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Sure, they have not been a masterpiece factory for almost two decades now. However they were certainly a masterpiece factory at one point, that point being the

Sure, they have not been a masterpiece factory for almost two decades now. However they were certainly a masterpiece factory at one point, that point being the first decade of the studio's life. During that time they were certainly a masterpiece factory. From 1995 with their first film Toy Story, to 2004 with the release of The Incredibles, that resulted in consistently great films for 9 years. Their record held for 11 years until Cars was released in 2006. I believe no other studio has had similar performance. I remember around early 2000's news of Hollywood studios in panic because investors started asking other studios why it was considered business as usual, a given, that for every successful film a studio released there would be flops too. So like VC investing, the pay off for the eventual success had to be enough to offset those films that flopped and lost money. But then came Pixar and suddenly a studio proved you didn't have to have flops, every film they made in their first decade was a resounding success. They blew the conventional logic of Hollywood economics out of the window. This article sort of paints a picture of how outstanding their success was at the time: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/nov/12/3 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/nov/12/3 So I guess I disagree with the title, Pixar was most certainly a masterpiece factory in its first decade. Reading deBoer's article I can't say I agree or disagree about the recent state of Pixar, I grew up with Pixar films and their first decade coincided with my childhood and early teenage years, so when I think to myself "yeah Pixar's recent work doesn't touch that early magic" I can't really tell is that my bias coming through? Maybe I am overthinking this a bit.

