Pixar and Dreamworks films discussions

I don't think anyone called these movies garbage. "Always hammering on the same theme due to lack of diversity" does not equal "garbage", just thematic monotony.

I agree that the creative output of this studio is reflective of the people who run it. However, this discussion sells short what has been a remarkable history of storytelling that goes well beyond male-middle-age-crisis tales. Just to name a few, there's WALL-E, a robot love story set in the context of a climate change fable. There's Coco, which is a story of the power of family in Mexican culture, and in that sense a beautiful corrective to the dominant narratives concerning Mexico in our culture. And there's Inside Out, which honestly depicts depression in terms that a child can understand (and, I don't know what it looked like in the drafts, but in the actual movie the main character is a tween-age girl). These movies and several others manage to combine original stories and themes that share a common thread of compassion and humanity while still being accessible to audiences of all ages. Compared to the creative output of the rest of Hollywood, It's a minor miracle that there exists a major American film studio that releases original content of this quality.

dejanzie wrote:

I don't think anyone called these movies garbage. "Always hammering on the same theme due to lack of diversity" does not equal "garbage", just thematic monotony.

Yeah, I'm not saying that they're "garbage" movies because they are tied to the concerns of their creators--quite the opposite! It's a really good thing that they're making films that speak to them, unlike a lot of cynical films for children that are about selling toys. Heck, Toy Story is literally about toys and manages to not be a cynical cash grab.

There's been an element of nostalgia from the beginning: look at which toys were in Toy Story. Some of those are nostalgia-bait, to the point where the Slinky Dog was no longer being manufactured. Heck, the entire film is about the fear of being replaced by a new generation that you don't understand. And it's great. It manages to speak to the entire audience on multiple levels, with elements of the action story and the themes for both kids and adults. I've talked about the adult themes, but the film also has lots of little touches about both the experience of being a child (you can only take one toy with you in the car!) and their deeper fears (moving is scary and disrupts your entire short life; fear of losing your toys, which are some of the only things that belong to you and no one else; fear of no longer being loved, etc.).

(The generational-replacement-theme is particularly Ironic, given that in the animation world the Pixar crew were the scrappy young kids who hadn't found traction at Disney with their new ideas for how to animate.)

Good kids films need to operate on five levels. 1. They need to be well-constructed and engaging to watch. That's a tall order, but also a given. 2. They need to have engaging surface level stuff for the kids: I know what it's like to go to the pizza/arcade restaurant! I play with toys like those! 3. They also need to have surface level stuff for the adults, which Pixar usually manages to pull off without Dreamwork's blatant innuendo. 4. They need to have stuff that speaks to kids on a deeper level: kids don't have a lot of experience doing media criticism, so it can be harder for them to articulate what they're feeling. But most people can think back and remember a film that hit them hard as a kid. There are reasons why a child will watch a film over and over again, and sometimes it is because it is effective at reaching an emotional state that speaks to them on a deep level. 5. Likewise, having themes that speak to adults is critical reason why they reached the success that they have. Toy Story is a kids film that lets adults deal with their fears and achieve catharsis (as a good dramatic story should, following Aristotle).

So it isn't a bad thing that Pixar has adult concerns. Indeed, that's the exact thing that made them stand out from the pack when Toy Story came out.

Pixar also managed to escape the Disney animated film formula, with an ensemble cast and a central conflict between two main characters rather than the princess/prince/villian formula that had dominated (with variations) since at least The Little Mermaid.

Some Pixar films work better than others. I'd argue that Cars has the surface level stuff for the kids and the deeper themes for the adults, but fails on the themes-for-kids and surface-for-adults categories. It's still got some nice observations about the feeling of road trips, but it is too held back by Lasseter's nostalgia for the route-66 era that he was to young to have actually experienced. It also has way too much money from toy sales, which is why it not only has sequels but also the spin-off non-Pixar Planes franchise.

