Capture the Flag

Capture the Flag (Spanish: Atrapa la bandera) is a Spanish 2015 computer-animated science fiction adventure comedy film directed by Enrique Gato and written by Patxi Amezcua and the eighteenth Paramount Animation film. Produced by 4 Cats Pictures and animated by Lightbox Entertainment, the film is distributed by Paramount Pictures International. It was released in 3D. The film won the Goya Award for Best Animated Film at the 2016 Goya Awards.

Plot[edit]
Mike Goldwing, a plucky, determined 12-year-old boy, is the son and grandson of NASA astronauts. His grandfather Frank Goldwing is a once revered, but now forgotten retired astronaut, who lives his days isolated from his family in an retirement home for former astronauts after missing out on his big chance to fly to the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as a part of the Apollo XI mission.

An eccentric Texan billionaire named Richard Carson III devises a plan to fly to the moon, to steal the moon's vast mineral resources (Helium-3), and destroy the American flag planted by the Apollo XI team trying to prove that America had never visited the moon and that he was the first person on the Moon in order to own it.

The President of the United States orders NASA to plan another space flight to the moon to beat Carson, so that he won't rewrite history, and at the same time prevent Carson from obtaining Helium-3 from the moon which can be used as both a new powerful energy source and a weapon of mass destruction to threaten any city which refused to buy this energy.

Upon hearing the news, Carson hires a saboteur to sabotage the NASA mission. Firstly, during a test maneuver, the saboteur, who is posing as a cameraman, flips a switch, opening the fuel door on the test lander, emptying the fuel and causing it to crash, injuring Mike's father, Scott. Thankfully, Mike and his friends, Marty and Amy, manage to escape unhurt. Scott blames Frank for not refuelling the tank and for his leg fracture, despite his wife's protests.

Mike decides to go to the moon as a stowaway on a rejuvenated Saturn V rocket in order to undo the 'Goldwing Curse'. Mike, Marty and Amy try to sneak inside the launch area, but Marty gets caught after being attacked by alligators in the marshes surrounding Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39.

Suddenly, the launch gets sabotaged by the same saboteur from before, and this causes the rocket to launch much earlier than planned. Carson assumes that by launching the rocket early, no one would be in the rocket to man it, meaning that no one would be there on the moon to stop him from mining the powerful Helium-3.

Accompanied by his grandfather, Amy and Marty (at the control center on Earth), and their clever lizard named Igor, Mike blasts off to the moon to capture the flag and reunite his family. Carson tries to destroy the space craft in which the trio are travelling. The trio along with Igor, risking their lives on the moon, with assistance from Marty on Earth, capture the flag to reveal as proof that man had walked on the moon to the whole world. Amy links her phone camera to the antenna while Carson reveals his evil plans to them, and consequently the world. Realizing that if he got back to Earth he would still win, they stop him by sabotaging his futuristic Helium-3 mines.

Mike even learns that Frank had been ruled out of the first mission because he had caught chicken pox from his son Scott. Frank at first blamed Scott for him missing out on such a great opportunity to go to space, but he then realized that it was not Scott's fault and he was a failure for blaming it on his own son. Feeling guilty about this, Frank decided to leave his family, declaring that Scott would be better off without him.

After planting the flag back in its place, they all return safely to Earth with Mike's plans to reunite his family and break the 'Goldwing Curse' accomplished as Frank and Scott have reconciled and made peace with each other for the first time in many years.

In a post-credits scene, Carson is seen drifting through space with his assistant Steve Gigs, who is revealed to be an android created by Carson's other late assistant Bill Gags, whom he had accidentally disintegrated when he tested his Helium-3 weapon. As Carson forgives Gigs for killing Gags, he is annoyed by an inexhaustible battery powered robot that he had used on the moon (despite the fact that the very invention of the battery was his own).

Cast[change | change source]

 * Dani Rovira as Richard Carson
 * Michelle Jenner as Amy González
 * Camillo García as Frank Goldwing
 * Xavier Cassan as Bill Gags
 * Oriol Tarrago as Igor
 * Carme Calvell as Mike Goldwing
 * Javier Balas as Marty Farr
 * Toni Mora as Scott Goldwing
 * Marta Barbara as Samantha Goldwing

Production[edit]
After the successful reception of the previous film Tad, The Lost Explorer, Enrique and his crew thought of an interesting concept regarding exploration on the moon based on the conspiracy theories to the Nasa and the Apollo missions, along with the themes of family and broken dreams regarding NASA space missions. The heads loved the idea and started greenlighting the project by crafting the script based on the elements with writer Jordi Gasull, who was also a great collector of space objects.

The Lightbox team visited NASA's space centers in Houston, Texas, and Cape Canaveral for documentation and visual references, with guidance from some members of the station. Astronaut Michael López-Alegría guided and advised the film crew at the NASA facility. "He told us many details about what some protocols are like, the launch of the rockets, the machinery of the ships ...", explains Enrique Gato. Another of the advisers was veteran astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the Moon. He did it on the next mission, Apollo XII, in November 1969. "He gave us details of what it was like to step on the Moon, how to get there in the last phases ... It helped us to be as faithful as possible", says the director.

Visiting NASA was especially helpful for the animators as they needed to know the textures of many surfaces. In the space agency, they were surprised that they were dedicated to photographing "a piece of telephone or the ground", revealed the scriptwriter Jordi Gasull in the presentation of the film. In the movie, they also used a member of the team as a reference to get an idea of the height of things. His name is Galo, so the team started talking about measures such as "half a Gallic", "three-quarters of a Gallic" or "two Gauls". The team also thought about including in the story the resource Helium 3, an isotope that could be a source of clean nuclear energy. This element actually exists and it is rare on Earth but abundant on the Moon, giving more motivation to the villain Richard Carson.

For the animation, it used a digital combination of 3D animation with Adobe After Effects (visual effects), Autodesk Maya (computer animation), Nuke (compositing) and ZBrush (sculpting). Every ten seconds of film and animation required a week of work, specifically for this movie production. This time, the artists also were determined in updating the elements of real hair when modeling the characters.

The biggest challenge for the riggers - those in charge of giving movement to the characters - was the design of Igor, the chameleon that accompanies the children on their adventure, along with the application of various mechanical gadgets in his backbox.

For Enrique Gato, the greatest difficulty lay in the animation of Frank, the grandfather who had a certain obsession with getting a character that had the acting characteristics of Clint Eastwood, even as a reference, that conveys incredible emotions without moving a muscle on his face. Other character designs for the movie were mostly modeled and parodically named as references to real-life people and animated characters from Pixar, including Richard Carson as a reference to Richard Branson, his assistants Bill Gags and Steve Gigs to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and the Goldwing family members Samantha and little Tess were visual references to the mother Helen Parr (Mrs. Incredible) from The Incredibles and Boo from Monsters, Inc..

Box office[edit]
Capture the Flag opened in 20 United States theaters on 4 December 2015 and earned $6,690 in its three days of release. The film grossed $12,481,312 in Spain and $4,178,905 elsewhere for a worldwide total of $16,660,217.

Reception[edit]
The film has received a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on the 23 reviews and an average rating of 4.9/10.

Home media[edit]
The film was released on DVD on March 1, 2016.