Posted by Allen on June 30, 2008 under Movie Reviews, Movies, Pixar | 
For all of the usual Pixar brand of amazing technical virtuosity on display in WALL-E (and believe me, there’s plenty of it), it’s the wonderful characterization which makes the movie such a joy to watch. That director Andrew Stanton and his wizards at Pixar were able to draw such well-developed characters with such little dialogue is testament to the skill of their animation and story departments. I have trouble imagining a more human movie about robots.
If you’ve seen director Stanton’s previous masterpiece, Finding Nemo — and really, if you haven’t by now, you really should — that depth of character won’t surprise you in the least. WALL-E himself shows himself to be one of the more appealing leads of any of the Pixar films; on retrospect, this big-hearted, curious, noble, romantic little waste-collection robot is probably the most likable lead Pixar’s ever created. All of the film’s robot characters have distinct, well-crafted personalities, and almost none of them have much dialogue to speak of (pun intended). I think WALL-E and Eve spoke ten different words between them, yet there was never any problem communicating with each other or with the audience.
During the early parts of the movie, the audience is expected to piece together for themselves what happened to Earth, but once the setting changes, the Kid Gloves of Subtlety come off in favor of the Brass Knuckles of In Your Face. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; the less-subtle bits also provided a good deal of the movie’s comic relief. WALL-E might be a love story between two robots, but it also falls cleanly in the Science Fiction Film With a Message mold. The same segments of the population which allowed themselves to get lathered up about the environmental message in Happy Feet will be thoroughly pissed off by WALL-E, which amplifies the green message and throws in several helpings of condemnation of our consumerist society to boot. The two other main themes I took from the movie — Open Your Eyes to the World Around You and Follow Your Own Directive — likely won’t go over any better with the crowd who’d be upset with the Take Care of the Planet one. But I think all of these points are valid ones to teach our kids (and adults). More than valid, really. Essential.
Anyway , it’s nice to see that Pixar has next year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar wrapped up early. One critic mentioned that he thought WALL-E could be up for Best Picture, but now that the Academy Awards have a separate animation category, I’m not sure any animated flick will ever get a Best Picture nomination again. I’ll be curious to see if it gets a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Andrew Stanton, especially given the paucity of dialogue; my suspicion is not, though my hope is yes. I guess we’ll find out in February.
Grade: A.
(Related side note: the short feature before the movie is one of the best they’ve done yet. Hysterical, and also dialogue-free, as most of their shorts are. Do not arrive to the movie late.)
Posted by Allen on July 28, 2006 under Disney, Movies, Pixar, Pop Culture |
As I had hoped when the Disney-Pixar deal went down, Pixar’s John Lasseter is reintroducing traditional hand-drawn animated features in his new role as Chief Creative Officer at Disney. First up: The Frog Princess, to be directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, the guys who directed The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Treasure Planet (well, two outta three ain’t bad). Alan Menken will be in charge of the music for the movie, which will be a return to the Broadway-esque Disney hits of the early 90’s (think, for example, Beauty and the Beast (which Menken worked on) and The Lion King). This announcement seems to me to be something worth celebrating — the driving talents behind The Little Mermaid making a new cartoon feature with John Lasseter in charge of the whole thing? Oh, yeah, man, good stuff.
But according to the news brief on the IMDb, the Hollywood Reporter doesn’t think Disney’s bringing 2D animation back is such a hot idea: the traditional animation “no longer draws the crowd,” the Reporter says. Um, hello, Hollywood Reporter? Yeah, the thing is that bad hand-drawn animated flicks, movies that seem excessively lame, insult the audience’s intelligence or seem to exist only as launching pads for Happy Meal toys… those are the movies that don’t bring audiences anymore.
Let’s go back to 2002, the year the death knell for cel animation was rung, for just a moment, shall we?
In November of ‘02, Treasure Planet, by most accounts a not-very-good movie, brings in a pitiful $38 million in the United States. Planet’s monumental failure pretty much single-handedly decimates Disney’s cel-drawn animation department, resulting in thousands of layoffs and the shutdown of Disney’s Florida animation facility. It was at this point that the “hand-drawn animation is dead” movement began in earnest.
Yet only five months earlier, Lilo and Stitch, a great movie with plenty of heart designed to appeal to both adults and children, pulled in $145 million domestic, plus launched a spinoff series and several direct-to-DVD sequels. Lilo and Stitch grossed almost as much in its opening weekend ($35 million) as Treasure Planet made during its entire theatrical run. By any metric used, Lilo and Stitch was a solid hit. (For some reason, every article I’ve read of the “no one wants to watch 2D animation” variety ignores this fact — doing so would dispute the foregone conclusion the writers were trying to assert, I suppose.)
Even 2003’s Brother Bear, which was released with relatively little promotion as a result of the huge stinking disaster which was Treasure Planet, managed to earn a healthy $85 million at the box office. (And 2004’s lame Home on the Range, also released with almost no promotion, still managed to out-gross Treasure Planet with a $50 million haul.)
