Pixar is in Crisis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ย. 2024
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Pixar's Elemental has a rough go of it at the box office, why is that? In this video, I go over Pixar's recent woes, and how they might be able to turn things around.
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Do you plan on seeing Elemental? If you did, what did you think?
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Are you going to make a video about the community movie?
I mostly liked it. Somethings bugged me, though.
No. Movie looks terrible
I am infertile from eating scented candles
@@Unknown23430 It was a good film overall, but it did have problems with the dialogue sometimes being too on the nose at points.
as an animator for the last decade i can tell you, few of the people who were at pixar when they were good are still at pixar. it’s not the same company, not the same people, not the same priorities, and not nearly the same freedom they had. it’s just a name, a brand for disney to leverage. not much more.
The Heart Pixar once had is with a few exceptions gone.
That's sad
@@LuisSierra42 it’s sad, and movie making is in a horrible place rn, but it’s worth nothing a lot of pixar’s best talent has just gone elsewhere, they’re leveraging their pixar experience at sony, at disney, etc.
Pixar got woke, now going broke
@@0Asterite0 Oh would you shut up with this nonsense.
"Woke" is so over used it means nothing.
It also means that you won't get good films till you stop gormlessly spouting this stupid catchphrase.
It allows any studio to handwave away criticism of their films as a "vocal ist/phobe minority."
You can tell Pixar was in trouble when they stopped using their good luck charm, John Ratzenberger, in films.
💯💯💯. Exactly
Along with firing John Lasseter
How dare they not put John Ratzenberger in their recent films.
The last movie he was in was Soul. They stopped putting him in there when new directors started making movies.
Why did they stop?
Glad I am not the only one thinking this. Personally, I am against trying to make everything more hyper realistic. The reason I like The spider verse films, anime, and stuff like Arcane is that It takes advantage of the fact that it is animation. If you wanted reality, watch live action.
But literal live action, not disney live action and even less lion king "live action"
@@FargonNemeloc it still baffles me how the animals in both lion king and gotv3 took the hyper realistic approach yet the former is so liveless and the latter looked much better
@@Sonmmmxuan it may be the marvel vs Disney approach.
@@bryantgrove6199 marvel _is_ disney
@@Hawk7886 True, but they aren’t headed by the same people.
Man I miss that 15 year period from 1995 to 2011 when every single Pixar movie that was released was an absolute classic. That was truly an amazing time for animation and those movies will forever hold a place in our hearts. I don’t even watch Pixar films anymore tbh.
What made you decide to drop out that early on? Because aside from the sequels, I thought most of their original films from the past decade were still home-runners.
Pixar was great until 2011.
@@andykishore Again, I hugely disagree.
@@geoffreyrichards6079 They’ve still made some great movies in the last 10 years but since 2011 it’s been a huge drop in consistent quality. It started with Cars 2 getting the lowest critical rating for a Pixar movie ever and then there was just too many movies that flopped and didn’t have a cultural connection with audiences. Examples: The Good Dinosaur, Monsters University, Soul, Onward.
Sure people like these movies still, but there’s no comparison to the popularity and quality of their initial 11 film run from 1995 to 2010 ending with Toy Story 3.
@@andykishore I still liked Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory despite not being near the quality of the first ones, and Monsters University is actually one of my favorite Pixar films. But yeah they started declining somewhere in the 2010s
I would say the main problem of Pixar is called Disney.
Agreed
I would say the main problem of Pixar is called Pixar…
It's WOKENESS!!!!
The weird thing about Lightyear was that they had the most interesting universe imaginable already created: Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. I thought that Lightyear was going to be a prequel to the series and show how he met up with Warp Darkmatter, Ty and Commander Nebula and all that before eventually becoming the "Lightyear" we all know and love.
Same here but sadly it seems John Lasseter isn't the only one who hates the Series.
That's what I thought the Lightyear film going to about as well. Sadly it didn't and it was so boring in my opinion. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is the best Buzz Lightyear movie and cartoon series.
Imagine getting THE Mira Nova in a movie nowadays. 🤌🤣🤣 Internet woulda blew up
Yes exactly
@@TheReZisTLust Oh iif only they did the cartoon movie of this version. Now that version I would love to see.
✍️The two movie a year may have drained Pixar of their necessary writing talents. It took them 4 years to make Toy Story, in that time they rewrote, changed character motivations, and story beats…quality takes time. 👨🎨🎨🖼️
Thank you! That was my thought too. I remember when you'd have to wait 1.5 years or more between films and now they're getting close to 2 per year!
Koala Tea Takes Time deserves to be on a 👕
They said it best themselves in Toy Story 2, "You can't rush art!"
Yes but there isn't any quality
Exactly. Quality over quantity.
I’m so glad viewers are being picky in order to reward creative stories like Spiderwerse and The Last Wish. Vote with your dollar and studios will be forced to abandon tired formulas we don’t want.
What makes me neutral about this perspective is that Puss in Boots and Spider-Verse are built on existing IPs, so it's hard to know how much of the movies' success was as a result of their quality alone. If it was not based on an existing IP than I wonder how much money it would have made on the big screen?
It goes back to what captainmidnight talked about with original works being at risk of not finding an audience in the future (at least in the west, cause original manga and anime have been doing well for years).
@@leithaziz2716 The Last Wish massively eclipsed the original Puss in Boots movie, as well as the third and fourth Shrek movies. So it's clearly not just coasting on brand recognition.
Spider-Man is obviously a HUGE IP, but it's ATSV's predecessor Into the Spider-verse that turned Miles Morales from someone comic book fans knew about to someone my four year old nephew wanted to dress up as for Halloween.
@leithaziz2716 The marketing for The Last Wish was awful. I barely knew about the movie or even seen trailers and ads for it, and many people I know including myself didn't care to see it when it came out. So many people didn't even know the movie was in theaters until it was. Even though the film was part of an existing and quite popular IP, it was practically doomed to fail because no one cared.
But the movie ended up being so good that it made its buck back damn near solely through word of mouth. That practically proves that good film quality has become extremely crucial to how people are viewing films and animation going forward. Audiences want to see new things, and Disney and Pixar are starting to fall behind in that lane.
Here's hoping Disney's Wish is a banger.
@@leithaziz2716I mean I see a lot of comments and TH-camr said they watch Spider-Man like 5 times, spiderverse has very high critic and audience score, cinema score. It’s a extremely well received.
and then there is Mario movie getting nearly a billion... completely undeserving it.
Disney is destroying all our beloved brands, even their own. It’s sad what they’ve become.
The big problem with every single major media industry right now is the obsession to constantly go bigger and bigger, without necessarily trying to be better. Most major releases nowadays are made with INSANELY bloated budgets, and that goes double for sequels/prequels to IPs that used to take only a fraction of the budget to produce (case in point: the new Indiana Jones movie cost over $300 million and is barely earning back a portion of that, while Raiders of the Lost Ark only cost $20 million [yeah, in 1981 money, but still], and earned back more than 20 times its budget). Same thing with the video game industry-every major company keeps trying to push the technical boundaries farther and farther, so they keep investing all their resources into major triple A releases while making all their smaller projects crappy mobile titles. This business model is unsustainable, and we're seeing corporations start to buckle under the capitalist pressure to constantly go bigger and bigger with everything. Pixar is suffering from this too-they used to make wonderful films with much less money than the movies they make now. Lightyear cost $200 million, while the first Toy Story was only $30 million. And does the first Toy Story show its age a bit? Sure. But people still love it, and it still stands the test of time as a great film. It didn't need a $200 million budget. And Pixar doesn't need that kind of money now, at least not for everything. All they really need is good writers, good directors, good artists, and a studio that won't ride their ass to only put out cash grabs and other schlock meant to fill the wallets of their board members.
200 millions wtf? Spiderverse animation is so unique and beautiful sure they overworked their staff but they had the largest animation team for any animated movie and it only cost a 100 mil or more. Since the film dominating the box office it’s a massive movie win. Elemental is way too expensive as well
@@GladwinAbel Low budget means slaving artists, not a good thing, imagine how much cut the celebrities already have cut by just doing voice. Digital artists don't get bonus if the film doing well, they are let go as soon as the production is done. Big budget has it's problem too. The best way is to give commission(even though just a little percentage) if the film makes money, or not if it flops.
