Minnesota Professor Helped Make Pixar's New Movie 'Hoppers'

A new movie that hit theaters today is called 'Hoppers'. It's a Pixar animated movie about a teen animal lover named Mabel who uses technology to allow her brain to 'hop' into a robotic beaver so she can speak with animals.

I've seen a bit of the trailer, and it looks like a good movie, but that's not what we're here to talk about. I want to talk about how a University of Minnesota Assistant Professor was Pixar's science expert for the movie.

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U of MN Assistant Professor Credited as Science Expert for Pixar's 'Hoppers'

Emily Fairfax is an Assistant Professor of Geology at the U of MN and has been studying beavers for the past 10 years.

Back in 2021, she gave a talk in California about some of the things she'd observed. Well, it got the attention of Pixar, and ended up reaching out to her to see if she'd give a similar talk to some of their staff.

More and more talks with the staff at Pixar happened, and pretty soon, Emily was the official science expert for the movie 'Hoppers'.

Pixar's 'Hoppers' Utilizes Beaver Expert to Create the Movie

MPR writes that Emily "complained to the team about how beavers are often inaccurately portrayed in film and TV, and the Pixar team listened." She was asked to watch different versions of the movie, and she would give feedback on what could be changed to be more accurate.

“'I took the whole art team out into the field for a week and put them in waders and dragged them through the ponds,''' she told MPR. Pixar was really all-in on making this animated movie look accurate!

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One of the most interesting things I gathered from the interview Emily did with MPR was that most of the time, beavers are depicted as sitting with their tail directly out behind them. That's anatomically impossible, so in 'Hoppers' they all sit on their tails like beavers actually do. All of them except Mable's robot beaver, of course.

Emily even got to go to the red carpet premiere of the movie. How cool is that?!