Pixar's Next Three Films Will Be Sequels 379
brumgrunt writes "Should we be worried? As Pixar, with Up, once more proves itself to be home to some of the most original and daring blockbusters on the planet, the news that its next three films are likely to be sequels — with the confirmation of Monsters, Inc. 2 — gives cause for concern. Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?"
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't all films these days... (Score:5, Insightful)
...either sequels or remakes?
Sequels don't have to be bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Toy Story 2 and GoodFather 2 where good examples. I have to admit that I liked cars more than Toy Story 2 but I loved Monsters Inc so I am actually looking forward to these.
well, the economy does suck (Score:5, Insightful)
And sequels are safer bets.
Or this is just speculation and/or distorted information as the result of a long game of telephone, like the content of most articles you find posted on slashdot these days.
Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:well, the economy does suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline is wrong, by the way. There will be non-sequels in between.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
fairly well insulated (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the impression that they're fairly well insulated from Disney's pressure. I think Disney realizes that they were digging themselves into a big hole with their own crummy animated movies leading up to the time when they bought Pixar. "Wall-E" took a lot of commercial risks, with the long, no-dialog intro and the overt political satire. "Up" dismayed the marketing types by having almost no merchandising opportunities (want to buy action figures of an old guy or a chubby boy scout?). Basically they've been putting the story first, and it's actually been a real winning strategy for them in commercial terms. Making some sequels doesn't necessarily equate to being commercial sell-outs; it depends entirely on whether the sequels are good, which we have no way of knowing about right now.
I'd watch for the big pressure toward commercialism to happen if and when Pixar makes its first big box-office flop.
By the way, Pixar-style CG movies are kind of a unique and interesting example of a purely digital form of entertainment that absolutely can't exist without copyright laws. If copyright was abolished tomorrow, we'd still have garage bands, we'd still have (low-budget) movies, and we'd still have novels (which most novelists don't make enough profit from to live on anyway). But a CG movie is an art form that by its nature requires a very large budget. It's not the render farm, it's the incredible number of hours of labor that go into those movies.
Wrath Of Khan ring a bell? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm OK with sequels as some do indeed surpass the original.
And while I don't love every Pixar movie, their worst effort is still much better than everyone else. I will admit that Kung Fu Panda was a pleasant surprise from DreamWorks, but I trust them less with the sequel.
Monsters, Inc. is my 2nd favorite Pixar film behind The Incredibles, so I'm jazzed.
Re:well, the economy does suck (Score:2, Insightful)
Possibly commercially, but Cars was actually an entertaining movie. I've seen it a couple dozen times (I have two young kids), and it is fun to watch over again.
Ideas slowly ran out.. for now (Score:2, Insightful)
It was bound to happen. Wall-E was the last of the original ideas that were developed at that famous brainstorming session that came up with things like Toy Story, Monsters, and Nemo. And even though Wall-E was cool and amazing, it still seemed like they were running out of ideas. IF you just went by initial premises, Wall-E and UP are pretty different compared to before: Cars (anthropomorphizing gang of cars adventure), Nemo (anthropomorphizing buddy fish adventure), Toy Story (anthropomorphizing gang of toys adventure), Monsters Inc (anthropomorphizing buddy monster adventure).
I'm not saying different isn't bad, but it's hard to get the overwhelming masses to go see weirder and weirder premised movies. So I'm worried. I wouldn't say that it's not looking good, but it will be a great challenge to come up with some memorable movies after this.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears to me that you are assuming Pixar's audience is exclusively children. I don't think that's ever been the case. Just because a film has been created using animation techniques it does not necessarily mean it's a a kid's movie--not everyone who enjoys animated features is a kid (or has one).
Pixar makes sophisticated computer-animated movies that appeal to a wide audience and, for the most part, they can be appreciated on several levels. This was the case with the original Toy Story and it continues to be the right through UP.
Re:well, the economy does suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like Disney to me.
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago.
I'd say Mulan, but that might be pushing it for some people. Maybe Tarzan, if you don't mind Phil Collins. The unarguable one is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, without a doubt, in 1996.
Regardless, far less than twenty years.
Besides, all Disney has been doing is trying non-sequels. Chicken Little, Bolt, Enchanted, and the new, not-white princess that all of the news outlets tittered over for a few months. All original. So if Disney was working Pixar, I'm sure they'd be pushing the same way.
Sonny Bono owns you (Score:4, Insightful)
Pixar-style CG movies are kind of a unique and interesting example of a purely digital form of entertainment that absolutely can't exist without copyright laws.
But do Pixar-style CG films require a 95-year copyright term?
Re:already happening (Score:4, Insightful)
See the trend? (and including the world releases follows the same trend). And I'm not including marketing costs, which can be nearing the cost of the movie.
