What people don't realise about Pixar is how much iteration goes into their stories - they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. And there's a process there that can be taught. I think that's contrary to the way some people imagine storytelling - it's almost never the case that some creative person has a brilliant story come out perfect in the first draft. Storytelling requires creativity but it isn't magic. You can also see the lack of this process in so so many films - George Lucas famously drafted out the Star Wars prequels under pressure, no one had the nerve to challenge him and they just ran with the his early drafts every time. Those drafts should have been a starting point, not the end product. And you can say this for many films that come out - there are good ideas somewhere in them, they just had to work on the story a bit more and that's often at odds with studio pressures, release date deadlines etc.
This course looks lovely. It's great for KA to have this kind of material and not just calculus tutorials (as much as I personally appreciated the calculus).
Pixar does this iteration using a technique called "plussing". When you see someone's work you accept it regardless of whether you think it's good. You're encouraged to do what you can to make your colleagues look good. Work is always a starting point for the next iteration. When you do need to be critical of something you should always add something about how to make it better.
Sounds similar to the improv skit mantra of "Yes, and...", where any improvisation ("and then I found the cat on the shelf!") must be accepted and built on.
(e.g. "Oh BooBoo, how did you get on the shelf you silly cat?")
If an actor instead said "No, the cat wasn't on the shelf, the cat wasn't even in the room" the skit ends awkwardly.
“Yes and” doesn’t always mean literally saying yes. It’s about accepting the premise, not the proposal. The way it was taught to me, if you offer me a live hand grenade, I can accept the premise by saying “oh god he’s got a bomb!”, even though I’m saying no to the concrete offer to take your hand grenade.
“Let’s change everything” - depending on context - can be a no to the premise. It’s the same as the Pixar idea - improv is about making your scene partners look good by supporting their choices, and building on them in turn.
This skill, or at least the ability to consider pulsing, is so valuable. A lot of things in life are not good. Even more are just okay. Very few are good and almost none are perfect or great.
Having the ability to be in a situation or see something that is just okay and go, "Okay well it's not perfect but that is okay. Can I make it a little better?" is really helpful. It also makes life a lot less frustrating.
Agreed. I'd almost go so far as to say that it's an essential tool for aggregating intelligence. Sifting for and refining ideas just strikes me as so much more efficient than attacking and defending them.
I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group.
They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad, though they are sometimes lukewarm. Except for the Pixar level of excellence in the visuals and animation, which to be clear are admirable on their own, I feel that their movies lack identity. I wouldn’t want their model to become adopted by everyone.
They love and study Miyazaki but don’t seem to trust any one person to direct a film. Everything must be put through a committee.
I would very much prefer a CG animation course by them. Or a full overview of their pipeline, asset management, USD implementation. Their technical chops are probably best in the world.
Maybe they could do something like release a public version of Presto. Or help out with animation and rigging code with the blender foundation.
Interesting; I feel it depends on the movie - they have a large portfolio now so some sort of averaging is inevitable.
I feel e.g. Cars franchise has limited vision. They're "allright", but not spectacular. I'm OK never seeing any of them again, even the first one.
On the other hand, I find Monsters Inc. a unique movie with a unique premise, and I can rewatch it regularly - with or without the kids 0:-). I also don't find it particularly sad. Inside out does indeed have a large dose of melancholy, but again I feel is a unique idea taken quite far without dilution.
(there are absolutely movies that are way more avant garde or quirky or surreal or even "creative" inasmuch as that can be objectively compared - but Pixar has two distinct audiences to cater to and they HAVE to be entertaining and attention-occupying to children; while inserting content that also keeps adults interested and even thoughtful - that's a specific set of constraints that e.g. "Love Death + Robots" does not have)
And if we look at their entire portfolio, the Pixar Shorts again have some absolutely brilliant, touching, "single idea executed to perfection" entries.
Around the time of Wall-E and The Incredibles, I was very much a fan of their work and felt like they could do no wrong. Now I’m not so sure- I did love Coco but they have been absorbed by Disney at this point and are satisfying investors. Also, I find the low key arrogance about having mastered storytelling more than a little obnoxious. You can see a bit of this in Andrew Stanton’s Ted talk.
