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Pixar's Next Three Films Will Be Sequels
brumgrunt writes "Should we be worried? As Pixar, with Up, once more proves itself to be home to some of the most original and daring blockbusters on the planet, the news that its next three films are likely to be sequels — with the confirmation of Monsters, Inc. 2 — gives cause for concern. Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?"
You shouldn't worry. Shut up and get a life.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...either sequels or remakes?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... an Incredibles II.
What did you expect ? Some sort of overlord !?
Well, now that we have already made all the code, models, artwork we need. Just recompile and pop out another movie!
Genius!
Looks like they already made prequels as well
My UID is prime... is yours?
The sequal to Toy Story was better than the original.
Toy Story 2 and GoodFather 2 where good examples. I have to admit that I liked cars more than Toy Story 2 but I loved Monsters Inc so I am actually looking forward to these.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And sequels are safer bets.
Or this is just speculation and/or distorted information as the result of a long game of telephone, like the content of most articles you find posted on slashdot these days.
Assuming Pixar's "competition" will continue to be such "gems" as Madagascar 2, Ice Age 2 or whatever Shrek sequel is coming down the pipeline, there's nothing to worry about. Now if John Lasseter leaves, then we might be able to talk about Pixar going downhill.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
The next three films are likely to be sequels? The article doesn't even make that claim. The person who wrote the summary likely thinks tha Pixar just "pops out" these films. In fact, they usually take about 4 years.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
This is Disney's modus operandi. The differences are that Pixar films have great story lines and aren't musicals. Other than that, I for one totally expected that Disney would start making sequels. Guess what's next...limited re-releases.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
Sequels are not necessarily bad. Empire Strikes Back, anyone? Rocky 2 was a brilliant sequel (although they did go downhill after that) and more recently the Shrek 2 and 3 sequels have been, well, adequately good. Toy Story 2 wasn't too bad, and I think there is capacity in some of the Pixar films to do good sequels. I think it's only a problem if the driving force to do a sequel is because the original did well, whereas it should be because they have a decent story to tell.
As long as Pixar's people are doing the creative work, and Disney is only doing the promotion/distribution, I am hopeful that the quality will remain high.
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Moychendeyesin'
Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?
No. Disney has caught up with them.
Sigh.
Without a doubt Monsters Inc. has to be one of the most funny movies I've ever seen ("2319! We've got a 2319!") and we can only hope that they keep the formula and that we get "More of the same" rather than the studio trying to do something different and ruining it.
Hopefully they'll start making good movies for young children again.
There are about five or six quality movies made over the past twenty years that I can feel good about showing to my 2 and 4 year old without worrying about them picking up extremely bad behaviors, being scared to death by the obligatory and unnecessary "scary part", or being bored to tears. Other than Curious George and Charlotte's Web, they're all Pixar movies.
They love Cars, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, and both Toy Story movies, and I don't mind watching those more than once either. But lately it seems like Pixar is making movies to impress themselves while forgetting who their audience is.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
First of all, Pixar has two announced films not mentioned here - The Bear and the Bow and Newt - both of which are original properties. Bear and the Bow is slated to share 2011 with Cars 2, and Newt is set for 2012.
Second of all, the suggestion that the "most likely" date for Monsters Inc 2 is 2012 is tenuous at best. The only time in the last decade Pixar has had a director do two films with only three years in between is when Brad Bird did Ratatouille three years after The Incredibles, and that was him coming on a film in mid-production. If Docter is directing it, it would be surprising to see it before 2013.
This story, in other words, is nonsense - the only actual content to it is that there's a sequel to Monsters Inc.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
i don't want to see straight-2-dvd ever again!
Dude. You just eliminated the porn industry.
It's like Pixar said themselves: For inspiration we watch what Studio Ghibli has made. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli) At any rate it cant be worse than what disney next "classic" is going to be.
Pixar's next three films won't all be sequels. Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 will be followed by two original films: The Bear and the Bow, and Newt. Since it was just announced, Monsters Inc. 2 will presumably be sometime after that.
Don't for one minute blame Pixar, All this is because Disney want to make a quick buck. Look at Lion King, Aladdin, etc... Sequels, ...
Disney, before buying Pixar, threaten with cheap non CG sequels to Toy story, Monsters INC, Cars. Because Disney had the rights to do so.
So these sequels were going to happen either way.
Still, it's sad that now Pixar is left to do sequels, and thus, in my opinion is going to stunt the vision and drive within the company.
I love Pixar, but I believe it's the beginning of the end for Pixar as a leader in Animation.
Yes, the next three Pixar films will be sequels, if you ignore Newt, which is the next movie after Toy Story 3 and is coming out in 2011. and the Bear and the Bow, which is coming out Christmas 2011. Other than that, the original post is exactly correct.
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Pixar makes a movie involving Tetris?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Both incorrect itself (or couldn't even be bothered with IMDB) and its assumptions are misquoted blogspam.