1.5 OT pay and 2x OT pay add up a lot to the budget unless artists are paid flat rate.
@@GladwinAbel "Sure they overworked their staff" Yes, let's get back to that. Spiderverse absolutely abused their artists. The stories that have come out about the inhumane working conditions are just the tip of the iceburg. Imagine all the other animators who are too afraid to speak out, for fear of not getting a job in the future? I hope it was the result of bad wording, but your comment is disgusting. You don't have the longest American animated movie ever, with the most animators, and a low budget unless youre REALLY taking advantage of your staff. It's people like you who allow studios to keep on mistreating their workers. No movie, regardless of how amazing it is, is worth subjecting another human being to abuse
@@El-de6nj bro I agree calm down 😂, I already know all of this, I that’s why I want the movie to be delayed cause these animators are talented and deserves a break to work their magic. The movie was split, pandemic and the writer is a perfectionist so I fully believe that the animators were treated horribly.
I think a bigger issue is that Pixar was once the gold standard of what 3D animation looked like. But in a post-Spider-Verse world, that quasi-realistic style feels outdated. So combine classic Pixar with those visuals, and we might get something incredible.
I agree, Pixar has tried a few more stylized things, like Soul had a lot of cool *aspects* but they seem unwilling to really commit to it
classic pixar cant exist anymore, too much financial entanglement and control from disney and studio execs. movies aren’t artist or writer-led, they’re finance-led.
Spider-Verse absolutely changed the game.
Going for the "animated movie that tries to look as realistic as possible by making it very detailed" approach has admittadly lost it's charm. And I'm personally one for artstyles that are expressive as possible with no set boundaries.
Spider-Verse is the obvious one, but a lot of high budget anime overseas pulls this off as well. I've spoken to people who talk about the animation of One Piece, Gurren Lagan, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and more. Yes, some of those examples are adaptation of existing Mangas, but what they pulled off onscreen can't be understated.
I dont think a sixth instance of toy story is caused because of spiderman: into the spiderverse
This situation of pixar decline isnt because of budget or artistics, it is clearly because studio mandates and meddling
I kinda feel for Pixar on this. They made a plan that they were going to focus on the next decade of films to be originals. Then the pandemic happened, they had to release those said originals on a streaming service with very little fanfare, and now due to low success of Elemental, it feels like they’re pivoting to fall back on releasing sequels/prequels again.
Yeah, and then people bitch that they only make sequels and shit. People are annoying af, tbh. I've enjoyed all of their recent originals, Soul and Luca are Top-Tier Pixar for me. I really liked Elementals. Turning Red was aight, a little bit better than Onward, for me.
The reason they're bombing is them putting things like non binary characters and two girls kissing. Straight people don't want their kids to see that so they're blocking half there customer base straight away. Only a small percentage of people are gay and though most of us it doesn't bother (I don't care) there's a HUGE percentage of people who do. So there customers become young adults who can buy a ticket for themselves and parents who don't care. Most queer people don't have kids. They're shooting themselves in the foot.
@@beinerthchitivamachado9892 Soul and Luca were okay, but Turning Red was absolutely _awful_
I really liked Turning Red but maybe because it reminds me of my own family and my childhood. Out of the last 5 or 6 movies they made the only one I can't watch more than twice is Luca. Otherwise Elemental, Turning Red, Soul, Onward, and Coco were rather entertaining. I haven't watched Lightyear yet though.
People do kinda suck. Based off comments I've read, people don't want anything too political, they don't want characters that are queer coded. They also want a decent amount of explosions and violence, maybe not Michael Bay's level of explosions. And they like stylization like the Spiderverse movies cuz once Puss N Boots did that for The Last Wish and everyone loves it.
The pandemic was really a wake up call to the entertainment industry because now people are more cautious, picky and have standards about which movies they want to see and the companies even now are still recovering from the aftermath, making stupid decisions, or some ignorantly believe that things would be the same like the good old days except those days are gone and the higher ups all need to wake up if they want to succeed in the future.
Yes thank god tbh tickets are expensive and food as well. People are gonna hold off to watch at home instead of investing their time into another “enjoyable film”
The last movie I saw in the theater was Murder on the Orient Express which was December 2019. Going to the movies is so expensive and people just don’t know how to behave in a theater; there are so many people who will talk throughout the movie, text on their cell phones and even bring very young babies. And with the dipping quality in movies, I can wait the three months till the movie is available on streaming.
i think it’s because the cost of seeing movies was so low that consumers could actually keep up with all the mainstream releases rather than just the event films. audiences got to venture out on a limb and see ambitious and artistic movies they wouldn’t otherwise have seen, and they realized they could set their standards much higher. a similar thing happened during the moviepass craze of 2018(?).
There’s a reason that Everything Everywhere All At Once absolutely crushed expectations at the box office as soon as the pandemic was considered over in most of the Western world. Audiences demand quality, writers/actors/directors demand a living wage and job security, and the movie industry finally has to cough up the billions that the executives pocket every year.
@@GladwinAbelMan them prices are insane, I'm not even seeing through imax yet I still have to pay £13 something!??
@@SG-bs6dm It's not like you have to pay for parking like going to a sports arena. I consider it cheaper than seeing a stage show, sporting event, comedy routine, etc.
As to quality of experience, that's what every theater needs to work on, making sure the image and sound are working right and the audience is behaving.
I think the overall biggest contributer to Pixar's doward spiral is them basically perfecting their technology. Without a doubt the biggest driving force for their stories in that first decade was the desire to see what creatures and worlds could be created using computer animation. And the limitations of the tech in ways led to them having more out of the box ideas, like storys about Toys, Bugs, and Fish because those were more feasible than Human characters, and forcing them to crack down harder on the writing process, because they knew that the visuals would age but a good story wouldn't. Now they've reached the point where they can create lifelike environments and if they made the humans any more realistic they would become uncanny. And their story process lately seems to be throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks, which allows for some nore personal stories like Turning Red and Luca, which are Wonderful and intimate stories, but they just don't carry as broad an appeal as sentient Toys or Robots.
And because their the studio founded with the purpose of making CGI movies, I find ot unlikely that they'd be willing to experiment with 2D or Hybrid styles the same way Sony or DreamWorks can.
I bet they can't make a movie on well designed future world like cyberpunk with 80s neon light aesthetic. For story, They can't make one on a student or messenger in future who appears to be perry the platypus like secret agent of some kind.
Nor they can make a movie on penguins / ice, nor they can make movie like tron inside computer circuits (even if its fake still), nor they can make a movie on magicians...
Ever since their first Movie Toy Story, they stick to the special/secret society trope in every movie, and a lot of them are really good and well written but I think it’s time they diversify in their plot/stories, and obviously in Elementals the fatigued really showed
Even Disney's just gone hybrid; Pixar had better find something that works and fast.
Luca was really good, Turning Red is very much not. It was clearly an allegory for a pre-teen girl going through puberty but it didn't handle that topic with any level of tact, it depicted her lusting over a celebrity and literally selling her body for money as good things and they chose to make the mother (the person best equipped to guide a girl through this time in her life) the villain of the story. It sends all sorts of awful messages.
The trailers for "Elemental" suggested a movie with very little in terms of surprises, and to the extent that world-building was going on, it was in service of some fairly shallow jokes and rather on-the-nose allegory. Many of the shots in it were almost uncomfortable in their resemblance to "Zootopia", another movie with a bustling, diverse metropolis- but one that seemed to have put more thought into what the interactions of its characters would mean. Perhaps it was a poorly cut trailer, but Pixar's greatest strength has always been its story-telling, making us care whether we were watching an action figure or a manifest emotion. That strength was not evident in the trailer.
Bingo! I was calling it a Zootopia ripoff before I got more information.
One thing that bothers me about current Pixar is the realistic skin textures on cartonish looking humans. It just comes across as creepy, uncanny valley to me
Exactly!
Agreed. Buzz looked really ugly.
I was thinking the same thing. It really bothered me while watching Luca.
@@cortomaltese5206Buzz was still fine compared to Soul
I have to disagree with this. That’s a part of their animation I don’t mind.
Pixar isn’t in crisis! They’re falling with style!
Deliberately being forced tor fail for their overlord. Soul and Luca were great though.
Soul was okay, it could have been better haven’t seen Luca and I haven’t seen Turning Red because it gives me PTSD.
their movies are still really great
@@jiji7250 Most of them are but some of them have not been great in the end.
@LiamDeege-ip8fp the only one where I felt was a bit weak was lightyear I still feel all other movies are pretty above average for animation standards .
This makes me sad, as a kid I remember watching Pixar movies, they had great stories and dope messages. I remember watching Incredibles,bugs Life, the Toy Story movies on car rides with my god parents family and helped me bond with them and make a new family and friends that helped me grow as a person.
