Reviewing Pixar Animation Studios: 2015 - 2018
A New Sheriff
One of Pixar’s biggest creative visionaries was John Lasseter – and it’s thanks to him that Pixar has many of their greatest hits. Lasseter’s films have earned over 19 billion dollars. However, the same week that ‘Coco’ entered theaters, John Lasseter suddenly took a six-month sabbatical. It was the transition that would eventually end with him leaving the company as a result of a pattern of sexual harassment complaints. One of the oldest and most valuable voices of the company was gone for good – which is to say that he wasn’t ever coming back, and that this was a good thing for the company. Pete Docter, the director of several of Pixar’s greatest flicks (Monsters Inc, Up, and Inside Out), stepped up the plate as Pixar’s chief creative officer – and thankfully, Pixar found that they didn’t need Lasseter in order to keep telling relevant and worthwhile stories.
The Good Dinosaur (***)
In which it’s the Lion King except with cowboy dinosaurs
It’s beautiful to look at – and still a step up from average children’s entertainment – but I think The Good Dinosaur is destined to become a fossil.
The Good Dinosaur is about a young long-neck dinosaur named Arlo. In a world where dinosaurs never went extinct, they’ve gradually developed the first signs of what we’d call society: farmland and organized families. He and his family run a little farm to sustain themselves, but he’s not much good at anything yet. Worse, he’s a bit of a chicken. His dad tries to talk some sense into him, but for the most part he’s unsuccessful.
In comes the classic Pixarian opposite – a tiny primal human kid who’s not afraid of anything. Shortly after Arlo’s father dies, Arlo and the kid get whisked away and are forced to try to find their way home. The kid is great. He’s a very funny and compelling character because we don’t find out until well into the film why he’s all on his own. The way Arlo and the kid gradually learn to work together is very reminiscent (not necessarily in a bad way) of Pixar’s bread-and-butter storytelling format.
Visually, this film is resplendent in its depiction of an American landscape. Pixar has the best of the best on its animation team, and there’s no doubt about that as the film unfolds. It’s just that there’s something unremarkable about the plot. A young kid gets lost, finds a weird friend, and finds his way home. We’ve seen stories like this before (The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Hercules) – but there’s always something that makes the story fresh. For Simba, it was the themes of responsibility and destiny. For Nemo, it was the dynamic of a father and son overcoming their individual fears to find each other. And for Hercules – well, that was a film about Greek gods with a gospel soundtrack, so that alone makes it amazing. Here…there are cowboy dinosaurs, I guess? I don’t know. Maybe this would fare better for a film buff who’d grown up on western films. For me, this just felt too run-of-the-mill. It felt especially reminiscent of The Lion King, seeing as we have a loving father who dies on a cliff and comes back as a ghost to re-invigorate their son.
I won’t say The Good Dinosaur is a bad movie, because it looks great and it has dinosaurs – and it doesn’t feel like a cheap story. It just isn’t moving or poignant in the way that Pixar’s finest are. If Dreamworks had made this, I’d probably be more generous. But Pixar has a reputation of greatness, and unfortunately we have to measure each of their films against their own standard.
Finding Dory (***)
In which an octopus and a memory-challenged fish driving a vehicle on the freeway isn’t even the most ridiculous part of the film
A lot of people really really value this film, and that's fine. I just can't find anything that makes this live up to its predecessor or to the other Pixar greats that came before it.
First, I want to acknowledge the good stuff, because I know that this movie means a lot to some people. It's great that this movie talks about living with a disability and the difficulties associated with that. It's also great how we got to see Dory find purpose and meaning even in the midst of her disability. She's never cured of her short term memory loss - instead, she's given the tools she needs to find success anyway. That's cool. And it's something we need to talk more about in general.
Also, the film is visually beautiful. Pixar animation is always at the cutting edge, and the amount of detail in every shot here is so insane, it's impossible not to appreciate it. They just know how to make stuff look good.
My problem isn't with the message or with the visual splendour. It's just that Finding Dory feels like a slightly unrealistic and preachy rehash of the original. Just like before, we have a fish stuck in the human world. It was fine the first time, but the ocean is a huge place. Why do we have to spend time in an aquarium? We've all seen an aquarium. Take us somewhere only the fish go. Just like before, Marlin puts his foot in his mouth to get the plot started. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson.
More than just feeling a bit too similar, I also had a hard time appreciating the stakes of the film when everything seemed to work out too easily in our hero's favour. I mean, yeah, there are talking fish in this movie. I get it. It's not real. But when Marlin and Nemo get flung out of a tree through the air and land in a totally coincidental fish tank - and then hop across spraying fountains to get into another pool - and then we get FISH DRIVING A CAR - it's just a bit much for me. When Nemo told the fish in the first film to 'swim down' to escape the fishing net, it was reasonable given the world of the film. Driving a car is just ludicrous. Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but here we are.
