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Comment by jerome-jh | Hacker News Reader

I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all).

My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between characters is déjà-vu, so many times a conflicting parent/children relationship, where the parent is reflective but wrong and the child impulsive but right and they end up reconciling and admitting they were both partly right in the end. In "Soul" they play a bit with this pattern although I would hardly call this creativity.

And finally many animation movies are also shameless green washing (here thinking of Wolfwalkers). Remember the critical tone of Wall-E?

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I would be curious to see your list of movies, primarily aimed at children, where there are two protagonists who disagree in the beginning and don't end up reconciling in the end.

("Up", which you cited as the last Pixar movie that was 'worth it', is in fact largely a conflicted parent/child relationship)

It reads as if what causes you 'grief' is actually the intended format of the content you are consuming. Yes, it's nice that Wall-E had a layer of critique of rampant consumerism (among other things), but it also had a joke about an unkillable roach too.

My hunch is that the -primary- intended audience for these films spends a lot of time dealing with "conflicted parent/child relationships", and that you are simply not the intended audience.

I don't mean to be overly critical of you here, I think if you take two steps back what you're saying is "the majority of these kids movies don't speak to me."

A movie being "worth it" is pretty different from a movie "speaking to me", which is so subjective that it is hard extract actionable insights from. It's a hop, skip, and a jump from saying "I don't know why you like this flavor of ice cream, because I don't like it."

The best kid movies speak both to adults and kids, because they have several layers of understanding. That's what makes them great. I have not found those layers in recent Pixar movies, although I admit I skipped a number of them. The cause may be that they have to be so polished in order not to offend anyone. Maybe also their technical superiority in visual effects is somehow exempting them from telling great or controversial stories.

I agree with you, as far as the dual layers of communication. The general feeling I get is that that's precisely why Pixar is a preferred studio over some of their competitors in the animation space.

I didn't see Onward, but between that, Coco, Soul, and Inside Out, those are four moves that grapple pretty heavily with mortality, death, the afterlife, depression, which I'm assuming sails over the head of most kids.

And even their earlier ones like Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and Up have pretty serious things to say about childhood illness/"deformity", the role of the critic, and tragedy that similarly seem to be aimed -just- over the heads of kids.

I think I'd need a definition of what a "great" childhood story is, but I'm pretty sure that neither Disney nor Pixar has "controversial" as part of their DNA. Much to the relief of parents everywhere, that's simply not what they're trying to do, so to judge them for not doing that is confusing.

Perhaps you're looking for something more along the lines of A24 (Moonlight, The Florida Project, The Witch) from... Disney?

Limiting my complain to recent Pixar movies: I think Coco, Soul and Inside Out are fairly obvious and not multi-layer. Definitely they talk of "difficult" subjects to kids: death, depression, regrets about ones life. They are not much fun either and the story is rather weak: often predictable, déjà-vu moments (Soul and Inside Out are strangely very similarly built with a meta-world in both), repetitive loop of slow and fast action scenes.

Japanese anime also talks about difficult subjects and IMO does it much better. Thinking of "Okko's Inn": much less predictable, some funny and tense scenes, and yet not shocking for children and quite emotional for parents (OK maybe our smallest daughter woke up and came in her parents bed the following night but she has not been traumatized for life :)

Since I am engaged in a reckless defense of Frozen in other posts: I think this movie is multi-layered. It talks of women and power, femicide, love vs friendship, sisterhood, although it is packaged in a story suitable for the smallest children as its success showed. The story is definitely not predictable from the start and has the power of myths. Of course Disney is well known for its ability to adapt old myths and tales.

As for older Pixar: The Incredibles was fun and multi-layered, Ratatouille was fun, Wall-E was great ...

Frozen? Elsa makes absolutely no proactive decisions for the entire movie. She is completely reactive.

Well that's a valid analysis: she's afraid of her power, both real and magical.

A quite strange Japanese anime I recently watched with my kids was "Ginga-tetsudô no yoru" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089206/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1). I warn you: it is really slow and dreamlike, and is about death. One daughter slept during the movie while the younger one watched till the end. The morning after we were discussing about the movie during breakfast. I love that! Never happened with a Pixar movie: they are just too obvious. The analysis is made for you. And for the more recent ones they are not even fun. Of course they are beautiful and polished but too slick for me.

> I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever.

