#like he still is but it's potentially skippable dialogue instead of a thing that he asks you right of the bat

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Pixar Films

I dislike Disney as an entity; it is an evil corporate conglomerate that makes focus-grouped schlock to appeal to as wide an audience as possible at the detriment of story.  That said, Pixar was once the greatest animation studio on the planet.

Keep in mind, these are movies for kids, so anything negative I say will almost certainly be rebutted with “you’re just old and you don’t like Disney because it’s popular and you’re a hipster and you’re not even the target audience anyway so shut up.”  I’m just giving my two cents, whatever that’s worth.

I’m not gonna rate them on a number scale, I’ll just tell you how much I would or would not recommend watching them.  Some are must-see-cinema, others are bland and skippable affairs that you should not feel obligated to watch just because it has the Pixar brand on it.

Let’s start from the very beginning (a very good place to start)

Toy Story (1995) Groundbreaking, the first feature length 3D animated movie, spectacular cast, great story, though a little wonky by today’s standards both in the visuals (though that’s just a product of the times) and in the characterization (Woody is kinda of a jerk in this one; he was worse during pre-production, so this is the tame version).  Pixar started off on the right foot.  Would Recommend

A Bug’s Life (1998) This has some flaws, but is still a really fun movie.  Not as good as Toy Story, but infinitely better than Dreamworks’ knockoff Antz.  Great ensemble, memorable characters and set pieces, really funny.  Would Probably Recommend

Toy Story 2 (1999) An excellent sequel, they knocked it out of the park with this one.  It’s surprisingly deep, exploring concepts like the inevitability of change; nothing lasts forever, you can’t keep kicking the can down the road forever.  The journey is finite, but that doesn’t make it worthless.  Would Definitely Recommend.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) To date, their best original movie, maybe even better than Toy Story 2.  Everything about it is perfect; John Goodman and Billy Crystal have great chemistry, Steve Buscemi plays the perfect sleaze, Boo is just adorable, it’s an excellent movie.  Would Definitely Recommend.

Finding Nemo (2003) This is a beautiful movie; they had to invent new animation techniques to make it look this good, new ways for light to bounce and diffuse through the fishy medium.  Amazing story, absolutely heart wrenching at points, hilarious at others, without feeling tonally dissonant.  Would Definitely Recommend.

The Incredibles (2004) Another home run, they’re just showing off at this point.  This is a much deeper and arguably darker story than any of their previous films.  It doesn’t pull any punches and explores adult concepts like mid-life crises, extramarital affairs, death (oh, so much death; red shirt mooks and civilians alike).  This may be my favorite (definitely top 3; I’ll expand the list below).  Would Definitely Recommend.

Cars (2006) A competent movie, though by Pixar standards it’s not quite up to snuff.  Not bad, by any means, but this one is the most blatant cash grab of them all, just a commercial for hot wheels and die-cast toys.  I have a soft spot for it because this is the one I’ve seen the most; my mom would turn on this DVD to keep my baby sisters occupied, so it was literally always playing in our house.  That said, I’m not nostalgia blind; it has good parts, but it’s not great.  Would Probably Not Recommend.

Ratatouille (2007) C’est Magnifique!  Patton Oswalt does a fantastic job, I identify with Linguini on a spiritual level, the human characters are all perfectly demented and the rats are equally so.  I love this moral; anyone can be successful, it’s about who you are not where you come from.  Funny and relatable, an all around feel-good movie.  Would Definitely Recommend.

WALL-E (2008) Top 3, hands down, this is a true work of art, a modern masterpiece.  A film mostly devoid of dialogue, it expresses so much emotion from how the characters carry themselves and react physically to their surroundings.  The body language, the color choices, the camera work (especially in the space dance sequence), just how RAW everything is, how grounded it feels, how fleshed out these little robots are..  I Cannot Recommend This Enough, Watch it Right Now. Now. Why Are You Still Reading This?  Now! Go Watch it Then Come Back.  Even if You’ve Already Seen it, Go Watch it Again.

Up (2009) Another near perfect installment under Pixar’s belt.  They’ve really nailed the art of opening scenes; Carl and Ellie’s love story moves me to tears, it is so beautifully portrayed.  Some of the characters can be a tad annoying and overly cutesy to sell merchandise, but the story never suffers from it.  The villain actually feels like a threat, there are stakes, and the image of a house sitting by a waterfall and the story connotations thereof are indescribably bittersweet.  Would Definitely Recommend

Toy Story 3 (2010) This is is sort of hit or miss.  It’s a very well made movie, and an excellent CONCLUSION to the Toy Story franchise (Conclusion: noun, the end or finish of an event or process).  I liked it, felt it really wrapped things up in a satisfactory way, but it’s not better than Toy Story 2 in my mind.  I feel like this was a turning point for Pixar; after this, they were never quite the same, never really bounced back.  May or May Not Recommend, I’m on the Fence

Cars 2 (2011) You don’t give the comedy relief their own movie.  That’s storytelling 101; the comic relief bit-character can rarely stand on their own and meaningfully carry a story, though corporations are laughing all the way to the bank as I say this because these types of movies keep making boatloads of money even if they suck.  Minions made bookoo bucks, the Pirates of the Caribbean series is still ongoing despite the loss of Bloom and Knightly (and bringing them back for the last one doesn’t really count because Depp is still the main character), Cars 2 is a corporate cash grab, and devoid of artistic merit; this is my first hard no.  Would NOT Recommend.

