PIXAR IS ADDING TO THE RUBBISH
by David Curry
Apr 18, 2018
In the past decade, sequels and reboots have taken hold of the film industry. As audiences turn away from cinemas and DVDs, risky ideas, like original stories and characters, are being shelved. Instead, we get the same old with a new coat of paint.
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Pixar, one of the most critically acclaimed and popular studios, has fallen into this poor practice, developing sequels that feel less like genuine works of art and more like instant cash-grabs.
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Pixar has released 19 films. Five out of the last nine are sequels, compared to one out of the first nine. The five sequels generated £2.7 billion at the box office. Finding Dory and Toy Story 3 both crossed the $1 billion mark.
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The four original films managed £1.7 billion – none managed to reach Disney’s $1 billion benchmark. If we include Up, the studio’s 10th release, the total comes to £2.2 billion, still a few hundred million shy of how much the sequels brought in.
In terms of budget, Pixar seems to invest the same amount into all its most recent films, $175 to $200 billion (£122 to £139 billion). The difference however comes in the amount of time spent before the film is given the greenlight, how many ideas are thrown about and how many are inevitably thrown out.
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With films like Toy Story 3 and Monsters University, the only creative energy that was exhausted was figuring how old the kids that watched the originals would be now. Cars 2 and 3 have even less to offer, essentially scrapping Lightning McQueen’s character arc in both sequels.
That’s not to say Pixar is the worst offender for sequels. We’ve seen some absolutely lousy attempts at recreating franchises and bringing back characters in the past 10 years. But unlike many of these faceless corporations – Lionsgate, Focus Pictures, Universal Studios – Pixar holds a special place as the most globally recognised animation studio.
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Part of this craze in sequels can be squarely blamed on Disney, which acquired Pixar in 2006. For the first few years, the owner kept a hands-off approach, keen to avoid tainting the animator’s success. However, Disney’s recent attitude has been to push for sequels, spin-offs and remakes across all its studios at a maniacal rate.
At Lucasfilm, which Disney acquired in 2012, the studio is ‘hard’ at work on the prequel of Han Solo character, followed by the final Star Wars movie in the third trilogy, the fifth Indiana Jones film, and then a untitled Star Wars movie.
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Lucasfilm may be considered a Star Wars studio by some, but in the 1980s and 90s it produced some genuinely unique if financially unsuccessful films. That era is over, it’s Star Wars and Indiana Jones from here on out.
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Marvel is a bit more complicated, as it’s making movies based on the famous comic book characters. The studio set out its mission to create a Cinematic Universe, in which each film meshes into the framework of the next. However, there are plenty of Marvel characters, yet it took three Iron Man’s, Captain America’s and two Thor’s before we saw the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther or Ant Man.
Pixar is not as quick a movie maker as Marvel or Lucasfilm, it has only announced two of its next movies, Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4. As if feeling the room, Pixar president Jim Morris confirmed this would definitely be the last Toy Story.
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It also confirmed that after Incredible 2 and Toy Story 4, there will be five original films, taking us to 2022. Whether all five make it to the cinema is up for debate, but it is at least a sign that Pixar may be moving away from Disney’s hollow franchise formula that has served them so well over the past decade. If that happens, we see less Cars 2 and Monsters University and more Ratatouille, Up and Coco.