mdhen 3y ago
I mean studio ghibli has to be in that conversation too.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  Do they? They are from Japan, not Hollywood. Very different business culture. And while they are successful and beloved, compared to Pixar they only made small money. They only have one movie who made comparable money to a Pixar movies, which was Spirited Away in 2002/2003, and it "only" made as much as Toy Story in 1995, and a bit more than "A Bug's Life" in 1998. So even if investors in Hollywood knew about Ghibli around that time, they probably didn't consider it as a relevant investment.
  - mdhen 3y ago
    I'm very confused right now, I replied to a comment talking about the quality of films made by a studio and you're responding with investment stuff.
dna_polymerase 3y ago
I'd say the masterpieces ended after Up in 2009. They started doing sequels after that.
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  It was a masterpieces factory until they sold to Disney and the people in charge of the masterpieces moved to revitalise the animation part of Disney. Everyone knows it but you won’t read it in an American newspaper because of the fall from grace of said talents. Edit: While I enjoy the usual downvotes, I find it hilarious to read all these articles about Pixar not mentioning Lasseter and Bird despite them clearly being a huge part of Pixar initial success with Lasseter being part of why Pixar mostly produced good movies. Disney Animation started making good movies again (Zootopia, Frozen) once he moved there. It's clear that the quality control suffered once he started splitting his time more and Disney had more influence.
  - asimpletune 3y ago
    The iron giant is amazing. Bird is a genius.
- iamtedd 3y ago
  I didn't know Inside Out was a sequel.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > the masterpieces ended after Up in 2009 And yet Inside Out came out in 2015, Coco in 2017, and Soul in 2020.
bemusedthrow75 3y ago
After 2006 they were still knocking out an extremely high rate of absolutely impressive films: Wall-E -- if you don't love this film you are possibly dead inside. It's not only absolutely beautiful and emotionally communicative, it's a deeply clever pastiche. Up, as observed below. Toy Story 3 came out after Up. And it is a work of acutely well-observed cinema. A staggeringly good film that should have won the Best Picture Oscar. [0] Brave (2012) is critically neglected, too -- that is a beautiful, subtle, yes quite elusive film, despite what the article says. And then there are films I have not seen yet but I am told are clever, inventive and beautiful -- Coco, Inside Out, Soul. They are by any measure still a masterpiece factory. This article is lazy, toxic and cynical. [0] edit: when I say this, I say it in the sense that surely everyone knows now that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should have won Best Picture, not Gandhi. Even Richard Attenborough thought this.
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]
- panzi 3y ago
  I think Luca, too.
- ljlolel 3y ago
  Frozen!
  - xnx 3y ago
    Frozen isn't Pixar
- fernandotakai 3y ago
  >And then there are films I have not seen yet but I am told are clever, inventive and beautiful -- Coco, Inside Out, Soul. you should watch both coco and soul. coco is beautiful. it's a love letter to mexican culture. soul is not only quite beautiful but the soundtrack... oh! i mean it's trent reznor, atticus ross and jon batiste. it won both a grammy and an oscar!
layer8 3y ago
> I believe no other studio has had similar performance. Studio Ghibli? John Lasseter was a big fan.
- archagon 3y ago
  Also, early Disney.
michaelbuckbee 3y ago
Cars wasn't a critical darling but has absolutely dominated Pixar revenues for years based on merchandizing. It's really hard to get accurate (or recent) data about these things but at one point was 4x Toy Story merchandizing revenue. https://www.therichest.com/most-popular/10-movies-that-sold-the-most-merchandise/ https://www.therichest.com/most-popular/10-movies-that-sold-...
- teekert 3y ago
  I loved Cars 1 (theme: It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice) and Cars 3 (a time comes when you need to step aside, make peace with it, use it). I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2 (theme: Idk, some short story expanded by chatGPT ;) to a long story) but I find it a very bad movie, really unwatchable almost.
  - fatnoah 3y ago
    > I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2 Cars 1 was a cute fish out of water movie where a self-centered braggart is humbled and finds true friendship and how to be a better person. Cars 2 is a kids movie full of gunplay and violence that opens with a torture scene, progresses towards murder, and finishes with the protagonists escape a death trap to prevent mass murder for profit. I mean, I don't know what anyone was thinking with this one.
    - teekert 3y ago
      Yeah man that torture scene, really, wtf. Since it happens off-screen my kids probably didn't really get it, but it's just... crazy. Imagine this conversation: - What's happening dad? * Oh, they are forcing this car to keep driving until, until ... yeah until he confesses something. - Why? * Well, if they make that car uncomfortable enough, like, when he almost dies, he will confess to anything. - So it's useless? * Yeah torture is useless, barbaric, something I hope you will just never come across in any shape or form in your life. It's a thing done by genuinely evil or very mislead people. - Jeez, that's quite something dad. * Yup, enjoy the rest of the movie matey. Let's hope they won't rape Sally next. - Wut? * Never mind bud.
DarkNova6 3y ago
Hmm, so ever since the takeover by Disney in 2006 we saw a decline in quality. Call me biased, but I might see the problem.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  I guess. If you call Wall-E and Toy Story 3 evidence of a decline in quality.
  - nickpeterson 3y ago
    It takes awhile for strong culture to erode. You can see a similar thing with Apple after Jobs, the products still make money, but the magic is gone.
    - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
      I think it's just as easy to see it as evidence that Pixar is too large -- trying to focus on too many things. But the reality is that most creative endeavours peter out a bit, because all long-lived creative endeavours exist in the context of nostalgia for their halcyon days. It's impossible for everyone to unsee what went before. And all creative endeavours eventually stray somewhat from self-reflection towards navel-gazing. (Like the Vision Pro, which is so completely a product of the totality of Apple culture that it is basically white cider, when what everyone is really keen to see is a very good scrumpy.)
    - DarkNova6 3y ago
      This right here