Brave (2012) This is not a Pixar film, it is a Disney film that they decided to make under Pixar’s name instead because they knew Pixar had enough good will and positive connotations to get people into seats regardless of story.  It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.  That’s the story of modern Disney; not terrible, not great, just okay because that’s all it needs to be.  People will watch it no matter what, so they put in the bare minimum amount of effort so nobody can say they suck at making movies again (because for the longest time in the early 2000s, they did suck; Dinosaurs, Home on the Range, Chicken Little).  Would Not Recommend.

Monsters University (2013)  Why did you do this, Pixar?  Why did you take one of your best movies and do this specifically to it? Nobody asked for this, nobody wanted this.  I can only applaud them for having integrity enough to NOT give people what they wanted; people wanted a sequel, and that would have bee terrible.  You can’t follow up on Monsters, Inc, it had a perfect ending, it was hopeful and heart warming and definitive.  A prequel is the only thing they could have made without messing up the ending of the original, so I’ll give them some credit for that.  It’s not good.  Would Not Recommend.

Inside Out (2015) Their best one since Toy Story 3.  Not terrible, I actually liked a lot of things about this one.  I like it when Pixar takes on more serious subject matter, and I thought they did a good job exploring how a kid would react to such a drastic lifestyle change.  The cast was good, the animation was fun (inside Riley’s head; outside was generic and samey).  Not bad Pixar, not bad at all.  Would Probably Recommend.

The Good Dinosaur (2015) It doesn’t matter what i think because this movie still made hundreds of millions of dollars.  Disney is losing no sleep over this.  Would NOT Recommend.

Finding Dory (2016) Again with the continuations!  This was better than Monsters University, but the original was still such a hard act to follow.  It had potential, and I liked how it respectably handled mental illness in a way that was easy for kids to understand without dumbing it down and underplaying its significance in the lives of those who it effects.  I think Marlin kinda regressed, having to relearn what he already learned in the first one. The hardest I laughed was during the climax, the truck chase scene, “It’s a Wonderful World,” just amazing.  Would Probably Not Recommend

Cars 3 (2017) I hope Disney was happy with this end product.  I hope the producers really enjoyed cashing their toy checks for this one.  I thought it was worse than Cars 2, but I can see why some people might like it more.  Either way, it’s worse than Cars 1, which wasn’t particularly great anyway.  Would NOT Recommend.

Coco (2017) I’m on the fence with this one.  It was beautifully made, and the songs made me cry, but it’s hard for me to look at this movie without judging it as a product made by a focus group of mostly white people.  By itself it’s a good movie, but when you know how the Disney sausage is made it feels disingenuous and calculated.  Might Recommend, But it Had Some Baggage

The Incredibles 2 (2018)  I am Boo Boo the Fool, Pixar suckered me and I fell for it.  I was legitimately enthusiastic for this one because the original is one of their best, and unlike Monsters, Inc it actually left room for a sequel.  It had so much potential, and big shoes to fill, and it did so in the most generic Disney way it could.  Like Brave it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either.  Middle of the road, some things were fun, others made little sense, it was “appealing” in that it literally appealed to as wide an audience as it could without alienating anyone by doing anything particularly risky.  I liked Voyd, I liked how Helen became the main character, I liked the villain twist; I did not like how easy it was to make superheroes legal again.  It felt like it was tacked on at the end, like he just says “and there we have it, they’re legal again, congratulations,” like he was announcing the winner of the Price is Right.  Would Probably Not Recommend

Toy Story 4 (2019) I want to be clear that I made a point not to pay money to see many of the previous films on this list.  If I thought they were going to suck, I waited until a friend bought it and saw it with them for free.  This one, though, I was forced to pay for because my mom insisted on seeing it in theaters as a family.  It wasn’t terrible.  Wasn’t great.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  It was the same villain again; Stinky Pete, Lotso, Gabby-Gabby... I can’t wait for the fifth one where the villain is an old toy who is mad because they weren’t played with.  Buzz was made much dumber for this one, and I felt they didn’t do enough with Forky.  I was excited to see how they handled the existential aspects of the series; what makes a toy? How are toys sentient? Why are toys sentient? In the first movie Woody implied that there were rules that toys were honor bound to follow, so what is stopping Forky from blowing their cover on accident?  None of these questions were answered.  I liked Keanu Reeves, I didn’t like Key and Peele.  Would Probably Not Recommend.

The mighty have fallen.  It’s just sad. 

”Onward” looks kinda dumb, like a kiddy version of the flop Will Smith movie “Bright.”  I have no faith in this production company anymore, but I’m sure it will make hundreds of millions of dollars; the cast are fan favorites, including Disney’s favorite topical pet celebrities (because let’s be honest, Disney basically owns Tom Holland at this point.  Whether they own Spider-Man or not, they own Tom Holland, he is theirs, his soul contractually belongs to them).

Speaking of souls, ”Soul” will probably go over well with critics, though I can’t help but notice that their main character of color is transformed into a non-human for most of the movie.  Again.  I’m also not a fan of this one-word naming convention Disney has fallen into in the last decade.  “Brave” was originally titled “the Bear and the Bow,” but one-word titles seem to test well with kids.  Hopefully this will pass, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m swearing off Disney movies, firsthand.  I might catch them second hand, through friends or other means, but I refuse to give this corporate conglomerate one more penny.  They basically own Hollywood, so my money will eventually make my way into their pockets, I just want to put as much distance between them and myself as possible.  No more Pixar, no more Star Wars, no more Marvel, no more Disney.  I am one drop in the bucket, I will not be missed, and they will not be affected in the slightest by my absence, but I need to prove to myself that I have integrity enough not to keep funneling my hard earned cash into a trillion dollar snack company.

Disney movies are snacks, not meals.  And I’m going on a diet.

Anyway, here’s my top three:

Monsters, Inc

The Incredibles

WALL-E