So, let's see, confirmed on Pixar's future agenda (as we know now);
Toy Story 3 (2010)
John Carter of Mars (2012)
1906
Plus speculation in Variety from several days ago about Monsters, Inc 2 possibly being Docter's next film that has suffered a little in the blogspam reporting (ie accuracy), resulting in the OMG SEQUALZ?!? meme we're soaking in today...
Also speculation: various rumored Mater spin-off movies from Cars. Yes, Larry the Cable Guy might get his own... vehicle (ouch). God help us all, but it'd be a goldmine.
I get the impression that they're fairly well insulated from Disney's pressure. I think Disney realizes that they were digging themselves into a big hole with their own crummy animated movies leading up to the time when they bought Pixar. "Wall-E" took a lot of commercial risks, with the long, no-dialog intro and the overt political satire. "Up" dismayed the marketing types by having almost no merchandising opportunities (want to buy action figures of an old guy or a chubby boy scout?). Basically they've been putting the story first, and it's actually been a real winning strategy for them in commercial terms. Making some sequels doesn't necessarily equate to being commercial sell-outs; it depends entirely on whether the sequels are good, which we have no way of knowing about right now.
I'd watch for the big pressure toward commercialism to happen if and when Pixar makes its first big box-office flop.
By the way, Pixar-style CG movies are kind of a unique and interesting example of a purely digital form of entertainment that absolutely can't exist without copyright laws. If copyright was abolished tomorrow, we'd still have garage bands, we'd still have (low-budget) movies, and we'd still have novels (which most novelists don't make enough profit from to live on anyway). But a CG movie is an art form that by its nature requires a very large budget. It's not the render farm, it's the incredible number of hours of labor that go into those movies.
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Quack, quack.
"Bugs and Rats drive Nemo's Incredible Toy Car Up the Monsters' Wall"
I'm OK with sequels as some do indeed surpass the original.
And while I don't love every Pixar movie, their worst effort is still much better than everyone else. I will admit that Kung Fu Panda was a pleasant surprise from DreamWorks, but I trust them less with the sequel.
Monsters, Inc. is my 2nd favorite Pixar film behind The Incredibles, so I'm jazzed.
I am my own gestalt.
Direct to web is fine by me.
If it's Disney doing a sequel to a Pixar movie, that's probably bad. If it's Pixar doing a sequel, (ala Toy Story 2, which I much prefer to Toy Story), then it's probably okay.
Don't be hatin'!
It was bound to happen. Wall-E was the last of the original ideas that were developed at that famous brainstorming session that came up with things like Toy Story, Monsters, and Nemo. And even though Wall-E was cool and amazing, it still seemed like they were running out of ideas. IF you just went by initial premises, Wall-E and UP are pretty different compared to before: Cars (anthropomorphizing gang of cars adventure), Nemo (anthropomorphizing buddy fish adventure), Toy Story (anthropomorphizing gang of toys adventure), Monsters Inc (anthropomorphizing buddy monster adventure).
I'm not saying different isn't bad, but it's hard to get the overwhelming masses to go see weirder and weirder premised movies. So I'm worried. I wouldn't say that it's not looking good, but it will be a great challenge to come up with some memorable movies after this.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I'm not that worried since Pixar does seem very committed to quality, as Up has demonstrated once again. What I don't understand is why Incredibles, the film that I think lends itself most to a sequel isn't getting the sequel treatment.
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Pixar makes a movie involving Tetris?
If so, would the setup look anything like this?
I seem to remember seeing an interview with one of the big guys at Pixar years ago talking about how much they regretted doing Toy Story 2 and how they would never do another sequel like that again, etc., etc. And so long as they were calling the shots, they didn't. Being that Disney is calling the shots these days, this shouldn't be a big surprise and while I can't be 100% I'm inclined to believe that's where the responsibility lies. The upshot is that Lasseter is now directly involved in non-Pixar Disney films as well. Take Bolt, for instance. It was a new franchise that, while not up to Pixar standards, I felt was noticeably better than what we've (sadly) become accustomed to from Disney. (full disclosure: Disney owns my soul)
but the poorly written sentences make for a hard time at best.
Pixar's first twenty seven paying jobs were commercials; the only two you remember are the packs of life savers doing a conga line and the listerine bottle Tarzanning around to Hooked on a Feeling.
Pixar's first three movies were Disney contracts for things they didn't write; one of them is a sequel, Toy Story 2 (to their Toy Story 1, with A Bug's Life inbetween).
Of their next three films, only two are sequels; they are Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. The story linked thinks that Monsters Inc. 2 is among the next three; it is not. It will be preceded by The Bear And The Bow, as well as by Newt.
Indeed, more worrying than that they're sequels is that one of the three isn't in-house written; that's Toy Story 3, and we all know what a pile TS2 was.
The vast bulk of Pixar's work is commercial in nature. None of their films are art films; they're all carefully concocted, demographically targetted Disney style family fun factory output.
Can't imagine why anyone would think that Pixar is just now becoming money oriented. You don't shell out for Tom Hanks as a cartoon voice actor if you're not looking for wallet padding; they hired him for his name, not the quality of his work (he's a fine actor, but doesn't have nearly the range of some of the well established voice actors out there, the same of which can be said for most of Pixar's other voice staff.)