Art and technique aren't mutually exclusive - and the process of storytelling is both an art and requires you to fit the bounds of storytelling, just as a painting class might teach you line drawing techniques but still counts as art.

The other thing to note is that you are listening to the same story over and over. This is the concept of the Joseph Campbell monomyth. All modern screenwriting is mostly based on the Campbell Hero's Journey, which argues that all great stories and myths are, at their core, the same. You generally follow a protagonist who moves from a place of comfort and is thrust into a new situation, where they need to overcome some sort of challenge which involves the protagonist needing to change as a person to overcome (i.e. metamorphosis). There are exceptions to this structure, like sometimes there isn't even a protagonist, but this is the general structure across the ages.

Storytelling is usually seen as playing within the structure, rather than inventing a new structure. Usually writers who don't embrace structure end up naturally writing in the same structure inadvertently anyway, because the theory is that this reaches the core of what a story is.

> My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds

It would be interesting to see a Pixar take on Stalker, a famously slow film, discussed just recently [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26126004

> Stalker

Sounds like I'll have to watch it ... someday. With young kids you are pretty much limited in terms of what can be watched. Maybe one of the reason I am so angry about american animation I find so shallow ;)

So wait, what're these non-US-made, deep, family-friendly films of which you speak?

One I saw recently with kids is japanese anime "Okko's Inn" (see above).

Là-haut = Up

OK edited :) To summarize my mind, I think the only american animated movie that's worth saving in the last 10 years is Disney's Frozen. It has some harshness, complex character relationships and appeals both to adults and children.

Frozen teaches kids all the wrong lessons. Shirk your responsibilities. Ignore your community. Focus on yourself.

"Let it Go" is like an ode to everything I dislike about American culture. It's so very American.

Best animated movie I've seen in the past decade was probably Moana, but I can't say I've seen many.

Well, actually the moral of Frozen is the absolute opposite - by shirking her responsibilities the community suffered, and she had to go back and face reality to restore the kingdom. The moral of the story was 'running away is not the answer'.

"Let it go" as a song needs to be considered along with it's reprise:

Elsa: "I'm such a fool, I can't be free. I can't escape from the storm inside of me... I can't control the curse! Oh I'm afraid I'll only make it worse. There's so much fear - you're not safe here, i.... i.... can't...."

It's the same underlying moral story as the Lion King - Simba runs away and starts living the easy life, only for the community he left behind to suffer, and he has to become brave and face his responsibilities. The song "Let it go" is basically just "Hakuna Matata" from a story perspective. Is Hakuna Matata an ode to everything you dislike about American culture too? (Also the underlying story of Frozen is actually Danish)

The uplifting music of Let It Go is an odd contrast to the film's message. As is the whole character of Elsa, who is seen as the protagonist of the film, when in fact she's practically the villain. Ana is the protagonist, but almost comes off as a sidekick.

You can feel the film's heritage, in which Elsa really was supposed to be the villain. It didn't evolve that way, setting up a genuine shock at the big reveal. Let It Go ends up mashing the I Wish song and the Villain Song, and (with Menzel's breathtaking voice) comes out doubly exciting. It makes the film feel a little uncoordinated, in a way that I like because it doesn't just follow the tropes.

But I think they didn't even understand that success themselves, and the sequel was rather poor. It dismissed the fact that the first film turned out to be about sisterhood, in a genuinely touching way, and thus lost its heart.

"Let it go" is pretty early in the movie, that's not the conclusion. To the contrary at the end Kristoff turns its steps to help stop a feminicide.

I’m fairly sure they created “Let it go” before they really knew what the story would be about.

They knew it was a snowy movie, knew they wanted something to rhyme with the traditional “Let it snow”, and vaguely had the idea that an angsty girl would be singing the song. As a result, the lyrics are incredibly generic and hardly seem to fit her specific situation.

You are half right, according to the song writer Robert Lopez the original movie structure and plan just had the placeholder title “Elsa’s Badass Song” and he was told to go write it, and then came up with let it go.

But it was still very early in the process and it was the first song to be written that actually made it into the movie. The extended soundtrack includes quite a few of the early songs that didn’t make it into the movie where they were still trying to work out what the style of music was going to be and who the characters are, so the music and story were definitely co-developed together.

> Frozen teaches kids all the wrong lessons. Shirk your responsibilities. Ignore your community. Focus on yourself.