Now, they do have a diversity problem: Pixar movies always have included the middle-aged dad perspective, but are haphazard about including other voices. They often do a good job of making them relatable anyway, because they're good at this whole storytelling thing, but they do have tunnel vision at times.

Toy Story: Woody is the Dad of the franchise. Note the sense of responsibility. All the viewpoint characters are relatable to a Dad. The Toy Story films do chart the arc of the concerns of a young parent to a middle-aged parent. Most blatantly, the child-character is leaving the nest in the third film. (The kid-themes also shift, which is one of the things that makes Toy Story 2 work so, so well.) For other perspectives, we've interestingly got Andy's Mom, who is mostly a force of nature to the toys but also seems to be a single mother. A recently-single mother at that.

A Bug's Life is...the Seven Samurai with bugs. Has a more adolescent arc rather than an adult perspective, which is why I think it didn't have as much staying power. Pixar films can have coming-of-age arcs, but they have to be the child-theme arc, not the adult-theme arc.

Toy Story 2 is about growing older and figuring out how you still fit in, even after suffering the trauma of abandonment. (The Toy Story films are, at their heart, about what it means to find love and acceptance. You'll note that the toys are increasingly able to find acceptance with each other, rather than strictly being co-dependent on Andy.)

Monster's Inc. is a great film. It is very, very definitely about being a parent. Especially when being a parent is a responsibility you weren't prepared for and didn't choose, while also struggling with the fear that you won't be able to keep your child safe.

The Incredibles...is literally centered around a midlife crisis. Though unlike most midlife crisis films, it shows how it plays out for the whole family.

Finding Nemo is about a father learning to let go of his fears about his son. Literally: the character moment in the center of the film that marks his shift is when he literally lets go in the whale's mouth and starts trusting other people, and therefore eventually can support his son during the climax in the net. The child-theme is a coming-of-age thing, which works much better than the Bug's Life one.

Ratatouille is about how you come to terms with creativity (for the adult theme, a very artist-concern) and how you find the place where you fit in (for the child theme). WALL-E is about love and connecting with other people. Up is about coming to terms with your life not being what you thought it was going to be, doing something about it, and how giving up your dreams to help the other people who need you can be a path to new dreams. Inside-Out is about dealing with depression as a child, and emotions more generally. Et cetera.

Brave is the film that is most plotted from the perspective of its female characters (which I credit to the original director) but still spends a lot of time on the Dad Concerns in the father-daughter conflict (which I credit to the original director being removed from the film).

It's not bad that Pixar makes films that have themes that speak to them. In fact, its one reason they've done so well. Their strength is when their plots are very different from the Hollywood formulas: Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles: all very unique pacing and structure. But they are a bit short in the diversity of viewpoints to inform their adult themes. And their weakest films are where they fall into conventional plots because they don't have enough interesting things to say.

Behind the scenes, Lasseter's harassment of women definitely hobbled the kinds of stories the studio was able to tell. With him out, I expect that some of the talent that's been suppressed will have a shot at telling new stories from new perspectives.

dejanzie wrote:

I don't think anyone called these movies garbage. "Always hammering on the same theme due to lack of diversity" does not equal "garbage", just thematic monotony.

This. I wish they'd broaden their horizons, and Inside Out and Coco are good steps in that direction. They're also two very, very good films for other reasons, as are many of Pixar's other films.

Except cars 2 and 3 and planes were cynical cash grabs.

Stele wrote:

Except cars 2 and 3 and planes were cynical cash grabs.

Hence why they're the worst Pixar films.

Unpopular opinion: Cars 3 is the best of the series.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Unpopular opinion: Cars 3 is the best of the series.

That's not going to be an unpopular opinion, though only for those of us that have watched all three. Cars 1 was certainly good, but they had to spend a lot of time setting McQueen up as a jerk (more than half the movie), showing the turn-around, and then being a better person (car) at the end. Cars 2 was a crappy money grab with a poor story. I think the best example of how bad Cars 2 was, is that if it ceased to exist, literally nothing would change in Cars 3. Nothing. At all. It's a completely useless movie beyond the merchandising.