StoneCypher is Full of BS
When Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney (and became Disney's largest shareholder in the process), he said (paraphrasing here) that Disney should stop pissing on its legacy and cranking out direct-to-DVD sequels of decades-old classics. Believe me, he is not a fan of sequels just as a cash-grab.
But, these planned Pixar sequels are films that people actually want to see. They have been demanding them. I'm surprised to not see an Incredibles sequel on the list, because there are a lot of folks that want that one too.
I am not disappointed by this news. All of these will be great movies. I wish they could squeeze in some original flicks among the sequels, but I'm not worried about it. They are giving the fans what they want, and will blow us away with the next original Pixar movie when it comes out.
BTW, Up was great; better than Ratatouille and WALL-E, in my opinion. Mad props to Pixar for giving a great actor like Ed Asner a starring role in a high-budget blockbuster film at the age of 76. The man's earned the right to rake in some serious royalty cash for himself and his heirs.
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Don't worry you quite possibly won't.
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I'm trying very hard to think of a theatrically released Disney sequel.
I think these were all released to theaters by Disney:
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Pixar-style CG movies are kind of a unique and interesting example of a purely digital form of entertainment that absolutely can't exist without copyright laws.
But do Pixar-style CG films require a 95-year copyright term?
See the trend? (and including the world releases follows the same trend). And I'm not including marketing costs, which can be nearing the cost of the movie.
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Hell, Fast and Furious released outside of summer timeframe and has hit 154mil with a 80mil cost, that's a 74mil US profit and still growing and it's definitely not oscar winning material. Now you know why crappy movies continue to dominate the scene. Show some T&A (thrill and action? ;) ) and the crowd forms.
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Yeah, don't worry, cause Dreamworks is in the same boat, as they discovered sequels cost more (just look at the Shrek series), Pixar will obviously come to the same conclusion. 3D (and real 3D) animation has just become just too expensive. Why? cause their employees think like IT: you need to constantly upgrade: cooler tools, faster computers, more editing, more realism, more challenges for the sake of keeping things fresh and innovative, like technology itself. Perfection is the motto of the tower of Babel. Which is ironic in a business where a simple, ingenious story can do wonders [with low-tech]. And some T&A doesn't hurt too (\tongue out\>
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I'd be interested to see how Princess and the Frog turn out...
Yeah, but kids that were little when Toy Story 2 came out are teenagers now. What about kids who weren't even born in 1999?
Today we have something called eBay. The younger kids' parents will buy the toys from the teenagers' parents.
I normally don't care about news of this nature. I like film to a point but what normally qualifies as geek film does little for me. Anyway, from the blurb...
Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?
Please. As much as I understand that Pixar is a beloved entity around here let's be honest. The way that this is stated acts like "commercial pressures" are exterior and actively destroying Pixar. Pixar has a choice in the way their company goes and what it does and does not put out. If Pixar bows to the fast buck that's their decision and if it lowers the to the same level as whomever is putting out these god awful Saturday morning cartoons I see anymore than so be it. I just hate to see people act like some mysterious force is at play here. If Pixar sells out they should get the same respect as Disney seems to get around here.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Personally I kept hoping the Pixar-Disney marriage would sour. I really wanted Pixar to take on some adult themes. Their current work is Good, even Great sometimes, but there is so much more possible in animation than the Disney Playbook.
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Free The Mouse
The next three releases are apparently Toy Story 1 & 2 (in 3D) and 3.
That's more than enough for me.
Your numbers are swapped for Finding Nemo. Also the profits aren't as slim as they seem.. Finding Nemo made $864 million worldwide. Yeah their profits are falling (coincidence probably) but those are profits. If you're making money ahead of inflation then you're alive.
If I had to make a completely uninformed guess, I'd say that they required at least a 5-year copyright term.
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Luckily Pixar has always cared more about making great movies than making piles of money. I mean seriously, would Disney ever have made a movie like Up, considering there are pretty much no action figure possibilities? But even more seriously, should the only consideration be how much toy sales will be when making a movie??
If I had to guess, Pixar is sitting back and adjusting to being absorbed by Disney. Thankfully the powers that be at Disney realized the value of incorporating various Pixar folks (*cough* Lasseter *cough*) and letting them take a stab at fixing a once great company that had taken a serious nosedive.
Of course that means while all the Pixar talent is busy fixing Disney, a variety of perfectly capable folks are gearing up to take the reins. I wouldn't worry about Pixar, and I am looking forward to a vast improvement in the movies that Disney makes.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
As long as they don't suck, I'm fine with sequels.
Finding Nemo worldwide revenue $864 mil.
Cars worldwide revenue $461 mil.
Monsters, Inc worldwide revenue $525 mil.
The Incredibles worldwide revenue $631 mil.
Ratatouille worldwide revenue $621 mil.
Wall-E worldwide revenue $534 mil.
Up worldwide revenue (not launched internationally) 149 mil.
