Yeah, I never understood why they stopped! Another thing they just stopped doing were those animated bloopers. In my opinion, it made the movies much more special and memorable.
They also stopped having John Ratzenberger in all of their films (With Onward being the last one he was in) and I am convinced it was because of his political beliefs as he is a Republican.
@@smpmuzpid based on the newer originals being directed by the shorts directors(i.e Turning Red by the Bao director, Luca by the La Luna director), I assumed that it'd stay that way and create a nice feedback loop of new directors starting out on a Pixar short before working their way up to an official movie. But Disney probably shafted it in place of advertising other Disney properties. Now the closest thing to that is the "Win or Lose" series that'll eventually appear on Disney+.
I agree with this quote but its hilarious that he said that as I am currectly reading the narnia books and they very much feel like just for chidren lol
@@pvzgamer6029in 1994, as Toy Story was being made, multiple heads at the company were having a lunch when the topic turned to what they should make next. From that conversation came a bug’s life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E.
@@pvzgamer6029 if you remember the one animation in the beginning, where they show drawings of woody, flick, and other pixar characters, that was where they talked about it. I think it was the initial teaser trailer for Wall-E back in the day, I remember watching it for the first time at a drive-in theater
imagine a universe where pixar said “no” to disney’s offer and went on to make more mature and poignantly written animated features with studios like warner bros or columbia pictures edit: yes, *now* warner bros wouldn't be a good place to shop pixar to. you all seem to forget that the disney/pixar buyout happened in 2006, which was before zavslav was ceo.
I do this in my head with Nintendo so much, wondering how much better Zelda would’ve turned out if they didn’t make tp and set the standard you have to be derivative to sell
i don't think pure grit is what allows these pixar films to be so memorable, it's the fact that they allowed their characters and their worlds to be flawed and layered just like our own. Grit alone can be as equally hollow as the familiar sappy emotional beats Pixar's been going through with their movies.
An example of a film that seamlessly merged grit & sentimentality was the Lego Movie (2013). The movie contained sentimental emotional beats that tugged at the heartstrings & dark evil villians- a family conflict & a wholesome resolution. It also had a non-meaningless message & looked awesome. Furthermore it made fun of how an excess of both grit & sappiness can be shallow. Lego Batman was overly gritty in a way that was hilariously mocked "I only like BLACK. And VERY, VERY DARK GREY." The lego pink kitten was overly positive to the point of naiveity, and the movie called this out as well.
Agree. Too much grit, and you get crap like the modern seasons of Rick and Morty. Where you can barely care about anything that happens in the story due to it being too busy throwing interesting and significant ideas out the window, or straight up doesn't have any at all, all for the sake of hammering in "lol everyhting is meaningless hashtag nihilism hashtag cynicism" and everyone's time is wasted. Ugh, it gives me a headache, and it feels especially weird coming from Emplemon who, a few years ago, also criticized Rick and Morty for this reason as well.
Pixar feels like the "gifted" kid. They were so much better early on and were praised so much that now that things have gotten hard they don't know how to actually try and they give up and coast while everyone around them flies past them
I could totally see that. Virtually all of Pixar’s best output was in the 2000’s. Even if they were never bought by Disney, they still probably would’ve fallen off at some point though. One thing I will say though: Even if it is sentimental and is after 2009, I like Coco.
The failure of Brave was largely a directorial problem. The studio decided to replace the director with a guy who straight-up did not understand the point of the movie and so halfway into the film the original plot basically gets thrown out the window and it becomes "Oh no, My mom is a bear" and it just kinda spiraled from there.
@@jamesstanley792 I can't say for sure, but I'm gonna say the plot would have actually been a lot more consistent a f focused morenon the Mom and Merida conflict.
@ano_nym. From what the movie showed it's socitial Disgonation tosward something new like a women being a capable hunter. Being that the main strife was with the family and their daughte, mainly the mother and her. Theres a video essay going into it's missed pointential, but thats whta I remember.
I definitely missed this kind of video. Your new stuff feels very impactful, it's like a documentary level quality that I must set aside time to watch and take in properly. This feels a lot more cozy and relaxed
When the Merger with Disney happened it totally destroyed their entire production line. So many staff were moved from Pixar to Disney and so many from Disney to Pixar. The blurring of the lines wasn't just in the movies, it was in the creators. People who had previously been technicians or animators were now promoted and put in charge of writing and were collaborating with the same people from Disney who specialized in rehashing old ideas instead of actually writing original content. The brand changed because the teams behind the movies changed.
Pixar changed because there was a clash of the older generation and newer generation. Lasseter and friends wanted to tell compelling stories, but the newer generation? Who the heck knows what they want. They're the same people who went in hard for the lesbian romance in Lightyear, and who knows what they'll do to Inside Out 2.
They were tight with disney since forever. Back in the day, theyd made some pretty decent shorts (amazing from a cgi perspective, decent from an animated short one), and when they set about to make toy story, no one had any idea what they were doing, nor how to make a full animated feature. It was folks from disney (who were onboard to be their distributor) who came in and taught them how to actually make movies.
Hey remember Toy Story 3 where all the toys were about to accept their fate and die in the fire? Gosh how did Toy Story 4 top that? By making Woody leave Bonnie and destroy everything he used to believed in.
@@OrchinX wasn't bad enough to let Woody leave. But Buzz is okay with that. Buzz Lightyear. The toy that said "Somewhere in that pad of stuffing is a toy that taught me life is only worth living when being loved by a kid." in Toy Story 2.
That’s really my problem with Toy Story 4. It’s not Woody leaving his friends and Bonnie to be with Bo Peep, but the existence of a fourth film really makes that scene you mentioned in Toy Story 3 of the toys accepting their death in the incinerator scene less impactful and intense for a first time viewer because now they know with the knowledge of a 4th film that they’re going to survive.
@@MatTen532 Woody wasn't loved by his kid tho, Bonnie didn't appreciate him like Andy did. He didn't feel he could do anything about it until he saw Bo and the other lost toys. They showed him life can be worth living, even if you don't have a kid to serve. I think that was very important, especially when there's only so much love a toy can have before they're outgrown, forgotten, etc. I personally really respect Toy Story 4 for exploring those ideas through a different lens and flipping the status quo.
"Mr Kailing, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan "This isn't Disney's America, or DreamWorks America, this is Animations's United States of America!!" - Barack Obama
The Incredibles is one of the most mature movies ever made, especially once you grow up and have a family. Those conflicts presented on the movie hits so much harder.
The movie implied Helen thought bob was cheating on her, something I didn't get when I first watched the movie as a 6 year old. It wasn't until I rewatched it last year that I fully understood the movie and everything really did hit so much harder
@@BananaPhoPhilly + the movie essentially being about Mr. Incredible having a mid-life crisis. The movie has so much more to say when you watch it as an adult
31:30 You're kinda on point, though it wasn't really the cynicism that differentiated Pixar from the pack but rather the fact that their movies never sugarcoated shit. Even in it's more goofier movies they all moments that genuinely felt grounded in reality. Every protagonist and villain had a genuinely realistic motivations and goals the average person could get behind and for that reason it made people actually care about the films a lot more. Incredibles was about a aging father chasing his glory days and a mother trying to protect her family from her and her husband's past. Cars was about a young, cocky racer being humbled for his arrogance and learning a thing or two by normal everyday people. Ratatouille is (practically) about two guys trying to find their place in the world while dealing the stressful reality of being a chef for a high class, respected restaurant. They're all simple premises but effect because the audience can *relate* to it. I feel like these newer movies are more focused on giving people an *adventure* to watch rather than a story to tell. They can be good, they can fun, but in terms of lasting impact they're a flash in a pan...
That’s my problem with movies like Inside Out, Coco, Soul, and Toy Story 4. I love their themes, but the actual plot elements don’t feel unique. They each follow a similar fetch-quest-like structure, which, despite having good themes and concepts, makes the storytelling fall flat
I think Emp meant more like the people in the worlds that Pixar presented were far more cynical and self-interested which sold the actual struggle far better
nah, Pixar is another example of americans thinking animation needs to be cartoony and family friendly. Is not deep, Pixar was always more childish fluff but decently written
The problem of "every character is perfect" is a problem in a lot of media now. It's part of the reason why they removed the "misogyny" of Sokka even though that was a big part of his development. "Good guys" can't have damning qualities. They have to be perfect so I can self-insert my perfectly shit self onto them. Villains are suffering from the opposite a bit, where they're just one dimensionally evil for evil's sake or to make thinly veiled political points like "racism bad" or "colonialism bad."