Cars 3 does a good job of introducing new characters, but they didn't have to do the same amount of work that they did in Cars 1, so they had more time to broaden out the story. The graphics were a generation better than Cars 1 and 2, which should be expected, but I don't remember there being any noticeable difference between 1 and 2 even with 5 years of massive improvements to computing that happened between 2006 and 2011. I mean, in 2006 the Core 2 Duo was still dominating the market, and in 2011 we had i7's, but you couldn't tell that at all from watching those two movies.

Thoughts on Ralph 2?

I'll start. Not as cohesive as the first and a bit uneven, but the best parts are as good or better than the first movie. It starts with a kind of a tedious tour of internet brands. The most prominent of the movie's themes is an exploration of toxic and controlling relationships. As it goes along, it also develops an interesting and nuanced critique of too-online internet behavior.

The Disney Princess scene is insanely great.

It also does a really good job of showing how Vanellope finds meaning and joy in a trashy violent open world game.

Took my kids to watch it just a few hours ago. I really, really enjoyed it. The tour of brands was to be expected, and I felt they did a decent enough job with it (I think I was more surprised at the amount of real logos they used). Vanellope's "song" was absolutely fantastic, as were the princesses. There were a good number of "Daddy why are you laughing" comments coming from my 6 year old throughout the whole movie. I even caught an Easter Egg at one part for those of us that grew up in the 90's (spoiler below).

I imagine that Facebook/Youtube refused to give them permission to use their brands, because they were very noticeably absent from the film. Not much of a spoiler, but the replacement Youtube was a major plot driver, and it feels like this was a massively missed marketing opportunity for them.

Spoiler:

At the part that Ralph is picking up the broken heart cookie in the lower "forgotten" part of the internet, he raises a broken beam with "GEOCITIES" printed on the side.

We enjoyed Ralph 2 also!

PurEvil wrote:

The graphics were a generation better than Cars 1 and 2, which should be expected, but I don't remember there being any noticeable difference between 1 and 2 even with 5 years of massive improvements to computing that happened between 2006 and 2011. I mean, in 2006 the Core 2 Duo was still dominating the market, and in 2011 we had i7's, but you couldn't tell that at all from watching those two movies.

The research for Cars 2 was, near as I can tell, mostly in the lighting and handling surfaces. And maybe in using GPUs, I can't tell for sure just from the dates on the research papers.

Interviews mention the use of lots of city lights, generating the cityscapes.

Finding Dory and Cars 3 introduced the RIS path-tracing engine that used physically based lighting (in contrast to the REYES algorithm they previously pioneered). They were working on the path-tracer in the R&D backrooms for a while leading up to that.

Thoughts on Ralph 2. Why aren't racing games a more popular genre? The Princesses and Calhoun didn't get nearly enough screen time (like Shank level plus 30 more seconds would have been nice). I may buy the bluray. I hope the rumor about a Princesses movie I read is true (they said they'll do it if they can figure out a good story).

polq37 wrote:

It also does a really good job of showing how Vanellope finds meaning and joy in a trashy violent open world game.

QFT.
I really really want those videogames to be real. I mean, there is All-Star Fruit Racing which is about as close to Sugar Rush as I can imagine. Actually there was an MMO called Auto Assault I think, oh and actually the Fury Road videogame is sorta close to Slaughter Race.
My only dislike is that Sgt Calhoun and the Princesses didn't get nearly enough screen time.
If Vanellope Von Schweets isn't officially a canonized Princess now I'll scream.

Spoiler:

I loved her 'staring into water' song.
Okay, I get that they wanted everyone involved, but I'm pretty sure singing a song about the wind does not give one wind powers, Disney (Pocohontas).
Would have liked to see more of the drivers being raised by Felix and Calhoun, if nothing else so we could watch Taffyta being a ..uh, big meany more.

