Err… so that’s like saying that making a movie that appeals to more than one group of people, and casting celebrities in it is “formulaic”. That’s just… not what formulaic IS. Of course they make it appealing to both children and adults–that is who is going to be sitting in the theater watching it! And of course they hire celebs… that is what almost all movies do–that’s how they got to be celebrities in the first place! I don’t get your point at all, unless you think that every movie and tv show ever made should be made with entirely unknown actors…?
As for the next part… um… not having seen, uh, MOST of the movies you are trying to discuss kind of…invalidates anything you have to say about them. That’s like me writing a bad-review food critic column about an Italian restaurant I never ate at, because I already knew I didn’t like spaghetti*.
*just an example. I really do like spaghetti.
People aren’t defensive about you not liking the films. People are criticizing you for expressing such a firm opinion on something you know precisely dick-squat about. As has been pointed out umpteen times, Pixar movies are much different from other animated movies. A Bug’s Life and Antz aren’t on about the same relative planes as Gone With the Wind and American Pie. People on the SDMB aren’t much into ignorance, as you may have noticed, and proclaiming your opinions as you are from a position of ignorance just isn’t likely to fly around here. It has nothing to do with you liking the movies or not.
The Los Angeles Times, in an article published shortly after the merger announcement, said the following (to the best of my recollection): the Pixar people didn’t want to do a Toy Story 3, at least in the near future, but Disney was keen on having a third movie in the series, and so overrode the Pixar folk and had an internal team of animators (and scriptwriters) working on a sequel. The division in which those animators were working was more or less eliminated after the merger, and the plans for Toy Story 3 were scrapped.
Great movie, catches and holds your attention!! Super funny in some parts but action and dramatic when it needs to be. A great movie worth every dime!!!
I can’t find the article after a search at the L.A. Times website, so I’m going from memory here. IIRC the explanation was that they didn’t want to do a Toy Story 3 sequel in a near enough future to suit Disney’s plans (if at all).
From Pixar’s point of view, why would you want to do a Toy Story 3? Surely it is more interesting to come up with new characters. In the Hollywood world, I think you get more respect from your peers with new material - the sequel is always considered to be a moneymaker project showing a certain lack of creativity, no? It’s not like Pixar is having trouble coming up with other hit movies.
P.S. The same article also mentioned that before the release of Finding Nemo, Michael Eisner confidently predicted at a Disney board meeting that Pixar’s next feature would be a huge flop. Nemo, of course, turned out to be Pixar’s biggest money-maker ever.
The folks at Pixar aren’t opposed to doing a Toy Story 3; they just want to do it themselves, since they see it (rightly) as “their baby.” I know that John Lasseter and the other senior Pixar folks have been kicking around ideas for a TS3 for a decade now – they’ve got some nice ideas to end the trilogy, with the final fate of Woody, Buzz, etc. resolved as Andy grows up.
Disney wanted to do Toy story 3 strictly as a money-making proposition – their previous contract with Pixar stipulated that they owned the rights to the movies and the characters, and were free to do spin-offs and sequels as desired (example: the “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command” cartoon). When Steve Jobs was threatening to end Pixar’s deal with Disney and find another distributor for their movies (one that’d give Pixar a bigger share of the profits), Michael Eisner accelerated development of TS3 to (a) spite Pixar and (b) spook Jobs into returning to the bargaining table. Disney had a very hard time finding folks who were willing to sign up for their “Circle 7”(*) studio to do non-Pixar sequels (IIRC, a Monsters Inc. sequel was also in the works), because a lot of animators respected Pixar’s stuff too much to want to do unauthorized knockoffs. One of the first conditions of the Pixar/Disney buyout deal is that Pixar gets control of sequels to their movies, which is why the Circle 7 TS3 got axed. I fully expect to see a Pixar-helmed Toy Story 3 sometime down the road, however.
(* = The name of Disney’s Burbank studios where they were developing their own computer-animated movies was called “Circle 7” because it used to be a studio for the local ABC 7 affiliate. The station’s logo was the number 7 in a circle, and it was cheaper to give the studio a name to match than to change the signage on the building).
“People here [at Pixar] love the characters, and they’re aware that these films, if done correctly, are living things. If you refer to them as product or franchises, you get bitch-slapped.”
–Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles)
Thanks and now I Respect Pixar’s reasons, just like I respect Bill Watterson’s refusal to treat Calvin and Hobbes like a commodity. Unlike the creator of GARFIELD.
I just have one question …
How in the heck is Cars gonna be any good when they put the car’s eyes in the wrong place??? Cars’ eyes aren’t in the windshield!! They’re the headlights !!!
Sheesh.
I like animated films. At 22, I’m a kid who never grew up.
I liked Toy Story.
Ambivalent about Toy Story 2. It had its moments, and was very pretty, but I wouldn’t say it was better than the original.
I loved Monsters Inc, and I’m sure I have it on DVD somewhere.
I loved Finding Nemo, and do have it on DVD somewhere.
I liked Ice Age, but not enough to go and see the sequel.
I liked the Incredibles, but not enough to buy the DVD. Though I wouldn’t be opposed to getting it as a gift.
I enjoyed A Bug’s Life.
I hated Antz.
I enjoyed Shrek, and saw Shrek 2. I didn’t like Shrek 2 much.
From the previews I’ve seen, I’m not going to go out of my way to see Cars. First of all, the characters don’t grab me. I can appreciate that a vintage car is a work of art, and there are some cars that I do drool over. But overall, cars bore me. As does racing, which is the subplot of this story, yes? The shorts for the movie, and the whole premise just leave me cold.
I’ll probably watch it when it comes to PPV on cable, and I may form a different opinion of it then. But at the moment, it hasn’t given me enough reason to want to pay out $15 per ticket to go and see it on the big screen (unlike over the hedge, which I saw the previews of at the same time as Cars. That one made me giggle, and I do want to see it when it comes out)
I do think that all Pixar movies look a lot alike and the messages also are quite similar : “everybody is special”. Cars looks to me like first Pixar movie I really won’t enjoy.
I am not very interested in cars or racing, which looks to be the main part of the movie.
The message sounds a lot like the one in the Incredibles (which I absolutely loved).
So, in short, I think I won’t enjoy Cars at all, but I will give it a shot.
Kids understand that a noose implies killing just fine. And calling each other names and getting excited hoping that a pretty girl likes them is 95% of what preteen boys do with each other. The sports thing is just a front.
I think you missed the point. While I’m confident kids would find calling someone a name funner, adults who watched the same scene would be laughing for a completley different reason, as mentioned before.
Uh, how does that play into the erection joke I cited? I have no doubt preteens get excited when a “pretty girl likes them,” but that doesn’t mean they’d pick up on the subtley of the aforementioned joke. I know I didn’t as a young one at that time.