Yeah, it’s really sad to think about
You never really stop growing as a person though. People are trying to be better everyday. So it is sad to hear that you stopped growing 😢
Fr In the late 90's to early 2010's Pixar dropped some of the greatest films of all time, I'm so glad I experienced it as a kid. But it makes me mad as hell seeing the state of everything nowadays
All the recent pixar movies feel more like Disney than Pixar themselves
This. It's getting harder to tell Disney's own movies from Pixar's, especially since Disney's gone exclusively to 3D animation.
Disney is quickly becoming the EA of the movie world: every studio they buy just becomes a soulless factory where (short-term) profit is king... until they lose so much of their former value they're shut down, or are left as nothing more than a name to slap on a poster.
they already became that, like 15 years ago.
Watched this on Nebula.
The fact that "Elemental" has a 92% Cinemascore while underperforming at the box office feels like strong evidence for the "audiences now conditioned to wait for streaming with Pixar stuff" answer. Yes, I know it had a pretty good drop-off rate in the second weekend, but it's still going to be a box office failure for the studio (they don't really reap the benefits of a sleeper hit, since every weekend the theaters claim a higher percentage of the take).
100% agree with this. I love movies and fully intend on watching everything Pixar makes, but I don't see myself going to a movie theater anymore to watch their movies.
Shittier zootopia with 0 meme material. Nothing but social justice drama that i want to escape from
@@shengshaoyi Then you're DUMB AF. Because if you wait for them to come out to Disney+ the movies are gonna keep failing.
The fact that we're in a really dicey situation with inflation and most places are charging $20 for a single movie ticket is further amplifying this.
I think it doesn't help that it doesn't look like an interesting hook for kids, regardless of the quality. Toy Story is about toys coming to life! Cars has talking cars! Elemental is, um, about a water blob and fire girl going on a date? Kid me would not have been interested in that concept even a little bit
Does anyone else watching the early 2000s Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command series & preferred it over the Lightyear film?
Yes. “Buzz, I am your father. Psyche! Made you look, you dimwit”
Yes. The Lightyear film should have been an adaptation of that. But even after John Lasseter left, they still hate that Series.
I didn't go to watch the film once i figured it wasn't a movie leading to the Star Command series.
If those executive idiots would put them on Disney+, then yes!
Not at all. Lightyear was terrific.
The thing is, Pixar started and did well when Disney animation was struggling hard and the animation field was wide open. It is very easy to do well when no one is competing with you.
Now, with Disney animation back and with new competitors, such as illumination entertainment, the market is far more crowded and competitive. An average Pixar movie cannot expect to pull the same revenu as it used to because of this.
I also think that Disney ownership, which likely was lighter after it bought pixar in 2006, is probably pushing them harder to increase the release schedule which is not compatible with this kind of creative process. To do that, you have to be independent like Studio Ghibli. Corporate overlord like to have steady stream of revenue and don't care much about quality.
but the pixar's movies were never succesful just because they had no competition (which in itself is a bold take), but also because they were great
@@kretgwiazdonos7397 Starting in the mid 90s, Disney animation went hard on straight to video/DVD animation and release only an handful of new animation movies in theatre between 96 and 06 when Pixar was competing with Disney. There was not a lot of competition from elsewhere either during that period, Dreamwork Animation only came to be in the 98 and didn't produce a major hit until they made Shrek 1.
I think the decline in Pixar quality movie is really due to the ever increasing management of Pixar by Disney. Pixar movie were great because they worked similarly like Studio Ghibli which took years to make a movie (but most of them are amazing). Disney doesn't the patience for that and have asked Pixar to produce multiple movie per years - that a huge increase from the releases pace they had previously.
Disney’s animated films aren’t doing so hot right now besides encanto strange world and raya were mid the former failed
I think there's room for 6 or more animated movies in theaters a year, just not all at once. _The Amazing Maurice_ (thought it was Marvelous Maurice for alliteration) went up against _Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,_ as well as _Avatar: The Way of Water_ which seemed partly animated. Now we got _Teenage Kraken_ and _Elemental_ going up against each other, _Spider-Man: Through the Spider-Verse_ and the live action _The Little Mermaid._ Dumb.
Also there needs to be 6 months between theater release and no-additional charge streaming release.
I just want to say thank you for creating content thats critical of today's cinema landscape but isnt overly opiniated and clickbaity like many similar channels
In my opinion, it isn't Pixar that needs to change, it's Disney. They released Elemental around the same time as Spider-Verse, just as DreamWorks did with Ruby Gillman, along with a bit of overhype and misleading trailers. If they released it at least a month afterward, it would've been alright.
I think that "do what's best for the film, however long it takes and however much it costs" is already way in the past. When that book came out in 2014, Pixar had released 14 films in 19 years (24 if you actually count the 5 years it took to make Toy Story) and they were already speeding up as there was almost 8 years between the release of their first and their 5th film, and 10 between that and their 14th.
In the 9 years since the book came out, over 2 of which were a pandemic which shut down everything, Pixar has released 13 films, with 5 more slated to release in the next 3.
The idea of Pixar as the home of original and consistently great stories is a dead one from before they were bought by Disney, and it's just taken this long for the body to go cold. Under Disney it's all about regular "content" and sequels.
It was the same with Lucasfilm. Remember when we were going to get a Star Wars film every year? In the 40 years Lucasfilm existed independently, it created 15 different IPs. In the 11 years since, it has created 0. Only sequels and spin-offs to 4 of those previous 15.
Pixar has faired better intellectually speaking, but Disney's corporate structure and syphoning off of resources from Pixar for their own Animation department has come at a major cost.
You would think the person who saved the production of Toy Story 2 would have job security to infinity and beyond, but NOPE.
No one is safe from Pixar's layoffs. Even a few execs got the can for the Lightyear fumble.
Just sad. Firing John Lasseter was DUMB!
Sure, he was kind of a sexual harrasser, but he knows PIXAR is known for its storytelling, so please bring him back. At this point, we don't care that he sucked as a human being.
What?! Yah, I’d rather not reward predators with cushy jobs and access to ample victims just so we can get a “good” movie.
@@Trainboy452John Lasseter knows good storytelling, huh? Did you forget that the Cars series was his pet project?
@user-Trainboy452
Speak for yourself. Call me crazy, but I think people feeling safe and comfortable at their jobs is more important than movies being good.
And besides, most of Pixar’s best movies weren’t even directed by John Lassiter. Finding Nemo and WALL-E were directed by Andrew Stanton; The Incredibles and Ratatouille were directed by Brad Bird; Toy Story 3 and Coco were directed by Lee Unkrich; Monsters Inc., Up and Inside Out were all directed by Pete Doctor, etc.
Meanwhile, out of the five movies that Lassiter directed for Pixar, only two of them were actually good, those being the first two Toy Story movies. Meanwhile he also directed A Bug’s Life, which was pretty mid, the first Cars, which was also pretty mid, and Cars 2, which was the first Pixar movie almost everyone agreed was bad, thus being the first movie to break Pixar’s winning streak. So you’ll forgive me for thinking that Lassiter is a bit overrated as a creative talent.
There seems to be less demand now for the Pixar look when it comes to animated films, as films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Klaus, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, The Last Wish, and Nimona all use 2.5D animation. (I'm sure there's a title I'm forgetting!) WDAS seems to be trying this animation style too with Wish, their November release this year.
I don't think the Pixar look should go away, though. I think there's enough space in movies for both these animation styles and I'm hoping WDAS and Pixar do get their groove back. It just kinda feels like now, they're playing catch-up instead of being at the forefront of the animation world.
I think what people are also realizing is that hyper-realistic animation isn’t actually all that fun to watch. All the movies mentioned are pretty stylized, which adds a sort of excitement through the visuals.
I don’t know what effect they used for the fire people in Elemental, but it does look like painted CG to me.
Finally someone who mentions Klaus! I love that movie
when people ask "is ____genre or type of movies dying?" the answer is almost always "no, just bad ones are no longer as acceptable because time has passed and it's been done already for the last ~25 years"
execution matters. Across the Spiderverse is proof of that. everybody is tired of multiverse superhero shenanigans but Across the Spiderverse says screw you we are going to do it almost [perfectly and their effort has been rewarded
Yeah, I feel like once a genre gets popular enough, you get some really good films in that genre. But it steadily becomes flooded with bad films trying to ride the hype train - so it’s not that the genre is bad or people have fatigue of that genre, it’s just that viewers have experienced the good so they don’t feel the need to support the bad
yeah like ppl were on board for just about any superhero movie like 10-15 years ago but now they only want to watch the good ones
@@amai_zingthis exact phenomenon literally happened in the 1970s with disaster movies. Everybody saw how successful Airport (1970) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) were and quickly tried to emulate it. We ended up with a mixed bag of successes ranging from the god awful Beyond the Poseidon Adventure to the mediocre Earthquake to the B+ tier The Towering Inferno. Airport even turned into its own franchise. The result was the same thing the cinematic universe style of superhero movies todays Hollywood is experiencing today: massively inflated budgets, sub-par plots and writing quality, and an insane glut of movies all in the same genre.