>villains are one dimensionally evil Are they though? Because it seems like every modern villain can be boiled down to "I'm le bad because of muh trauma, I'm damaged actually and I'm not totally evil as long as I learn friendship! I'm so gray area you guys!"
@@horpuscorpus8299i think the problem is so many villains only ever fall under what you mentioned or one-dimensionally evil, and there's so rarely ever any in between
Basically the way it's been is if the villain is evil by Current Year standards (-ist/phobe or what have you) then they are pure evil with no nuance whatsoever. If they're any other type of villain then they're just "misunderstood" and "redeemable"
one-dimensional villains are totally fine, just make them entertaining and don't try and pass them off as some kind of good guy or overly complex character when they're blatantly not
It's a shame because Peter Sohn (the director of Elemental) is an animation veteran, working a long time with Pixar and even branching to other projects (he voices Miles's roommate in Spiderverse). Hearing the way you described the film, as touching on elements rather than delving deeply, makes me wonder if he had a much more substantial film before it was corporately neutered
@@jeffreyquinde6707Ah. Probably reading too much into it, then. He just seems like a cool guy.so it's a bummer people aren't super interested in his movie
It's a pretty good film, I actually like that it doesnt give too much detail into why they're discriminated against because then you make the experience more universal, I actually couldn't pinpoint what immigrant population were trying to portray with this and that was kinda cool honestly.
I found him out with the Behind the Meme video. I must admit some of my favorites are from this era (the Jimmy Kimmel video is top notch, and Trump's journey to the presidency through memes is great). I think I prefer the old content though the new one has value too. This channel has been a little disappointing in the latest videos yet I don't know exactly why, I think he's getting bad at complaining, which was his calling back in the day.
@@not_emerald I think his new videos are just too safe. I understand why he doesn’t use copyrighted meme material like before, he’s trying to monetize and make money. But beside all that his new videos are really milquetoast in subject matter and seem to be more directed towards his Reddit audience. My favorite videos of his, like you mentioned, probably wouldn’t be made in this new era because they’d be to controversial or drama inducing which seems like Emp is trying to distance from. Whatever, but his videos have been lacking lately and your not the only one to see that
The reason that Pixar started slipping and Disney started to get good at the same time is because once Pixar got bought out almost all of their senior talent got moved into Disney Animation to lead the helm there. The actual talent left and the people holding the bag had to continue on without any of the Founding Generation talents or spark to guide them. People make art and entertainment, not brands. Once the people making quality movies at Pixar left, Pixar stopped making quality movies.
Disney went hard with Encanto. But overall, I feel like Pixar is found better than Disney. But still, I loved Luca for example, but Encanto felt more mature like a classic Pixar film. It’s hard to say who’s doing better
This channel is fascinating because it's like you raised the standard too high on the main channel to post things like this video to it. But there was still clearly effort placed into sourcing assets and making little gifs of cartoon emp typing away. This was clearly planned out, but not strictly scripted. It's fun to see where the effort line is as to what gets posted here and what goes on the main channel
28:40 This is a common sentiment, and it's happened to Disney animation studios as well. Villains are barely a thing anymore, instead it's the personal journey or flawed main character or family dynamic that's the antagonistic force
I actually liked Coco because it manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls in its storytelling outlined in the video. The villain, a TWIST villain no less, was a total bastard, and even if the audience could catch onto the twist, it still manages to act as good dramatic irony for the characters. And to compound on how much of a bastard he is, he kills a guy ON SCREEN! Pixar had shied away from that sort of stuff for a long while, not since the Incredibles I imagine. And the family is BRUTAL in how they treat the main character and his ostracized ancestor. And I fee the sentimental last scene actually ties into the overall narrative and themes way better than most of the other similar moments from other pixar films. I think it’s because it captures a real moment that many people have to sadly face in life with family, tying it back with how Pixar used to not hold punches on depressing topics. It’s such a shame that the movie released during a big downturn in the studio’s cultural relevance, and I do feel it would have been even better if it was made by the older Pixar veterans. Because while the designs of the skeletons I think hold up, you see Disney’s soft edges in the human designs that do detract from the film’s visual vocabulary and quality.
@@jemm113I gotta be honest, I saw Coco, and that one is probably the most engaged I recall being when watching a Pixar film in the last 14 or 15 years.
Personally I think that Pixar's run from 1995 to 2010, beginning with the release of Toy Story and ending with the release of Toy Story 3, was its Golden Age.
Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up started production before the Disney acquisition. The first original movie fully conceptualized after the acquisition was Brave. It's not a coincidence.
anyway to make a non-stupid comment yes the quality of storytelling as a whole has declined significantly. even as low as independent works of fan fiction - stories arent engaging, villains have no black and white, and there isnt any nuance any more. I believe that this is because of the lowered quality of content now. The stories themselves become diluted (the source of the dilution is irrelevant) to be super simplified, and those simple stories become the standard for new stories. New ideas aren't given the elevation they could have because they pose challenges. then again i havent seen a movie in years so what do i know
It's the Theseus' ship thought experiment: "If all the parts of a ship are gradually replaced, at what point does it cease to be the original ship and become a new one?" Today's Pixar is Pixar only in name and appearance, the Metaphorical ship can still sail the waters, but not nearly as well as the original legendary ship, as what made it legendary in the first place, was its ORIGINAL components, which have been long replaced...
Coco is a movie about how a broken family needs to be mended. They lost their dad, and that took the music from them. The point of coco isn’t that family comes first, or even that you need to be in touch with family, but that family needs to be whole. Honor our family, cherish and love them, and reconciliation as a whole. I really thought they did a great job on that movie.
30:19 I think the cynicism is only half the picture. Pixar movies used to make people cry because they would show the audience this grim, dark world, and set their happy moments in it. Because just happiness on its own means nothing, just like sadness on its own is meaningless. The world is dark and sad, so when we see the light, we want to protect it. That is the most fundamental, basic part of emotional storytelling.
I'm a bit younger so I started to notice the shift after Inside Out. While I did like that movie, after Inside Out, I pretty much lost all interest in Pixar films. For a while I attributed this loss of interest as just "growing out of animated films", however both of the Spiderverse movies, as well as the second Puss In Boots movie, made me realize that the problem may have actually been Pixar themselves. While this is certainly sad for a studio as culturally significant as Pixar, I'm at the very least glad that we have competing studios giving Pixar a run for their money. It wouldn't be good if we just had one animated studio having a full monopoly over the CGI film industry. Maybe the success of Spiderverse will push Pixar to try harder, or maybe Pixar will continue to fall into irrelevancy as they are overtaken by the competitors, either way, we'll at least continue to have good animated movies coming out for the foreseeable future, hopefully...
Inside Out in particular really overdid the whole "tugging on heartstrings" thing. There were like three moments that were made to bait the audience into crying. Only one of them actually worked for me. It's a shame because I legitimately have quite a soft-spot for Inside Out. It was a comfort movie for me and I have watched it several times, but I cannot deny its flaws...
Elemental to me feels like they thought up an idea for a cool animated short and didn’t have anything better to make into a movie so they just went “uhhh fuck uhhhh ok let’s make this a movie”
The main thing you miss in this video is that it's less the "filmmakers" (which is extremely vague) who don't want to take risks in their stories, but it's "the mouse" (which is also pretty vague). The non artists who are the ones who greenlight pitches, who get to make final decisions on the story, the style, character designs, the script anything and everything that goes into a movie, _they're_ the ones who refuse to take risks. They're too concerned about money and don't have faith in their audiences, that they don't allow their artists, the _actual_ filmmakers to craft good stories.
Thank you! I was hoping someone would say this. Audiences don’t give a damn about a writer. Elemental literally wasn’t marketed. There was a new Spiderverse promo/trailer for nearly every main spiderperson. Writers do NOT make these decisions.