Before they sold to Disney, they were going to start making more mature films alongside their children’s entertainment. I was very curious about Ray Gunn. I think if Disney wanted it then Pixar could definitely make an incredibly compelling animated movie with mature themes. I mostly find myself disappointed with them these days.
(I find whenever I bring this up online quite a few people come at me with this idea that they are making mature films, and that the line between children’s entertainment and adult is imaginary, as though most kids could sit through something like The Rules of the Game or Tokyo Story.)
But to be clear, I’m still mostly a fan of their work but mostly for their technical mastery.
> "I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated."
me too. the incredibles was pixar's high point of storytelling imho. of the first six films, i liked the toy stories the least. a bug's life, monsters, inc., finding nemo to the incredibles was like a crescendo of animation, reaching a satisfying zenith of art. cars, which came next, was ok (but unoriginal for storytelling, the characters were mostly great!), but then ratatouille through inside out were all groping for relevance while nakedly harvesting their reputation. of the last 8 movies, only coco has been worth watching so far (i haven't seen the good dinosaur or soul yet). so perhaps a quarter of their 23 films have been good enough to watch again for me; contrast that with the studio ghibli collection, nearly all of which are imminently re-watchable (spirited away is an absolute masterpiece).
Maybe the whole mastery of storytelling is overrated per se. They were talking about how they build on their own experience, an epiphany - which is the essence of what they try to express. When I think of the great books and movies that I love I hardly remember the whole stories, but more a certain idea, scene or mood.
And thus doesn't that mean that the stories are merely vehicles, like mechanical means to transport.
i’d say a good story is the culmination of various intriguing ingredients (characters, motivations, circumstances, etc), which hopefully blend together into a rich and layered whole. that we can’t hold it all in our heads (like only remembering an idea or mood) but yearn to experience it again could be considered indicative of a good story, and creating that yearning indicative of storytelling mastery.
Hmm, no I disagree strongly. I quite like Pixar's stories. In particular I appreciate how differently they come off to adults vs. children in ways that feel meaningful to both. As a kid, I completely missed what were obviously concerns of Mr. Incredible's infidelity. In the emotions one, kids see the obvious narrative that the emotions control the child, whereas adults are likely to see the emotions as a metaphor for feelings and growth rather than zany cartoon accidents.
Up's primary theme was the importance of letting go of the past to focus on the future. Soul was that you don't have a divinely foretold purpose in life other than living your best life. Inside out was about recognizing the importance of negative emotions- and that while joy is good, sadness is not bad. A lot of these are heavier and more mature than you'll find in a randomly chosen piece of fiction intended for adults, but I wouldn't say they're sad so much as thought provoking.
Some of it is really bleak. I mean, a fair bit of soul is a guy realizing he wasted his life, and then died right before doing the thing he thought would give his life meaning. But like... Grappling with that feels like a really meaningful conversation to have.
edit: although I don't feel as strongly for their sequels. To some extent I find they phone some of them in...
Recently I have been watching a bunch of pixar movies that have been blockbusters, but I really haven't seen before. I like their themes and story telling, but something that bothers me for their major pictures is it feels like they all follow a very similar overall narrative:
- some sort of "buddy" movie
- some sort of "we only have x amount of time to solve our crisis we got into"
- the two buddies have some sort of big fight
- the two buddies make up
- stronger than ever, they overcome this crisis right just before the buzzer.
Maybe its because they don't do it in their shorts (or its because they can explore ideas more), but I think their shorts they have are really some of their best story telling.
Tropey story beats do get a bit tiresome, but they're there because they work. Fiction that flaunts defying these tropes tends to be pretty great, but its still rare, and probably doesn't feel very good unless the viewer is already tired of the original.
Buddies fight and, having acknowledged their primary character fault, reconcile, is one that is everywhere in children's fiction. I also find it boring.
Fiction that flaunts the tropes are a good example of “you have to know the rules before you can break them”.
