, 'It is going to be okay.' That sentiment at the end, I love, because things can be difficult and things can be hard. But it's going to be okay. I always pitched that moment and the thing I love about that is that it works on a good day and a bad day."
Does Dog Man set up a sequel?
Dav Pilkey's official Dog Man book series has 13 published titles with the 14th installment, Big Jim Believes, dropping in bookstores this fall. Hasting's DreamWorks Animation Dog Man adaptation pulls storylines and characters from the first three books, including A Tale of Two Kitties. There are plenty more storylines and characters in the Dog Man book universe to use as the foundation for a movie sequel.
Dog Man exclusively hits theaters everywhere Friday, January 31. Click here for tickets.
