I'm worried about future of Pixar, they always valued original and insightful stories. All of their early and recent productions were delightful to watch. Understandably, this approach left not so many space for sequels.
They recently committed to making of Monsters 2 and Cars 2. Story outline for Cars 2 is just terrible. It seems that financial concerns under Disney leadership are prevailing and bits of integrity are slipping away.
I didn't like Cars 1 and it doesn't look like I'll like Cars 2. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the studio is losing integrity.
As another commenter pointed out, Pixar rarely pumps out sloppy sequels -- while the motivation to make Toy Story 2 or 3 may be money initially, they make sure that the sequels have legitimate stories and are generally enjoyable. If they didn't, they would quickly become just-another-studio worth only the length of time they can trick parents into buying merchandise based on their intellectual property holdings.
Pixar doesn't do the straight-to-DVD sequel gig. Even when they continue a franchise, they aren't sloppy about it. Even if we aren't really big fans of the "Cars" style or humor, it's evident that there's at least a cohesive storyline and technical quality. Let's remember that Pixar makes cartoons -- usually, they easily skew to adults, but the more 8-year-old oriented Cars doesn't necessary mean that Pixar is losing it; it just means they're targeting 8-year-olds.
I actually like Cars - while story is quite cheesy, it has good character development and just fun to watch. Racing is just done well - it gives you the same feeling as watching real racing on TV.
I enjoyed Toy Story 2 and it has very decent jokes, but I think that story-wise it is quite inferior to Toy Story 1 - the entire story setup just feels artificial. I'm afraid that same thing on larger scale is going to happen to Cars 2.
...yes... but they didn't do that. In fact, they scrapped the whole straight-to-video story line 9 months before the release date, and started from scratch.
The Story outline for cars might seem "terrible," but think about every Pixar movie's outline before you actually saw it? A movie about Toys? A Movie entirely about Rats--whose going to watch that? A Robot who doesn't talk, for how long?
And yet, each and everyone of those movies were astounding, at least in my opinion, but critics and box office receipts prove my point too.
Yes, sequels have a tendency to be purely money ploys, but luckily Pixar's sequels almost exceed the originals (Toy Story 2 and 3). I'd give the future films a chance before you even see a trailer for them.
For me, aside from some interesting landscape rendering, Cars isn't in the same league as the other Pixar films. It felt like a pure kids movie + merchandising extravaganza.
> and box office receipts prove my point too
This isn't saying much. The cost-structure of CGI and effects-heavy films is such that you have to essentially make something that will appeal to kids and/or teens, otherwise you're hosed financially.
I can think of many great stories that I'd love to see on screen that wouldn't really appeal to kids + teens, and therefore wouldn't be feasible with the current cost-structure.
Cars is my least favorite Pixar movie. Far too much of the payload was nostalgia for the era of Route 66. An era that my parents could have caught the tail end of. I suppose also my personal philosophy is that the past is important but that trying to lock the past in is not a way to commemorate or honor it, but a way of being imprisoned by it, and the central story just falls flat for me. YMWV, of course.
(My next least favorite is Finding Nemo, because Nemo's dad is my mother-in-law, on film. Only she hasn't had the epiphany about needing to let go of worry at some point. Again, YMWV.)
I liked Cars. I absolutely hated Up! and Wall-e with a passion.
Cars is obviously a reasonably simple storyline, but it's a good movie with good characters. Kids like cars shrug it's a movie about toy cars... what's not to like?
Better than an obese highly irritating boy scout kid hitching a lift on a house with an old guy :/
UP was strange. It was like two different movies that never quite came together. I like slapstick, but man, slapstick and cancer doesn't work. It's like there was a great and weird (good) movie in there but it got cheapened by the clowny Disney mascot kid thing.
I couldn't stand the kid and the bizarre dog voice, but I haven't thought enough about it to see a solution.
Wall-E had some nice moments -- mostly when it was trying to be Star Wars. The Eco-story and human characters were ludicrous.