Funnily enough the oversaturation of disaster movies lead to an entirely new subgenre of comedy movie being created in 1979-1980 by 3 guys: Airplane!. By taking the screenplay of a movie Paramount had basically forgotten about and then injecting a joke somewhere every 5 seconds, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker single handedly kill off the disaster movie as being a genre audiences could care about until Roland Emmerich brought it back with Independence Day in 1996.
I know this won’t happen and it will have economic consequences, but I think Pixar needs to spin off from Disney if they want to be a great company again.
The threshold for me to actually pay the $12 to go see a movie is much higher now. If I'm leaving my house im not just gonna hope a movie is good.
I think alot of recent flops point to this exhaustion with unoriginal or generally uninteresting movies. If they insist on grafting the worst parts of corporate greed onto these supposedly creative projects people will continue to check out.
I totally agree. The only time I ever go to a movie nowadays is if I'm sure its a good movie. I haven't seen any recent disney/pixar releases because why waste money on them if I can watch them on D+ in 40 days? Movies like John Wick, Spiderman, Puss in Boots, and Oppenheimer (not out yet but I'm quite excited) have the draw of being interesting and unique that gets me to go to a theater. Live action remakes and ATLA Romeo and Juliet just don't have that draw to them.
Aside from these annoying remakes, poorly done CGI and unoriginal content, I think your first sentence also really hits the nail on the head. It’s harder for people to see movies now with these prices going up constantly. I used to go to the movies at least once a month or every other month. Now I’m lucky to go 3x a year. It’s so expensive and basic needs have gotten expensive too as well as ordering food so I think a lot of people cannot afford it anymore.
Coincidentally enough, I hadn't gone to the cinemas in years by now. I only went there recently to watch the new Spider-Verse, and while I can tell it's a 10/10 movie, and I didn't "love" it like I did the 1st one, and maybe that's cause I've gotten fatigued by multiverse stories (even well-told ones like Spider-Verse).
It seems like cinemas are facing an issue of the general audience not feeling interested to watch many new movies coming out unless the word of mouth is REALLY good.
Jesus it's $20 per ticket where I live lol
This has happened a few times in Hollywood. When the western genre was dying theaters were dying. It was just like today I hear
The success of movies like Super Mario Bros. and Across the Spiderverse didn’t take away from Pixar’s status as a hub for originality. Pixar did that themselves by mostly sucking for the last decade.
Besides, Pixar has been banking on franchise recognition for a while now. They’re just worse at it than other studios.
It absolutely did because now people are looking to other studios for originality.
@@littlemoth4956 huh?
This franchise recognition thing is nothing else but studio mandate, disney want to fill shelves with toys and what better to fill those shelves than with a "brand new" toy story movie, with another new toy made entirely out of garbage, AGAIN!!!
Spiderman and Mario arent orignal. They are literal icons of their respective mediums/genres. This "downfall" of Pixar only seems apparent now due to the result of the pandemic
@@tonyp9884God, thank you. People here seem to be conflating "good movie" with "original movie" and it's driving me nuts.
I mean c'mon, The Last Wish is the SEQUEL to a SPIN-OFF of a movie franchise with FOUR MOVIES and 5th one on the way. Don't even get me started on Spider-verse, which is an adaptation of a comic storyline which is also an adaptation of a storyline from a cartoon WHICH ITSELF is based on video game which ALSO was directly inspired by ANOTHER storyline from an even older cartoon.
What The Last Wish and Spider-Verse prove is that EXECUTION still is the most important thing in a story. You can have the most out-there, bonkers premise for a movie and it won't matter if you suck at writing.
There’s actually been a big conversation happening regarding blockbusters bombing. Other films like the Flash and Indiana Jones 5 (also very well established franchises) have been flopping.
Most people are like “eh I’ll just wait till they’re streaming”, since going to the theater is pretty inconvenient and expensive these days.
I think we’re at a point now where you need make the movie going experience worth the price of admission. Answer the question “why should I bother seeing this in a theater?”
Seeing Zack Snyder's Justice League in IMAX would definitely be worth the experience. Simply because the story of how the Film came to be is Legendary. Of course some intermissions would be needed.
@jturner2577
As much as I would like to see the Snyder Cut in theaters, I don’t think a lot of people would go see it. Most people kinda stopped caring about it almost immediately after it hit HBO Max (which btw I refuse to call “Max” because fuck Zaslav). I think if I remember the data correctly most people didn’t even finish the movie.
Might have something to do with a movie ticket costing $20 before you've even gotten a snack, and the cost of living being so inflated while wages are stagnant that people don't have the damn liquidity to frivolously attend movies. I loooooove the theater but it's gotten so expensive that most movies I'll do at home, and I only see movies in theaters that I feel NEED the big screen or are particularly fun for it (Interstellar, Oppenheimer, Spiderverse, Mad Max, Top Gun)
It's not that.
It's because they suck. They're trying so hard to force bs woke culture into it and it ruins it.
Flash flopped because of Miller and the track record of DCEU films. Hopefully they right the ship under the new regime.
Continuing Toy Story is such a bad idea. The ending of 4 really felt like a goodbye forever and it made a huge impact on me since i was seeing my favorite characters from childhood giving their goodbyes. It will just feel empty seeing them again and again.
3 was already unnecessary. the first 2 and the video game were good. after that, meh.
@@TheSuperappelflapnah, 3 is the perfect ending. 4 was unnecesary
@@arturocastroverde3349 agreed
3 was amazing, 4 was unnecessary, but not bad, 5? Ridiculous
@@TheSuperappelflap arguments?
You are indeed right about the Prequels and sequels only getting the company so far. I definitely want to see more different and unique projects. Elemental looks very creative and funny. I’m not into all of the modern stuff but my big favorite of the recent years is Coco and I didn’t mind the human characters look in that movie because they looked quirky and relatable but yes hyper realistic designs can often be distracting. I hope that Pixar will indeed make some more unique movies and stories soon! Thank you for sharing this with us!
to me Elemental didn't had a strong enough hook to make me go "OH HELL YEAH! I'M GOING TO SEE THIS IN THEATHERS!"
Same here. Honestly other than Puss in Boots 2, Sonic 2, The Super Mario Movie, Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, no theatericaly animated movie screamed must see in theaters for me.
@@jturner2577 Anything would've been better than Turning Red in the theaters last year because at that point it could've very well won the Oscars because they're always rigged towards trashy Disney and Pixar movies. Brave should not have won and I'm glad that Turning Red did not, wish Puss in Boots won, haven't seen it, hope to someday but I know enough about it to understand why it had high success which is why I hoped it would win the Oscars, it didn't sadly, I don't mind Pinocchio winning but anythings better than Turning Red.
@@LiamDeegehe Oscars aren’t always rigged to Disney and Pixar movies. Their movies are just that good, so naturally they’ll win almost every year. Of course you don’t understand because you probably have awful taste in movies. Although I don’t care whether Puss in Boots or Pinocchio won because they both really deserved it.
@@anthonygabriel7409 I understand what. you're saying, but it's also not cool when Disney wins all the time. Certain years will come when it seems like Dreamworks will have their deserved moment, only for the final laugh to be delivered by Disney and that's why I'm saying the Oscars get rigged because they're too biased towards a studio that hasn't had too many big hits in recent years.
i share this same sentiment & a part of me wishes the studio would take a big risk and develop one of their smaller, intimate pre-screening short films (2D or 3D for that matter) into a full-length in the hands of one of their emerging, incredibly creative animators. i think that kind of risk, given the kind of care they've shown in most of their films, would pay off incredibly for fans and the industry alike.
That's pretty much what they did for Turning Red, whose director, Domee Shi, was the director of their Oscar-winning short Bao, a couple of years prior.
Can't quite ask them to do something they've done already...
@@jjstarrprod this is true & i realized there are multiple examples of this already done. i definitely think they can push the envelope more than turning red with future projects, despite me liking that movie a lot.
Their last two releases were bombs in theaters, but the three films that they released beforehand that were forced to stream, soul, Luca and turning red, these are excellent movies. And I'm pretty sure those movies would have done really well in theaters if it wasn't for COVID. Or if they had just given them a chance and released them in theaters anyway.
