Pixar to Disney: Drop Dead

Oh yeah, the animation in that trailer is sublime.

Yes, but Pixar should remember that DreamWorks animation is also very pretty, but underneath lies a vacuous void with the heart of a hyena (a cowardly hyena's heart).

Cars 2 was the beginning of the slide.

Pixar's sequelitis is a little surprising, as even Disney proper has avoided that to a pretty large extent (either shipping that garbage straight to video or dumping it on a lesser studio, a la Planes). I think the critical and commercial success of the Toy Story series went to their heads and suggested that the rest of their library could carry subsequent installments.

true, but so far, the only terrible sequel is Cars 2. I still stand by Monsters U.

Monsters U was fun but Cars 2 good lord

but it's true they really haven't tried anything ambitious or critic-friendly anyway since Up

I guess Brave had its fans actually

xpost Which is baffling, since up to that point (IIRC), each subsequent movie did better both critically and financially than the one before. Why mess with that formula?

Cars was WAY too big of of an incentive from a merchandising point of view for them to not do. I can imagine a push in very early phases of writing Cars 2 to "expand the universe" with that in mind. And imagine the pressure after Up to produce another good merchandising opportunity.

Are you kidding? Those Carl dolls are still flying off the shelves five years later.

haha

Ha - yeah and my kids did not dig Up at all. Maybe they were put off somehow by their parents weeping within the first three minutes.

worth mentioning that the people who made pixar A Thing are currently focused on making disney A Thing again.

Good bit of recent discussion ITT about that very Thing. I hope Lassiter stays in a position of power at Disney for a long time to come.

ah my bad - i figured that already came up. i just assume that's the reason pixar seems to be treading water at the moment.

weirdness of that trailer aside though, what i've read about that brain movie seems pretty promising.

Well, usually their storytelling is pretty good. That trailer was just establishing the world. Same with Monsters U- Pixar did a nice job with the story and it was a fun movie, but the similar trailer just showing the characters as college versions doing Animal-House-but-not-humans was also really shitty looking initially (though I'm not saying it came close to the legacy that ended with Toy Story 3).

Cars 2 was the beginning of the slide.

It was one of them, considering they devised it as a means to marketing toys to boys, though the irony is that it was totally Lasseter's baby because he likes cars. But I think the breaking point was giving up and greenlighting Toy Story 3 after Disney threatened to start making straight to video sequels on their own and Pixar capitulated.

Nothing wrong with Toy Story 3 though imo

Stays true to the magic of all the other classics.

Is anyone else excited for the movie about people's emotions being anthropomorphized? Looks like it might be pretty good, IMO.

"greenlighting Toy Story 3 after Disney threatened to start making straight to video sequels on their own and Pixar capitulated"

this happened with Toy Story 2 actually

wasn't making Toy Story 3 one of the required terms of the Pixar/Disney buyout deal?

this happened with Toy Story 2 actually

Yeah, this may be right, or at least closer. I think Toy Story 2 was going to be straight to video, but they decided to make it a feature. This is back when Pixar worked more or less independently from Disney, while Disney handled distribution. They split profits 50/50, but Disney retained character/sequel rights. Regardless, Toy Story 2 is perfect, so worked out OK. Last several Pixar, starting with Cars, have been erratic or otherwise disappointing, while Disney (under Lasseter) has cleaned up, creatively and commercially. Again, no coincidence that we are in the middle of the longest stretch yet between Pixar films, many of which have had creative conflicts/changes and/or have been delated (Brave, Dinosaur).

Intrigued about the return of Andrew Stanton post John Carter. It's too bad it's for Finding Dory, but Finding Nemo may be my Pixar fave. Definitely up there.

u r all cray monsters u was a by-the-numbers betrayal of everything that made the first one worthwhile

I disliked Monsters U. I thought it was lame and unfunny and I was shocked they went with the boilerplate slobs vs. snobs set-up. Iirc it saved all its few jokes for the fuzzy guy. Monsters Inc, is one of Pixar's formative masterpieces.

All I meant (speaking for myself) was that it had a nice charm to it and that it would have been a very strong Dreamworks film. But yes against the earlier Pixars it was disappointing for sure.

I kinda want to say that The Lego Movie was fantastic and better than anything Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks has put out for the past few years, to my shock

both toy story 3 and the recent toy story holiday special have a heavy handed judeochristian subtext that feels both subversive and somewhat underhandedly delivered all at once
and yet the former had gleams of brilliance
i agree with you on the lego movie; that was a dozen times better than it would've been. only wish they hadn't cast will ferrell.

Everything I've heard suggests that becoming integrated into the Disney corporate machine has affected not only the quality of Pixar's output, but also the working conditions as well. You just have to look at how many directors have been fired from their own projects in the last decade, at least three that I'm aware of. It just doesn't sound like a healthy working environment at all.

Also just been reading about how the current president of the company has basically fucked all his employees over through years of wage fixing. Lassetter was also apparently aware of what was going on and supported it.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html

Lasseter is a fool and a moron.

http://cdn7.staztic.com/app/a/2569/2569756/rj-over-the-hedge-wallpapers-9-2-s-307x512.jpg

That's a little heartbreaking for me tbh, I love Lasseter

he hugs everyone like a madman. watch that day in the life he did. gimme a break stop hugging me. he even hugs miyazaki like crazy. everything with him during directing is "great job, just fantastic, brilliant, now let me go finish decorating my office"

Yeah I remeber a clip of him and Miyazaki on the red carpet and Lasseter was clowning like a buffoon, and there was this sheepish grin on the very diginified Miyazaki's face which seemed to say "I'm kind of glad I don't speak English right now".