I don't see Pixar being in trouble at all, this is very solid business and seems to me very predictable above $500mil. per movie business. All figures from wikipedia.
Why do you only list US gross, the films, you know, are shown around the world!
e.g. Wall-e 180 mill to make, WORLD gross 534 mil, Profit 350 mil, sounds a lot better than your 43 mil profit. I am sure they are disappointed making a profit of 350 million on a film.
You also ignore the side marketing, as stated in the article, Cars alone has taken in $5 billion in merchandising.
I thought Pixar's culture was supposed to rub off on Disney.... not the other way around.
What is there more in life to long for, than a nice little hour of pleasure here and there?
They may still be profitable, but the trend is definitely there: they aren't making as much money on each movie as they used to.
Personally I blame the movies themselves. They've been written to a more and more simplistic audience as time has gone on, while their earlier films almost told different stories on the surface (children) and if you got the references (adults.) Lately they've been forgetting to cater to the adults that buy the movie tickets and DVDs.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Up! is an amazing, amazing movie. What they were able to do with that movie, which as far as I'm concerned is a legitimate piece of quality cinema, is simply fabulous. And how can you not like Doug, and Kevin, and an awesome airship?!
Before that there was this little movie called WALLâE you may have heard of -- I understand it was kind of successful, and well-received...
Yeah.... I'm not too worried based on the last several flicks. They've had a few movies I wasn't as hot on, but the recent trend seems to indicate higher quality than ever before, not lower.
US box office gross is an afterthought. Cars, for example, grossed over $461million worldwide, made a fortune in DVD sales, and made over $5 billion in merchandising, according to the article. Disney's $120 million investment returned over $5.5 billion, I doubt they're losing any sleep over The Fast and the Furious' $80 million budget.
I give Disney/Pixar credit for releasing imaginative films like WALL-E and Up knowing they'd make far less in merchandising and DVD sales. They would be crazy (incompetent in the eyes of their investors) if they failed to produce films capable of generating billions in revenue. And who's to say the sequels will be any worse than the originals? Toy Story 2 was one of Pixar's better films.
You also are forgetting licensing, toy sales, royalties on kids items, etc. No one has is selling 4fast4furious coloring books, beach towels, bath toys, shampoos... Finding Nemo on the other hand...
You're ignoring DVD sales, product tie-ins and sponsorships.. two of the biggest revenue streams. If you just look at box office receipts when determining the success of a movie, you're missing more than half of money mdae
...creative integrity. These movies stand a great chance of being awesome because the back-story has already been told. A movie spends a fair amount of time establishing context and character... they get to get straight into it, which is what helped ToyStory 2. Sequels can be great when they've been done properly with the right amount of creative integrity.
Ratatouille was just about complete and it wasn't what they were after. They brought in Brad Bird who re-wrote it and did it right. If they have the creative integrity to do things like this, then I'm fully looking forward to these movies.
Pixar really do deserve people giving their projects the benefit of the doubt at least until they make a dud. Their creativity and originality have been amazing; a step above of any other studio in the industry.
Disney used to have an official "crap sequels division", called "Disneytoons". Disneytoons was responsible for Sleeping Beauty 2, Mulan 2, Jungle Book 2, etc., direct-to DVD efforts designed to wring the last dollar out of each franchise. When Disney bought Pixar, Disneytoons was shut down. This was just as well. Sequels from Disneytoons were far, far worse than the originals.
It looks like Pixar is being given Disneytoons' job. "Cars 2" is being made because about $5 billion in "Cars" merchandise has been sold, and with another Cars movie, another few million tons of injection-molded plastic can be shipped out. There's no other reason for another "Cars" movie; the story was complete in itself.
Apparently they're not doing another "Incredibles" movie. That concept has more franchise potential than "Cars". But it wouldn't move the injection-molded plastic.
No, you shouldn't be worried.
Just as the Ubuntocalypse (which occurs after the Zealous Zebra release) is a constant worry for us all, there are only about four unused Toy Story names, which would mean Debian will run out of names in 2138. A third Toy Story movie should give us about five hundred more years of Debian release names.
By that time, the "Toy Story" branch of releases will enter "Testing", and "The Incredibles" branch of releases (based on dozens of movie sequels) will become the "Experimental" branch. This should last until the heat death of the universe, at which point all Debian releases will be classified as "Stable".
I want my Incredibles sequel! That was one of the best superhero movies made!
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Getting too expensive to produce? Too much attention to detail?
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
According to the American constitution artificial scarcity, also known as copyright was introduced to promote the progress of art and science. A brief look at the content produced by commercial film, music and software industry tells us that copyright has totally failed in the "progress" part. Conservatively, 50% of what they produce is crap (IMHO over 90% is a steaming pile of CRAP fit only for tv-zombie consumption). Instead the concept was hijacked by evil, soul destroying corporations that don't give a shit about "progress" only mega-profits. And the easiest way to do so is to produce for the LCD public. So they find a formula that works, COPYRIGHT it and then beet us over the head with endless sequels and corporate mass manufactured soulless bands. In such a "competitive" environment anything remotely novel and interesting suffers. Abolishing the copyright would stop them from endlessly benefiting from something they made once and the only way to distinguish yourself from the crowd and make money is by using the advantage of being the first to come up with something NEW thus actually promoting progress.