@@carloscauan7967 Reread what I wrote carefully, because I did _not_ say these things are made by non artists. I said that non artists are the ones that get to make the final decisions. They have to approve of the story, the style, character designs, the script etc. which leads to the issue I'm discussing. To help you understand better; artists will create something, then send it off to be reviewed, and those who get the final say on the end product are the non artists. Essentially the art is passed through many hands (many of which are non artists) who all give revisions and changes which change what the artist originally had in mind. While this is an extremely simplified version of what happens, most industry professional will tell you something similar.
I hate that Soul got zero advertising or push. I randomly found it while babysitting my nephew and looking for something new on Disney. I was surprised at how solid of a movie it was, but there is zero buzz online about it. I won’t say it was a top 5 Pixar movie by any means, but it was still a great movie.
"Wow, there really ARE no cats in America! Great!" "Fievel! Where are you?" "I'm over here, papa!" "Oh thank goodness, we almost lost you!" Roll credits "An Americal Tail" by Pixar, 2025
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 'Mrs Brisby and the Rats of Nimh' was pitched by Don Bluth to Disney for adaptation. Disney turned it down for how dark it was. So Don, and a group of defectors, left and developed it into the Secret of Nimh on their own. The critical success of that movie got them the funding for American Tail from other studios.
the core of pixar films are not cynicism. earlier films definitely had darker elements and themes, but it was always juxtaposed with hope and overcoming tough challenges, which are still present in modern movies. the dark nature of the world is something everybody has to confront, but that wasn’t what made the early films special. it was the opposite, it was the idea of compassion and family and connection and *emotion* (which I know is not a word you like judging by this video) that truly allowed these films to connect with people. nobody watches a movie like Toy Story and thinks the highlight is how dark and serious everything is, the highlight is always in the connections and aspirations of the characters and how they reach that conclusion. not to mention, in Luca there’s plenty of moments where it’s spelled out that the main characters (who are secretly fish) will be explicitly ostracized and killed if they reveal their true forms. Coco and Soul are inherently rooted in death and finding purpose in life. Coco literally has a scene where a character dies from poisoning on-screen. it just seems so strange to act like modern pixar movies have no semblance of dark themes and then praise the first Cars as some kind of gritty look into our society
Carss is one of the OG Pixar films and it uses a similar apporach to every other Pixar film from its time. But honestly it's the shittiest out of all of them due to its bad pacing and over reliance on toilet humor. The themes it wants to show just get buried and forgotten.
Thank you for saying this! I believe the bigger reason Pixar has had its share of the industry greatly cut into is just the fact the competition has caught up, and the technology has become much more accessible. For any animated film to stand out nowadays has a greater challenge than what Pixar had in the 90s and 00s. And the omission of Pixar classics like Coco and Soul, and the reductive analysis of Up and Inside Out was really jarring to hear.
If the Incredibles was made today, when syndrome sends the missiles to shoot down Helen’s plane, they would 100% not show the family escaping in order to try to tear jerk you
Yup, that scene was intense and I was like 5 when I saw it, heck at one point there was suppose to be a pilot piloting the plane instead of Helen and died during the explosion, but the sequence we got now is probably the best we got as I think Helen piloting makes more sense than some unknown character we don’t know.
I don't think Sid Philips is a bad kid, he seems to do what he does to his toys as a means of self expression since he has neglectful/ not so great parents, he never understood the toys were living up until Woody convinced all of Sid's toys to appear in the backyard in a creepy fashion during Buzz's rescue, and I doubt he ever did his pretend surgeries or experiments ever again.
Mean to his sister, but not beyond what you'd expect from a boy his age. Glad to see him get closure in Toy Story 3 too, and that's where the whole franchise should have ended.
@@TracksWithDax I agree. I thought 4 was decent but I think Woody leaving his friends that he's probably known for well over a decade or two just felt wrong, especially with Buzz since they became best friends after a rough start.
I feel like seeing as Pixar was back-to-back firing out the very best in that golden early 2000s era, the amazing heights they reached sort of make us all look to the extreme highs and lows when talking and reminiscing about this stuff. Especially the "Dark and Gritty" thing, a lot of Pixar and good storytelling overall has to have pretty horrible and nasty stuff in it to contrast and seriously highlight the good stuff - The emotional journeys and climaxes of these characters we resonate and relate to. The incredibles isn't my favourite film of all time because of the "le epic supers are all dead?!?" scene that's (deservedly) revered all over the internet, it's the way that the family's EMOTIONS all push them and bounce off each other to further a proper and solid story. The Incredibles is about a man who experienced and treasured the highs and lows of his golden years, and now feels numb and discontent with settling down into a decade or so of mediocrity. The villain literally exploits his emotional vulnerability because of this slump and it's only when Mr. Incredible realises to treasure and synergise with all of the quirks, untapped potential and EMOTIONS he can only feel with his family in the present that they can overcome any of the threats and move onto an ending where he's miles away from the long gone glory days or unthinking idle he was stuck in. None of these dark reveals, depressing worldbuilding aspects or grim themes would really resonate much if there wasn't strong emotional highs seen with the bonds these characters are inspired or dedicated to. The morbid shit isn't gonna show up on top 10 dark kids' shows moments if there isn't STRONG love, passion or wonder to contrast it. Pretty fitting how Mr. Incredible's arc matches up with how people feel about Pixar. Are they gonna let people exploit their need to tell the 20th Family trauma story like in the past, or move on to innovate what can only be seized now?
Em... What if toys had feelings What if cars had feelings What if robots had feelings What if rats had feelings What if ants had feelings The "what if x had feelings" is the basic Pixar formula, since Toy Story.
@@matthewvalente5877 and why? Why do you have to compare it to previous works? What is that idiot necessity to compare current movies to old ones? Of course the new ones won't probably be our cup of tea. But that is because of how our lives have shaped us. A kid in the 2000s experienced a whole other world than those of the 2010s. Not to mention that not everyone gets to live the same lives. You don't like inside out, but i like it. I like it as much as older films. The fact that you don't like something made by someone is not co-related to the quality of the product. Most people praise "Prince of Egypt" for different reasons. I cannot get myself to like the movie.
Monsters Inc had Mike, this absolute greaseball protagonist who is rarely asked to "do the right thing" in the story. It's those moments when he is kind that are the most satisfying, and they completely miss that in the spin off where he's this pure ball who does "the right thing" at every given opportunity. It's flanderization 101
I can personally forgive Inside Out for being emotional and sappy given the fact that the main characters are literally emotions, I mean it would be kind of a waste of potential not to tell an emotional story with that very premise
Something about Inside Out is that the journey itself is literally just a plot device, the story isn't there to really cement anything into the characters that is inherently based on the specifics of the events we see. It feels like a non-fungible part of the movie, like these events (internal or external) could've been triggered by almost literally anything or even nothing at all and still had more or less the same effect. The strength on Inside Out comes from it's emotional moment, but this moment was truly earned not by nature of the story itself but by the character development and the very real and human side of the events and how relatable the core of the story was to the personal experiences most of us have had, even if those experiences relate in no way to the story at hand. To me, Inside Out was Pixar _knowing_ what they were able to do nowadays, and just executing _perfectly._ You don't remember IO because the story just goes inside and out quickly, but the *impact* it has is probably the strongest a Pixar movie can ever have.
Its an even bigger waste to just pretend the dark and unsavory emotions dont also exist in everyone. Ya know like envy, hatred, violent aggression, avarice, lust, v o i d , nihilism, and so on
Despite insisting that there's no nostalgia bias, there is and it's quite visible. That doesn't mean that the main message is wrong. But the guy is trying so hard to make a very subjective aspect of the video, look like an objective one. Like talking about the good movies and bad movies. To prove his point right, he has to degrade many of the movies that people like the most from Pixar. Instead of looking for reasons why those movies don't follow the overall tendency, he just says "it wasn't that good, I never agreed" and that's it. GG. Every pixar movie is different. He may not like Up as much as Monsters INC. (I prefer Monsters INC. too), but that's a matter of taste. Up is great and not just due to the very good intro scene. Just like Inside out is great, and not just for moms and children (a lot of mom and children work for review magazines then). The essay lacks research. It's too personal, too hard to get anything truly useful. This video is about the feelings of a generation, full of the bias required to fit that generation. I suppose that has some value too. Not so much for me.