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Cars was pre-Disney and one of John Lasseter's pet projects (some say being the original idea before Toy Story even). John Lasseter in general is an interesting thread to pull there at that point because there are many competing narratives. When Disney bought Pixar Lasseter moved in charge of all of Disney animation. So there are the narratives that Pixar didn't see a noticeable change because the boss was still the boss and the boss was still reporting directly to the C-Suite, even if the C-Suite changed dramatically. There are also the narratives that because Lasseter originated at Disney Feature Animation and may have felt that Pixar was always the "mistress" and DFA the "wife" that Lasseter "sabotaged" some of Pixar's efforts in favor of the marquee brand, the historic brand, DFA. (There's some evidence for the "sabotage" narrative: after the expense of The Princess and the Frog failed to impress the C-Suite and DFA turned to primarily 3D animation DFA was encouraged to compete with Pixar, built a very different renderer and something of a different tech stack in general. It seems easy to argue that DFA's tech quickly got superior to Pixar's. There are environment and crowd shots in Wreck-It-Ralph and Big Hero 6 that Pixar still seems to struggle to match years later. Personally, I thought it most noticeable in Soul where most of the wide establishing shots consist of "empty clouds" and its version of New Orleans feels both empty and claustrophobic. At nearly the same time Soul released to Disney+ DFA released a lovely short of a digital New Orleans with gorgeous establishing shots and crowd work and it felt almost a direct flex on Soul and exactly what Soul was lacking in its characterization of New Orleans. [This was Us Again, which was theatrically attached to Raya, as much as theatrical attachment of shorts mattered in that strange year.]) It's probably one of those cases where both narratives are "true" in their ways. Pixar never really saw a different boss and seemed to continue down a lot of the same path, including two Cars sequels because Lasseter loved Cars. Lasseter likely did see the competition with DFA as a part of Pixar's success pre-buyout, so continued it hoping it would keep Pixar hungry and innovating. Lasseter seemed to try to genuinely juggle obligations to both DFA and Pixar (The "mistress" versus "wife" analogy being an especially cruel one, but seemingly quite appropriate, for me to pick because the end of the thread was that Lasseter was eventually fired from Disney for being a sex pest; though don't feel too bad about how "canceled" Disney tried to make him because he still heads an animation company. Ironically one again with weird Apple connections because Apple TV+ has been buying most of their streaming rights. [The goofy Luck was the first notable one from that company.]) (Further aside: I also don't think A Bug's Life has aged as well as some think it has. It had great quality compared to its competition at the time, but outside of that context, it's "fine" and hasn't aged well. I think that is also evidence that maybe Pixar was "never" a masterpiece factory, not even pre-Disney buyout.)
alexpotato 3y ago
> But then came Pixar and suddenly a studio proved you didn't have to have flops, every film they made in their first decade was a resounding success. They blew the conventional logic of Hollywood economics out of the window. I think this is the key point that a lot of people nowadays are forgetting. Part of why Star Wars was such a phenomenon is that there were three films in a row that were all good. This was so rare (even into the early 90s) that there was even the "movie trilogies as bar charts meme" [0]. Then Pixar came along and it was hit after hit after hit. Even for movies that WEREN'T sequels and it kind of blew everyone's minds. I would argue Marvel went one better and put out 10+ movies in a row that were also, at a minimum, fun and good movies. I remember saying to someone in the early 2010s "what a cool time for movie making that there are just strings of great movies". What's even more amazing to me is that Kevin Feige took over Marvel studios when he was 34! Which in turn leads me to believe that maybe the "small studio, dedicated people, mostly young but fanatical about the material" is how you kick off the series and then try as hard as you can to keep the big corporate interests run by older folks away. 0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/7y90h/movie_trilogies_rated_as_bar_charts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/7y90h/movie_...
- nwienert 3y ago
  Was nodding along until you brought up Marvel, I’ll never understand how so many people like them. I can’t get past how incredibly cheesy and overly dramatic they are.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    The first few are quite enjoyable flicks. I watched few randomly but it quickly became boring. They quickly became copy and paste with bit of a different paint movies. I would suggest to watch Logan, its excellent.
    - gspencley 3y ago
      Was Logan Marvel Studios, though, or Fox? (I know I could easily look this up, I'm just making conversation). In the 00s I really liked the Marvel movies. Then came Marvel Studios to ruin everything. But even in the beginning, the first couple of films were really good: Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. But once they started to expand the "MCU" I quickly lost interest in the films. I like character driven stories that focus on the person behind the power. Batman is interesting because of Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is interesting because of Peter Parker etc. When you start doing these big mash-ups and team stories, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers, you lose focus on the individuals and it becomes lots of long, drawn-out & boring action sequences. But if I remember correctly, Fox held the film rights to the X-Men property. So when Marvel Studios got off the ground, they did everything but X-Men. I don't know if that ever changed. In any case, I agree. Logan was really good. And it was really good, in my opinion, because it was character-driven and not just 13 hours of drawn out, boring as hell, CGI "porn" action sequences. And I figure it was like that because it wasn't made by Marvel Studio.
skizm 3y ago
Didn’t cars end up making the most money despite the poor ratings? They were able to cash in on merchandise sales too. I think once they did cars they realized (their definition of) quality didn’t matter as much as broad market appeal.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  My then 4 year old son forced me to watch Cars 50 times and I still think it’s a good movie. All I’m saying is, critics gonna critique but theres plenty people who absolutely adore Cars. I mean it has 100% refridgerated air!
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Didn’t cars end up making the most money despite the poor ratings? That's because the critics view of what a 4 year old wants to see doesn't actually matter. My son put me through hell at that time with almost daily viewings of cars, a merchandised Disney Cars bed, stacks of toys, clothing, hats, etc. Cars is one helluva good movie if you're in the correct age range. Hell, the first time I watched it I loved it :-)