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Hollywood Accounting nuff said
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
"Bolt" has already shown that Lasseter is only a part of Pixar's magic. "Bolt" was a POS Disney movie, just rendered in 3D. As it often happens, the higher ups aren't really worth that much without the right set of grunts in the trenches.
I'd like to see an Incredibles sequel.
Also: Include the kazillions earned via merchandising! Cars made tons!
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
First of all, you can't ignore foreign box office totals. These days, foreign gross can be 60-70% of a movie's total take, especially for animated movies.
Second, DVD sales dummy! DVD sales for Pixar movies are always relatively higher than other types of movies, because they're intended to be enjoyed by children. A family with a bunch of kids might not plop down $50-60 bucks to take the brood to the theater, but they'll spend $18 bucks on a kid's DVD to get the little bastards to shut up for 90 minutes.
Pixar is not in trouble, in fact they're one of the most consistently profitable studios in history. Dreamworks is somewhat in trouble, but not because of Shrek 3. Seriously? That movie will probably bring in over $1 billion in its lifetime, if it hasn't already.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Isn't shit news supposed to be dumped on reddit or digg ?
Plenty wrong with 'bad' sequels, made entirely to cash in - but not with sequels per se.
Off the top of my head, they already made one with Toy Story 2 - which in my and most people's opinion was better than the original.
As to the comment below about falling returns, these films are going to be generating money for decades (think of the Disney back-catalogue that's getting continuously re-released to much fan-fare every few years).
Pixar never released the actual cost of the movies they make. Please don't trust the "budget" figures from boxofficemojo; they're pretty much made up.
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie? The graphics were good, the plot was rather cliched - and not even as good as most cliches because the robot was apparently developed with feelings rather than somehow developing them after an accident like in Short Circuit, which is still silly, but at least there is some kind of reason. I enjoyed Short Circuit much better than Wall-E. Perhaps my expectations were just far too high after them having adverts out for months in advance though.. I said to myself I'd probably never watch it again, but I might enjoy it better if I did. With Transformers 1 I didn't enjoy it much at the cinema either, but after I decided just to ignore some of the more stupid parts and get it on DVD, it makes a decent action/comedy kind of movie.
which is totally what she said
Don't forget merchandising: Cars for example did $5Bln in merchandise sales.
> See the trend?
The trend is only down because all your numbers are wrong (Or perhaps you got them from a dodgy source).
If you use the ACTUAL profits these films made then there is no downwards trend at all.
Wall-E and Nemo made far more profit than are shown in your figures - just Google it. Cars was apparently Pixar's least profitable film, yet your numbers show it as having made more money than Wall-E which is wrong.
Whether Wall.E worked as a film depends mostly on the central character himself. It seemed you didn't like him because you were preoccupied with the question of how he became sentient, a futile question as essentially Pixar just asked us to suspend our disbelief about that. *All* the robotic characters had sentience of some sort. Get over it.
The main disappointment about the film for me was that once we reached the humans, the graphics began to look like every other Hollywood animation.
As long as they're good who cares? At least they're making sequels of original content that they made themselves and not re-hashing old ideas and squeezing all the life out of them. I'm looking at you, the makers of the A-Team.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
It's pretty damn close. Assuming that the studio spent double the budget (budget for creation plus an equal amount for advertising, which is, IMHO, a worst-case scenario for costs), Shrek the Third grossed $800M worldwide and we subtract 2*$60M from that. Shrek 3 has made (just in theaters! That's not including DVDs, merchandising, etc.) $680M!
I think the trouble with Wall-E was that it made too much reference to cinema history that only adults would appreciate (not necessarily enjoy), and didn't spend enough time on sticking to the Disney magic formula. It was effectively a Charlie Chaplin romantic comedy with cartoon robots. The animation was top-notch but at the end of the day, you should expect to see movies with characters you can believe in and sympathise with, whether they feature real actors, 2D drawings, puppets or CGI.
For my money, Ratatouille and Bolt (Disney but not a Pixar production) were both far more entertaining and engaging than Wall-E.
Wall-E also ripped off Idiocracy big time.
Squirrel!
Hello Dolly is totally faggy too!
You claim that Pixar does not understand the importance of story... I disagree wholeheartedly. Pixar films are identifiable precisely by their outstanding stories and memorable characters. Having to constantly upgrade the IT... well, that's only a natural progression of the biz - nothing can be done to fix that.
People (myself included) don't want to go to the movies and see something that looks like the original Toy Story when so much more is possible now. That's a blatant example (if you don't believe me... watch the original Toy Story, then watch Ratatouille and tell me which one looks better). The point is - each film shows a bit of marked improvement and that's what keeps Pixar ahead of the game and makes their films attractive to audiences (particularly children who arn't as concerned with the plot line).