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Hell, Fast and Furious released outside of summer timeframe and has hit 154mil with a 80mil cost, that's a 74mil US profit and still growing and it's definitely not oscar winning material. Now you know why crappy movies continue to dominate the scene. Show some T&A (thrill and action? ;) ) and the crowd forms.
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Yeah, don't worry, cause Dreamworks is in the same boat, as they discovered sequels cost more (just look at the Shrek series), Pixar will obviously come to the same conclusion. 3D (and real 3D) animation has just become just too expensive. Why? cause their employees think like IT: you need to constantly upgrade: cooler tools, faster computers, more editing, more realism, more challenges for the sake of keeping things fresh and innovative, like technology itself. Perfection is the motto of the tower of Babel. Which is ironic in a business where a simple, ingenious story can do wonders [with low-tech]. And some T&A doesn't hurt too (\tongue out\>
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I'd be interested to see how Princess and the Frog turn out...
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Toy Story 2 was a great movie. And seriously, how cool would a second Incredibles movie be?
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago.
Lilo and Stich?
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
But the trend is there (Score:2, Insightful)
They may still be profitable, but the trend is definitely there: they aren't making as much money on each movie as they used to.
Personally I blame the movies themselves. They've been written to a more and more simplistic audience as time has gone on, while their earlier films almost told different stories on the surface (children) and if you got the references (adults.) Lately they've been forgetting to cater to the adults that buy the movie tickets and DVDs.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
The Incredibles was the only Fantastic Four movie to do the Fantastic Four justice. Funny old world, isn't it?
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Cars, the only movie I didn't like. Not looking forward to Cars 2.
Re:But the trend is there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Aren't all films these days... (Score:5, Insightful)
and the above two replies are exactly why this old, old commentary ("it's all been done before anyway") should cease to be modded up. It's not insightful at all - it's no more insightful than commenting that ice melts above 0C.
Yes, every movie's been done before. Either as a movie, or a play, or a novel, or whatever. Just look at the number of "boy meets girl, boy engages bet that he can get the girl, he gets the girl and is cray about her, girl finds out about bet and thins the boy's just been acting, boy has to prove that he really is crazy about her"-movies. Heck, "Yes Man" fits that category, and so does "She's the Man".
Yet only an idiot would argue that the two movies are the same and that if you've seen one, you've seen the other.
It's never about whether or not the story is completely original (when it comes down to it, every movie is either a comedy or a tragedy), but about how the story is told, and about the finer details of that story.
But to those who still think "meh.. there's nothing original anymore".. please, by all means, swear off movies, tv, radio, books, etc. Go hiking, have your own unique experiences doing so. But keep in mind that odds are somebody hiked that path before you did, and your taking a hike is hardly original.
Have you seen Up! (Score:2, Insightful)
Up! is an amazing, amazing movie. What they were able to do with that movie, which as far as I'm concerned is a legitimate piece of quality cinema, is simply fabulous. And how can you not like Doug, and Kevin, and an awesome airship?!
Before that there was this little movie called WALLâE you may have heard of -- I understand it was kind of successful, and well-received...
Yeah.... I'm not too worried based on the last several flicks. They've had a few movies I wasn't as hot on, but the recent trend seems to indicate higher quality than ever before, not lower.
Re:But the trend is there (Score:5, Insightful)
Pixar has which not too many studios have... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ratatouille was just about complete and it wasn't what they were after. They brought in Brad Bird who re-wrote it and did it right. If they have the creative integrity to do things like this, then I'm fully looking forward to these movies.
Pixar really do deserve people giving their projects the benefit of the doubt at least until they make a dud. Their creativity and originality have been amazing; a step above of any other studio in the industry.
Re:Ideas slowly ran out.. for now (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not saying different isn't bad, but it's hard to get the overwhelming masses to go see weirder and weirder premised movies.
The box office recepits for Wall-E [boxofficemojo.com] ($535M lifetime) and Up! [boxofficemojo.com] ($142M in two weeks) lead me to a different conclusion.
The Revenge of Disneytoons (Score:3, Insightful)
Disney used to have an official "crap sequels division", called "Disneytoons". Disneytoons was responsible for Sleeping Beauty 2, Mulan 2, Jungle Book 2, etc., direct-to DVD efforts designed to wring the last dollar out of each franchise. When Disney bought Pixar, Disneytoons was shut down. This was just as well. Sequels from Disneytoons were far, far worse than the originals.
It looks like Pixar is being given Disneytoons' job. "Cars 2" is being made because about $5 billion in "Cars" merchandise has been sold, and with another Cars movie, another few million tons of injection-molded plastic can be shipped out. There's no other reason for another "Cars" movie; the story was complete in itself.
