Remember when everyone loved Pixar? Remember everyone loving Up, and Finding Nemo, most of the Toy Stories, etc. You probably vaguely recall it wasn't always Disney's little slave. Some other mogul was helping them out of the muck and giving them tech and really investing in something quite special. They made their own stories and shunned the concept of sequels and were really mavericks in the animation sphere. I liked them initially, I appreciated the advancements they were making in animation physics and making shit look authentic, hair and water being major improvements.
Disney ruined them. But they still had a lot of love from "fans" who were just happy new Pixar movies were coming out, while Disney forced them to make sequels and their own adaptations of fairy tales that were so beyond bastardised I more or less refused to watch them for ages. I kind of liked Frozen but skipped most of the songs. I was annoyed by Tangled but I liked how it ended. For the record, Rapunzel is one of my favourite fairy tales, but I will admit there isn't a lot to the story itself. The Snow Queen wasn't that bad a story but apparently we had to have a good one not a bad one, fine.
But when Up and Soul and Inside Out were being hyped up I was just so over it. I didn't care. The shorts meant nothing, the Disney/Pixar colabs meant nothing. I did not care. And when I see anything remotely Pixarish now, I see the same character models, the same reused animations. Yes, they did that with 2D animation to save money. They have money and it's still lazy. I do not have time for any of it. I'm also sick of Disney just assuming they have shoe-ins for the Oscars every fucking year that other better animated films just don't have a fucking chance.
And nobody is vibing with Elementals. Nobody. You can't even give them Up 2 as a short to get butts in seats. People are finally sick of Pixar. I beat you all to it. I just checked out of this and the Marvel franchise (and Star Wars when I never cared anyway) I was so sick of hearing about the new shit, Endgame was enough, I stuck with it to the least amount possible then you were forcing more streaming services on me and I went NOPE. DONE. But I was checked out of Pixar long ago, people telling me to watch it made me not watch it. You couldn't force me to. I did love the Disney classics in their second Golden Age. I've had a weird urge to rewatch Little Mermaid and Lion King and Aladdin, they were my childhood, I love a lot of the music, they're fun movies, they hold up. It makes sense for Pixar to dip finally but they were dipping for way longer than people are willing to admit and all the love has dried up. If the Disney adults can't even hold up the line and keep the train going, it's looking grim for Pixar, you can tell from the layoffs.
I just don't get how people have managed to defend Pixar's lack of real imagination since they were forced to make sequels. What else can they really do by now? Romeo and Juliet as pigs? Herman's Head but it's in a bunch of gnomes? It's bad enough Dreamworks has churned out barely passable budget versions and we have the Minions. It's also meant I'll never watch any of their movies, even Despicable Me or any of the others. I don't want to watch 3D animated movies from any studio because of Pixar. I watched Wolfwalkers out of fucking spite and I liked it and it deserved its nomination. But seeing a trailer for a new animated feature that's effectively 2.5D or whatever, just seeing the hints of Pixar and Disney fingerprints all over it despite it being dumped and rescued by Netflix (which is nice, I'm not mad about it) I can't watch it. It's the same animation style and borrowed movements. You've seen one, you've seen them all. They shoehorn in some gay shit you can cut for Chinese audiences, but it's not working on Western audiences anymore either. God, there's a Reddit post from 2020 and the guy's like, IDK guys do you think it's dying? No disrespect, I love Pixar yada yada.
No, it is dying and I blame Disney. I didn't grow up with Pixar films, they were out when I was basically an adult and starting university, but I enjoyed them initially. Sorry, I don't like Wall-E that much. Nothing clicked or really charmed me. The problem with Disney is its failure to understand over-saturation, particularly when they've invested in a new company or IP, they never slow their fuckin' roll on this shit. Okay, the 2D animation renaissance saved the animation department from failure, but all that did was then make them too big for their boots. Other studios just didn't have the steam-power to compete. It's legitimately unfair that 2D fell by the wayside when Disney were really one of the best in that arena. As of this year, Pixar is worth 15 billion. One of the original people behind Pixar left the studio a while ago, that was possibly a death knell. I don't know if a movie about red panda TF being an allegory for periods really was going to be a big hit. Now there's a sequel for Inside Out, what the fuck else will you do with that outside of using the same character and the same construct? We didn't need FIVE Toy Stories so why are we getting 2 Inside Outs, other than they keep hoping for sequel bait to hook the kids in. And I didn't give credit to Sony animation kicking their ass or DreamWorks actually managing to semi-revive Shrek with another Puss in Boots movie that did well. Shrek was kinda my limit too. I did like Incredibles but never saw the sequel either, I never had much interest in anything after the original movies anyway, I think I saw Toy Story 2 but definitely not 3.
I didn't grow up with Pixar but I didn't exactly grow up with Disney either. My favourite animation's made by a defunct studio that has links to Ghibli and I'm not even that big a fan of those movies. I don't tend to rewatch a lot of films now unless I loved them, and I don't love any new animations. I don't even think I would rewatch Bug's Life and I do own it on BluRay. If I wanted any Disney movies I could just go buy them, nobody judges adults for buying Disney films or any animations. But their kids don't necessarily love the movies they did. I'm not forcing kids I know to love the Never Ending Story.
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