It's an industry with multiple pressures on it then - with both a pressure to improve the look of the films as well as pressure to maintain excellence in story telling. These two elements must be balanced to achieve the most profitable combination possible. That's ultimately what Pixar, Dreamworks, and all the rest of the CG producers are looking to do.
I am not worried at all. Pixar has yet to make a bad movie; and as with Toy Story 2, they proved that if they choose to make a sequel, they sure as hell can do a fine job of it!
Ratatouille and Bolt were indeed excellent. I hadn't seen Idiocracy at the time I saw Wall-E and had never made that link, but you're right there.
Ratatouille really looks amazing on blu-ray, all these CGI films are great candidates for HD viewing :)
which is totally what she said
So your figures MUST be wrong.
Either that or they lied to the IRS...
The main villain in the movie is an incredibly intelligent kid, capable of dreaming up and engineering devices that give him superpowers. This isn't good enough though- you have to be *born* with the powers to be of any value. Never mind that Buddy/Syndrome was fully capable of being a superhero, and indeed wanted desperately to be one- Mr. Incredible dismisses him with disgust, and he ends up a villain because of that rejection. It reminds me a lot of the football player picking on the geeky kid because he's not as strong or handsome.
Compare that to the messages in the rest of the Pixar films such as Up or Wall-E, and somehow the film ends up more than a bit tarnished.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
In my humble opinion the movie Monsters, Inc., was the very best computer-created cartoon movie ever made. The script, plot elements, and awe-inspiring computer graphics, especially the extended door warehouse scene, are a a really tough act to follow.
The sequel will probably have a colon in its name, too. Sigh.
Kriston
but they'll spend $18 bucks on a kid's DVD to get the little bastards to shut up for 90 minutes.
Not much of a family man are you?
I don't see Pixar being in trouble at all, this is very solid business and seems to me very predictable above $500mil. per movie business.
Except for Cars that is, which suffered from the fact that kids outside North America just weren't quite as thoroughly sold on the concept (motor vehicles aren't cuddly). Still made a good amount; just not as much as the others.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
but they'll spend $18 bucks on a kid's DVD to get the little bastards to shut up for 90 minutes.
Don't forget that you can play those 90 minute videos at least a dozen times. Your bang for your $18 bucks is MUCH higher than just 90 minutes of peace and quiet... :)
I'm guessing you didn't read the part in TFA about how Cars has brought in $5 billion in merchandise. I think these Pixar folks watched SpaceBalls, and decided to make Cars 2: The Race for More Money.
I'm not complaining though. I didn't really care for Cars, but I think most of the rest of their movies are downright amazing. And Toy Story 2 was probably one of the best sequel movies ever, so I think they can do the sequel thing, as long as they keep the heart and soul that the original movies had.
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie? ... the plot was rather cliched
Yeah, just one of the half-dozen "robot cleans up trash on abandoned earth and meets a probe robot who he falls in love with and follows her back into space and eventually leads all of mankind back to repopulate the earth" movies I watched last year.
Also, I like how you complain about the cliche, then say that it's not even a good cliche because it doesn't follow the cliche like you expected. Here's a news flash for you: 100% original movies that don't borrow from a previous story concept at all are incredibly rare, so if you see any movies at all, you're probably seeing cliches, judging by what your definition of cliche seems to be. And if Wall-E isn't borrowing concepts from any movie more recent than 1986, then I'd say it's doing better that 99.9% of Hollywood movies.
But the point of the movie wasn't so much the story... it's that it had a lot of heart, and that Wall-E himself was incredibly lovable. The scene where Eve thinks that Wall-E got blown up, then they dance around in space was pretty amazingly well done. Also, I took my kids to see it (ages 4 & 6 at the time), and they were absolutely enchanted by the whole movie, and laughed and giggled the whole time. Seeing movies with kids puts things in a whole new perspective.
Ratatouille was a good show with gorgeous animation and artwork, but I never really felt like it was that entertaining, especially for kids. There were no kids in the movie, and nothing that kids ever play with or dream about, which was a pretty big departure for Pixar. After all of the movies about toys, monsters, cars, bugs, and fish, we got a movie about a rat in a fancy Parisian restaurant -- not the normal stuff of childhood imaginations. If anyone could do well with that it's Pixar, and I think they did a pretty magical job given what they were working with. But my kids didn't laugh all that much, and while they seemed to enjoy it, they've never asked to see it again.
I have a hard time believing that someone could see Wall-E and not sympathize with or believe in his character, or any of the other characters in the show. I thought they did an excellent job of developing all of the major and minor characters. It felt to me like it was very easy to love the character of Wall-E, and to see what he was feeling and thinking, and to root for him the entire time.
But at the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions, and mine are often not the same as others around me, so that's cool.
Pixar will obviously come to the same conclusion. 3D (and real 3D) animation has just become just too expensive. Why? cause their employees think like IT: you need to constantly upgrade: cooler tools, faster computers, more editing, more realism, more challenges for the sake of keeping things fresh and innovative, like technology itself.