So because of one massive stinkbomb, all of a sudden no one wants to watch hand-drawn animated features anymore?
Audiences do like hand-drawn animation when done well. (Have you noticed the huge surge in popularity of anime over the last decade?) Computer animation isn’t inherently superior, and doesn’t automatically ensure that people will show up. You’ll notice that in the glut of computer-animated movies that have come out over the last few years since 2D animation went into its coma, there have been some pretty big duds in that list, too (The Wild and it’s $36 million take, anyone?). Would The Iron Giant or The Lion King have been better movies if they had been done in 3D rather than 2D? No, I don’t believe it would have. What makes these movies work are the characters, the story, the songs (where applicable), the heart and soul that comes through — not whether the animation is flat or three-dimensional.
If John Lasseter’s going to be overseeing these new features, I have every expectation that the new breed of 2D movies will be more Lilo-like than Planet-esque. Lasseter might be most associated with computer animation, but the man knows storytelling and character and detail, and it’s those qualities which I hope will make these new hand-drawn features every bit as excellent as the Pixar films.
Posted by Allen on January 24, 2006 under Disney, Movies, Pixar, Pop Culture |
Back on December 27th, I got to talking about Disney and Pixar and the rumors that The Mouse was going to buy Pixar outright rather than simply renewing their soon-to-expire distribution deal. I had some qualms, I said:
I might be less concerned if they installed John Lasseter as Almighty Inscrutable Pixar Overlord and left them alone, but I have trouble imaginging Disney buying a new toy and not wanting to play with it.
Well, the deal’s done — Pixar is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. Steve Jobs just made himself somewhere north of $3 billion (yes, that’s billion) and finds himself the single largest shareholder in Disney (which could mean some interesting corporate synergy ‘twixt Disney and Apple, I’d imagine).
But the most important part of the buyout?
John Lasseter, the highly respected creative director at Pixar who had previously worked for Disney, will rejoin the House of Mouse as chief creative officer for the company’s combined animated studios and will also help oversee the design for new attractions at Disney theme parks.
I swear to ${god}, that sentence almost made me cry when I read it.
Not only does installing Lasseter as CCO help insure that Pixar will get to keep on keepin’ on as they have been, it also might mean a rebirth of traditional 2-D animation from Disney. Lasseter has said he’s a fan of old-school animation — might we get to see Disney return to producing new hand-drawn animated features? It doesn’t seem like it would make much sense to have two separate computer animation facilities, especially when one would so clearly outclass the other. Former CEO Michael Eisner was the oatmeal-brained idiot who decided Disney should get out of the cel-animation business; now that he’s gone and Lasseter’s in charge, maybe Lasseter can reverse that decision.
I’m sure his buddy Brad Bird wouldn’t mind. I know I sure wouldn’t.
Posted by Allen on December 27, 2005 under Disney, Movies, Pixar, Pop Culture |
As I’ve been predicting since early in the negotiations, Disney and Pixar are nearing a deal to re-up their distribution deal, which was set to expire after the release of Cars next year. I can’t honestly see how anyone might have believed this deal wasn’t going to happen–both companies stood to lose way, way too much if they parted ways: too much money for Disney, too much caché for Pixar.
I do have some concerns about the new agreement, if the information out there right now turns out to be true. If Disney were to outright purchase Pixar and make them the official Disney animation division, as one rumor has it, Pixar would lose the independence that’s allowed them to craft their movies they want the way they want to make them. If Disney owns them rather than simply distributs their product, Disney would likely want to have more of a white-gloved, three-fingered hand in what Pixar does and how, and we’ve already seen how wretchedly Disney manages their current animation department. I might be less concerned if they installed John Lasseter as Almighty Inscrutable Pixar Overlord and left them alone, but I have trouble imaginging Disney buying a new toy and not wanting to play with it.
Part of the deal might also include allowing Disney’s current 3D animation department to produce Pixar-sanctioned sequels to some of the Pixar catalog. I’m not sure if this one’s true or not, since Disney’s in-house 3D division seems to be nothing more than a poorly-constructed sham (”Circle 7 Studios” taking its name from the logo for the ABC studio across the street from their offices). I had been thinking that Pixar wouldn’t want to be involved with making any direct-to-video sequels of their work…until I remembered that Toy Story 2 was originally intended to be exactly that. So we’ll see; I’m going to leave this development in the “skeptical” column for now.
Those concerns aside, though, I’m very glad this deal’s going to get done. I’m not the biggest fan of The Mouse, but I realize that Pixar’s better off having their name connected to Disney than not. The distribution and promotion they get (like, say, having their creations slapped all over theme parks around the world) from being associated with the Disney Multimedia Conglomerate can’t be beat by anyone else they could have snuggled up with. And they certainly didn’t want to get into distributing their own movies; far better to let a company with that infrastructure in place take care of it so Pixar can stick with what they do best.