I want to see what Brad Bird makes next. Incredibles and Ratatouille are by far my favourite Pixar movies.
Ratatouille just doesn't cut it for me, I don't care if it's a rat cooking food or not, the entire story just leaves me thinking "whateva".
Incredibles on other hand is perfect in every way. BTW, given the premise of this movie it's possible to make good sequel for it without resorting to "international spies in the world of racing cars".
To say those movies are about "Toys" or "Rats", doesn't say anything about it, any more than saying a movie is about "People", and there are a far larger number of those.
One of the writers for Pixar gave a talk where he confessed that /all/ of the stories for their movies started out terrible and took tons of rework to get right. Originally, Woody was a serious jerk. It took a long time for them to realize they didn't like their own main character and even longer to evolve him into the great guy everyone loves today.
I remember being in the theater when I saw the trailer for Cars 2. First was the Pixar splash. I gripped the armrests and sucked in my breath with anticipation. Then I watched the trailer and was a little disgusted. My reaction afterwards was "I didn't like the look of that trailer one bit. If it was anyone but Pixar, I would have covered my kids' eyes so they wouldn't know it existed. Since it's Pixar, I'll see it opening weekend." That's how much I trust them.
Will you people please stop trusting companies and politicians.
It's a company and the only goal of it is to make profits for its investors and its employees. If you believe that making artistic movies and maintaining a company's good reputation is a good way to run their business, let it happen with starting up your company and risking your own money or career.
My point is that commenting on how some company's business decisions didn't justify your expectations is tad garish.
How can the company get people to see their movies if they are not know for making good ones? Politicians can lie because you are not the target, cinemas have you as a target.
Yeah, but if you have good feelings about the brand, you'll excuse some not so great offerings. So, they can get away with it for a time.
This is a classic problem: to be really successful you need to create a kind of brand mythology. The problem is once you do that, people stop honestly appraising your work, until it's too late.
Ed Catmull (Pixar CEO) is a huge inspiration to me, and he seems to understand the importance of getting accurate feedback (especially negative feedback). The problem is that once you're Pixar/Disney, the audience isn't really providing you with accurate feedback on the time-scale of a single release.
If your quality is slipping, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt, until it's too late to ignore.
I'm very much a "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Pixar has never made a movie I didn't LOVE, so until they do, I'll see their movies sight unseen.
In contrast, the digital animated movies from other companies (Dreamworks, etc) have been so BAD that I won't even consider seeing them unless I hear great word of mouth.
Both companies (Pixar and ^Pixar) have earned the reputation they have.
All I am saying is that they may have their own motivations and, well, they are more likely to know what they are doing than all of us as it is their primary occupation and business.
In general, we don't have strong opinions on how to run the chemical engineering companies but everyone is eager to tell Pixar what movies to produce. This is a good manifestation of the Bike shed rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_shed
I'm not telling anyone what kind of movies to produce. The Shrek movies made about a zillion dollars even though I didn't buy any tickets to see them. It was good business for them to ignore my preference.
I don't understand what you're saying. My business relationship is with Pixar is that I pay one of their distributors and I expect 90-120 minutes of good entertainment. They have help up their end of the bargain every time. If I accept their value proposition and trust based on history that they will continue to deliver, why would I not continue to do business with them?
I think the key thing to note is that, even if you don't personally like some of Pixar's films you cannot deny the quality of filmmaking, which increases with each film in every quantifiable way.
There is a lot about film (as with any art) that is subjective but there are specific and measurable qualities of a film that can be measured and in each of these Pixar struggles (I say struggle because they set themselves a very high bar) to exceed the qualities of their previous work. In this way they are very different from the Disney of the 1980's/1990's where quality was liquidated as a way to increase the revenue of films who's value lies solely in brand and character recognition.