They wouldn't have. None of these 3 films actually appealed to most of their intended audience. I liked Soul, Luca was okay, Turning Red was suuuuuper meh. They just weren't the kind of movies that resonated with many people in the same way films like Wall-E, Inside Out, and Coco have. The more recent Pixar installments have been forgettable.
I really liked Turning Red. Reminded me of how I grew up with my family. Freedom with friends was a short leash and there was pressure to represent the family name. And JC was my favorite N'Sync.
I would’ve liked to see Turning Red had it not been relatable to my early teen experiences which aged badly for me and gives me nothing but bad memories of my middle school days. I also don’t like it for the cringy and dirty scenes which make the film practically nothing but a meme at this point. In the end I wouldn’t want my favorite animation studio to remind me of my dark years by means of a cringy, dirty, bizarre and memey coming of age story and any other trauma and PTSD I faced as a 13 year old.
@@DefconDelta88They would have. Audiences would have loved to see more brand new original Pixar movies in theaters. If you don’t care about them that’s your opinion not a true fact.
Luca and Turning Red were mediocre.
The Good Dinosaur gets dismissed a lot, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I think of it as a hidden gem considering how it got buried. The moment between Arlo and the human boy telling each other about their families through use of basically puppets and gestures was genuinely touching and beautifully done.
Good Dinosaur is one of the biggest lost causes in the history of Pixar.
From a technical standpoint Elemental feels a lot like tech demo with a story slapped into it. The physics are amazing across the board. I actually liked the film and while I think it's far from Pixar's typical masterpieces, it's still enjoyable. Personally, I don't think Pixar _needs_ to release a groundbreaking, tear-jerker film everytime. Turning Red was pretty simple too and it was still enjoyable. At the same time I agree with what you said that going to the movies needs to feel "epic" enough to justify the costs.
The think is spending 200 mil for a enjoyable movie is setting up for failure, Spider-Man is 100 mil and clearly people are returning to watch it multiple time, the ratings are also high as well
@@GladwinAbelthe main reason for the big budget is that Pixar developed new cgi tech in house so that they could actually make this movie
@@hydenmoody4373 ok I didn’t know this but it’s not only animation movies like fast x and indiana are costing 300 mil to make and flopping. Idk why are they even investigating in dying sequels
@@GladwinAbelConsider it a thoroughbred contender for best animated feature at next year's oscars.
@@GladwinAbelit’s 100 million dollars because they underpayed their workers and overworked them the budget doesn’t matter
I never thought I would see the day when Illumination and Sony are ruling the animation kingdom so to speak.
I feel like Illumination didn't really do much to get there, it was moreso their competitors losing some ground.
Sony on the other hand was a welcome surprise outside of the occasional stinkers (the less said about the Emoji movie, the better).
@@leithaziz2716 Sonys Spider-Verse movies definitely turned things around for them.
@@claytonrios1The failure of the Emoji Movie was the kick in the ass Sony needed.
I still can’t believe that Sony Animation released such amazing movies with Spider-Verse.
Illumination is shit
Audiences have been conditioned to just wait for Pixar movies to go to Disney+. Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were hurt badly by this. A shame because Soul was genuinely great. Not to mention that Pixar uses in-house CGI tech developed as each new movies are made, which bloated their budget by several times compared to something like Puss in Boots, which cost around $90 million, if I remember. It's still a huge sum of money, but nothing compared to Pixar movies' budgets. It makes their movies much harder to turn a profit or break even when their budgets are so inflated in the first place.
My brother said something the last time we watched an Elemental trailer in theatres, “When did Pixar movies become so cookie cutter?” And tbh I did agree a bit with that sentiment
Yeah, the trailers were ASS. But the movie was pretty good. Critics and most importantly, the Audience are fucking with it.
@@beinerthchitivamachado9892pretty good is not enough to get ass seated in a theatre
@@GladwinAbel Nah, but niggas will go see The Mario movie or Fast and Furious 100 and suddenly mid af is enough, but pretry good isn't...
@@GladwinAbelit’s really great as the audience score is all i needed to watch the film , but yeah i feel the marketing kinda hurt the earnings of the movie.
@@GladwinAbelThen don’t be such a picky ass with what movies you want to see. If that’s not good enough.
Onward is actually one of my favorite Pixar movies period. The brothers/father relationship concept is pretty unique, and as a dad with 2 sons, it really hits me emotionally every time I watch it. Such a great movie.
I loved onward. I'm also a dad (3 kids) and have a relationship with my older brother like Ian and Barley. But outside of being able to see myself in the story I really enjoy the take on "what if magic was real" and seeing pixar's imagining of classic fantasy elements. It had the fun, whimsical feel and a nice emotional core that I'm a sucker for. I've talked to a lot of people about the film and most people have never heard of it, those that have loved it.
I think a lot of us just want to see a really fun movie with characters we can get attached to. Spider-Verse and Mario really scratched that itch. I haven’t been excited for a Disney/Pixar movie in a long while. The last Pixar movie I saw in theaters was Incredibles 2.
Yeah exactly. I think the issue with Pixar in the last 5 years is that they aren't making movies that appeal to the audience. I mean, I'm 34 and I still goddamn love animated movies and always will, so I'm very, very likely to give movies they make a watch at least once, but the more recent additions haven't been movies that appeal in the right kind of way. It's like they are trying to appeal to an adult audience with movies that they haven't bothered to even ask if the audience wants to see. Instead they're making what they themselves want to see, and while the themes and stories they're trying to tell aren't BAD, they aren't good either. They're mediocre, they don't have the same kind of dynamic humour mixed with really fantastical and innovative concepts and worlds. Take Soul vs Inside Out as an example. Both movies have solid casts, great animation, and the stories are solid, and both take place in the "real" (modern) world revolving around human characters. So why does Inside Out work where Soul lost a lot of people? Because Inside Out spends far more time in Riley's head than the real world. The real world was never the setting of the movie. Riley's imagination is, and it created the stage needed to explore it's themes and narrative with the complete creative freedom a child's imagination is rife with, and that opens the door to some seriously funny settings and jokes. With Soul, most of the movie takes place in the real world and the more abstract setting of the afterlife is more of a temporary stage rather than the primary stage in which the story is playing out. You can turn around and see the exact same issue with movies like Lightyear, Encanto, Turning Red, etc. They are too grounded in the familiar world we live in and not free enough to create their own fantastical setting. Encanto tried and succeeded in certain parts of the movie but every "unique" stage we see in various scenes is only ever temporary because we keep getting dragged back to reality. Reality is boring, mundane, and unless you do something with the concept of a modern world reality to make it a different kind of reality, that setting IS boring. A great example of that is Zootopia and Big Hero 6. Both films take place in world's that are structured much like our own and familiar: a modern Metropolitan setting. But both movies do something remarkable with it to make it feel special. In Zootopia, you've got the entire theme of an animal kingdom civilization with various habitats and a complex society that quite literally makes the tension of a civilization made up of predator species and prey species the point of the narrative, so it's exploring the very concept that makes the actual existence of that kind of society extremely problematic, while selling you this really neat spin on a metro full of tiny mice city blocks to elephants, whales, etc etc. In Big Hero Six, they take the familiar setting, mash it up with some international themes, but focus on the fantastical elements of that world for most of the film, which is done primarily through its characters venturing into super hero territory, and it works because the real world setting is never actually the focus like it is in Zootopia, and unlike Soul, Turning Red, and Lightyear, the characters are the main focus of that story and thus the "real" world in Big Hero 6 is only every a supplementary stage for the actual story happening because the primary stage for that story is instead held on the character interactions themselves. Zootopia and Big Hero 6 are both movies that take a different approach to telling a story in a modern metro setting without losing a fantastical focus in the process. A movie like Raya worked well because it was telling a real world theme in a fantastical world setting, and I think if they'd tried to make it take place in say, an ancient Asian cultural setting that is grounded in reality (like King Fu Panda if you take all the characters out of it), the movie would have fallen flat. Speaking of Kung Fu Panda, there's another example of a film that takes a setting that is based on a familiar reality, but the characters are what makes it fantastical and they lean very hard into that.
So setting has a huge impact when we are trying to tell stories, and animation has always served a very unique purpose in being able to tell fantastical stories that are closely woven with realistic themes and relatable characters, while it allows us to suspend disbelief and get lost in a rich environment with dynamic characters that have one foot in reality and one foot in something fantastical. And it works. But when you have both feet in reality, it falls apart. You have to have at least one foot in something fantastical. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is a stellar example of instead having BOTH feet in something fantastical and demonstrates that works fantastic. But it doesn't work the other way around.
