Sanjay is the protagonist in the Disney/Pixar short, Sanjay's Super Team. An energetic child who loves to watch and mimic superheroes, he is reluctant to connect with the cultural customs of Hinduism with his father. However, through spiritual trials and tribulations, he is able to understand the impact and importance of his father's traditions.
Background[]
Sanjay at first did not want to do his father's traditional rituals. Due to his obsession in watching "Super Team", he becomes a little hardheaded and feels bored about this. Later after Sanjay defeats Ravana in a Hindu temple where he ended up at, Sanjay understands his father's traditions as his father allows him to watch television after understanding this.
Role in the short film[]
Sanjay is a boy who watches Super Team, an animated superhero series until his father tells him that it is time for their family's Hindu ritual. When his father turns off the TV, his father then tells him that it is time for him to do the ritual. Feeling bored, he accidentally burns the cape of his Blue Flame (Super Team character) action figure on a flaming diya (Hindu oil lamp) in which he suddenly blows out the fire an ends up in a dark Hindu temple noticing three statues of the three Hindu deities from his family's shrine in his home. Meanwhile, Sanjay encounters a dark monster resembling the Super Team villain Shapeshifter emerging from an enormous diya who pursues him and tries to escape as he finds out he cannot escape because the temple doors are locked. The dark monster then grabs two staffs from the statue of the deity Hanuman and grows two arms and additional heads revealing to be Ravana, a monster from Hindu mythology as Sanjay spots the images of the deities on a lit diya. Discovering that his action figure emits sparks, Sanjay then lights the wick on the diya which then stuns Ravana.
Suddenly, Sanjay then notices the statues of the three deities transform into living deities as he watches them confront Ravana in which they stall the monster with colorful rings using the same bell like his father did at home. As Ravana combines various weapons from the deities to resemble a trishula (which is also another weapon), Sanjay and the other three deities are pushed by a large wave of light. Sanjay then discovers the reflection of the diya resembling the same bell his father used at home as he smashes his action on the diya as Ravana is getting close to him. As he does so, he suddenly defeats Ravana as he is peacefully absorbed into the diya as the Hindu deity Vishnu gives Sanjay the same action figure that he used to defeat Ravana as the deities turn back into statues. Sanjay then ends up at his home where he meets his father again as he now understands his father's traditions as he draws three deities on his notebook on the page where he drew the heroes from the TV shown Super Team as he shows his drawing to his father.
Trivia[]
- Sanjay is an animated personification of the director of the short, Sanjay Patel, specifically, when he was a child.
- Sanjay is the first non-Caucasian protagonist to be featured in a Pixar short.