I agree that the level of merchandising associated with these films is absurd, but I don't know how much the filmmakers have to do with this and we could point to plenty of examples in the software sector who have a hard time saying no when a few million dollars are waved in front of their faces.
If you want to learn more about how Pixar will bleed for quality, research the story behind Toy Story 2; if you can find me another company willing to risk everything for the sake of preventing even one low-grade product from reaching the market, I'll be impressed.
> the quality of filmmaking, which increases with each film in every quantifiable way.
It's funny, that sounds more like vague generalization than something quantifiable.
I'm impressed by the attention to craft at Pixar, but that doesn't mean that each movie is better than the last. Certainly not in "every quantifiable way".
i wonder, if you broke down their revenue, if the majority of their viewers are children, thus the diminishing returns of making a blockbuster vs churning out crap make their decision rational? pure speculation obviously.
There are a significant number of people without children, such as myself. The entire world doesn't revolve around kids and its nice to see movies and other entertainment options that cater to adults. Besides, we're the ones that have money to spend, not the little wee ones.
Both Wall-e and Up! were excellent movies. In particular, Up! was one of the few movies in many years that actually emotionally moved me in serious ways. Wall-e was also a great movie that deserves the many accolades it received.
Fair point, there's a market for adult animated movies. But I think it's small.
The scene in Up! which showed the old couples life story was well done, but I doubt any child would really remember it or rate it. It was for sentimental adults and critical acclaim from adults.
Again, the scenes in Wall-E where the robot does boring things for ages without saying anything seemed to be there for adults, and to get oscar nominations, rather than to entertain children.
Just my opinion, but I'm really glad to see them revisiting Cars and Monsters Inc which are favorites with my kids, whilst Up! and Wall-E barely registered with them.
I think the point is that Wall-E and Up! weren't movies targeted at kids. Any entertainment value kids can derive from such a movie is purely coincidental. Any entertainment value the target market of such a movie can derive from such a movie is brilliant success.
Once again, they were not kids movies. Stop criticizing them for not being fun for kids.
In 2008, Pixar's creative director John Lasseter explained the secret of their success: "The people who work here are doing what they've wanted to do their whole lives." [1]
This is great advice that can be applied to any type of work, particularly entrepreneurial start-up activity. If you're in it just for the money and don't enjoy what you do, chances are your little start-up venture will not succeed.
It also didn't hurt that Ed and Alvy could stand up to their bosses. In my experience, one feature that separates good manages from bad is the willingness to shield their team from the crap thrown by upper management.
It's funny how the mind plays tricks on us. I had thought that Steve Jobs had made much more off the sale than that - when I looked at their numbers 7.4 billion return on 5 million invested over 20 years? Pffft. Then I ran the numbers...
... it translates to a 44% compounding annual increase over 20 years ...
Oh that I should do so well for anyone that would invest in me!!
There's a beautiful coffee table book "The Pixar Story" that talks about the cash Jobs put into Pixar.
The book claims Jobs purchased Pixar for $5M and immediately invested another $5M. When he purchased the company he was also running NeXT. Pixar, like NeXT, was a computer company selling computer hardware. Both companies we're struggling and taking up a lot of Job's cash.
The story goes that Pixar started to produce more 3D animated shorts, these impressed Katzenberg at Disney who agreed to part fund Toy Story. Only to even get to that point, 6 years after Jobs purchased the company, he'd had to invest a total of $60M into Pixar. He was investing close to $1M a month.
Between Pixar and NeXT jobs was nearly broke. Although I suspect his "nearly broke" is a much bigger bank account thank my "nearly broke".
Not sure how true the story is. But that's how "The Pixar Story" tells it.
I watched the Pixar Story DVD and when they mentioned that Jobs was writing a million dollar personal check every month to keep the company afloat my opinion on his running the company changed instantly. Most opinions of his role as CEO are really dismissive of him and give all the credit to Lasseter (who does deserve a lot of credit). But Lasseter, beyond working in the company, has no real skin in the game. He doesn't have to justify to himself that this investment may not work out, and continue giving it money...for 10 years. And if Pixar failed its not his bank account that would look like a crater.