Animation serves a purpose of enabling us to tell stories we can't tell in live action, and Pixar as of late has been using animation to tell stories that could easily be done in live action and thus, are boring concepts for animated films.
get attached to mario? hes a plumber with a red hat who jumps really high and say woohoo. any "character" they gave him for the movie was just to sell merch. one of the most soulless projects in the history of cinema. also can they stop putting chris pratt in fucking everything? the only things he ever did that i liked were the first guardians movie and the terminal list, which was a slightly above mediocre netflix action series. he is not a great actor.
@@blendedcircuit479 Yeah, I don't know what movie people were watching if they liked Super Mario Bros. I know I'm not the target audience, I mean, my nephew liked it, but I thought it was terrible. I cannot speak to Spiderverse, haven't seen any of those movies, and that style of animation is simply not my thing: I was never into comic books.
Pixar being screwed by the pandemic and having three of their films go straight to streaming. Luca, soul, and turning red all of which wouod have made a nice chunk of change at the box office. I do hope they recover as I liked elemental
Soul would have been a massive hit for them had the pandemic not screwed everything up.
Turning Red would have been a hit with Millennials/Gen Z. Luca would have likely connected with that demographic as well . While Soul would have brought in GAs. Each of those films would have at worst broke even.
@@jturner2577 I feel it's over exaggerated when people say Pixar is dead when we have had very good films from them in the modern age.
@@jordanvance1657 Not many of their newer films have received great reviews from critics save for Inside Out, Coco, and to and extent, Luca despite the fact I have not seen it, I think it is okay to an extent.
I was a big Pixar fan and grew up on the early Toy Story films so it makes me sad that all your points are true. I can't even remember when was the last time I was excited for a Pixar movie (Incredibles will always be my favorite). I hope they turn things around.
As a toddler in the late 2000’s I grew up watching the greatest Pixar movies of all time, now I get nothing but cringy, dirty, bizarre, memey coming of age stories that give me PTSD of my early teen experiences.
@@LiamDeegeThat’s your problem if movies give you PTSD. Deal with it yourself, but don’t complain about their movies for something that you exclusively have a problem with.
To be fair, original animation in general is also in crisis post covid. The latest DreamWorks film just tanked completely.
DreamWorks was already low budget, they were reusing assets in the same movies
Puss in Boots and Spiderman both did well. Mario was the biggest film of the year. Bad movies (teenage Kraken, elemental) will not make money in any medium.
Nah not really, y’all gotta stop this narrative. It’s the same thing as the “people are tired of superhero movies” when it’s just people getting tired of movies that are not great and feel like it’s something they’ve already seen. If you’re movie is great and unique it’ll sell well. Puss in boots and spiderman proved that
@@Thishandle9374rabdomElemental wasn't a bad film, just poorly marketed and Puss in Boots, Spiderman, and Mario aren't original IPs at all.
@@hs1798 That's not true, remember Iron Giant was a flop when it came out, and now it's considered a classic. Not every great movie is a success in the box office.
I'm a firm believer that Pixar's run from '95 to 2010 is probably the greatest we will ever see from a major animated movie studio. With that said, it obviously can't last forever. I've just kind of accepted that Pixar just isn't what it used to be and will probably never regain the throne as the kings of animation. However as long as they're still making solid movies from time to time, I think that's alright. Movies like Soul and Luca are both great and proof that Pixar isn't out of the game completely, it's just the consistency that's gone. Hopefully Elio is good!
Onward failed mostly because it was made for a very specific audience. It’s one of my favorite Pixar movies because they story of that film is one I connected to. My younger brother and I loved the story because we lost our father at a young age. I think onward was made for people like us but not a general audience
I think the issue is less about popular brands. It has to deal with the fact that they have had a string of mediocre films. They also seem less to be timeless stories and more modern in its approach to storytelling.
U gonna talk abt the great concept of "what if "this thing had emotions, we all know it never gets old
Soul should have been in theaters. It was astounding
It's all been downhill after Soul.
I'd go as far as to say that Pixar is emblematic of a much broader issue with entertainment in general, whether it's in reference to animation, live-action productions, or videogames. It's that these budgets are getting too unsustainable, and you can't make a good movie just by throwing money at it. I don't think most people care about how well you can animate hair or water if the writing and direction leaves something more to be desired.
Pixar movies now feel less like “what if x had feelings” and more like “what if x was human”.
Cars 1 is still the most underrated Pixar movie, raised a whole generation of car enthusiasts like myself.
A technical achievement isnt a visual one. Elemental looks outdated and the story has been done by pixar before at a more pertinent time
I knew Elemental was gonna flop when they advertised an Up spinoff as the short.
Well Elemental was actually really good and most audiences ended up liking it. So you’re wrong.
@@anthonygabriel7409 where did I say elemental was a bad film? How does your anecdotal information refute my opinion?
@@anthonygabriel7409no one liked it
Also have to wonder if it has something to do with the writer-director. Pete Sohn, who was in charge of Elemental, also wrote and directed The Good Dinosaur.
He is also, coincidentally, the voice of Ganke in Across the Spider-Verse.
Peter Sohn is a weird anomaly
The Good Dinosaur went through production hell and was passed around directors, so it doesn't feel fair to blame Peter Sohn for that mess.
Good Dinosaur is my 2nd least favorite movie by Pixar after Brave and my 3rd least favorite is Turning Red.
Elemental, Soul, Luca, and Turning Red have all been amazing tbh.
Im sad they dont do great at the box-office anymore.
Maybe, but the inescapable fact remains that photorealistic animation is outdated. Pixar no longer innovates in their animation department. People also want 2D to make a comeback and Spider-Verse found a middle ground between 2D and 3D.
@@vetarlittorf1807 Pixar definitely innovates, thats just plain false.
The whole reason Elemental cost so much was because the entire idea of using effects as characters has never been done before and was extremely complex.
Spider-Verse is amazing obviously, but I think the trend of copying that movies style will get stale eventually.
@@spectorthecritic1723 No. Pixar doesn't innovate anymore. Everything they've done for the last couple of years has been done before.
I was not a Top Gun (80s) fan because I had never seen it. All of a sudden, Top Gun 2 gets released and everyone in my life who had seen it implored me to go watch it and thank God I did because what an incredible, special experience it was.
As old-school as it sounds, movies need to feel special, characters need to feel universal, and there is absolutely nothing better than word-of-mouth marketing.
Studios need to stop relying on IPs/sequels/prequels/etc. and just focus on making timeless stories. Word of mouth will do the job. Pixar needs to stick with original stories, but create something un-missable in theaters that resonates with its audiences again. Their movies feel half-baked, almost tired of themselves. They need confidence. I’m rooting for them.
Also tired of nostalgia bait. These studios are not understanding that today’s kids need stories and characters of their own to grow up with, not recycled, dimmer versions of the characters our generation first met when we were kids
Dreamworks is making a movie based on a Charlie Kaufman script. Maybe Pixar should be taking chances like that.
Agreed. Disney should also do a Theatrical Rerelease of Fantasia.
Ayo what?!
@@wjsproductions1784 Yeah, it's called Orion and the Dark.
Current Pixar thinks taking chances means putting in a 5 second lesbian kiss at the end, or making a character have half-dyed half-shaved hair.
I honestly feel kind of bad for Pixar. At a time when other studios are making masterpiece films, it seems like making a good film is not good enough anymore. Pixar has made good films like Soul and Turning Red, but it's not up to the perfect standards that most people put on them. That's a lot of pressure to live up to. I think they are still a good animation studio because it's not like they are failing in their animation department. They just need to find a way to please everyone with their stories and concepts, which is really hard to do when being completely original is near impossible. We are going to have a lot of overlap in our films and Pixar is going to make mistakes, but that's okay if they can learn from them and add their own unique flair to those overlapping ideas. For example, Across the Spiderverse's main message is don't let people tell you what your "destiny" is and fight for what you believe in, even if other people tell you you are wrong. Now, that alone is not original. We have seen that message before, but they make it their own by connecting it to the multiverse and demonstrating it through amazing characters that we want to see succeed. This is what Pixar needs to do.