Apparently they're not doing another "Incredibles" movie. That concept has more franchise potential than "Cars". But it wouldn't move the injection-molded plastic.
Re:But the trend is there (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, my thought too. It's much easier to see a trend over time when you ignore the last three data points, isn't it? :)
Re:already happening (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, you can't ignore foreign box office totals. These days, foreign gross can be 60-70% of a movie's total take, especially for animated movies.
Second, DVD sales dummy! DVD sales for Pixar movies are always relatively higher than other types of movies, because they're intended to be enjoyed by children. A family with a bunch of kids might not plop down $50-60 bucks to take the brood to the theater, but they'll spend $18 bucks on a kid's DVD to get the little bastards to shut up for 90 minutes.
Pixar is not in trouble, in fact they're one of the most consistently profitable studios in history. Dreamworks is somewhat in trouble, but not because of Shrek 3. Seriously? That movie will probably bring in over $1 billion in its lifetime, if it hasn't already.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Re:Sequels don't have to be bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back [...]
Well, yes, but it's slightly different.
Star Trek and Star Wars were essentially about the stories. The characters don't grow and change and learn much during the stories--they are who they are. But they're fun characters and we want to see their further adventures.
Oh Lord, now I have to don my SCI-FI nerdery hat.
I disagree! I think that the characters grow and change quite a bit through both movies.
In Star Trek II, Kirk confronts his feeling about aging; how giving up the captain's seat and directing StarFleet Operations left him just feeling old (Shatner was 51 at this point) and eventually only commanding the Enterprise is where he feels young again. His mid-life crisis is to leave the admiralcy that he worked for the sit in the captain's chair again, something that Spock is all too willing to allow. At the end he loses his best friend and constant companion, and in the sequel he destroys his career in StarFleet (at the time he expected a long jail sentence) to find a way to save Spock.
Let's take the character of Han Solo from Empire Strikes Back. At the start he's simply a mercenary -- tagging along with the rebels for awhile, but really the only reason he sticks around is that he's infatuated with Leia. By the end of the film he falls in love with Leia, chooses to sacrifice himself entirely, joining his friends and the rebels instead of taking the bounty that Jabba put over his head (which is why he gets shipped back to Jabba's palace instead of staying with Lando). Luke spends pretty much the entire Empire Strikes Back learning the ways of the force, finding out his relation to Vader.. he's a much much different character at the start of Return of the Jedi than he is at the end of Star Wars.
Those two movies are about stories, but some characters go through profound changes along the way..
Re:already happening (Score:3, Insightful)
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie? The graphics were good, the plot was rather cliched - and not even as good as most cliches because the robot was apparently developed with feelings rather than somehow developing them after an accident like in Short Circuit, which is still silly, but at least there is some kind of reason. I enjoyed Short Circuit much better than Wall-E. Perhaps my expectations were just far too high after them having adverts out for months in advance though.. I said to myself I'd probably never watch it again, but I might enjoy it better if I did. With Transformers 1 I didn't enjoy it much at the cinema either, but after I decided just to ignore some of the more stupid parts and get it on DVD, it makes a decent action/comedy kind of movie.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Except of course their powers were chosen as metaphors:
The mom, stretched in every direction (literally) trying to hold things together.
The archetypal husband; the big strong provider.
The invisible older sister.
Dash, who runs around so fast that the parents have a hard time keeping him contained.
Ok except Jack Jack....his powers were chosen for humorous reasons I suppose.
Re:already happening (Score:3, Insightful)
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie? ... the plot was rather cliched
Yeah, just one of the half-dozen "robot cleans up trash on abandoned earth and meets a probe robot who he falls in love with and follows her back into space and eventually leads all of mankind back to repopulate the earth" movies I watched last year.
Also, I like how you complain about the cliche, then say that it's not even a good cliche because it doesn't follow the cliche like you expected. Here's a news flash for you: 100% original movies that don't borrow from a previous story concept at all are incredibly rare, so if you see any movies at all, you're probably seeing cliches, judging by what your definition of cliche seems to be. And if Wall-E isn't borrowing concepts from any movie more recent than 1986, then I'd say it's doing better that 99.9% of Hollywood movies.
But the point of the movie wasn't so much the story... it's that it had a lot of heart, and that Wall-E himself was incredibly lovable. The scene where Eve thinks that Wall-E got blown up, then they dance around in space was pretty amazingly well done. Also, I took my kids to see it (ages 4 & 6 at the time), and they were absolutely enchanted by the whole movie, and laughed and giggled the whole time. Seeing movies with kids puts things in a whole new perspective.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:already happening (Score:3, Insightful)
... but most of the merch revenue went to Disney.