For one thing, the faster computers and the cooler tools can actually help the budget as they can cut development times down. For another thing, Pixar doesn't go always go for "more realism", at least not for the sake of realism, especially when human characters are in the picture. There were some scenes in Wall-E where it felt like you could have been looking at a photograph (mostly at the beginning), but when the humans got involved, they were all very cartoony, and intentionally so, because they were making a point and drawing a contrast between the first humans on the spaceship and what they had become.
Each of the Pixar movies has its own artistic style, and after the beautiful water scenes of Finding Nemo (which probably did cost a lot to make it as beautiful as it was), the Incredibles was very cartoony and the characters looked like action figures, instead of trying to make them look like real people. Ratatouille had a very realistic look, but with a charming, not really realistic glow that lifted the whole tone of the movie. Up had very cartoony characters, especially the main character. But the way they showed him grow up as a kid, a young man, middle aged, then elderly, you could see how he grew up into the little crotchety old scrunchy character he was, and you understood why he was lonely, and that he wasn't really the mean old man we could have otherwise mistaken him for.
Through all of it the artwork, especially the characters, was all a vital part of the story telling. The stories stand alone quite well, and they're mostly all very good stories. But the extra time and money was put into the artwork -- not to make shiny yet hollow experiences (as with most Disney releases of the past 10 years) -- but to enhance the tone of what are already very compelling stories.
With all that and more, the nice foreign profit gets skewed. It's like reporting 1 billion in sales, but posting 100 million in loses. And that's not including the fact that movie tickets can cost twice as much as a US ticket, as the cost of living is higher in most western cities. Distributors like Disney over-analyze this balance (cost of business/TCO/ROI) cause it can easily spin out of control even if the film is a huge success.
As for pixar being a powerhouse in profit, I beg to see what the true ROI is, with having expensive real-estate, production crew, and such on the order of a typical silicon valley company like Yahoo. The thing is most SV companies out-source to cut costs. Pixar can't really do that.
But I do agree, the movies are declared a business success if the DVD sales and consumer products/licensing are good--the long tail works here and Disney is the gold standard for exploiting the brand.
My two and four year olds like Wall-E pretty well (but Bolt more :-)
They sing along to the music from Hello Dolly. In fact, when we rented Hello Dolly they said, "It's the Wall-E music!"
But due to short attention span the four-year-old prefers the Presto! and Burn-E shorts to a full Wall-E showing.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
I actually disagree, to some extent. If you've seen the trailer for Toy Story 3 (admittedly I haven't seen it close up or on a big screen so I can't say much about the quality or level of detail), the style is very much the same as the previous two Toy Story movies, as it should be. Ratatouille had an incredibly beautiful style, but that was the Ratatouille style, and Toy Story shouldn't be done that way.
One of Pixar's greatest strengths is their ability to put you in a world and believe in that world. Doing Toy Story in the style of Ratatouille or Wall-E or Finding Nemo would break you out of the Toy Story world and would ruin the Toy Story experience. I can tell you right now my kids would much rather watch either of the Toy Story movies than Ratatouille... they're so much more relatable for children (and for me, actually, despite having lived in France for a couple of years). That's not to say that Ratatouille isn't a great movie though.
I have no doubt that Toy Story 3 will have higher-quality animation and artwork than the previous TS movies. That's expected, and it is pretty much a requirement. But if the difference changes the way you see the Toy Story world, then Pixar has failed to some degree... Unless TS3 takes place in a Parisian restaurant, of course.
Yeah I admit it's a good kids movie, I just meant the sentient robot thing is cliched - perhaps that's just because I read Asimov's Complete Robot short story collection as a kid, not to mention loving stuff like Short Circuit and Batteries Included. I suppose I did say it doesn't do the cliche like I expected (just because it is a cliche doesn't mean it has to be bad though, boy meets girl stories have been done probably billions of times, but they can still be done well), but that's more because the advert made it look like the cliched situation of a robot developing sentience a la Skynet, Johnny 5, iRobot, etc but then it turned out that no, the garbage robot was for some reason developed with the capacity for emotion. Who would want to give a garbage compacting robot emotion? He'd end up half-suicidal and bored out of his mind like Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Anyway, I have developed a slightly better perspective on life (which includes movie watching, heh) in general since that movie came out, and now that I don't have unrealistic pre-conceptions of it I might enjoy it better, but I don't know if I'll ever enjoy it as much as everyone else seems to.
which is totally what she said
Sequels are hard. Why? That WOW! factor the first time your Toys start moving and talking, you were transported under the ocean, or to a world of intelligent funny Cars, a tiny trash compactor turned out to have a huge personality, or your house flys Up, Up, and away is really hard to replicate a second time around.
People go to sequels to get the same feelings that they got in the original movie. The problem is, that after a few viewings of the original movie you've developed an immune response to this Wow factor. If you didn't, then you could just keep watching that original over and over again for the same effect.