Reading Frozen as teaching that is like reading Veerhoeven’s Starship Troopers (which, sure, is abysmal on all sorts of other grounds) as an endorsement of Fascism.

Yea, those things occur in the movie, but the movie is quite specifically about it producing bad outcomes that must be dealt with by people doing exactly the opposite.

You don't read Frozen. You watch Frozen.

You watch it in first grade through maybe through eighth grade, but probably at that point, you're too embarrassed to go to a little children's movie.

As much as I understand the more nuanced messages which could be taken out by a more sophisticated audience, much more so, I see the impact the movie has on actual real-world little kids.

I both read and watched Starship Troopers as an adult.

> You don't read Frozen.

“read” as in “to understand and give a particular meaning to written information, a statement, a situation, etc.”

> You watch it in first grade through maybe through eighth grade, but probably at that point, you're too embarrassed to go to a little children's movie.

Well, I mean I was a lot older when I watched it, but when my then-four year old watched it his commentary indicated that he saw the problems stemming from the behavior problem it highlighted pretty well. Not sure my almost-three-year-old got it, but she hasn't shown any sign of inverting the message as badly as you have.

Frozen is as cliched and as boring as possible.

Compare it to, say, Coco. Or Zootopia. Or Klaus. Or, if we're talking about relationship with parents, Inside Out.

Truly it has quite a bit of depth and is not predictable from the start. Certainly it appeals more to girls. Pixar movies tend to be rather didactic: "OK we are going to talk about [death|depression|aging|following your passion]" whereas the best kid movies just tell a great myth.

> Truly it has quite a bit of depth and is not predictable from the start.

It... really isn't. There's not much depth or unpredictability. It's the regular Disney hero journey: oh, I'm a misunderstood loner, oh, I've found my own path, oh, I've prevailed. Oh, and comic reliefs.

There are "unexpected" twists as in "wow, these sisters don't need a strong man to save them", and that's as much depth as it gets.

Unlike, say, Coco. Which actually:

- "has harshness". There's an actual murder involved. There's the uncomfortable truth of people losing their memory. People facing death etc. What harshness is there in Frozen that we haven't seen 15000 times before? Most Disney musicals from before 2000 have significantly more harshness than anything Frozen has.

- "complex character relationships". The relationship between Miguel and his relatives, especially grandmother. The ever evolving relationship between Miguel and Hector. In Frozen there's next to zero character development except "suddenly we don't talk, suddenly I'm strong, suddenly we're good, suddenly sister powah".

- "appeals both to adults and children". Coco definitely caters to a more grown up children who understand the concept of getting old, and death. Frozen is for the kindergarteners who will hug an Olaf plushie and sing Letitgo on repeat. The scene where Miguel sings to Mama Coco is such a gut punch to anyone who has relatives with memory loss, Frozen couldn't even approach the depth of it in the wildest dreams.

The same goes for all other movies in my list. Frozen is a flashy loud entertainment for kindergarteners. It's definitely not "the only American animated movie that's worth saving in the last 10 years".

> whereas the best kid movies just tell a great myth.

And Frozen fails to tell that myth. It's flashy, loud, with memorable songs. And the first quality animated musical in a long while. That's why it is memorable. But "the only animated movie in the past 10 years that deserves to be preserved"? Hahaha, no.

> "suddenly we don't talk, suddenly I'm strong, suddenly we're good, suddenly sister powah"

From what I can see as a father: that's basically sisterhood :D

TBH I hardly remember Coco's story although I watched it entirely. I do not remember it was bad though, rather unremarkable story wise. Frozen may look as a kindergarten movie but there is clearly an attempted murder in it (Hans over Anna) which is only prevented by a magical intervention (Olaf). I would say, although I may use too big words here, Disney is closer to naturalism, whereas recent Pixar movies are more transparent and explanatory. You would have guessed I prefer naturalism (in literature at least, I don't know if it actually extends to cinematography ;)

10 years is a lot of time, and "worth saving" is a very low barrier.

I'd classify Kubo And The Two Strings, and Inside Out as must-watch films. Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse set new boundaries for what's possible with animation.

Moana, Zootopia, Big Hero 6, Wreck-it Ralph, The Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory are all pretty good films, and definitely tick all the boxes you listed.

I'm not even looking at Anomalisa, Isle of Dogs, and other such more adult-oriented animated films.

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