Honestly, I think that's only half of the problem, the other part of the problem is the audience. Elementals, Turning Red, Souls, Onwards, Coco, maybe Luca, were all great movies. They're entertaining, tell a good story, animated well, and can be watched more than once. But then they gave everyone Lightyear after theaters reopened to the public and it put a bad taste in everyone's mouth so now all their movies might be perceived as bad. So now audiences are gravitating away from slow and nuanced story telling in 3D to something more stylized like Spiderverse where they've taken comic book motifs and art style to the next level. People nowadays may not have the attention span for slow story telling they would rather see more action. The whole "defy destiny" story has already been done by Pixar in the past with Brave (which I can't watch more than once), and it might've been a theme in some of their older movies but they've definitely already done it. Most complaints I've read are they don't want to see anything political or can be perceived as political, and they don't want to see queer coded characters or even the idea that a character is LGBTQIA+ is enough to make people upset.
When writing a story you also have to think about who you're writing to. You can't please everyone. And the way the world is right now, a lot of people just aren't happy in general.
you think Soul and Turning Red are good movies. i saw the posters, the plot synopsis, and, although i dont watch animated movies anymore, i just lost interest in them as a teenager, i am sure that even 11 year old me would think those movies were boring and soulless. they arent adventures like the incredibles or toy story were. they seem to be more about characters having some sort of identity crisis or trying to fit in. if kids want that experience, they can just go to school.
@@TheSuperappelflap So, did you actually watch both of those movies? If so, you are allowed to not like them and have your own opinion. I personally watched them and enjoyed my time with both of them. I don't think that just because a few people didn't like them that they should be classified as bad movies. They just focus on different things than Pixar used to and I am okay with them trying new things as long as they keep with the emotional core that Pixar is known for. Both of these movies, whether you like them or not, do focus on personal journeys of either what makes life meaningful or how to be independent when you are growing up. Those stories should be allowed to be told just as much as toys having their own feelings and emotions that they need to deal with. They just don't appeal to everyone like they used to.
DISNEY is in crisis. Pixar will never improve without the mouse changing or letting it go.
Agreed.
Even Disney TVA, their underappreciated division got into a real problem recently.
2:49 Thankfully WALL-E gets its Criterion Collection and after 15 years and rewatching this movie, it's the best Criterion come back instead of using it in Disney.
It's insane that a film like Elemental will cost 2x what Mario Bros when there is almost no noticeable differences in the "quality" of production between the two
They just release too many mid movies nowadays, back in the day Pixar was known for its quality
Exactly
It’s not that Elemental looks bad to me. It looks solid enough. It just doesn’t interest me enough to drive to the theater, pay the $10 admission, the however much the concessions will cost, etc for it
Y'all niggas in the first world are cheap af when it comes to movies, then bitch and blame Hollywood when they make safe movies based on pre-existing IPs.
Its easy to say now, but I always hated the look of Pixar movies, with their "generic blob" character designs and hyper realistic backgrounds. It feels like theyve prioritized realism over animation itself and the freedom, stylization and expressiveness it allows. Im so happy to see Spiderverse come along and shake things up. The ugly pixar style needs to die, like yesterday
I think it’s important to accept that something good never last forever. Eventually it has to come to an end.
You’re very right about EVENT movies. No theatrical release = No event.
Spiderverse was written well. Formulaic by the numbers drivel isn't going to fly anymore and that's that, and that's a good thing.
💯💯💯💯
Zack Snyder's DC vision would thrive in this environment.
@@jturner2577 Nope.
You need a solid script, Captain. An obvious truth that, as of lately, Disney/Pixar ignored -Puss in Boots 2 cost less than $90M and grossed almost $500M. Because it's a darn good movie at all levels.
Elemental was emotional but very weak scriptwise, it hadn't enough to push families to run to theaters.
Puss in Boots 2 was so much better than it had any reason to be. And because of it I'm hyped for Shrek 5.
Spider-Man was also well written and with a 100 mil budget grosses 600mil already. It didn’t felt like another Spider-Man film it felt fresh and had emotions
@@GladwinAbel right you are!!
The state of pixar atm is sad to see. I grew up on pixar films and both as a child and when I was older I always saw them as the artistic peak of 3d animation. However, during the latter 2010's and 2020's they've had such a fall from grace and its so sad. Here's hoping they have a renaissance later this decade reminiscent of pixar during the 2000's.
Ever since Disney took control of Pixar they have been risk averse, creating sequels and more traditional stories. Ratatouille, Walle and Toy Story have such interesting settings and characters. Much like videogames, it's the indie scene that will push the artform forward, not the AAA studios.
I was one of the few that saw Lightyear in the theater. It was OK, and completely something I'd expect to go straight to Disney+
Luca and Turning Red were done dirty. I appreciated them being on Disney plus but goodness gracious I would have loved to see them in theaters like they did with Encanto as well.
I still feel there's some politicking when it comes to the studios like Disney animation getting a little bit more attention than Pixar proper but that might just be a wild theory
You're far too lenient and sitting on the fence about modern Pixar movies. They're rubbish, purely because of Disney's woke agenda. Creative ideas don't matter anymore, the woke message does
Very dumb comment. Can you give even a single example?
@@yoloswaggins7121These snowflake conservatives are triggered over a 3 second lesbian kiss in Lightyear and a non-binary character in Elemenal which wasn't even known about until the movie was out.
On a personal level… Lightyear is one of my least favourite movies of all time.
A possible theory for Pixar’s troubles: they’re not adapting well to what this generation (late Z/Alpha) is into-Illumination movies and Spider-Verse have this manic, meme-ready energy that Pixar doesn’t.
"this manic, meme-ready energy" Wait, holy shit, I think you're onto something here. There really is something about the energies of these different movies.
Some Pixar’s old movies already have that meme energy like Toy Story, Ratatouille, Monsters Inc, etc. But yeah I get your point, there is something so different and off about these new movies compared with the classics.
late Z and Alpha would also appreciate old Pixar, everyone does. These execs don't know jack about movies and they keep hiring tumblr artists. I want Pixar movies to be like actual movies again.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the ousting of John Lassiter. Since that event coincided roughly with the time the current crop of, shall we say, less-than-stellar movies would have been starting production, it's hard not to draw a causal link, there.
How on earth were the words "John Lassetter" never uttered in this video? Pixar's fate was sealed the day they canned him. Without Lasseter, it's simply not Pixar anymore, much like Lucasfilm isn't Lucasfilm without George Lucas.
No-so-coincidentally, you'll notice both studios crank out forgettable "content" that is mid-tier to creatively bankrupt, and is primarily concerned with trying to capitalize off of previous "IP's" and art style, rather than creativity & visual innovation
And they dumped him for the most dumbest reasons ever.
There have been great bits of hope/originality like turning red, soul, and luca which I felt were all great but yeah I hate the films they make that feel derivative like Elemwntal and Onward (which might as well have been a Disney animation).
My issue with Elemental is that it's an inferior Zootopia, which I absolutely loved
@@unicorntomboy9736 Zootopia is really meh by 2000's Disney standards
The first thing Pixar needs to do is get rid of the “bean mouth” animation style. I didn’t trip over my own feet to watch Luca or Turning Red because Pixar adopted the same “bean mouth” animation style that so many other animation studios use. It looks cheap, and it feels cheap, they don’t look or feel like Pixar movies, Disney’s animated films have been looking better than Pixar’s films, and that’s sad considering Pixar’s history.
The second thing they need to do is work on their writing process. Coco is (in my opinion) the last truly good Pixar movie with an accompanying good story. Lightyear was a really good time, but not nearly as good as Coco. If I spoke to someone who thinks “cartoons are for kids” I wouldn’t suggest them any Pixar movie post-Coco. Elemental isn’t original at all, it’s basically just Romeo & Juliet with elements.
Pixar just hasn’t been the same company in 7 years, and I haven’t been giving them my money since then. Their animation and writing quality plummeted, and I think it’s finally taken Elemental to prove it to both them and Disney.
I was at Spark Animation Festival in Vancouver in 2009. Wall.E had just been out in theaters and Pixar was at it's highest peak. I remember attending a panel, during which someone who was not FROM pixar but worked with them was the speaker. He said that moving forward, Pixar was planning to go with a "one movie a year" model. And I remember him saying that, based on what he's seen so far, he was REALLY concerned about Pixar's future.
It seemed very strange to me back then...
I appreciate how Toy Story 4 logically continued where things left off in 3, but their choice to neglect most of the legacy characters and abandon the premise of the toys purpose for children kind of underminded the last three installments and made the fourth one just not feel like a Toy Story movie.
Pixar is now the Dallas Cowboys of animation. They havent done anything great in a while, everyone who was responsible for those great things are gone, other rivals have done much more with much less in recent times and have reaped rewards, and yet people still think that the next mega hit from them is just around the corner.
