When it comes to portraying the themes of a movie, having strong characters to portray get across those themes makes the message more effective.

The strongest Character in the movie, who portrays the theme of letting go our protagonist, Marlin. At the beginning of the movie, due to the prior experience of losing his wife and the rest of his kids, he is overprotective of Nemo to the point that he is reluctant to even let him go to school. He is shown to be humorless too, as despite being a clownfish, he can’t tell a joke, as he fails to tell the same joke twice. His overprotectiveness drives his son away, but despite his fear of the Ocean Marlin going out to save his son, he learns to have fun thanks to Dory during the Jellyfish scene and learns from Crush the turtle to believe in his son’s abilities. Dory even helps him see how his initial promise to “never let anything happen to him” is inherently flawed. Eventually, Marlin does trust Nemo to save all the fish in the net, and by the film’s end, he has learned his lesson as he is sending his son not school and can tell the same joke from the start successfully now. Marlin’s character is effective and undergoes visible character growth. This growth happens in corelates with the theme, making it a good book end to the movie’s message as well as his character. That is how the theme of the movie is so powerful, by tying it to Marlin’s character.

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