Yeah, I kept hearing his opinion about UP and I couldn't help but wonder if he actually watched the movie or not. Because there's WAY more to UP than just that intro, and ONLY talking about the emotional impact of those first few minutes does a disservice to them. It wasn't there solely to be emotional and sentimental, it was literally laying the groundwork for the themes of the whole movie. It feels like this guy just took what was blatantly obvious (that Disney is intentionally suffocating Pixar to boost WDAS and take their niche) and warped it into a subjective take that misses the forest for the trees.
You make valid points. Yet the cultural inpact has decreased by a lot. I only knew of Elemental because they had it on the plane. Nowhere else was anybody talking about it. Luca, Soul.. they had some kind of impact. But nothing like Toy Story or Wall.e
Pixar's "Golden Era" in my personal opinion, would be from Toy Story (1995) to Toy Story 3 (2010) and everything in between. Every movie released during this time region, you could tell had a lot of love and extensive care put into every single one. Obviously, they've still released some alright movies after 2010, but they just don't even compare in my opinion.
@@ChiangKai-ShrekSo? They had Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 afterwards. It’s not like it ruined their critical streak, so we can put up with having one “lesser” film in their Golden Era.
Pixar films were teachers that could subliminally prepare children for the horrors of life and adults could appreciate and respect it too. Pixar just made the formula that both parties could enjoy. Thats the real magic
16:45 Inside Out is one of my favourite pixar movies purely because I was going through the exact same situation as the girl in the story in my life when I was younger and it had understood my feelings more than any other film before that. I think for some movies, the age at which you watch them is extremely important too.
older pixar films are the type of films that you enjoy as a kid because of the visuals, even if you don't understand the story much, but as you get older and rewatch it, you realize how deep and emotional the story-telling and worldbuilding actually is
My favorite Pixar trivia comes from the very early days, when a bunch of the creative heads at the time (John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor, and the late Joe Ranft) all met up at the Hidden City Café in Point Richmond to come up with ideas for their next movie after Toy Story. Apparently they formed concepts for A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and even WALL-E right there during a single lunchtime while they were all just doodling on napkins. Imagine having that much creative talent together in the same room that you could create four hit movies that would go on to form a cultural legacy just from a single lunchtime brainstorm session.
You're right it was with the movie 'Up' that Pixar went all in on cornball melodrama. At that point it seemed like they were more interested in making sappy scenes designed to make you cry than they were on telling interesting stories.
Literally same. This video just popped up in my recommended and I thought "Hey, that looks a lot like an EmpLemon video." Then I check the channel and... wait a minute... WAIT A MINUTE.
I take some comfort in knowing that most of Pixar's OG heads haven't been there for a long time. In my eyes, the Pixar of 20 years ago is a different studio. Its like the Ship of Theseus. The OG Pixar dissolved a long time ago, a different studio just took it's name.
Laptop? My guy, that's an old-school desktop with a chunky CRT monitor. It's the furthest you can get from a laptop without being like, an ancient 1940's room-filling computer.
Fascinating, I agree with a lot of points : the pixarisation of the animation industry, the multiplicity of sequels, all pixars from the golden age is not just a good movie but classic from the 2000, etc. However for me a key point in the downfall of Pixar is the semi-failure of The Princess and the Frog (2009), which put a definitive end to any Disney attempts to creats 2D film. For me it was the perfect compromise: Disney is doing traditional 2D animation and Pixar new generation 3D animation, but reality decides otherwise... The main element which push Pixar to creats new licence was contractual, except for Toy Story 2, the contract between Disney and Pixar didn't allow Piwar to creat sequels. It why at the new decade (2010's) with Toy Story 3, where were a suddent sequel-mania in the studio. Another issue with Pixar today, is like the Simpson, they are victim of they own success. People associate good Pixar with the classic Pixar formula. Like Tim Burton, if it not like they imagine what Pixar is suppose to be they don't care, and also you don't always have good idea, I mean if we count Pixar golden movies in a strict way (=between Toy Story 2 1999 and Toy Story 3 2010), is 7 movies in total, it already HUGE! In conclusion I just want to say that, I'm european btw (so sorry for my english), as a children Pixar movies in the 2000's was a rare unanimity with the audience. Everyone knew the movie would be a commercial and critical success, it would be one of (maybe the) best movie of the year (decade even) and a cultural refenrece for the 20 years at least. And only few studio were able to manage, Great Respect to Pixar!
This prompted me to watch The Incredibles again, and in one of the scenes I believe Elastigirl talking to her kids summarizes perfectly the mantra of OG Pixar, and I literally had to quote this: "Remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well *these* guys are not like those guys. They won't exercise restraint because you're... children. They will kill you, if they get the chance. Do not give them that chance."
And the craziest thing is Disney Animation itself isn’t any better than Pixar anymore since 2018 when they released Ralph Breaks The Internet Like who the fuck gives a shit about Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World, or Wish that isn’t a die hard Disney fan?
No one. But to me Encanto felt like a Pixar film (expect for the songs) I wish Pixar could make movies like Encanto that feel mature. Encanto feels like the movie that Soul, Turning Red, and Coco (which is still really good but feels like it purposely through in silly scenes) wanted to be
It's also very funny to me that Elemental is just Zootopia. Like, its about a quirky, diverse society of non-humans trying trying to make order out of chaos by ultimately disenfranchizing a portion of the population for the perceived safety of the others. The difference there is that, in Zootopia, not only is the threat of predators self-evident, it's also explored in a tenser way; Nick is a bad person, but having a heart of gold proves that it's not some biological function that stops him from being a more empathetic, less manipulative person. There's character to his growing and shifting relationship dynamic with Judy, and tension as to whether their adverse relationship will have them ultimately succeed or not. It's, well... it's a Pixar movie. They took a creative hook (a society of animals living like modern humans), explored the topic for themes to explore (species diversity and the creation of law in nature), found relatable ways for the audience to associate the film's problems with theirs (racial relations and systemic disenfranchisement), and the results are a film that feels built to explore a fantasy setting, rather than to support a stilted political message. It's fundamentally the same process that created classics like Monsters Inc. or Toy Story, and whether you believe it's as good or inferior, I don't think it's as easy to say that they didn't have a fun universe they wanted to explore and teach lessons through. Zootopia's segregation message worked because predators and prey do have fundamental biological differences, so it adds complexity to the topic above just a 1-1 parallel of the real world. Elemental's message doesn't work because "you get it--because water and fire can't mix!" is more a cheesy joke than an actual, legitimate fantasy concept to explore. It doesn't add a film runtime's worth of depth.
I've got to disagree because elemental and zootopia's stories serve different purposes. Zootopia is a buddy cop mystery that tackles racism while Elemental is a romance and family drama that tackles interracial relationships and being a second-generation immigrant. The comparison between the two movies feels very surface level. Elemental does work in its own right because Ember chooses to forge a relationship with Wade when she previously thought it would be impossible due to her upbringing and the prejudices she is raised with. She realizes she doesn't live in the same hostile world her parents immigrated to. She also doesn't have to hold onto the dreams her parents had for her (to run their store) she can be an artist, which Wade encourages her to be. Idk elemental is no masterpiece, and maybe Zootopia is a better movie, but at their core the movies really have nothing to do with each other and it's best to evaluate Elemental in its own right and merits as a movie. Especially since the movies are not about the same thing.