I've kinda always wanted to own the Dallas cowboys ...
Pixar started getting worse when Disney bought them and it was a downhill slide from there. You can only blame bad management.
Disney has been working with Pixar since Toy Story 1 and officially bought it in 2006. Since the purchase, we got Ratatouille, Wall-e, Up, and Toy Story 3, all Pixar classics so I am not sure that that assessment is accurate. I do agree that Disney has been mistreating Pixar and taking them for granted in the last 3-4 years but that was way after they purchased them
Disney bought Pixar in 2006
@@acat6145 Ya but since Toy Story 3 none of the movies were absolute bangers like before. They were all average or forgettable. That means since UP came out in 2009 they haven’t released anything that actually blew peoples socks off.
@@isaakfaulk8067nside Out, and Coco? Also, Pixar having forgettable films doesn’t make they’ve been getting worse.
I think the issue with Pixar is, that their modern films are about a very specific social issue, which most likely originated from personal struggle of one of the writers that currently works at Pixar. I think this is the reason, why so many people are not interested in their films any more. Not that their films are bad, I personally still think they are a decent studio, but because the themes in their current films are so specific, that only a handful of people can relate to them. Unlike their previous films, who had themes in them, that everyone could relate to, like letting your child go (Finding Nemo), move on with your life (Up), or not being appreciated for your talents (Ratatouille).
Don't forget racists and homophobes actively trying to drown Pixar (and Disney) in negativity for daring to show immigrants and gays as normal people, not some scary aliens.
Kinda reads like cope tbh
Soul was about living a meaningful life, that just about applies to everyone
Today is the *1* year anniversary of when "Pixar is in Crisis" was uploaded! "Inside Out 2" just surpassed "The Lion King" (2019) as the fastest animated film to get to $1 billion. However, Pixar's not out of the woods yet. Shortly before "Inside Out 2" became a smash success, it was announced that they would be moving away from making personal stories in favor of "mass appeal" films. If their next original film "Elio" and their debut TV series "Win or Lose" don't succeed, they will only be focusing on sequels and spin-offs for the next several years. Their second TV series "Dream Productions" is already a sign of Pixar's potential new direction. It will be an "Inside Out" spin-off focusing on a movie studio in Riley's mind that makes up her dreams.
Also, for people that are already paying for a Disney+ subscription, it can feel like you already DID pay for the movie, so it can be harder to justify paying to see it in theaters.
The weirdest part in all this is that Elemental somehow made a comeback in the box office.
Don't be surprised if Pixar gets merged into Disney Animation studios.
I can see that happening
@unicorngamer9736 once they started dumping Pixar in Disney+, I could kind of see the writing on the wall. And pay attention to other Disney news besides movies, because they're not doing good at the parks either, despite the insanely high prices for everything, it's starting to cost more to run WDW or Disneyland than they're earning. Which is why we've been seeing a lot of layoffs, and some of those positions weren't necessary, but I think they're going to look and see that they don't need 2 animation divisions anymore when they're not making a profit.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they sold the Muppets back to the Henson family.
@@CinnamonGrrlErin1 It's unfortunate but having the main Disney Animation Studios makes Pixar redundant to a certain degree
Overall I think Disney just needs to scale back a bit, and cut out all unnecessary areas
It already has Years ago. Pixar is just a brand name, it does not represent anything practical
I remember when every Pixar project was a slam dunk. The Disney bought it and it's been on the decline ever since
I know, it's almost as if the two things are related somehow...
It wasn't right away.
I do notice things slumped when Disney pinched and later fired the talent from Pixar.
I don’t think Disney buying Pixar was when things started to take a turn. Right after Disney bought it we got Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3, so things definitely didn’t start there.
Nah, Pixar made some of its greatest movies under Disney. The problem is Bob Chapek.
I was excited when I heard about Turning Red a Pixar movie set in Toronto. When the movie got pulled from theatres and went to Disney+ I was angry. Now Disney and Pixar are dealing with the fallout with not releasing Pixar movies in theatres.
I think the problem is back in the 2000s, computer animation was still brand new, and it was a lot easier to blow everyone's minds with this relatively photoreal approach to filmmaking. Finding Nemo was an instant classic because nobody had seen water animated in this way before. The Incredibles was an instant classic because nobody had seen humans animated in this way. That, and these films also had a level of prestige that could satisfy those who appreciated the art of filmmaking as well as the general public.
Nowadays, it takes a lot more than just new animation tricks to get people to keep coming back for more. Pixar only has so many "game changing animation techniques" they can pull from now, and along with that lack of inspiration in the technology, they also don't have as much inspiration for the way they tell their stories. I'm certain that 20 years ago, they would have made Elemental with just as much passion as they made Ratatouille, but now all other animation studios have caught up to Pixar, and as proven by Illumination and Sony, some have even surpassed Pixar.
Have you met anybody who goes to movies because they like the animation style they saw in the trailer? I haven’t, but maybe you have.
People loved Pixar because they had absolutely wonderful stories that kids could understand but that also had deeper meanings for the adults.
Their animation style was groundbreaking, but few people would have even been aware of that. If one bought the DVD and watched the “how it’s made“ feature, that was how one learned eg. about the difficulties of animating fur in Monsters, Inc., which had never been done before.
DreamWorks produced Shrek around the same time as the early Pixar movies, and it was an animation style that seems less sophisticated than Pixar’s, but I have never heard a single person say that they don’t want to watch it because the animation isn’t as good as Pixar’s.
That’s the whole problem with Hollywood in general. If they told great stories, people would be happy to see them eg. Top Gun 2. For animated movies, the animation style would not matter at all if the story was fantastic.
For example, there is a Lord of the Rings spin-off movie, The War of the Rohirrim, which is supposed to be released in April 2024. It will not be live action. It’s going to be anime, which sounds like a pretty unusual choice. As long as the story is great, all the LOTR fans will love it.
@dronesclubhighjinks Um, yes. Spider-Verse and Puss in Boots 2 were big successes primarily because of their unique animation styles.
And also, I'd argue that the groundbreaking animation WAS a major reason why they were so successful. Toy Story was the #1 box office hit of its year not just because of how entertaining and lovable it was, but because Pixar proved the potential of this new way to tell stories.
Spiderverse and Puss in Boots 2 were mostly successful because they’re sequels, and part of massively popular existing ips. That’s mostly the reason why Sony and Illumination are doing so good in general.
finding nemo was a classic because its a story about a dad doing everything he can to rescue his son, and had a bunch of great characters. dory, the sharks, the turtles, even the fucking seagulls.
@@trevorpacelli8056 you and I must know very different types of people because I have never, in multiple decades on this planet, heard anybody say they want to watch a movie (or refuse to watch it) because of an animation style. People love good stories.
As for the movies you mentioned, they’re part of existing popular franchises. That is not always a guarantee for success, though. If the story stinks, people who might have been interested won’t watch it. That is probably a contributing reason as to why MCU phase 4 has been less successful than previous phases.
I have heard a lot of complaining about poor CGI, but I don’t know if that counts as animation within live action movies or shows. I don’t know if anybody has refused to continue watching a show because of the quality of the CGI, but they certainly stop watching when the quality of the storytelling is bad and doesn’t show any signs of potential improvement eg Rings of Power, She-Hulk.
It's funny how you realize that the movies aren't as good and that Pixar isn't the same company, but don't realize that all the woke crap they shove in is the problem.
The movies would still be good if they were made for creative reasons, not for ideology.
I split Pixar's history into two eras: Before Cars 2, where Pixar's output was mostly masterful and merely good at the worst, and After Cars 2, where their quality was never guaranteed again. The fact that they were able to release what I consider their magnum opus, Inside Out, after Cars 2 is nothing short of a cinematic miracle.
During Pixar's golden age, it would peeve me when people would confuse DreamWorks for Pixar; these days, I wouldn't blame them.
The *GPT44X* by Amazon is a force to be reckoned with. This revolutionary technology will change the world, and you don't want to be left out of the conversation.
I think there are several factors at play besides the ones you mentioned:
1. High expectations for Pixar. Even if they produce a good movie, everyone expects Pixar to blow their minds. This makes for a guaranteed disappointment because of constant comparison to a beloved previous film (many of which people saw as children).
2. Confusion with Disney Animation. Disney Studios has basically cloned Pixar's animation style, which causes for a lot of people to think Disney projects are Pixar movies (Such as Strange World). This causes an over saturation of the style and diminishes the "specialness" of Pixar movies.
3. Getting promptly moved to Disney Plus and blending in with all the other sub-par Disney animation productions.