Christopher Orr, The Atlantic:
A well-regarded hollywood insider recently suggested that sequels can represent “a sort of creative bankruptcy.” He was discussing Pixar, the legendary animation studio, and its avowed distaste for cheap spin-offs. More pointedly, he argued that if Pixar were only to make sequels, it would “wither and die.” Now, all kinds of industry experts say all kinds of things. But it is surely relevant that these observations were made by Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, in his best-selling 2014 business-leadership book.
Yet here comes Cars 3, rolling into a theater near you this month. You may recall that the original Cars, released back in 2006, was widely judged to be the studio’s worst film to date. Cars 2, which followed five years later, was panned as even worse. And if Cars 3 isn’t disheartening enough, two of the three Pixar films in line after it are also sequels: The Incredibles 2 and (say it isn’t so!) Toy Story 4.
This is a scorching, but well-written read. Hard to deny the logic when there’s a sea of Pixar sequels in the works. That said, I loved Inside Out and I’ve heard very positive things about Coco, due out this November.
And that said, the next non-sequel after Coco isn’t due until 2020. Until then, it’s sequels all the way.
I too loved inside out (abstract reasoning: amazing) as well as Ratatouille (and the History of the Rat short). But, I think that piece was spot on, maybe a bit ahead of the curve but there’s definitely something going on that doesn’t seem right.
Disney’s business model is sequels.
Buy properties with a strong following, do a good (if somewhat predictable) job on the movies and other tie-ins, repeat.
Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars…
It wasn’t, though. Walt had a strict no-sequels policy, which he broke all of once (at customer/Roy’s insistence) to bad reception.
Disney’s acquisition of Pixar had me bit concerned at the time and this is exactly why. I would not be surprised at all to see the trend continue with Disney focusing on the core brand. I think it would be good for Disney to become more like Pixar. I just hope that they don’t destroy the Pixar name in the process. They were, for good reason, the gold standard for a long time. Let Disney churn out the sequels, people expect the cash grab from them, but let Pixar continue to create more complex and interesting original stories.
Pixar often had a 3-year delay between films when they were independently owned and made a sequel to Toy Story only a year after A Bug’s Life was released. This isn’t really anything new, except that now they can afford to employ additional creative teams that can focus on sequels. Does that mean their ratio of masterpieces to mediocre films will go down? Sure. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get fewer masterpieces.
The main difference with Disney’s purchase was that the speed with which they could make a movie increased and their quality of animation jumped considerably, due to an influx of cash and talent. But, the hardest part of making a masterful story is the storytelling. That takes time. If it takes 3 years to take a concept to final project, then that’s how long it takes. Making sequels in the meantime is a good way to justify the time between masterpieces. It is a business, after all.
Sorry if it’s obvious to everyone else, but what was so bad about Cars?
Without question Disney has marginalized Pixar.
But were all the sequels and spin-offs created to pay for the Pixar acquisition or did Disney buy them to eliminate a competitor? I think a bit of both.
Neither Catmull, nor Lasseter were able to shield Pixar from Disney execs pimping it out to turn cheap tricks once the deal was done. I think Pixar’s best movies are likely behind them. R.I.P. Pixar.
Dunno, Cars is one of my favorites.
Pixar is probably the one studio that I’d give the benefit of the doubt on all of these sequels. For one, they’ve not been nearly as sequel-happy as other studios. And while upcoming movies have a clumping of sequels, it’s because they’ve taken the time to get them right. Dory took 13 years. Incredibles 2 will be 14 years. While nobody thought Toy Story needed another movie, most would agree that TS3 was surprisingly good – perhaps the best in the series. So TS4 has also earned the benefit of the doubt.
An interesting article last summer noted that the big 4 Pixar directors – John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, Pete Docter – haven’t produced a single dud when more than one of them was involved in a project. Lee Unkrich (TS3, Coco director, co-director on others) may also be in that group.
Cars was Lasseter’s baby, but none of the other “big” directors were involved. While his fasination with toys really worked for Toy Story, he needs to give his fascination with cars a rest. Unfortunately, I think this is the one case where Disney may be applying pressure due to merchandising opportunities – and Lasseter is more than eager to comply because he personally loves car racing so much.
Pixar was making sequels long before Disney bought them.
“More pointedly, he argued that if Pixar were only to make sequels, it would “wither and die.””
Right and they don’t only make sequels.
Pixar movies are still almost a guaranteed to be head and shoulders above the competition. Isn’t it fun to poke them.
Nothing to see here.
I wonder the same thing. I even think Cars 2 was a fun movie, even if it wasn’t Pixar’s best.
That’s a good point. I still think that Pixar at their worst is better than a lot of others at their best.
It’s been more than 10 years since The Incredibles came out, and it is arguably the best movie that Pixar has ever made (I think it’s pretty much in everybody’s top three at least). I’m not going to knock Pixar for making The Incredibles 2, especially since they got Brad Bird back for it.
Cars 3 on the other hand…yeah, that seems to have the Vader-esque hand of Disney all over it.
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True but they were also mixing in more than a healthy dose of original conten back then. Sequels and reboots are fine but once they go from being a minority of the content you’re producing to the majority of the content that you’re producing that may signal a problem. IMHO letting Congress constantly screw with copyright law is the biggest problem. If Disney didn’t have an ever expanding copyright to Mickey Mouse and it’s other ancient properties then it would’ve had to innovate more to survive. It’s long past time we returned copyright back to something resembling what the founders intended.