@@platanoluver What I'm evaluating is the logic present in both movies--not whether they're literally the same plot. Like, just look at how you describe the two movies: "Zootopia is about racism" is a pretty broad topic. "Elemental is about falling in love as a second-generation immigrant" is direct and overt, and barely builds on anything in-universe. Zootopia's plot mostly revolves around its own in-universe logic--with racism being a logical result of that. Elemental, meanwhile, feels like it was built from the ground-up to tell a story meant to parallel real-world situations without consideration for just what the setting serves; there isn't much novelty brought to the topic by making the parties involved like... water and fire. It doesn't add to the themes or make them more difficult to explore, it just kind of sits there as an accessory to the real point of the movie. Zootopia, meanwhile, is about animals--the differences in needs for each species, how they're catered to systemically, and the gaps in the system that appear specifically because they are animals. You can't remove the 'they're animals' element of Zootopia's plot, because the entire plot revolves around that specific novelty, but Elemental? I kinda struggle to see the film being much different thematically or mechanically by removing the whole 'elements' aspect.
I agree that after Zootopia, Elemental doesn't seem to add as much that's new, but I still found it to be an adorable film in its own right if I watch it more for the fantasy escapism and for Ember and Wade instead of trying to apply it too much to real life issues. Although, I've heard immigrants specifically (not just to the US but also to Korea) say that it really resonated with them.
Something about Inside Out is that the journey itself is literally just a plot device, the story isn't there to really cement anything into the characters that is inherently based on the specifics of the events we see. It feels like a non-fungible part of the movie, like these events (internal or external) could've been triggered by almost literally anything or even nothing at all and still had more or less the same effect. The strength on Inside Out comes from it's emotional moment, but this moment was truly earned not by nature of the story itself but by the character development and the very real and human side of the events and how relatable the core of the story was to the personal experiences most of us have had, even if those experiences relate in no way to the story at hand. To me, Inside Out was Pixar _knowing_ what they were able to do nowadays, and just executing _perfectly._ You don't remember IO because the story just goes inside and out quickly, but the *impact* it has is probably the strongest a Pixar movie can ever have.
I think one film emp forgot to mention regarding dark subject matter is Coco. The film's overall themes are deep and complex that has a lot of potential for great storytelling. And the villain is probably one of the darkest to come out of the new Pixar era (obviously not as dark as Syndrome or any other Pixar character who has a track record of murder). But the execution of it was such a missed opportunity in a way that felt somewhat formulaic and, tbh, a little bit pandering. i mean, as a Mexican i like being represented, but it didn't really feel 100% authentic or genuine, much less powerful. So just because a Pixar might have some deep themes and dark characters doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be a hit. I'm actually a little ashamed cuz there's so much more Mexico-related content out there are have made much more of a cultural impact than Coco, even during the time of its release and after, not only in the US but worldwide.
That’s my exact problem with movies like Inside Out, Coco, Soul, and Toy Story 4 is their plot elements don’t feel unique. They each follow a similar fetch-quest-like structure, which (despite having themes and concepts that I love) makes the storytelling fall flat. They have scenes that don’t really connect to their overarching themes and feel like they take breaks between what the movie is trying to say
35:12 This makes we worry about Cartoon Network being in the same situation, because in recent years, they've been releasing less and less things. Their channel is just full of reruns of shows from a decade ago that made them popular. Even some of their shows have been moved onto Adult Swim, with some of them airing on the Checkered Past block. The channel used to take risks making high quality shows like Regular Show and OK K.O., but now it's just a shell of it's former self, especially since the merger. Most of it's category of shows were easily assessable on HBO Max until 2022 and slowly decreased from there. CN Studios' building even got taken down. Some of the worst things to come out of that studio were the Ben 10 and Powerpuff Girls reboots, with Problem Solverz being their weakest show. CN Studios Europe, the studio that made Gumball, has now rebranded to being apart of the Hanna-Barbera brand, which has been absorbed into Warner Bros Animation. I really hope Cartoon Network stays as it's own thing and doesn't get absorbed into Warner Bros Animation brand like their predecessor, Hanna-Barbera, which worked on a few CN shows in it's early years. Cartoon Network used to be my favorite channel, growing up in the 2010s, but my least favorite thing about it was the constant TTG reruns, which had slowed down slightly in recent years, but the show is still airing over 10 years later. They even put a lot of effort into their overall branding during the 90s and 2000s, and I even associate them with the CYMK palette that they used in the Check It and Dimensional eras. Their current era doesn't even scream "Cartoon Network" at all and looks like a lazy mess, they got rid of the CYMK palette, the CN Bold font, and even the US website looks depressing. To make things even worse, they even introduced a preschool block, which I don't think CN needed at all. Copying Nickelodeon instead of being their own thing is a bad decision on CN's part. For as long as the merger will last, I barely see any signs of improvement for CN.
Regarding what you said about the older Pixar films looking at the world in a darker and more cynical way, it is worth noting that despite their darker thematology compared to the more wholesome and light-hearted newer films, these movies still had wholesome and happy endings just like the newer ones. In fact, we could probably go as far as to say that despite how much they are trying to make their world look like the way an adult would interpret it, ultimately their endings are kind of idealistic or ''child-like'', if you will. Let's take a look at Monsters Inc. for example. While the film indeed presents its world within the factory as very corrupt and greedy, the way things are eventually resolved feels very ''fairytale-like'' when you really think about it. I mean, the film establishes Waternoose as a ruthless corrupt owner who doesn't stray away from silencing and basically killing his own employees or the human children who accidentally learn more than they should about the shady things happening within the factory. Monsters Inc. as an inside business is absolutely repulsive, yet the film just ends with the classic fairy-tale message: ''Oh, the bad guy lost, now the good guy will set everything straight without any kind of realistic consequences for the actions that occurred and were exposed. Everyone lives happily ever after.'' I mean, yeah sure, Waternoose gets arrested and the factory almost shuts down but what about the rest of the city? The other monster employees? Everything that Waternoose developed with Randall to get rid of all his employees, all the innocent employees who were exiled to the human world. Everything is just forgotten when Sally realizes they can produce energy more efficiently using laughter instead and everyone goes back to working and functioning like it's just another day at the factory, how can the employees or the civilians trust this company anymore after everything that has been exposed? What about Wall-E? The film has arguably the darkest setting out of any Pixar film and yet it still ends with a very positive and ''tied with a nice bow'' way. The humans despite believing the Earth had become completely inhospitable disprove this when Wall-E finds a random plant inside a fridge, and in the end instead of teaching the audience about the true consequences of materialism and pollution and how we should protect the Earth because at some point it will be too late for us to do anything, it just ends like: ''Hey kids, turns out one plant managed to develop through all the destruction that our behavior and lifestyle caused to the planet, so now I guess Earths plantation will be completely restored, somehow, and everything will be nice and dandy from now on!''. I think what would feel more appropriate and fitting with your statement about the maturity of older Pixar films would be if these films also had cynical endings along with their cynical settings. Like no, don't make the Earth hospitable again, try to show that some things cannot go back to they way they were, there are consequences to pay for what has happened, don't just switch to a nice ending with rainbows and sunshine because this is not in line with the atmosphere the film established at the beginning. I am not saying Pixar films shouldn't have good endings or anything like that, but if you want to make the claim that A Pixar film is better than B Pixar film because A film portrays the world how an adult would see it and B is full of nice characters with no negative traits whatsoever then film A better sticks to its ideology throughout its entirety, not switch at the last second and show an ending that coincidentally feels like the resolution you would expect from the newer, more child-like films. By the way, I don't disagree with what you said about Pixar films falling to mediocrity, I am just pointing out that, looking back on them, the old Pixar films despite being praised for their maturity, don't completely follow the format that audiences praise them for. They have similarities with the ones being considered average today.
Its because of the death of Joe Ranft. He worked on The Brave Little Toaster, Toy Story, A Bugs Life and pretty much every golden age Pixar hit until Cars. He was a storyboarder and illustrator and was kind of the heart and spirit of the studio. He introduced Tim Burton to the Jewish folktale that later became The Corpse Bride. There are a couple short videos with him on youtube.
I agree with just about everything stated, but on the point of cynicism and bastard characters, Coco at least had those things going on with Ernesto. He's on par with other past villains if not worse.
He was a good twist villain but he felt kinda…cartoonish? Like he did some messed up things but when we see him on screen he doesn’t act all that cynical and kinda just runs away from the heros
that’s true. I think my criticism has to do more so with the tone of Coco. Sometimes it’s serious, and other times it’s silly (like when they jump in front Ernesto in the hallway and instead of jumping him they just look at him like “it’s you against us!”)