These tropes aren’t new inventions, they go back into thousand year old myths, so it does seem like they really do appeal to the human brain, ie the Campbell monomyth/hero’s journey.
I like Pixar a lot. But maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste.
Letting go is a unifying theme in Up but my problem with the movie isn’t that it’s bad but that you had a table of all the guys at Pixar spitballing scene ideas and then glueing them all together. The result just feels episodic, in a bad way, and commercially manufactured. Up is a really good movie but I don’t want every CG film to have the Pixar preproduction process. (And I still think they are a bit overrated and that the technical side of their creative teams are doing most of the heavy lifting.)
I like this. The feature film brings me to tears every single I watch it without fail, and then I am always thoroughly entertained back to a pretty good moood by the following movie.
This is how I've felt about Disney and Pixar for a long time. As a kid, I liked them for action, adventure and comedy. But as an adult I like them for the animation, storytelling, and good emotional/moral lessons on top of everything else. As a parent who sees lots of content for kids, it's not easy to find things that legitimately appeal to multiple age groups like that.
I cried after watching Soul. It made me go through my own life when I was a "lost soul" and I somehow recovered. I loved the person who was carrying the sign board and kept a photo of him for me to recollect.
That's the impact that I recognize with Pixar, a movie a like Soul and an Auteur like Pete Doctor.
Storytelling is frequently done as a collaborative process. Spielberg famously likes to take his screenplays through 14 drafts and meticulously drafted storyboards put together by a creative team. Large television shows are written by rooms full of writers, and on reality television shows a big chunk of the writing happens in the editing room, often with a committee in the editing room picking at and debating every little detail before a final cut is produced.
I agree about Aguirre and I’m glad you mention that because you very quickly got to the core issue I have with Pixar. They have “mastered” crowd pleasers which are marketable to any age group. That’s fine- but artistic vision is also so crucial. It’s the reason they look up to Miyazaki in the first place.
You have to remember that as pixar got bigger, more people had a say in the story.
The original pitch might have been absolutely groundbreaking, but for what ever reason one of the producers didn't like a character, and pushed for it to change.
All movies are a collaboration. there is no such thing a single "author" on a movie, its always team work. Sometimes that team is aligned to the same vision, other times not, and a compromise has to be hashed out.
> Their technical chops are probably best in the world.
They were ground breaking, but up until recently they insisted on making their own version of everything. This was fine in the early 90s when there was no other option. But now there are better tools out there. Thats not to say that all their tools suck, far from it.
>it's almost never the case that some creative person has a brilliant story come out perfect in the first draft.
I've got a book i ended up getting in a free box of books. It's some fantasy novel.
It's probably the worst book i've ever seen in print. Everything from the description on the back to the font choices, sometimes four or five in different sizes on one page, to the actual writing reads like something a child would write.
Curious about how such a thing could exist, i looked into it more. Turns out it was a self published book edited by the author's wife.
Now this next part is speculation...
But you can almost picture his wife trying to edit this thing and the author just being like, nope we'll keep it my way.
Like, basic spelling and grammar mistakes, terribly worded sentences, a story that made absolutely no sense.
The thing is, getting past it all, there were some good ideas in there and likely, in the hands of a good editor and publisher, it could maybe have been turned into an alright, if still not that great of a book rather than, i'm not actually exaggerating here, literally the worst book i've ever seen.
Another example that just kind of popped into my head while writing this, the original drafts of star wars.
I've read some of them and honestly, they were pretty bad, like scyfy movie bad. Without the team of screenwriters and editors that worked through those drafts, we'd probably have no idea what 'Star Killers' was other than some weird cult scifi b-movie with a dedicated fan base of a few hundred people that get together once a year, get drunk, dress up as their favourite characters and complain about how nobody understands just how great George Lucas and Star Killers is.
And then Spaceballs would never have been made and that just woulda sucked a whole lot.
> they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good.
Except when their stories end up not being very good at all. There's a lot of variability in what they produce, to be honest, so I am not sure if their "process" is a robust as they would like us to believe.