For sequels to have the same effect you need to punch everything up to a higher level, but that's really hard. Chances are that you liked the original movie simply because it did take things absolutely as far as you felt they could be taken. Now you need more - a stronger hit. In order to give you that the studios need to figure out what you liked about the original and how to punch it up even more. They tend to do this badly, resulting in sequels that are often more parodies of the originals than true sequels.
A truly original idea in Hollywood is the rarest of things. A truly good sequel that can affect you as strongly as the original did, and for as long as the original did, has got to be the next rarest thing.
Sequels can succeed - and even be better. See Godfather II. But it's really, really hard to do them right.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Equipment upgrades, however lavish, are only going to cost a few million per movie. Salaries are the big hit here.
I would bet Pixar workers worked for next to nothing making Toy Story et al, and competition from other studios wanting to poach employees ensured substantial pay raises after Finding Nemo et al.
I really doubt that anyone at Pixar is poorly paid anymore, and I would hope most of us would agree this is a good thing.
Don't feel sorry for anyone at Disney just yet. Not only are foreign sales excluded from that list, but home video as well. The reality is that all those movies made a mint, and will continue making money for many years to come.
D
Lilo and Stich was a FLUKE. It was as if they were trying to knock off Pixar as a last ditch effort to save that division which I believe was closed after that film.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Finding Nemo worldwide revenue $864 mil.
Cars worldwide revenue $461 mil.
Monsters, Inc worldwide revenue $525 mil.
The Incredibles worldwide revenue $631 mil.
Ratatouille worldwide revenue $621 mil.
Wall-E worldwide revenue $534 mil.
Up worldwide revenue (not launched internationally) 149 mil.
I don't see Pixar being in trouble at all, this is very solid business and seems to me very predictable above $500mil. per movie business. All figures from wikipedia.
Curiously, the two lowest grossing films on that list are the ones getting sequels. Meanwhile the one Pixar film that everyone DOES want a sequel to isn't happening (INCREDIBLES).
I was just about to make this point. Cars *still* makes tons of money on merchandising. WAAAY more than Ratatouille or even Incredibles.
With Transformers 1 I didn't enjoy it much at the cinema either, but after I decided just to ignore some of the more stupid parts and get it on DVD, it makes a decent action/comedy kind of movie.
For what, 15 mins? I sat down with some friends to watch it on Blu-ray. We figured we'd skip all the shitty parts. We watched the opening battle and then we ended up skipping everything else. That movie is just aweful.
Well there's no accounting for taste, I suppose. As someone that cares deeply about the craft of storytelling, the first 30-40 minutes of Wall-E (no idea how long it actually is) is absolute genius, and I'm not one to throw that word around lightly. If you go back and rewatch it, pay careful attention to how simple Wall-E's range of expression is (and he wasn't programmed with a personality, he developed it after hundreds of years of loneliness and boredom). To be able to tell a story in which the main characters basically don't speak or have human expressions is incredible. To be able to tell a moving, heartfelt story while doing that is amazing. They did those things, which on their own would have made Wall-E a very good film. Then you take into account that the story at its core contains a terrifyingly bleak and dreary critique of our society, but still manages to be optimistic and upbeat the world. Oh, and the film looks AMAZING. First-rate animation by Pixar, as always.
... but most of the merch revenue went to Disney.
aweful
I don't think that word means what you think it means :p
I like the first half of transformers a lot, and most of the action is okay - though at the cinema I thought it would be a lot better with the shots of the transformers being done from further away so that you could get a better view of the battles. The most annoying bit for me was when he had to take apart a monitor just to create something that would make noise on a line, and that he wrote a chat program that converts and receives ASCII morse in half a minute, though I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to come up with something like that quickly if you knew morse code well and could isolate a couple of pins on the serial port or whatever. Optimus going on about how humans are good and worth saving, yada yada, was quite boring and cliched the first time I saw it (I'd been watching a lot of anime around the time, lots of them go on about the human potential for awesomeness, blah blah.. it can be inspiring if done right of course but sometimes it just gets annoying..), for some reason it wasn't so bad the second time round, and I decided he probably did have time to make friends with Sam and appreciated those soldiers helping out and whatnot.
Glad that I'm not the only person who didn't think it was really amazing though. Usually I buy heavily CGI movies on blu-ray, but I avoided even buying it on DVD until I saw it for £5 at a supermarket and thought what the hell I'll give it another go. The adverts for the sequel do make it look like it'll have a lot more kickassery this time round though, and I certainly won't say no to more of Megan Fox :)
which is totally what she said
The characters in Wall-E are very well done, but the plot.. it just wasn't as 'special' as I expected it to be. I actually was just getting bored and wishing the film would end at some points, despite having wanted to see it for months. To me it was just a lesson not to build up too much anticipation for anything, otherwise it's very unlikely to excel or even live up to your expectations. Not every film can be The Dark Knight.
which is totally what she said
Why wasnt 90 enough
Because the company that is now Pixar's parent noticed that it had been nearly twenty years since 1978, when the term of copyright in works made for hire was last extended from 56 to 75 years.