Loved how woody was such a vicious bastard in toy story, so relatable to kids and funny to us adults, teaches why kids need to stop acting like bastards and shows what happens to adults who don’t grow up and relinquish control. Great film.
I thought old Pixar films felt grand because the setting of the story is so different from each other. Modern ones fail to intrigue me because they are either set in the real world, or the scale of the story feels small.
I like that you still have rant videos but they're in their own space from your documentaries. I enjoy both, and this video being a little bit of a throwback was a little refreshing.
a few explanations: 1)the merger of Disney and pixar might have meant that pixar animators and Disney animators changed priorities. Perhaps because Disney had more control over pixar meant that the company had to abide by what Disney viewed as success. 2)John Lassater. His behavior raises serious questions as to how the company promoted its employees, what John and others like him in the company more or less forced the staff to make one film. John, and im only using him because his decisions were high profiled, with the success of pixar meaning he could afford to get away with stuff meant pixar would follow his whim. John's sexism became more apparent, writers quit because they felt the studio did not reflect a working environment that could explore more diverse stories. A good article pointed ut the weird paternalism john feels for young boys, and how he constantly strives to make content for them...except he never if ever talks about girls. 3) Franchises exploded after the 2000s in large part to marvel and others movies. Makes sense that Disney which made the direct to video sequels asked pixar "make more." or that pixar thought "lets do it." 4)competition. its not just sony, its foreign markets, smaller American animated studios that make more interesting, more visually interesting stories. Nimora, that Irish animation movie about wolves and oliver comwell. There are better animation stories right now on tv, and in theatres that beat pixar more and more. 5)A lack of creativity. adding onto what i already said. pixar movies dont deviate from making cool things "look modern." Did elemental really need to be in a modern city? As you said, why are the elements acting like real life people...? THEY ARE ELEMENTS! Why is outward modeled after real life scenarios that we've seen over and over? Look, bug's life showed ants' perspective. Toy story was how a toy looked the world. nemo was in the water. up yes took place in a modern world but most of the film was in a new world. ratatouille looked at a rat in a french cafe! Thats unique. You know whats' cooler than upward, elemental or the good dinosaurs? Land before time, a final fantasy story where your mascot is a black mage in a land where science and magic exist, a tv show where a young Hispanic girl gets sucked into a magical world and battles imperialism, a animated show where a person is reincarnated into a god-like figure who controls all four elements. Pixar did a great job showing themes that were subtle enough and show them in different ways.
For me Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the pinnacle of modern animated movies. Pixar has been super boring studio and I loved Cars and Ratatouille very much. These days I don't even bother watching them because as EMP said it's one movie with different characters. It's just not exciting anymore unless you are a kid.
What Inside Out says about the importance of understanding and embracing the sadness in life is a great message that is organically introduced and is as sophisticated as anything in the earlier films.
What did you think of the 2019 animated film “Claus”? Aside from some of the soundtrack choices, I think it was one of the best animated films to come out in the last 5 years.
Not only did I really like the story, but the animation being 2.5D. They made their own engine that was built for 2D to look like 3D with lighting and materials
One very important thing is that a lot of Pixar's worlds are more grittier and realistic, but despite all of that the characters within manage to persevere. They always overcome the challenges and grittiness, which is more inspiring than living in a relatively fine world with a couple of inconveniences.
If you want strong proof of this, you need to check out Lassider's pre-Pixar work The Brave Little Toaster. As that movie gets quite dark, realistic and gritty on a smaller 2D animation budget. As many of its themes and tones are replicated in Toy Story, largely older appliances getting replaced by new ones and have to prove they are not worthless.
Also to add onto Toy Story, it’s deeper when you realize Woodys journey is about elevated status, with him losing his glory when Buzz comes into the scene. This gets to him so much that he not only gets angry, but has to deal with the fact his possibly once friends just see him as a jealous psycho person who got so fed up with someone he had to “kill them”
Pixar's worlds being cynical meant the hope-driven idealism the characters pushed through to make a dream happen (even if just for a short while) hit a lot more poignantly. It's mature in that the adults are trying to teach a young audience a valuable life lesson, having gone through such hardships themselves. The problem is now we have younger, up-coming directors trying to teach a lesson, however, they have nothing interesting to say or don't have any solutions to show that isn't about "Me, me, me". _Luca_ was just a story of what the director remembered doing one summer vacation as a child in Italy, and it's alright, had almost a Ghibli-esque feel to it, but it doesn't leave an impact and no real life lesson to be had. _Turning Red_ is supposedly based on the director's teenage experience growing up in the 2000s, and she clearly has some mommy issues. It's not teaching children (and parents) anything, it's just the director saying "Pay attention to ME!" _Up_ may have started this trend in hindsight, especially when it comes to the side-characters and approach to the narrative, yet I still see a story about a cynical person that was trying to run away from his problems only to face reality. While his problems weren't entirely resolved at the end of the movie like he wanted, he still found some new life in the most unlikely place because he moved on from what was holding him back: unfounded idealism. Unlike his "hero", Charles Muntz, Carl had to learn to accept the world around him wasn't going to change to accommodate him, and now he's content. Kind of sounds like it was a way for the old folks to bow out and let the new generation take the wheel, they just didn't expect what was going to happen when they did. They were oddly enough still optimistic about the future. Feels bad, man.
On that note of cynicism in classic Pixar, it doesn't mean that Pixar was all just dour and dark. Rather, classic Pixar is the prime example of how hopeful, wholesome, and idealistic messaging can be enhanced by a grounded, dramatic story. The Incredibles may have been a story about special individuals shackled down into mediocrity and a dysfunctional family on the breaking point during hard times, but it's also a story about what makes someone truly a hero. It's not the powers, the fame, and the excitement that separates Bob from Bucky, it's the desire to protect the ones we love, glory and fame be damned. Cars is the story of an arrogant and lonely sports star in a desolate town forgotten in history, but it's also the story of finding meaning in what you do, appreciating the little things in life, and opening yourself to even the most unlikeliest of friends. McQueen may not have won the big game, but he gained more than what Chick Hicks can ever achieve: happiness and contentment. And do I even need to mention Ratatouille and Wall-E, the two GOATs? Greatness can come from anyone, even a lowly rat? That hope can live on, even when we all think it's lost? Nothing enhances an uplifting message better than a grounded story, where it's not some sugar-coated Tumblr fantasy land some California writers dreamt up. It's not because we don't want to feel good with movies, it's that we want to earn those feel-good moments. Stop trying to tug on my heartstrings with cheap, overdone plotpoints and make me feel something different again, Pixar.
Didn't movies like Up, Inside Out, and Coco do exactly what people claim that the newer movies fail to do? Up dealt with an old man who suffered a great loss, but he learned to let go in the end. Inside Out dealt with a girl struggling to find her place in the city, but Joy had to learn to avoid toxic positivity and that while it's okay for Riley to be sad sometimes, there's hope. And Miguel from Coco was tied to the strictness of his family, but found hope in music and friendship. Where the hell are you getting the "sugar-coated Tumblr fantasy land some California writers" bulcrap argument from?
@@Stew91 Up was good but not amazing, Inside Out is overrated and carried hard by the goodwill it got with it's messaging, and Coco had an interesting concept shackled by going through the same-old Disney formula of a sappy faux-deep family cartoon. Pixar, and the rest of Disney animation for that matter, can only do the same type of movie every single time, and frankly, it's gotten to the point where no one, not even kids, bother to care about them anymore. It's either a sequel, a recycled Disney plot, or a vapid tearjerking heartstrings-pulling arthouse fluff that would get people in their feelings for a bit before moving on to the next thing to ogle at. Nothing uplifts, relates, or even resonates with modern Pixar anymore. You tasted one meal, you ate through the whole menu. I'm not saying these are bad kids movies. It's inoffensive and mediocre at worst. But the fact that Pixar used to be so much more with so much less condescension, self-importance, and undeserved fanboy hype is what I'm getting at here.