And yeah, I did use the word "preachy". Dory has a speech towards the end of the film to convince the octopus guy to man up. It wasn't a bad speech - it was just so on the nose. It was all about how the best things in life happen by chance - which isn't what I'd say the movie is about. The movie is about how Dory overcame her obstacles with the help of people she'd influenced with her kindness. Chance certainly played a role here (too much of a role as I indicated earlier), but just because Dory is more or less incapable of making plans doesn't make plans obsolete.
I'd love to see what someone else sees in this film, because I've watched it twice now in very different settings and haven't really enjoyed it once. If I were you, I'd skip this.
Cars 3 (***1/2)
In which we’re reminded that cars can die in this world even though the franchise itself won’t
For a film that didn’t deserve to be put into production, Cars 3 ended up being the best film in the franchise.
One of the first things I looked up after watching this film was how it got produced. John Lasseter, with his next-level love of cars, was obviously responsible for the first two flicks. But with the negative taste that Cars 2 left in many people’s mouths, I thought that no one else would be able to get a third film off the ground apart from their top dog gunning for it. But as it turned out, I couldn’t find Lasseter’s name on this film anywhere apart from his credit billing as executive producer – which can mean next to nothing. Stan Lee was “executive producer” for many MCU films, but I have no doubt he wasn’t at a single storyboarding meeting for any of them. What I’d love to know is how this movie got greenlit, and how John Lasseter didn’t end up being a part of it. I have a hard time believing that Lasseter wasn’t interested, and I’m really curious to know the reasons that the director Brian Fee wanted to hop on to this franchise.
Well, for whatever reason, Cars 3 got the green light, and here we are. And to be honest, it’s surprisingly good. There’s a few key reasons for this – first and foremost, the emphasis has been brought back to Lightning McQueen. The detour with Mater in Cars 2 was a train wreck, so getting the franchise back to its roots was a good call. Secondly, the animation is (as always) top notch. There are a number of shots that are really just beautiful. But most importantly, we have a compelling story at the heart of this film, and it all starts with one key question.
What happens when Lightning McQueen isn’t the best anymore?
The first film showed us McQueen as the top up-and-comer, and Cars 2 had him on top of his game. We’ve seen McQueen at his best, so it made perfect sense to give us a McQueen that was coming to terms with loss and his own fallibility. The crash sequence early on in the film was just terrific – it’s no wonder that they made it a key moment in the trailers leading up to the film’s release. Everyone loves an underdog, and making McQueen a little over-the-hill was exactly what this franchise needed to make us root for him again.
And on that note, I love how they decided to end this film. Cars 3 would’ve been unremarkable if it had just been about Lightning McQueen proving that “he’s still got it”. Instead, it became a movie about training up the next generation. McQueen realized the inevitability of the end to his racing days, and decided to use that as fuel to raise up his replacement. He could have raged and resisted and gone out like a candle, but instead he used the strength he had left to light a fresh one. That’s a cool story, regardless of the fact that this is a movie about talking cars.
No matter how good this is, this doesn’t change the sour taste of Cars 1 and 2. But it’s a movie that provides some saving grace for the franchise, and it ensures that the characters kids know and love go out on a high note. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank goodness they made a Cars 3.
Coco (****)
In which a young boy finds a surprising number of skeletons in his family’s closet
Shining light on a vibrant culture that’s under-represented in Hollywood, Coco finds life and beauty in a world of death.
I have to admit that the first time I saw Coco, I didn’t love it. It really just had to do with the fact that I wasn’t crazy about a movie of skeletons. As a grown-up, sure, there was nothing to worry about. But as harmless as the skeleton characters were presented, I wasn’t able to shake the off-putting nature of the content the first time around because I was worried at how kids – specifically my future kids – would react. Obviously skeletons aren’t real, but is this really how I wanted them to envision the afterlife? Technically, I guess this is more of an in-between place. An intermission before entering ‘The Great Beyond’. I don’t know – maybe it’s Western squeamishness, but I just couldn’t get past the skeletons on my first watch-through.
It wasn’t until a re-watch that I was able to appreciate the film for what it was. And here’s what it is: colourful, energetic, musical, and every bit as poignant as the Pixar greats that have come before it. The connection between memory and music that they highlighted struck such a chord with me as I’m sure it did with millions of other viewers. My grandfather is a wonderful man who has spent a lifetime loving others. He is in a retirement home where he receives care due to his dementia. He doesn’t know who many of his family members are anymore, and certain tasks become harder and harder for him everyday. But if you put on an old hymn, he’ll sing along to every word with a tapping toe and a comforted smile on his face. Music is far more powerful than we sometimes give it credit for. There’s a magic to it that transcends the physical plane.