Is this our general Pixar thread? Anyway, reviews of Finding Dory not encouraging.

They did Toy Story justice but it seems otherwise like they need to cut it with the sequels.

Well, Good Dinosaur was not a sequel and they fucked that up. Inside Out was original, too, and those were just in the last 12 months. But yeah, their sequels are pretty meh, though I understand that was a big negotiating tactic Disney used to keep them onboard. Basically, stay with us, Pixar, and do sequels, or we will do them ourselves. Which is ironic, because Disney proper has been killing it: Zootopia, Frozen, Wreck It Ralph, Big Hero 6, Tangled ...

Next up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6PbWhWGUrY

Well, with Lasseter in charge of the whole of Disney animation, I think he shifted his emphasis to the larger playground. It's just my feeling that his stewardship is largely to thank for the uptick in Disney's output, but the timeline seems to support that.

"Anyway, reviews of Finding Dory not encouraging."

which ones? it seems overwhelmingly postive on rotten tomatoes so far. I'm seeing it tonight so I'll report back.

I read the Chicago Tribune one, which was 3 stars but mostly a modest review, heard the NPR one, which was pretty meh, AVClub gave it a meh B- ... Most for the same reasons - Dory is annoying, the contained setting is not as expansive as the first one - which is not reassuring.

Blurbs on Meteoritic - and these are the mostly positive reviews:

It’s not Toy Story or Inside Out or even Nemo. What it is is a perfectly enjoyable family film that’s comforting, familiar, and a bit slight, like one of those serviceable Lion King spin-offs that Disney used to ship straight to DVD back in the ‘90s.

In deciding not to stray far from the first film in plot or tone, it makes for a pleasant, familiar, cheerfully unassuming fish-in-her-water tale.

Even the more positive Times review strikes a similar chord:

What “Dory” lacks in dazzling originality it more than makes up for in warmth, charm and good humor.

Iirc the Good Dinosaur reviews were sort of similar, along the lines of "It's a simple story, perfect for families, nothing special, but its heart is in the right place and it's nice to look at."

those serviceable Lion King spin-offs that Disney used to ship straight to DVD back in the ‘90s.

lol they were putting those lion king movies on VHS in the 90s not DVD do your fucking research you gormless noob and you call yourself a "film" "critic" you make me SICK

lol

fwiw i thought Good Dinosaur was totally underrated. not up to the best of Pixar but still a really good children's film in my eyes

Saw it last night, it's very very good, certainly not a trifle. It's true that resetting this story in what's basically the MOnterey Bay Aquarium takes some of the open-ended fascination of the ocean out of it, but they already did that story. It's absolutely better than the Good Dinosaur and has no dead parents. It's not as good as Nemo but most films aren't.

also Dory herself is not annoying, who would say that?

I think it was the NPR/LAtimes interview. Tbf they didn't call her annoying, but they did say after a while she makes you (that is, made the reviewer) a little irritable.

I don't expect this to be bad at all, but given the original "Nemo" (which I love) is not terribly ambitious by Pixar standards, this sort of redux seems not particularly compelling. It's curious, my kids have loved all those recent Disney-proper cartoons, even the older daughter, but neither wanted to see Inside Out, both actively refused to see Good Dinosaur (to my disappointment) and neither has mentioned Finding Dory at all.

I am curious about the animation. Nemo was, what, a decade ago? 15 years ago? A while ago, anyway, and I think it still looks gorgeous. Have there been any significant advances in computers that make this one look any better/different? I don't know where the animation can go from the first one. A lot of computer tech lately is going to fur and flowing hair and other hyper-detailed stuff. Computers seem to have nailed water stuff years ago.

the surfaces of the fish look very tactile in this, like you could just pick them up and touch them (and I saw it in 2d). And the water itself is mindblowing, particularly at the end credits where there is a scene that's held for about 10 seconds of the bay and the dock and it's utterly, completely photo realistic; if you didn't see the Good Dinosaur, there are scenes of wind through grass that are similar, where you can't believe this is animation. That's amazing, but it's also a bit...if it just looks completely real, then why is it better than actual film of a real place, you know? Luckily that kind of realism is left to the background textures and the character animation itself is just very very good. The way the octopus moves around, for instance....it's cartoonish, almost loony-toonsish at time, but somehow it's very believable.

for all the fuss (or, well, one article anyway) about there being a same sex couple in this, they are there for all of about 1 and a half seconds.

It's funny, the uncanny valley doesn't really apply to natural imagery, does it? Just people? Because there's a driving scene in Zootopia, too, where everything looks photorealistic (except for the characters). Even back in Life of Pi, the tiger is as real as can be; likewise the bear in The Revenant. I think that's why these movies stay cartoons, because they still can't do people, and thus go the opposite direction with cute and/or stylized protagonists, or talking animals. Though new Jungle Book was all CG, more or less, except for the kid, right? I wonder how far we are from a movie with photorealistic CG creature protagonists. Or how they would sustain a film in that mode, narratively. I guess a movie like Babe did it with a combination of real animals, puppets and CG.

Not really interested in photorealism in art, generally speaking. It's basically a magic trick (albeit one that that involves a lot of skill and technical mastery). But the extent to which movies like this are able to more fully and realistically realize an imagined universe is pretty amazing (the aesthetic of Zootopia was just gorgeous in this regard).