@@wojak-sensei6424 Up was met with critical acclaim, Inside Out was praised, and Coco was met with critical acclaim. As for Up, it being a good movie should not be a knock against it, so I don't get why you have against in, in relation to your argument.. As for Inside Out, overrated does not mean bad, and while I do feel like the movie is overhyped, I do feel like the movie did a great job with Joy's character development and learning about the dangers of toxic positivity. And that's why I feel like the emotions at the end felt earned. As for Coco, and your stance about it being saccahrine drama, the core theme of the movie centers around how music can inspire people, and it being interwoven into the story through Hector's character, is why I feel like your take that the emotions in the movie are forced is something I do not agree with. Also, if you didn't care for the movies, that's perfectly fine, and we all have our opinion. But the numbers + the praise, show that kids and adults still care about Pixar and it's quality. So your arguments that it's the same movie every time, that kids and adults dont care anymore, and that nothing resonates anymore, are disingenuous. This is especially true when people are flocking to see a massive hit like Inside Out 2, which is said to be funny and resonate with both kids and adults If you were only talking about Disney in relation to the Wish movie, you would have a point. But compare Up or Coco to something as soulless as Wish? The differences are night and day.
From what I understand about elemental, there was new technological advancements made for the movie, because of the way the water and fire people move. It's pretty niche though.
I would argue Sentimentality was a chore of old Pixar, and the cynicism you talk about was present, but I think you overstate it. Yes, there's a lot of cruel things in Pixar's worlds, but that's usually contrasted agaisnt the character relationships, and moments of whimsy. Sentimentality was always to a greater o lesser degree present in Pixar's work, and it was an important part, but I would agree it had more, finnesse. It was more nuanced, due to the worlds been more nuanced, there was some darkness (in some chases as the incredibles it was way more present) as to be able to enjoy the moments of light. Modern Pixar even when it makes some compelling character drama is in a backdrop that doesnt allow for much darkness to contrast (that and just a lot of generally mid writing). I would argue, that despite mostly being o nthe decline (there's a couple of movies in their modern roaster which I found somewhat enjoyable or charming), ther have been able to pull out a new masterpiece; "Soul". And you could, cynically, argue its on the "character gets on with their feelings" type of story, but I would argue the sort of issues, the emotions and the themes are way more mature than the studio has been on years. I wouldnt get my expectations that high, but hey, its not all soooo bad
I think EmpLemon’s problem is his own cynicism blinding him by the good aspects of the newer films. None of them are on the level of the golden era, but even so many of them are great. Turning Red was a lot of fun for me. Luca was IMO, a great underrated film that has a bastard villain that doesn’t get redeemed. I get he holds a much higher standard, but when I think it’s too the point like he’s sounding more like Mr. Enter than he realizes.
@@thefvguy5648 "grrrr why arent films Made for the whole the whole family more dsrk and gritty like in My time grrrr" ok but in on honesty yeah, I agree with your point
I also feel that the shine of Pixar faded off when the Lassiter scandal happened. And it’s not even the stuff about worker treatment or how he basically became a drunkard who let his success get to his head, it’s how I’ve realized how he was really dismissive of creatives he didn’t see eye to eye with. How he forced the original director of Brave out of the studio and Chris Sanders, the Lilo and Stitch director, off the project that became Bolt because they didn’t fall in line with his tastes tells me that even if Disney didn’t take control, I get the feeling that the overall internal culture of the studio would have soured worse. Both were primed to be distinctive, but they were kicked off and their projects turned into bland things no one remembers. But John can make his Mater goes to Europe fanfic because it makes money from merch (that’s seriously was his pitch). Heck, there’s reasonable evidence that he took credit for Cars since he wasn’t the guy who pitched it originally, but you make the rules when your the boss. Why else are Brad Birds movies far more sophisticated and freer in their execution even compared to the other classic Pixar ones. Because he’s buddies with John. Creative minds can get lost in either the desire to maintain the success or just can’t transition into the high class environment. Just look at Lord and Miller and how they have basically refused to acknowledge the controversy around the poor work environment they created when making Across the Spiderverse. Even then, the fact they are still struggling has nothing to do with the people there now, but with how Disney is basically the controlling entity now and their overall corporate mindset is that they want a specific, marketable brand image rather than any sort of risk.It’s not “wokeness” or whatever buzzwork griftubers use to complain about the recent mediocre blockbuster, it’s that the studio just isn’t able to be free to grow on their own terms. Other studios, in spite of their issues, have a sense of experimentation and varied perceptions. I feel that Pixar itself have become a brand. You can get a great film from them, but it’s like what, once every 5 or 6 films this happens. They aren’t special, they are just another studio.
Well shoot, wish we had more comments as thoughtful and considerate as this one. Or maybe I just also strongly agree with the idea that the people in charge make the biggest difference of all, and how that makes an unstable, easily altered foundation.
That's not even the half of it. I remember the day Lassiter paraded his gleaming white unicorn on to the Disney lot, holding Oswald the Lucky Rabbit up by the ears as if getting the property back were some sort of messed up bribe to soften the blow of what was to come. The guy was lauded for cutting off sequels while halfway through production, which - yeah, of course - nobody wanted all the crappy Disney sequels to traditionally animated classics, no - but each crew was a small army of people who suddenly lost their jobs as Lassiter danced on through, hacking them off at the neck during some sort of manic fit. It all happened that fast, and caused complete chaos throughout the studio, for all productions, as we wondered if we were going to be next on the chopping block. Even back then, he was a nightmare of an ego case. It made me shudder to see how much he was sucking up to Miyazaki, too, who wanted nothing to do with his pathetic advances to get him to join the dark side. I'm no big fan of Miyazaki's personality either, but man did he ever dodge a bullet by not allowing Disney to get its claws into Ghibli properties. Distribution in the US is plenty, thx. In the end, I don't have to even say how not surprised I was to see Lassiter outed for being a creep. It was pretty satisfying, actually!
@@sashizakura9124 >believing the #metoo scandal by a bunch of disgruntled women who were "totally" harassed by John Glad to see youtube commenters are as regarded as ever and hardly express any critical thinking like the sheep you are.
@@sashizakura9124 >believing the m*t** scandal by a bunch of disgruntled women who were "totally" harassed by John Glad to see youtube commenters are as high IQ as ever by hardly expressing any critical thinking like the 'edditors you are.
You kinda lost me when you started going on about how classic Pixar was cynical. That's just wrong, outright. Yes, they did portray aspects of the world as REALISTIC. With the bad AND the good, both aspects being shown. And I agree that you're right that these realistic dark aspects have been washed out of modern Pixar films. But "cynical" implies that it's just constantly downtrodden and everything is bad all the time and it's only ever going to be bad. That the future only bodes poorly. And that absolutely doesn't stack up with any of the core Pixar classics, which all ended on hopeful notes about confronting or changing these worse aspects of the world. WALL-E and Up, ironically, are ironically the only classics that have any true cynicism to them, rather than dark realism. WALL-E portrays a cynical future on purpose, as an environmental and societal warning, in the likes of The Giving Tree or The Lorax. Meanwhile, Up's most cynical theme is distilled into the scene where the entire town around Carl's house is reconstructed into a city. The modernization and urbanization is shown as an allegory for the inevitable march of time/progress, for better or for worse, and you can either go with it or get trampled by it, as would've been Carl's fate had he not flown away with a bunch of balloons. And I think him returning to the city with Russell showed how he had capitulated to it at last, not necessarily for bad reasons. By contrast, I think the sequels and newer films showed significantly more cynicism than the originals ever did: - Monsters University was a parable about the futility of certain dreams and that it's better to just settle for something mediocre within reach, and that even your best efforts don't mean much in the end. Life's unfair. That's the whole message. - Inside Out was about the importance of allowing yourself to just be plain miserable at times because sadness is inevitable, and trying to ignore it just makes it worse. Not a bad message, but still pretty damn cynical. - Cars 3 was a metaphor for athletes aging out of their sport and no longer being able to keep up with the young bloods, forcing them to accept a coaching role from the sidelines to cheer on the young upstarts instead. Very cynical. Even if you reach your dreams and make it big, you'll one day get too old and weak to keep doing what you love and have to watch somebody else do it instead. Basically Rush's song "Losing It" as a movie. - Coco's entire central conflict is about how simple misunderstandings can ripple to cause trauma for generations. Additionally, a warning never to meet your heroes because they'll inevitably let you down. - Soul is a parable about how we're all so jaded and miserable in our lives that we've forgotten the simplest joys of being alive, while also basically ignoring each other to look only at ourselves. I actually really liked this movie and felt it was the closest of the new movies to old Pixar. Not because of any sappy scene that makes people cry but because it dealt with themes of life and death with both the perspectives of an adult and a child. Just a few example as my comment's already long enough. Also, not trying to shade your video or anything, I just wanted to voice my disagreement with your point about cynicism.
