Pixar Merger with Disney Has Hurt Quality

[Relayer1]

FPAlpha wrote:

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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.

I've got to disagree. It may not have been totally original but I adored Cars - it's my favourite Pixar movie. And it's not like I'm American on a nostalgia trip or a petrol head - not only am I not a car buff, I can't even drive.

Now Ratatouille was a turkey - by the numbers that any studio could churn out...

[Christopher]

I thought Ratatouille was superb. Brad Bird has yet to make a bad film.

[Trekker4747]

Ratatouille being "paint by the numbers." How is a rodent wanting to be seen as a great chef "paint by the numbers." Ratatouille was a wonderful, unique, film.

Cars was essentially a remake of a Michael J. Fox movie.

[Christopher]

Every story's been told before, more or less; what matters is the execution. Ratatouille was brilliantly executed with lots of imaginative details and story/character beats. Cars was just kind of okay, feeling more like going through the motions. I haven't even seen the sequel.

[VulcanJedi]

[QUOTE=Christopher;7267165]I thought Ratatouille was superb. Brad Bird has yet to make a bad film.[/QUOTE
Love the food movie; it's all about food. When ever I hear sous chef on the Food Channel I look for a cute rat.

[CaptainCanada]

Relayer1 wrote:

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Now Ratatouille was a turkey - by the numbers that any studio could churn out...

I don't know what other animation studio you would expect to see make a lengthy story about a rat who wants to be a chef and spends a lot of time on the finer points of haute cuisine.

[FPAlpha]

Relayer1 wrote:

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I've got to disagree. It may not have been totally original but I adored Cars - it's my favourite Pixar movie. And it's not like I'm American on a nostalgia trip or a petrol head - not only am I not a car buff, I can't even drive.

Now Ratatouille was a turkey - by the numbers that any studio could churn out...

I'd really like to know why you think Cars is good and Ratatouille bad.

I'll give my view on why i don't like Cars much.. it was too predictable and the characters were too bland. Now obviously Pixar movies tend to have uplifiting ends and it's no surprise Cars does too.. that's not my critique. I just felt that Cars lacked that certain spark that made the story worthwile.. it lacked an original idea and as someone else pointed out it was basically Doc Hollywood remade into computer animation and people replaced by cars.. for me that's too simple for Pixar (even if the focus of the story was different from Doc Hollywood).

What i love about Pixar is their unique ideas.. with Ratatouille they took a rat and made it into a gourmet and cook. A rat of all things.. by many considered to be a very dirty animal that shouldn't even be in the vicinity of a kitchen yet they took the idea and ran with it and made a damn good movie with it.

Finding Nemo.. a fish in search of his son who meets many strange characters along the way and learns something about himself - a tale about parents who need to learn to let go and overcome their fears.

Wall E.. a robot who falls in love with another robot and follows her (by accident more or less) and in the process leads humans back to devastated Earth - a lovestory mixed with an ecological/social warning to humans.

With Cars i never felt that anything had its own idea or even an interesting one.. everything was cliché. Hotshot, arrogant main character, hillbilly character, the grumpy old guy who teaches the main something, the love interest etc.

Granted.. these ingredients are found in many other movies including Pixar's but they managed to still inject something that made the sum more than its parts. This is what i felt Cars lacked.. i didn't even bother with Cars 2 because of it.

So if it's true that Disney is putting pressure on Pixar to turn out movies at a faster rate so they can profit more i'm very worried. It seems Disney hasn't learned a lot through the years after they reduced (or shut down) the cheap direct to video sequels of their major animation movies or they simply fail to grasp the uniqeness of Pixar and that creativity needs time.

[Relayer1]

Well Cars was neither unique nor ground breaking, but I really liked it.

I just really didn't like Ratatouille, and until this discussion didn't know it was so popular. Most of my friends were rather unimpressed too.

Just personal taste I suppose.

[Christopher]

FPAlpha wrote:

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So if it's true that Disney is putting pressure on Pixar to turn out movies at a faster rate so they can profit more i'm very worried. It seems Disney hasn't learned a lot through the years after they reduced (or shut down) the cheap direct to video sequels of their major animation movies or they simply fail to grasp the uniqeness of Pixar and that creativity needs time.

But as I said, that assumption doesn't make sense, because the Cars movies are the outliers. There have been six movies since Cars, and the only weak one was Cars 2. So the problem is not with Pixar as a whole, only with that particular concept.

[davejames]

FPAlpha wrote:

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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.

I thought the first Cars had tons of heart and character. I was resistant to the concept at first like everyone else, but the great storytelling very quickly won me over (much like with Ratatouille).

Unfortunately the sequel ditched all the quiet character stuff and became just a wacky saturday morning cartoon.

[bigdaddy]

I liked Cars 2 more than Cars 1.

ANyways your point is not really based on anything. John Lasseter is still in command of Pixar, he is also in charge of Disney animation. Pixar got a great deal from Disney. They make more movies now, so more of them suck. But we got Toy Story 3, so right there proves it's not just a merger that messed things up.

I havent seen Brave, and a prequel to Monster's Inc., which I love, is completely not needed, but my least favorite Pixar movies are Cars 1 and The Incredibles. t's just personal taste.

I was really looking forward to Newt, but they canceled it. However they are making a dinosaur movie and how can you mess up a movie with dinosaurs. I have faith still.

[Bob The Skutter]

I thought Brave was wonderful. Not sure why people didn't like it, because although it may not be Pixar's best film ever it was still great. Toy Story 3, Up, Wall E. These are all very good films. Cars and Cars 2 are the only Pixar films I'm not all that fond of. Cars 2 actually bored me.

[CaptainCanada]

I thought Brave was fine, I just didn't think it was up to Pixar's normal standard.

[Christopher]

I'm not sure Pixar has a "normal standard." I think it's more of a continuum -- some great films, some very good films, some pretty good films, and two or three mediocre films. I'd put Brave in the "very good" range, or at least on the border of "very good" and "pretty good." Certainly in the upper half of the spectrum.

[Ian Keldon]

Was "Incredibles" pre- or post-merger? That was the last Pixar film I thought was really worth anything.

Disney has been creatively stagnant for well over a decade now.