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“Elemental” Is a Tearful Metaphor for Pixar’s Decline
- spindle 3y agohttps://archive.md/xPQhc https://archive.md/xPQhc
- treis 3y agoSometimes a bad movie is just a bad movie.
- tjpnz 3y agoOn the back of Lightyear. This is unprecedented where Pixar's concerned.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoTbh I wouldn't even call Lightyear bad. It just dropped the marketing hard. And ofc Pixar is held to a high standard. A "bad movie" for Pixar ia a "decent enough" level film if it was DreamWorks.
- c_crank 3y agoAs a stand alone movie, Lightyear fails to deliver an interesting and sound science fiction film for adults, or a competent action filled romp for kids. I could not tell you who it's supposed to be made for besides the producers.
- mcphage 3y agoThis isn't Pixar's first bad or mediocre movie—Cars 2 was straight up bad, and Monsters University and The Good Dinosaur were both mediocre. Coming up after the release of some really solid titles, I'm not too worried.
- watersb 3y ago"Encanto" was fantastic, but was a Disney Animation Studio production. Not Pixar. So less involvement from the people in Emeryville?
- wrycoder 3y agoAnd a lot less preachy or ideological. My theory is they knew the intended market wouldn't stand for it. The strong woman was well done, without hitting you over the head like most films do these days.
- redkinght99 3y agoI brought up seeing it with family and the general sentiment I got was: Why go out when it will be on Disney+ in a few months?
- whynotmaybe 3y agoBecause with my family, choosing one of the 12 available movies at my theatre is far easier than choosing one of the too many available movies on d+. Now I go to the movie for the "experience". Next on my list, Indiana Jones which I guess will be the last with Harrison Ford.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoYet another victim of the pandemic. Real shame since 6 months ago DreamWorks absolutely demolished the "sub-genre" with Puss n Boots. There's definitely an experience you get in a theater that can't quite be recreated at home with all it's distraxtions.
- parpfish 3y ago> a creative spree that peaked with the end-of-the-two-thousands hat trick of “wall-e” (2008), “Up,” and “Toy Story 3.” I've never understood the love given to "Up". Everybody remembers the fantastic opening sequence but seems to forget that it ends with dogs flying airplanes. As great as Toy Story 3 is, I would've put Pixar's peak at Ratatouille and Wall-E.
- cm2012 3y agoCoco is my favorite pixar work
- tzs 3y agoOT: If anyone here is up on Mexican folklore, I've got a question about "Coco" and "The Book of Life". They both are built around the Day of the Dead holiday, so of course are going to have certain similarities. The stories they tell though are massively different, and they have quite different takes on what the land of the dead is like. For the most part the similarities are mostly what naturally comes from focusing on the same holiday. Except for one. Both of them feature a boy who wants to be a musician but grows up in a family that has a traditional family business and strongly disapproves of their kids becoming musicians. I'm wondering if that was just a coincidence, or if "kids wants to be musician, family disapproves" is a theme from Mexican folklore or something like that that both films happened to use.
- arrakeen 3y ago[dead]
- echelon 3y ago> I've never understood the love given to "Up". Everybody remembers the fantastic opening sequence but seems to forget that it ends with dogs flying airplanes. The flying house with balloons wasn't too unrealistic? ;) Up tugs on a lot of heartstrings. It's front-loaded with tremendous loss, but that emotional punch isn't lost as it transforms throughout the film into Carl opening up to protect someone new. The film is cute and full of emotion. And despite the fantasy, it's well written. It's my favorite Pixar flick by a wide margin. Ratatouille and WALL-E are fantastic, though.
- legitster 3y agoPixar is a victim of it's own success. They blew the works away with kids movies that were actually pretty good and innovative in a world where they had been neither. Today, "kids" movies are now one of the premier tentpoles of the film industry and Pixar has tried to corner the market on... abstract stories about emotions?
- nielsbot 3y agoMaybe they should take a page from Bluey's book :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEQHiJVH79o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEQHiJVH79o
- dragontamer 3y agoAbstract stories about emotions is good though. Soul was a perfectly good movie. And if you go over to the anime community, the kids are explicitly liking it because of the random emotional tangents (I'm looking at you Demon Slayer). And a lot of the reason why people liked Puss in Boots: the last wish, was because of the existential crisis the protagonist faces upon confronting his last life. -------- I don't think a movie like Elemental would hit very hard after Zootopia locked down the concept near perfectly. It seems ill-timed, we need a few more years to forget Zootopia before giving another rural vs urban different people's city romance with subtle nods to racism story.
- josh_today 3y ago[flagged]
- WorkerBee28474 3y agoRhetoric suggests[0] you use either 'get' or 'go', not both. [0] http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/anaphora.htm http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/anaphora.htm
- napierzaza 3y ago[dead]
- sn_master 3y agoThey're no longer trying to be subtle at all. Movies have become stuffed with outright political lectures, and always coming from the same view. I just want a movie being itself without politics shoved into it.
- saagarjha 3y agoI have bad news to share with you if you think movies were never political.
