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.
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.
As much as I love Pixar, that is incorrect. Toy Story 2 was going to be straight-to-video: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-122205888/sequels...
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.
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.
> 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 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 :/
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.
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".
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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".
Story outlines usually sound rubbish IMHO. So I'll give cars 2 the benefit of the doubt. Glad there's a new movie with characters my kids love in it.
Wall-e and Up! catered mainly to parents/intellectuals so it's nice to see some good fun movies in the pipeline.
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.
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.
Once again, they were not kids movies. Stop criticizing them for not being fun for kids.
Thats fine. I just wish they'd made that clear in the trailers.