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    I wonder what I would have thought if I watched it at 4. I saw Cars in the least favorable way possible, so my hatred for that movie should be entirely understandable, but it is still a fun story to tell: It was the height of "Wii Mania" and my brother desperately wanted a Wii. (We were both in college at the time, for age context.) Being a good older sibling I agreed to help line stand in the local Wal-Mart's crazy rule-filled queue to buy one as soon as the truck pulled up with fresh stock the next morning. It's one of those worst kinds of "sleepover" situations where you are trapped inside a Wal-Mart with underpaid retail workers who obviously don't want to be there that late/early either so they give you a lot of rules and restrictions and marching orders in part as much to keep themselves entertained as to keep things "orderly". That's part of why we needed two of us to keep a single spot in line, because they were trying to exhaust people and hope they leave. One of the other most exhausting things about it, and I still mostly think it was intentionally a torture decision, was that near the place where the line spent most of its hours over night there in that Wal-Mart was a TV with the volume on. That TV was left in an endless loop of the movie Cars. Every time it ended it went right back to the beginning of the movie. (When the fresh members of Wal-Mart's morning shift finally arrived we eventually did convince one of them to change movies on that TV and turn the volume down, to cheers among us. I still believe it mostly proved it was always possible, the late shift just hated us.) Cars will always be associated for me with late night exhaustion and torture. I feel for all the parents that got versions of that from well-meaning kids rather than spiteful retail employees retaliating at crazy customers.
hajile 3y ago
Pixar's best run ended when Steve Jobs stepped away as CEO after selling to Disney. I wonder how much his leaving influenced this change.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  You might be onto something. Pixar isn't what it used to be, but I find AppleTV (when it works) captures a lot of that early Pixar magic.
  - joker_minmax 3y ago
    But that's Tim Cook, not Jobs. What shows in particular have that magic to you?
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      Right, I meant to suggest there might be some "culture" bleed. Another commenter suggested it had more to do with key Pixar figures leaving for Disney, at which point Disney's own offerings improved and Pixar's suffered. I'm not very good at articulating "feelings" so bear with me: Early Pixar movies (to me) are timeless, positive, almost fairy-tale like. They're centrist, middle-of-the-road films that don't offend or validate anyone, just faithfully follow the Hero's Journey as they try to resolve some issue in the ideal world where we're all in this together. Toy Story is the best example-- literally every single toy could not be more different, but the entire point of the movie is about all of them finding ways to leverage their differences to advance the journey for all of them, not exploiting their shortcomings to hold everyone else back. Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, all are the same pattern. Pixar's money printer used to be endless asset-swaps of "Diversity: The Movie" (the secret to Sesame Street as well), and it was a beautiful thing before the concept was perverted by the same children who grew up watching these movies. I don't have kids' show equivalents to name from AppleTV, but I do get the same feeling ("Diversity: The Show") from their regular shows. Ted Lasso is the obvious frontrunner. For All Mankind, Invasion, Foundation (caveat: I was really high when I watched this one). All of these beautifully weave together the themes of diversity and unity into a shared journey.
deleted 3y ago
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basch 3y ago
At some point in the 2000s Pixar shifted from making movies for everyone to making movies for certain demographics, or people with certain issues in their life. Moving, strained relationship with parent, a purpose in life etc. Not every movie resonates with everyone, but almost every movie has its defenders. Maybe Brave doesn’t work for you if you and your mom don’t have trouble. Maybe Soul doesn’t work for you if aren’t a bit down. They are also perfectly ok making simpler movies like Luca, that aren’t trying to be some sort of epic treaties. What Freddie is getting wrong here is projecting his ranking onto everyone else, even when he is calling out the critics as being the wrong audience for the movies. A lot of the movies aren’t made for critics, but because the director or storyteller has something really personal to say to a subset of society. Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur (which I’m not sure I’ve even ever finished) are their only real true misfires. A lot of their whelming movies (Onward, Lightyear) feel that way because they feel like a waste of premise and opportunity more than actually bringing bad.
- Master_Odin 3y ago
  This comment hits the head on my biggest criticism of this article, where because a given movie doesn't resonate with him, it's therefore terrible. For me, Onward is one of Pixar's best and made me rethink how I was interacting with my brother now that we're both adults. I think this quote from the author sums this up: > It’s also great because it affirms my own views on human life, as all great art does. The movies don't fit his worldview and doesn't resonate with his past struggles and are therefore terrible. A similar example, not from Pixar, would be I watched Big Fish with an ex and she couldn't finish it do to her complicated past with her dad, which I didn't have with my own dad. Good movies need not appeal to everyone and I think it would be a loss if we don't support Pixar in making movies that don't.
joker_minmax 3y ago
I agree several of their movies ARE masterpieces. I think the problem is when they tried to get too preachy and sacrificed the "soul" of the plot to the message you're supposed to get out of the movie. Wall-E was a good movie, but it feels preachy. Incredible 2 was a nightmare because all it did was preach. I haven't seen most of the newer ones. Ratatouille came out post-Cars, and I feel like Ratatouille does one of the best jobs balancing the message with the plot, and giving you an aesthetic experience you will not forget: perceiving the world from the point of view of a rodent. Ratatouille genuinely changed my life. And yeah even if you grew up with Pixar, you can watch those movies again and they're still solid, soulful film.
Zandikar 3y ago
As someone that doesn't have the bias and nostalgia for Pixar movies that someone growing up with them does, I would say that your assessment is fairly accurate. Masterpiece factory is clickbait hyperbole. Pixar has made at best, 2 masterpieces, and I'd argue 0[1], but that's a matter of preference frankly. What isn't subjective, is regardless of my or your feelings on the movies, that first 10 years period you mentioned? Yeah. Pixar fucking killed it. They were box office darlings for sure that could do no wrong for a while there. [1]: The intro to up, as a standalone: Masterpiece. The rest? Good movie but it wouldn't have been near as memorable//enjoyable if not for those first few minutes.
7speter 3y ago
No one ever talks about A Bug’s Life. Has that movie beeb Mandela effected out of half of our universe’s existence?