- c_crank 3y agoThe word 'subtle' was included.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago"shoved" was also included. And I don't even think there's a DreamWorks movie as heavy handed as Wall-E, which we considered part of the "Renaissance"
- c_crank 3y agoWeird as it sounds, I would still describe the political message in Wall-E as more subtle than in Elemental, or even Strange World - another recent flop. Why is that? Wall-E, although clearly and one sidedly in favor of environmentalist or conservationist causes, still describes the problem and the solution in fantastic terms. The entire planet being covered in skyscrapers of toxic trash may have some parallels to the present, but those are just parallels. The message you can take away from Wall-E is not a literal solution (planting plants to rejuvenate things ignores the complexity of real life ecosystems - just consider invasive species!). Instead, the message must be more abstract - something like "Care more about the environment." The political situation in Elemental, by contrast, is barely abstract at all. There is a city, there are immigrants, and the elemental toothpaste commercial aesthetic is a thin veneer over real life racial and ethnic tensions. So any solution the movie suggests would be something that maps very closely to the real world.
- placesalt 3y agoThis line was good: "The sheepish alienation of sitting through “Inside Out” amid the static of my fellow-theatregoers’ sniffles and nose honks must have been what Data from “Star Trek” felt like all the time."
- BoxFour 3y agoThe absence of Lasseter has undeniably left a noticeable void. It was imperative for Lasseter to be held accountable (and arguable if that even happened), though, without a shadow of a doubt.
- uejfiweun 3y agoI feel like Pixar is just a classic case of a couple of truly brilliant visionaries and founders creating a truly incredible company, they get rich and leave, and eventually the suits come into control and it's just never the same again. This process also seems to be happening to Google, TBH.
- explaininjs 3y ago> “Cars” (2006), the only first-wave Pixar original that has no fans above the age of twelve Really? I thought it was thoroughly decent. Solid performances from Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, and Cheech. Original story, tasteful comedy, interesting plot twists, actual character development, timeless look&feel. What more is there to want?
- jackcosgrove 3y agoThe article does not mention the departure of John Lasseter, who was forced out because of sexual improprieties during the Me Too movement. He was the creative force behind the glory days of Pixar. If someone has information that he was more of a figurehead, I'd welcome it. But this seems like a pretty big omission.
- yanderekko 3y agoYeah, obviously one has to be careful about lamenting this stuff, but it seems pretty clear that #MeToo not only ended the careers of many successful senior creative visionaries but it probably provoked a more-cautious stance from many companies towards the mere idea of having powerful visionaries to begin with, especially if they're male. They represent potentially catastrophic single points of failure, after all - and it's not just coming from #MeToo, but having an errant tweet or even an inkling of "problematic" political beliefs could suddenly end one's career and whatever works they have in motion would be ruined. But as a consequence of this caution, we're also seeing that Disney and Pixar and other firms are just dissipating their brand capital by putting out safe, corporative-approved and committee-driven works. Within the next 5 years we'll probably see the first movies released where most of the writing was done via LLMs. I'm going to guess that it won't end well, unless the LLMs get much better...
- xk_id 3y agoHollywood has been using algorithms to evaluate new movie scripts for decades. Consumer entertainment was never really an outlet mainly for creative expression; creative expression was just instrumental for making the business viable within certain market conditions. Now that indignation has been inculcated in culture by leftist social engineers, the machinations of capitalism are adapting the products accordingly. But the fundamental character of consumerism remains unchanged: endless variations, on themes that are favourable to incumbent financial interests, and which put the creative, revolutionary spirit into a slumber; elevator music. And LLMs are uniquely suitable, indeed.
- nradov 3y agoThat is one of the key issues behind the current Writers Guild of America strike. Producers want to be able to use LLMs to write script rough drafts and then pay human writers a lower rate to edit those scripts. https://movieweb.com/why-the-wga-strike-hopes-to-cause-monumental-shifts-in-the-film-and-television-industry/ https://movieweb.com/why-the-wga-strike-hopes-to-cause-monum...
- eevo 3y agoUgh, I really hope the lesson Disney learns isn't more sequels, less original IP. I thought it was middle of the pack for Pixar, not their worst, far from their best though. Even worse than the quality of the movie was how they advertised it. The preview seemed so recycled - the story seemed unoriginal the characters so similar to what we've already seen before with Inside Out and Soul. We just went on a whim because its nice to have the excuse to go to the theater
- jayd16 3y agoElemental is good. It's just the marketing was bad. The premise itself is generic and they didn't put the work I to the marketing to make it exciting. Despite that the actual movie is quite enjoyable.
- sdwr 3y ago" In retrospect, it seems clear that “Inside Out” was when Pixar’s Silicon Valley brain trust began to peel off from the universe and float into the metaverse, borne aloft by a kind of totalizing cleverness. " Aka disappeared up their own bum. Lost the un-self-conscious being-in-itself, and went from "Pixar making movies" to "people trying to make Pixar movies"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kaycey2022 3y agoThere was a time when I could recall having watched every single movie released by Pixar, and looking forward to the new ones. Now I have no idea what is happening.
- mimd 3y agoTheir in a rough patch but they've had successes in the last 5 years. There is a conservatism in their approach, mostly targeting parents and slice of life scenarios. And some huge misfires such as treating the kid as stupid in inside up. They've had nice elements though, like Trent Reznor's music in soul and 1990's anime echos in turning red. And it's obvious that it's pulling from people's memories, so they are sincere. However, they are leaving better ideas like a jazz fantasia or a true sailor moon style fantasy on the table. Some of this restriction is not just Disney's attempts to segment but also Pixar's marketing as a known commodity. This also likely stunts any real attempts, like lightyear, to go beyond the formula, ie saddled with reference to toy story, etc. They will also struggle to ever top the original toy story, though. Even though their are little shades of it here and there; mike and sully, finding Nemo, coco, and lightning McQueen's horror at his body failing; they are still not pulling it fully together. I would like one at that level again, but that's a rare thing.