Took until the credits for me to see Gal Gadot was Shank (definitely a fun character). I finally realized she's kinda like early to mid aughts Angelina Jolie. I remember an article about her mystique I think I read while waiting for a test to see if I had appendicitis. Paraphrasing badly: "No matter who you are, it feels like being around Angelina Jolie would bring more excitement to your life."

I don't know, Ralph 2 just fell flat for me. The plot seemed to carry the movie forward, not the characters. I laughed out loud once. While I appreciated parts of it (Princesses, cool racing bit) and the end got me teared up, as expected, I left feeling it was less than the sum of its parts. I'm hoping when we inevitably get the movie (I have two young kids) I will enjoy it more on rewatching.

As a reminder, Wreck-it-Ralph 1 & 2 aren't Pixar films.

No one talks about The Good Dinosaur. Is it the forgotten Pixar film? Destined for A Bug's Life status?

garion333 wrote:

As a reminder, Wreck-it-Ralph 1 & 2 aren't Pixar films.

No one talks about The Good Dinosaur. Is it the forgotten Pixar film? Destined for A Bug's Life status?

A list of Pixar films I haven't gotten around to seeing yet:
Cars 2
Cars 3
The Good Dinosaur
Coco (because I refuse to watch it until I'm in close proximity to my family)

garion333 wrote:

As a reminder, Wreck-it-Ralph 1 & 2 aren't Pixar films.

No one talks about The Good Dinosaur. Is it the forgotten Pixar film? Destined for A Bug's Life status?

The Good Dinosaur didn't work for me, and I think it's because it's the only true children's movie that Pixar has made. That is, the plot is so simple as to be very accessible to children, but all but inert for adults. A well-intentioned miss.

Given the development problems it had, I'm surprised The Good Dinosaur was as good as it was. Still it's near the bottom of Pixar's movies and one of the few I've never felt the need to rewatch... so yeah, it seems to me to destined to be mostly forgotten.

Mantid wrote:

Given the development problems it had, I'm surprised The Good Dinosaur was as good as it was. Still it's near the bottom of Pixar's movies and one of the few I've never felt the need to rewatch... so yeah, it seems to me to destined to be mostly forgotten.

I feel the same way as an adult, but my kids enjoy re-watching it, so I definitely agree with sunday. It's a good movie, it's just that parents weren't really in the target demographic like they tend to be (at least to some extent) in other Pixar films.

I honestly find The Good Dinosaur too painful to watch. The constant bullying he gets from his family members and the emotional scars that leaves, plus his guilt and shame from feeling responsible for his dad's death, makes it an emotionally excruciating film. I don't watch it much because it makes my heart ache through most of the film.

Also, I'm not going to lie, the wild-eyed fanaticism of the pterodactyls creeps me the f*ck right out. They're basically a cannibal cult from a post apocalyptic movie inserted into a Western for kids. Gives me the heebies.

The Good Dinosaur does have some wonderful moments of animation, though. The vistas are beautifully rendered and true to the region. The scenes with Arlo and the fireflies are truly wonderful. I love the image of the pterodactyls circling in the sky like inverted sharks. And the drug tripping scene has to be one of the best that's come out of Disney since the '40s.

So the first Pixar Sparkshort came out yesterday:

I liked it!

Great story, and a nice story behind the story.

It's a good video. I've been racking my brain about why she's a ball of yarn though.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

It's a good video. I've been racking my brain about why she's a ball of yarn though.

Because men would find it too threatening if she weren't a metaphor.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

It's a good video. I've been racking my brain about why she's a ball of yarn though.

Because men would find it too threatening if she weren't a metaphor.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/7vRpCl1.gif)

LouZiffer wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

It's a good video. I've been racking my brain about why she's a ball of yarn though.

Because men would find it too threatening if she weren't a metaphor.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/7vRpCl1.gif)

How did that ball of yarn become a pro wrestler?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

It's a good video. I've been racking my brain about why she's a ball of yarn though.

Well, Quintin, when two balls of yarn love each other....