mdhen 3y ago

I mean studio ghibli has to be in that conversation too.

PurpleRamen 3y ago
Do they? They are from Japan, not Hollywood. Very different business culture. And while they are successful and beloved, compared to Pixar they only made small money. They only have one movie who made comparable money to a Pixar movies, which was Spirited Away in 2002/2003, and it "only" made as much as Toy Story in 1995, and a bit more than "A Bug's Life" in 1998. So even if investors in Hollywood knew about Ghibli around that time, they probably didn't consider it as a relevant investment.
- mdhen 3y ago
  I'm very confused right now, I replied to a comment talking about the quality of films made by a studio and you're responding with investment stuff.

dna_polymerase 3y ago

I'd say the masterpieces ended after Up in 2009. They started doing sequels after that.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
It was a masterpieces factory until they sold to Disney and the people in charge of the masterpieces moved to revitalise the animation part of Disney. Everyone knows it but you won’t read it in an American newspaper because of the fall from grace of said talents. Edit: While I enjoy the usual downvotes, I find it hilarious to read all these articles about Pixar not mentioning Lasseter and Bird despite them clearly being a huge part of Pixar initial success with Lasseter being part of why Pixar mostly produced good movies. Disney Animation started making good movies again (Zootopia, Frozen) once he moved there. It's clear that the quality control suffered once he started splitting his time more and Disney had more influence.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  The iron giant is amazing. Bird is a genius.
iamtedd 3y ago
I didn't know Inside Out was a sequel.
mcphage 3y ago
> the masterpieces ended after Up in 2009 And yet Inside Out came out in 2015, Coco in 2017, and Soul in 2020.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

After 2006 they were still knocking out an extremely high rate of absolutely impressive films: Wall-E -- if you don't love this film you are possibly dead inside. It's not only absolutely beautiful and emotionally communicative, it's a deeply clever pastiche. Up, as observed below. Toy Story 3 came out after Up. And it is a work of acutely well-observed cinema. A staggeringly good film that should have won the Best Picture Oscar. [0] Brave (2012) is critically neglected, too -- that is a beautiful, subtle, yes quite elusive film, despite what the article says. And then there are films I have not seen yet but I am told are clever, inventive and beautiful -- Coco, Inside Out, Soul. They are by any measure still a masterpiece factory. This article is lazy, toxic and cynical. [0] edit: when I say this, I say it in the sense that surely everyone knows now that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should have won Best Picture, not Gandhi. Even Richard Attenborough thought this.

canadianfella 3y ago
[dead]
panzi 3y ago
I think Luca, too.
ljlolel 3y ago
Frozen!
- xnx 3y ago
  Frozen isn't Pixar
fernandotakai 3y ago
>And then there are films I have not seen yet but I am told are clever, inventive and beautiful -- Coco, Inside Out, Soul. you should watch both coco and soul. coco is beautiful. it's a love letter to mexican culture. soul is not only quite beautiful but the soundtrack... oh! i mean it's trent reznor, atticus ross and jon batiste. it won both a grammy and an oscar!

layer8 3y ago

> I believe no other studio has had similar performance. Studio Ghibli? John Lasseter was a big fan.

archagon 3y ago
Also, early Disney.

michaelbuckbee 3y ago

Cars wasn't a critical darling but has absolutely dominated Pixar revenues for years based on merchandizing. It's really hard to get accurate (or recent) data about these things but at one point was 4x Toy Story merchandizing revenue. https://www.therichest.com/most-popular/10-movies-that-sold-the-most-merchandise/ https://www.therichest.com/most-popular/10-movies-that-sold-...