So when someone opines that Steve didn't really influence Pixar, I casually mention that $100 million over 10 years gets you a lot of influence. And then ask them to read the pixar story.
Great story. Of course if you over analysis it's nothing great, under neath it could simply be that the executives know that the layoffs was just a start. First round of layoffs leads to low morale, which leads to a decline in quality which eventually leads to them being removed.
A lot of leaderships like coaches are usually on short lifespans. The executives knew that by forcing the company to think about losing two top execs it was serious and maybe reconsider. In this case it was a good gamble.
Their intentions is what makes the story great, though. Honestly I would have given a list of people to layoff, but that's why I am not a great leader or a leader of anything for that matter, of any sorts LOL
I watched "ILM - Creating the Impossible" on Encore on Demand the other night, and it was well worth the watch. There is quite a bit devoted to the relationship between ILM and Pixar, and a number of historical anecdotes like this article that are very interesting.
If you haven't seen it, check it out before they drop it. Of course, The Pixar Story is worth watching as well (same people, I think).
The Pixar Story has some issues with it--largely cuts out Alvy Ray Smith and gives a lot more credit to Steve Jobs than deserved. I'd recommend reading The Pixar Touch for a balanced portrayal of the company.
For what it's worth, I got to know Alvy by running into him at various Seattle breakfast spots over the years (he's in Berkeley now). If you ever get to hear him speak, be sure to go up and talk with him. He's nothing but a welcoming, smart, and humble guy.
If you haven't yet, go and watch the Pixar Shorts Films Collection[1]. It includes a fairly long extra with interviews with early Pixar employees, and the challenges they faced with the limited technology at the time.
It's great to see that level of commitment to a team, but it was also a smart move - those guys knew that the intellectual capital sitting in those employees heads was one of Pixar's biggest assets. Get rid of them so they can go work for a competitor? Nuts.
If anyone is interested, The Pixar Touch by David Price is a pretty fantastic look at the early history (both from a business standpoint and from a technological standpoint) of the company.
Great story. But look how times have changed. I can't imagine many company leaders today choosing to stand their ground and put their own heads on the chopping block. I'm not sure when it happened, but this kind of servant leadership doesn't seem to exist today.
Anyone have recent examples of stories like this?
How many people move to take a bullet because it is the economically rational thing to do? Even body guards don't generally elect to take a bullet unless they really like the person they are protecting.
Potential is not a guarantee. Even if you see potential in someone, there is still a risk in investing in that potential - not all potential is realized.
Even if we assume the managers' motives were purely economical, it's still rare. Consider that they took a risk - their own jobs - based on their own belief that their team could deliver.
What has changed is the size of the industry. There are so many animation studios these days that the chances of landing in a studio with leaders like Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith are far, far smaller than they were back then.
Actually, Pixar is probably one of the best places on the planet to work.
The no-cold-call policy did not mean that employees were off limits completely. We hired lots of people from ILM, Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, etc, but they came to us.
The "evil" of this particular case is pretty overstated. I was there at the time, and basically understood it was happening, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. All those other VFX houses treated their employees like cattle.
I can kinda see a practical rationale to a no-cold-call policy: It's pretty well-known when a movie is in production, so one company could throw a monkey wrench into a competitor's film by poaching a key person at a bad time just by throwing a bunch of money.
I suppose that's mostly the case anywhere, but film releases are, I think, on somewhat tight schedules to hit release windows. Cause a three month delay in the release of a Pixar movie and you might remove a potentially huge summer competitor from the field.
As long as unhappy employees are able to look elsewhere on their own initiative, it doesn't seem that bad.
They recently committed to making of Monsters 2 and Cars 2. Story outline for Cars 2 is just terrible. It seems that financial concerns under Disney leadership are prevailing and bits of integrity are slipping away.