Pixar Merger with Disney Has Hurt Quality

[Mr Light]

Cars 2, like Cars 1, was completely uninvolving, but I like Toy Story 3 (and I didn't care much for 1 or 2). Brave was disappointing to me, though. I wanted more plot/story/action/villain.

[Christopher]

Let's be fair -- I don't remember A Bug's Life usually getting mentioned among Pixar's greats, and that was only their second feature. Checking IMDb's rankings for Pixar feature films, ABL, at 7.2 stars, is the lowest-ranked one other than Cars 2 (6.4), scoring a little below the original Cars (7.3) and Brave (7.4), with every other Pixar feature ranking between 8.0 and 8.5. So it's not really accurate to say that Pixar has always been uniformly strong until recently. They've had fluctuations before. Okay, the last two films have gotten their lowest and fourth-lowest rankings, respectively, but the difference between those two is nearly 50% of the total spread, so it hardly proves there's a trend, especially not when the immediately previous film, Toy Story 3, was tied with WALL-E for first place.

[Gaith]

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

Cars 2: we take a film that actually had a anti-establishment message and turn it into happy feet 3 or back to the barnyard.

Lol, wut? The message of Cars is that the ways and values of old white rural men in positions of authority are the best, and that NASCAR is totally awesome, so the surest way to find happiness is to embrace both in equal parts. If that's an "anti-establishment message", then Up must be a NAMBLA commericial.

Alidar Jarok wrote:

---

What was Bug's Life's message?

Are you kidding? A large, peaceful community is being preyed upon by a few violent oligarchs, until the proletarians learn to rise up and expel the 1%. It's the clearest message movie Pixar's made yet.

[Relayer1]

I haven't seen Brave - itself unusual as I've seen all the others, so I can't comment on it. Maybe that does say something about Pixars no longer being 'must see' ?

The two I've liked least were Monsters Inc. , which has since grown on me and the rotten Ratatouille, which hasn't.

My personal favorite is Cars, but I like the rest.

And A Bugs Life is great !

[VulcanJedi]

Cars an ode to old white men and NASCAR?: au contraire; do you think Randy Neumann and James Taylor would sing a song about the glory of white power? No, the message of Cars was that Eisenhower's highway system destroyed the American community....which is why it was nervously followed up by a film glorifying technology, progress and the CIA. Cars is subversive!

[Christopher]

I thought the message of Cars was, "Hey, Tex Avery's One Cab's Family was cool, let's make a whole movie like that!"

[Jax]

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

but poor reviews turned me away.

Brave received positive reviews from critics. Based on 210 reviews, the film currently holds a "Certified Fresh" rating of 78% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Brave offers young audiences and fairy tale fans a rousing, funny fantasy adventure with a distaff twist and surprising depth.Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 69 based on 37 reviews, or "Generally favorable." The film was also well-received among the American audience, earning an "A" CinemaScore

Not that bad though I did read the film is better suited to kids than adults, which is probably why the film is like what 95 minutes? which shocked me. Anyay I still love Pixar

[VulcanJedi]

The first reviews i read this summer made it clear this was sub par Pixar. Plus, These reviews remind me of Lion King: except in this case we had 15 years of great movies. Lion King was a departure from the three previous, excellent, films: Little Mermaid, Beauty and Alladin--we went from classic Broadway style music and dialogue to Circle of Blechh. Three great films built up enough goodwill..but it was all downhill after that. I love Pixar and hope these missteps are noted.

[Christopher]

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

The first reviews i read this summer made it clear this was sub par Pixar.

Even if that's so, like I said, what's subpar for Pixar is still a pretty damn good movie for Hollywood in general (unless it's got talking cars in it). I can think of no possible reason why I would not recommend Brave to anyone. There is nothing wrong with it that I can recall and a lot that is right with it. Actually I'd call it at-par or somewhat above-par for Pixar -- not on the level of their best films, but nowhere near being one of their weakest.

[Gaith]

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

I'm not sure what the message of Brave was.... Perhaps Brave delved too far off the grid of anything recognizable? Even so, Girl Power might have hit the bulls eye if it only slowed down a bit.

Pixar has had a habit of heavily reworking their stories well into the production phase, which is far more feasible in animation than live action (as Andrew Stanton learned the hard way), but without a strong scipt or story to start out with, is bound to falter at some point. From what I've read, they wanted to do a princess movie without a traditional fairy-tale villain, which is commendable, but never quite found a compelling alternative.

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

Cars an ode to old white men and NASCAR?: au contraire; do you think Randy Neumann and James Taylor would sing a song about the glory of white power?

Dude, an ode to old-timey WASP values, which Cars (a blatant ripoff of the Michael J. Fox movie Doc Hollywood) very much is, is not the same thing as a Klan mission statement.

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

No, the message of Cars was that Eisenhower's highway system destroyed the American community.... Cars is subversive!

The longing for a more innocent, pastoral age is as old as civilization itself, and has been a core feature of establishment ideologies as diverse as Jefferson's farmer-citizen American ideal and the Nazi's obsession with the hardworking, small-town Germanic volk. And how does Cars end? With the suggestion that modern, tech-based capitalism (in this case, Nascar) can, with a little prodding, help the sleepy little town (whose distance from modernity shielded it from the vices of metropolitanism) regain its dormant economic strength without corrupting its pure, old-fashioned culture. Subversive? Please.

[StalwartUK]

I agree with you. One possible cause I think is that movies like Up and WALL-E weren't doing so well on the merchandising front. There is no doubt some from pressure from above to produce more merchandise-friendly films such as sequels.

[Christopher]

VulcanJedi wrote:

---

I'm not sure what the message of Brave was....

I missed this comment before... I thought Brave had a very clear message, one that's embodied in the title. As I said in my review on a different board:

It does have a lot to do with bravery, but not so much about being brave enough to fight demon bears as being brave enough to set aside old tensions and insecurities and have a frank and open conversation with your domineering mother or your rebellious daughter; brave enough to step out of your comfort zone and recognize that your preferred way of doing things isn't right for every situation; brave enough to set aside self-interest and embrace responsibilities that have seemed odious, or to be open to changes in tradition.

[FPAlpha]

Well.. Cars burned me real bad when it comes to Pixar.. up until this point i adored their movies. They were unique, had their own style and their own story to tell.

They had a heart.

With Cars Pixar made a run of the mill, paint by number movie any studio could have produced.. like the ones from Dreamworks or any other animation studio that relies on big names to voice the characters and promote the movies.

Up until that point it was enough for me to know it was a Pixar movie to go see it and know i'd get a good movie with a good story.

Well.. if Disney took the reins over that heavily i'll mourn Pixar for a while and hope that some day a bunch of insanely creative, crazy people who just want to tell some stories find someone who'll back them up and open door for them so they can produce stories without pressuring them or telling them how to do it.

It'll happen.. might take a while but a new Pixar will come.

[The Keeper]

I got a bad feeling about this. ;-)

[Christopher]

FPAlpha wrote:

---

With Cars Pixar made a run of the mill, paint by number movie any studio could have produced.. like the ones from Dreamworks or any other animation studio that relies on big names to voice the characters and promote the movies.

Up until that point it was enough for me to know it was a Pixar movie to go see it and know i'd get a good movie with a good story.

But that doesn't mean they stopped making good movies after that point. Cars was followed by four of their best films in a row: Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. The only weak one since Cars was Cars 2. It's not the studio as a whole that's suffered, it's just that one concept that falls below their usual standard.