teekert 3y ago
I loved Cars 1 (theme: It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice) and Cars 3 (a time comes when you need to step aside, make peace with it, use it). I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2 (theme: Idk, some short story expanded by chatGPT ;) to a long story) but I find it a very bad movie, really unwatchable almost.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  > I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2 Cars 1 was a cute fish out of water movie where a self-centered braggart is humbled and finds true friendship and how to be a better person. Cars 2 is a kids movie full of gunplay and violence that opens with a torture scene, progresses towards murder, and finishes with the protagonists escape a death trap to prevent mass murder for profit. I mean, I don't know what anyone was thinking with this one.
  - teekert 3y ago
    Yeah man that torture scene, really, wtf. Since it happens off-screen my kids probably didn't really get it, but it's just... crazy. Imagine this conversation: - What's happening dad? * Oh, they are forcing this car to keep driving until, until ... yeah until he confesses something. - Why? * Well, if they make that car uncomfortable enough, like, when he almost dies, he will confess to anything. - So it's useless? * Yeah torture is useless, barbaric, something I hope you will just never come across in any shape or form in your life. It's a thing done by genuinely evil or very mislead people. - Jeez, that's quite something dad. * Yup, enjoy the rest of the movie matey. Let's hope they won't rape Sally next. - Wut? * Never mind bud.

DarkNova6 3y ago

Hmm, so ever since the takeover by Disney in 2006 we saw a decline in quality. Call me biased, but I might see the problem.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
I guess. If you call Wall-E and Toy Story 3 evidence of a decline in quality.
- nickpeterson 3y ago
  It takes awhile for strong culture to erode. You can see a similar thing with Apple after Jobs, the products still make money, but the magic is gone.
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    I think it's just as easy to see it as evidence that Pixar is too large -- trying to focus on too many things. But the reality is that most creative endeavours peter out a bit, because all long-lived creative endeavours exist in the context of nostalgia for their halcyon days. It's impossible for everyone to unsee what went before. And all creative endeavours eventually stray somewhat from self-reflection towards navel-gazing. (Like the Vision Pro, which is so completely a product of the totality of Apple culture that it is basically white cider, when what everyone is really keen to see is a very good scrumpy.)
  - DarkNova6 3y ago
    This right here
WorldMaker 3y ago
Cars was pre-Disney and one of John Lasseter's pet projects (some say being the original idea before Toy Story even). John Lasseter in general is an interesting thread to pull there at that point because there are many competing narratives. When Disney bought Pixar Lasseter moved in charge of all of Disney animation. So there are the narratives that Pixar didn't see a noticeable change because the boss was still the boss and the boss was still reporting directly to the C-Suite, even if the C-Suite changed dramatically. There are also the narratives that because Lasseter originated at Disney Feature Animation and may have felt that Pixar was always the "mistress" and DFA the "wife" that Lasseter "sabotaged" some of Pixar's efforts in favor of the marquee brand, the historic brand, DFA. (There's some evidence for the "sabotage" narrative: after the expense of The Princess and the Frog failed to impress the C-Suite and DFA turned to primarily 3D animation DFA was encouraged to compete with Pixar, built a very different renderer and something of a different tech stack in general. It seems easy to argue that DFA's tech quickly got superior to Pixar's. There are environment and crowd shots in Wreck-It-Ralph and Big Hero 6 that Pixar still seems to struggle to match years later. Personally, I thought it most noticeable in Soul where most of the wide establishing shots consist of "empty clouds" and its version of New Orleans feels both empty and claustrophobic. At nearly the same time Soul released to Disney+ DFA released a lovely short of a digital New Orleans with gorgeous establishing shots and crowd work and it felt almost a direct flex on Soul and exactly what Soul was lacking in its characterization of New Orleans. [This was Us Again, which was theatrically attached to Raya, as much as theatrical attachment of shorts mattered in that strange year.]) It's probably one of those cases where both narratives are "true" in their ways. Pixar never really saw a different boss and seemed to continue down a lot of the same path, including two Cars sequels because Lasseter loved Cars. Lasseter likely did see the competition with DFA as a part of Pixar's success pre-buyout, so continued it hoping it would keep Pixar hungry and innovating. Lasseter seemed to try to genuinely juggle obligations to both DFA and Pixar (The "mistress" versus "wife" analogy being an especially cruel one, but seemingly quite appropriate, for me to pick because the end of the thread was that Lasseter was eventually fired from Disney for being a sex pest; though don't feel too bad about how "canceled" Disney tried to make him because he still heads an animation company. Ironically one again with weird Apple connections because Apple TV+ has been buying most of their streaming rights. [The goofy Luck was the first notable one from that company.]) (Further aside: I also don't think A Bug's Life has aged as well as some think it has. It had great quality compared to its competition at the time, but outside of that context, it's "fine" and hasn't aged well. I think that is also evidence that maybe Pixar was "never" a masterpiece factory, not even pre-Disney buyout.)