I can't think of any original Pixar stories that were "not good at all". Brave is probably the only one I might put close to that category. Which ones would you include?
Edit: Added "original"; some of the sequels are not great
I also think most of their originals are good. I thought The Good Dinosaur was awful though, and can't understand how it could have come out of this kind of long process of iterative refinement.
Maybe studio just got caught up in it, lost objectivity? Or they just hit a point of no return and hey, it's a Pixar film, it's not going to lose money even if it's very average, is just a possible hit to reputation. It's just not a great subject or story, but I bet the initial tests they did for it looked fantastic. Everyone loves dinosaurs, right? And story is dead simple to understand (too simple? There's nothing there imo), so probably an easy sell at first. Once committed, past a certain point just need to finish it because sunk cost, can iterate and refine a turd forever and it'll still be a turd.
I don't think The Good Dinosaur was a very good "children's movie" in the typical sense, but I'd recommend taking a second look at it if you haven't recently. I watched it again after seeing it when it first came out, and I found it to be a pretty good movie - even if it doesn't fit the typical kids movie mold.
It's ironic because The Good Dinosaur would be a good example of them taking a bet on a somewhat unique vision (a dinosaur spaghetti western?) with a more mature outlook, and then getting shit on by reviewers because it wasn't as funny or charming as Inside Out.
I may have to rewatch it, but I recall that movie being fairly entertaining, even as an adult.
I also will say I went to watch it without having seen the original Cars, so perhaps I really had no expectations for the film (other than it was a Pixar film)?
I've not had any interest in it, so I haven't really say through it.
The weird thing is that Cars has this emotional center around facades and regret and abandonment and the differences between the journey and the destination and it's this beautiful look into a town that got bypassed. And more to the point it has this emotional weight that was still really accessible to a young me that a lot of other kids studios didn't really trust kids with (except for like Miyazaki films and stuff).
And then Cars 2 was a mistaken-identity spy movie a la Johnny English or Get Smart. I don't doubt it was an entertaining movie or something, but it felt so outside the Pixar brand, like something Disney or Dreamworks or any other studio would make.
It was also the first sequel outside of the Toy Story series, from a studio that somewhat famously refused to do sequels if the world didn't have more story to tell.
Like I said, it was just such a weird departure to do seemingly do a sequel just because the world was popular enough.
> but it felt so outside the Pixar brand, like something Disney or Dreamworks or any other studio would make.
Maybe that's why they wanted to do it, to try something different?
I have always found the Pixar Shorts to be some of their best story telling. They don't have a lot of time, and don't seem to be afraid of trying new ways to tell a story, or a different type of story.
Toy Story has been on a very slid downhill after the second episode. 3 and 4 were both unnecessary and not very good. The same can be said for the Cars sequels, and the more recent Pixar productions in general - they had much better ideas in the very first years.
It's not unique to Pixar. Many stories and so many films follow the Hero's journey: a common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey).
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?
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 ...
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
> 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 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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
I have watched every single video in this series. To be honest, it was a disappointment. There are a few cool videos, but most of it is very surface level. You won’t get any deep or thorough insights into what makes good characters, stories etc. I would suggest you pick up some books on story telling and the rest will do itself, if you are a programmer.
For anyone looking for a deeper dive into how Pixar iterates on their movies and how highly-functioning creative teams can work in general, Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull is a really interesting book.
It goes into the history of Pixar and some of the detail of how they work with actual stories from the movies they've made. One of my favorite anecdotes from the book is how they nearly almost lost all the work they did on Toy Story 2 and almost went under.
One caveat is that the book doesn't cover the news about John Lasseter's misconduct, so it's not all roses, of course.
Great book. I read it once 4 years ago and again 2 years ago thinking about reading it a third time. The lessons have been applicable to me in game dev but if you work in any field whatsoever that relies on creating anything I'd recommend reading it.
Right. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that the book doesn't cover that scandal (which it couldn't have, as you mentioned) and that the Pixar story isn't all roses.
This course looks lovely. It's great for KA to have this kind of material and not just calculus tutorials (as much as I personally appreciated the calculus).