On that note, music plays a role in this film in a way that Pixar hasn’t done a lot of before. Yeah, Randy Newman sang a lot in the first Toy Story, and the Pixar filmography is packed with stupendous soundtracks. But this is the first Pixar film that is really a musical. There’s a number of songs sung by characters throughout the film, and each song pushes the narrative along while enriching and deepening the world of the story. At the heart of the film is “Remember Me”, an aptly titled song that tackles the central themes of memory and respect for those who have gone before us. The way the meaning of the song changes over the course of the film is really interesting, because every time we hear it we learn a little more about it.
The spirit animals were pretty cool too, and I liked the idea of how memory can keep us connected to loved ones we’ve lost. As far as the relationship between Miguel and Hector goes, I think it wasn’t the strongest pairing in Pixar history. It wasn’t bad, but I wonder if a father-son dynamic would have played with more intensity. Well, let’s be honest. We all know that stuff is like catnip for me, so maybe I’m being a bit picky. At the end of the day, this was an imaginative, heartfelt, relevant, and triumphantly different film. It’s definitely worth being remembered again and again.
Incredibles 2 (***)
In which the villain makes fun of the audience for watching the film
It's not bad. I just don't think we needed to wait 14 years for it.
Check out these time gaps between movies' release dates and their sequels.
· Revenge of the Sith to The Force Awakens: 10 years
· Toy Story 2 to Toy Story 3: 11 years
· Jurassic Park 3 to Jurassic World: 14 years
· Return of the Jedi to The Phantom Menace: 16 years
· Mary Poppins to Mary Poppins Returns: 54 years (a bit extreme to say the least)
Notice that in each of these cases (and I admit that my examples are limited to films I've reviewed), the story always leaps to a dramatically different time. With the exception of the Star Wars prequels, every other example moves FORWARD by at least a decade. For Incredibles 2 to pick up exactly where it left off in 2004 wasn't just unexpected - it was also fairly unprecedented. When the announcement first came that a sequel was on its way, I couldn't have been the only person who wondered how far the film was going to take us into the future of the Incredifamily. Would Violet have grown up and moved out? Will Jack-Jack be an actual kid now? And how will the parents recuperate from the strain the original film likely put on their marriage?
It's hard for me to say that choosing to return to the family precisely at the moment we left them was a bad call. What I CAN say is that I kinda wish they had gone with the traditional time jump and shown us this family ten years further down the road. Without it, the film feels just a little bit...I don't know. Stagnant? Out of place? I don't want to be too critical on a competent film like this one.
On that note, let's talk about what Pixar did right. First of all, everyone sounds great. The adults are voiced by the same actors, and the kids sound similar enough to be almost indistinguishable from the originals. Dash steals the show again with his hilarious youthful energy, and the bad guy is interesting enough as an antagonist. Elastigirl also takes the lead in this film, which I'm all for. However, I feel like the story she leads isn't as compelling as the original film. The original film centers around restoring a relatively broken marriage - and through it, the family. Here, the family unit itself isn't ever really in jeopardy. Sure, Mr. Incredible is trying to prove that he can do everything Mom can do, but worst case scenario, she comes home, right? The urgency or gravity of the family struggle isn't as potent this time around.
I want to highlight a speech from the Screenslaver, the film's main bad guy. Skim through this excerpt from a monologue that plays while Elastigirl is searching for the antagonist:
"Superheroes are part of a brainless desire to replace true desire with simulation. You don't talk, you watch talk shows. You don't play games, you watch game shows. Travel, relationships, risk; every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance so that you can remain ever-sheltered, ever-passive, ever-ravenous consumers who can't free themselves to rise from their couches to break a sweat, never anticipate new life."
First of all, this is kind of meta for Pixar. The antagonist is talking to the people in the world of the film, but it also REALLY feels like they're talking directly to us. And if that's the case, what are we supposed to make of that? Is the superhero genre - or the medium of film and television as a whole - a way to diminish ourselves and our own zest for life? Are stories the problem, or is the "package and delivery" the problem? What's interesting to me is that the movie doesn't ever really answer this - nor does it even really need to. By the end of the film, this speech turns out to be relatively meaningless. The villain cared more about preventing the return of superheroes than they did about getting couch potatoes to go outside. But why put in such a thought-provoking idea if you weren't going to explore it further - ESPECIALLY if that very idea is one that threatens the very system you're using to deliver it?
Okay, here's another thing. Jack-Jack Attack was a short film that followed up on Kari (the babysitter) and her discovery of Jack-Jack's superpowers. It was never released in theatres, but was included on every DVD or Blu-Ray copy of the original film. IN THAT SHORT, Rick Dicker is interrogating Kari in a dark room with one lightbulb and a desk, just like he questions Tony at the beginning of this film. Some of the dialogue is literally cut-and-paste here - it's like they assumed no one watching the 2018 film would have seen the original short. It's not an homage. It's just lazy. What were they thinking?
I'm giving a lot of flack to a film that I originally gave 3.5 stars. This movie doesn't suck. It's an enjoyable ride and it's worth its runtime. It's just not really what I was hoping for or expecting, so because of that I have to dock it half a star and leave it at that.