alexpotato 3y ago

> But then came Pixar and suddenly a studio proved you didn't have to have flops, every film they made in their first decade was a resounding success. They blew the conventional logic of Hollywood economics out of the window. I think this is the key point that a lot of people nowadays are forgetting. Part of why Star Wars was such a phenomenon is that there were three films in a row that were all good. This was so rare (even into the early 90s) that there was even the "movie trilogies as bar charts meme" [0]. Then Pixar came along and it was hit after hit after hit. Even for movies that WEREN'T sequels and it kind of blew everyone's minds. I would argue Marvel went one better and put out 10+ movies in a row that were also, at a minimum, fun and good movies. I remember saying to someone in the early 2010s "what a cool time for movie making that there are just strings of great movies". What's even more amazing to me is that Kevin Feige took over Marvel studios when he was 34! Which in turn leads me to believe that maybe the "small studio, dedicated people, mostly young but fanatical about the material" is how you kick off the series and then try as hard as you can to keep the big corporate interests run by older folks away. 0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/7y90h/movie_trilogies_rated_as_bar_charts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/7y90h/movie_...

nwienert 3y ago
Was nodding along until you brought up Marvel, I’ll never understand how so many people like them. I can’t get past how incredibly cheesy and overly dramatic they are.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  The first few are quite enjoyable flicks. I watched few randomly but it quickly became boring. They quickly became copy and paste with bit of a different paint movies. I would suggest to watch Logan, its excellent.
  - gspencley 3y ago
    Was Logan Marvel Studios, though, or Fox? (I know I could easily look this up, I'm just making conversation). In the 00s I really liked the Marvel movies. Then came Marvel Studios to ruin everything. But even in the beginning, the first couple of films were really good: Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. But once they started to expand the "MCU" I quickly lost interest in the films. I like character driven stories that focus on the person behind the power. Batman is interesting because of Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is interesting because of Peter Parker etc. When you start doing these big mash-ups and team stories, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers, you lose focus on the individuals and it becomes lots of long, drawn-out & boring action sequences. But if I remember correctly, Fox held the film rights to the X-Men property. So when Marvel Studios got off the ground, they did everything but X-Men. I don't know if that ever changed. In any case, I agree. Logan was really good. And it was really good, in my opinion, because it was character-driven and not just 13 hours of drawn out, boring as hell, CGI "porn" action sequences. And I figure it was like that because it wasn't made by Marvel Studio.

skizm 3y ago

Didn’t cars end up making the most money despite the poor ratings? They were able to cash in on merchandise sales too. I think once they did cars they realized (their definition of) quality didn’t matter as much as broad market appeal.

skrebbel 3y ago
My then 4 year old son forced me to watch Cars 50 times and I still think it’s a good movie. All I’m saying is, critics gonna critique but theres plenty people who absolutely adore Cars. I mean it has 100% refridgerated air!
lelanthran 3y ago
> Didn’t cars end up making the most money despite the poor ratings? That's because the critics view of what a 4 year old wants to see doesn't actually matter. My son put me through hell at that time with almost daily viewings of cars, a merchandised Disney Cars bed, stacks of toys, clothing, hats, etc. Cars is one helluva good movie if you're in the correct age range. Hell, the first time I watched it I loved it :-)
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I wonder what I would have thought if I watched it at 4. I saw Cars in the least favorable way possible, so my hatred for that movie should be entirely understandable, but it is still a fun story to tell: It was the height of "Wii Mania" and my brother desperately wanted a Wii. (We were both in college at the time, for age context.) Being a good older sibling I agreed to help line stand in the local Wal-Mart's crazy rule-filled queue to buy one as soon as the truck pulled up with fresh stock the next morning. It's one of those worst kinds of "sleepover" situations where you are trapped inside a Wal-Mart with underpaid retail workers who obviously don't want to be there that late/early either so they give you a lot of rules and restrictions and marching orders in part as much to keep themselves entertained as to keep things "orderly". That's part of why we needed two of us to keep a single spot in line, because they were trying to exhaust people and hope they leave. One of the other most exhausting things about it, and I still mostly think it was intentionally a torture decision, was that near the place where the line spent most of its hours over night there in that Wal-Mart was a TV with the volume on. That TV was left in an endless loop of the movie Cars. Every time it ended it went right back to the beginning of the movie. (When the fresh members of Wal-Mart's morning shift finally arrived we eventually did convince one of them to change movies on that TV and turn the volume down, to cheers among us. I still believe it mostly proved it was always possible, the late shift just hated us.) Cars will always be associated for me with late night exhaustion and torture. I feel for all the parents that got versions of that from well-meaning kids rather than spiteful retail employees retaliating at crazy customers.

hajile 3y ago

Pixar's best run ended when Steve Jobs stepped away as CEO after selling to Disney. I wonder how much his leaving influenced this change.

jstarfish 3y ago
You might be onto something. Pixar isn't what it used to be, but I find AppleTV (when it works) captures a lot of that early Pixar magic.
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  But that's Tim Cook, not Jobs. What shows in particular have that magic to you?
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    Right, I meant to suggest there might be some "culture" bleed. Another commenter suggested it had more to do with key Pixar figures leaving for Disney, at which point Disney's own offerings improved and Pixar's suffered. I'm not very good at articulating "feelings" so bear with me: Early Pixar movies (to me) are timeless, positive, almost fairy-tale like. They're centrist, middle-of-the-road films that don't offend or validate anyone, just faithfully follow the Hero's Journey as they try to resolve some issue in the ideal world where we're all in this together. Toy Story is the best example-- literally every single toy could not be more different, but the entire point of the movie is about all of them finding ways to leverage their differences to advance the journey for all of them, not exploiting their shortcomings to hold everyone else back. Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, all are the same pattern. Pixar's money printer used to be endless asset-swaps of "Diversity: The Movie" (the secret to Sesame Street as well), and it was a beautiful thing before the concept was perverted by the same children who grew up watching these movies. I don't have kids' show equivalents to name from AppleTV, but I do get the same feeling ("Diversity: The Show") from their regular shows. Ted Lasso is the obvious frontrunner. For All Mankind, Invasion, Foundation (caveat: I was really high when I watched this one). All of these beautifully weave together the themes of diversity and unity into a shared journey.

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basch 3y ago

At some point in the 2000s Pixar shifted from making movies for everyone to making movies for certain demographics, or people with certain issues in their life. Moving, strained relationship with parent, a purpose in life etc. Not every movie resonates with everyone, but almost every movie has its defenders. Maybe Brave doesn’t work for you if you and your mom don’t have trouble. Maybe Soul doesn’t work for you if aren’t a bit down. They are also perfectly ok making simpler movies like Luca, that aren’t trying to be some sort of epic treaties. What Freddie is getting wrong here is projecting his ranking onto everyone else, even when he is calling out the critics as being the wrong audience for the movies. A lot of the movies aren’t made for critics, but because the director or storyteller has something really personal to say to a subset of society. Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur (which I’m not sure I’ve even ever finished) are their only real true misfires. A lot of their whelming movies (Onward, Lightyear) feel that way because they feel like a waste of premise and opportunity more than actually bringing bad.

Master_Odin 3y ago
This comment hits the head on my biggest criticism of this article, where because a given movie doesn't resonate with him, it's therefore terrible. For me, Onward is one of Pixar's best and made me rethink how I was interacting with my brother now that we're both adults. I think this quote from the author sums this up: > It’s also great because it affirms my own views on human life, as all great art does. The movies don't fit his worldview and doesn't resonate with his past struggles and are therefore terrible. A similar example, not from Pixar, would be I watched Big Fish with an ex and she couldn't finish it do to her complicated past with her dad, which I didn't have with my own dad. Good movies need not appeal to everyone and I think it would be a loss if we don't support Pixar in making movies that don't.

joker_minmax 3y ago

I agree several of their movies ARE masterpieces. I think the problem is when they tried to get too preachy and sacrificed the "soul" of the plot to the message you're supposed to get out of the movie. Wall-E was a good movie, but it feels preachy. Incredible 2 was a nightmare because all it did was preach. I haven't seen most of the newer ones. Ratatouille came out post-Cars, and I feel like Ratatouille does one of the best jobs balancing the message with the plot, and giving you an aesthetic experience you will not forget: perceiving the world from the point of view of a rodent. Ratatouille genuinely changed my life. And yeah even if you grew up with Pixar, you can watch those movies again and they're still solid, soulful film.

Zandikar 3y ago

As someone that doesn't have the bias and nostalgia for Pixar movies that someone growing up with them does, I would say that your assessment is fairly accurate. Masterpiece factory is clickbait hyperbole. Pixar has made at best, 2 masterpieces, and I'd argue 0[1], but that's a matter of preference frankly. What isn't subjective, is regardless of my or your feelings on the movies, that first 10 years period you mentioned? Yeah. Pixar fucking killed it. They were box office darlings for sure that could do no wrong for a while there. [1]: The intro to up, as a standalone: Masterpiece. The rest? Good movie but it wouldn't have been near as memorable//enjoyable if not for those first few minutes.

7speter 3y ago

No one ever talks about A Bug’s Life. Has that movie beeb Mandela effected out of half of our universe’s existence?