As much as I do like Emp and agree with him on a lot of things, I cannot like this comment enough. I also feel as though he’s only looking at the negatives of the newer Pixar films, but you pretty much put my thoughts into words regarding the positives for each of those films above. Nice work! Edit: I also forgot to add another strong aspect of Coco still being cynical/mature in my opinion: It had the balls to show a human being murdered via poisoning.
Thank you for putting this point into words. I love Inside Out and other modern Pixar films but could somewhat agree with his point about the newer films being softer- but his point about old Pixar being cynical I just couldn't wrap my head around. How could you watch Toy Story or Monsters Inc and really believe that those stories were cynical? Monsters Inc might be one of the most sentimental Pixar movies with Boo and Sully's relationship.
Good points. Although I have to say Monsters University wasn't really about "settling for something mediocre." Despite Mike simply not having the talent to achieve his initial goal, he finds out that what he's really good at is coaching others who do have talent and pushing them to do great things that neither could have done by themselves. It feels more like realism than cynicism. Or say, a punch of cynicism with a little optimism on the side.
Movies becoming less willing to take risks was actually a few factors, and people in general having less movie money was only one factor. Another one - probably a bigger factor - was the loss of home video revenue in the wake of online streaming. For a long time, movies could afford to not make all their bank at the box office, because home video was like a whole extra stream of revenue from people who wanted to own or rent a film. Now, because people overwhelmingly watch movies on netflix/hulu/Disney+etc., that extra revenue is pretty much gone, and studios rely far more on the box office to make their money.
I disagree with you on a few points about all of the newer films being bad, because I really do think theres a few diamonds in the rough here and there like Coco and Soul and even Monsters University. The latter honestly has a pretty deep message. That being said they're diamonds in the rough they definitely arent as good as golden era Pixar. It's so sad to see how much theyve fallen off.
Omg i loved monsters university when I saw it for the first time. i still like watching it. I actually watched it before the 1st movie and for a long time I didn't know there was another movie.
How have I been an EmpLemon viewer since middle school, I’ve watched all his vids, continue to watch every single new one that comes out, used to be a patron, then the algorithm recommends this channel to me out of nowhere and it’s the first time I’m hearing about him having more content like what😭😭 I’m so happy there more stuff to watch
Does this mean you’ve eased up on Finding Nemo over the years? Because I remember you saying way back in the day that was your least favourite Pixar movie, or at least one of them.
Pixar used to be the company that picked up the slack whenever standard Disney animation was in a rut. Nowadays, they're either making unnecessary sequels to their classic films or making movies that are lucky to not be considered financial bombs.
Remember when Pixar only produced 3D movies and Disney only produced 2D movies? Nowadays I can’t tell the difference between both Pixar and Disney Animation use CGI, but only if you see either of their logos by the marketing and opening logos.
Did everyone forget they used to show the most creative shorts before every pixar film? AND THEN JUST STOPPED
Yeah, I never understood why they stopped!
Another thing they just stopped doing were those animated bloopers. In my opinion, it made the movies much more special and memorable.
@@yoitsmichelle5838the Pixar shorts stopped showing in theaters because of Disney Plus.
They also stopped having John Ratzenberger in all of their films (With Onward being the last one he was in) and I am convinced it was because of his political beliefs as he is a Republican.
My favorite is Night and Day
@@smpmuzpid based on the newer originals being directed by the shorts directors(i.e Turning Red by the Bao director, Luca by the La Luna director), I assumed that it'd stay that way and create a nice feedback loop of new directors starting out on a Pixar short before working their way up to an official movie.
But Disney probably shafted it in place of advertising other Disney properties. Now the closest thing to that is the "Win or Lose" series that'll eventually appear on Disney+.
"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." - C.S. Lewis
I agree with this quote but its hilarious that he said that as I am currectly reading the narnia books and they very much feel like just for chidren lol
@@redique that's not to say the books can't be enjoyed by adults.
@@Segadrome I agree but I don't know, I'm finding sorta boring personally.
This could be a good Never Ever Video he could make. Why there will never ever be another Pixar movie like the Incredibles
While true, I could smell the Funko Pops off anyone who says this.
Fun fact, most of the peak Pixar movies were made from just random conversation ideas they had.
Any examples?
@@pvzgamer6029in 1994, as Toy Story was being made, multiple heads at the company were having a lunch when the topic turned to what they should make next. From that conversation came a bug’s life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E.
@mg6945 Shoulda had a longer lunch, maybe we woulda gotten some more bangers lol.
Yoooooooooo, I wasn't expecting to see you here... Or at least find your comment
@@pvzgamer6029 if you remember the one animation in the beginning, where they show drawings of woody, flick, and other pixar characters, that was where they talked about it. I think it was the initial teaser trailer for Wall-E back in the day, I remember watching it for the first time at a drive-in theater
imagine a universe where pixar said “no” to disney’s offer and went on to make more mature and poignantly written animated features with studios like warner bros or columbia pictures
edit: yes, *now* warner bros wouldn't be a good place to shop pixar to. you all seem to forget that the disney/pixar buyout happened in 2006, which was before zavslav was ceo.
I can believe it but I could also believe any other major studio being almost as bad.
I'm baffled they said yes when their animated projects where doing so much better than anything Disney was putting out at that time
Could you imagine the reality if Pixar was its own company?
Heck, could you imagine if in said reality Pixar and Dreamworks became a thing together?
I do this in my head with Nintendo so much, wondering how much better Zelda would’ve turned out if they didn’t make tp and set the standard you have to be derivative to sell
Seeing what’s currently going on with Warner Bros, that’d probably be even worse.
i don't think pure grit is what allows these pixar films to be so memorable, it's the fact that they allowed their characters and their worlds to be flawed and layered just like our own. Grit alone can be as equally hollow as the familiar sappy emotional beats Pixar's been going through with their movies.
An example of a film that seamlessly merged grit & sentimentality was the Lego Movie (2013).
The movie contained sentimental emotional beats that tugged at the heartstrings & dark evil villians- a family conflict & a wholesome resolution. It also had a non-meaningless message & looked awesome.
Furthermore it made fun of how an excess of both grit & sappiness can be shallow. Lego Batman was overly gritty in a way that was hilariously mocked "I only like BLACK. And VERY, VERY DARK GREY." The lego pink kitten was overly positive to the point of naiveity, and the movie called this out as well.
Agree. Too much grit, and you get crap like the modern seasons of Rick and Morty. Where you can barely care about anything that happens in the story due to it being too busy throwing interesting and significant ideas out the window, or straight up doesn't have any at all, all for the sake of hammering in "lol everyhting is meaningless hashtag nihilism hashtag cynicism" and everyone's time is wasted. Ugh, it gives me a headache, and it feels especially weird coming from Emplemon who, a few years ago, also criticized Rick and Morty for this reason as well.
@@toasturhztoastbunz896 i feel like emplemon was waffling in this video rather than it be something scripted
cringe, Pixar is for soys, go watch classic anime from the 90s
they were memorable because they were easily consumed comedy slop like everything America produces
Pixar feels like the "gifted" kid. They were so much better early on and were praised so much that now that things have gotten hard they don't know how to actually try and they give up and coast while everyone around them flies past them
Damn, I never thought a corporation that doesn't care about me would be so relatable. Was considered smart but now I'm 'stupid' lol
me when i do nothing all day long
I could totally see that. Virtually all of Pixar’s best output was in the 2000’s.
Even if they were never bought by Disney, they still probably would’ve fallen off at some point though.
One thing I will say though: Even if it is sentimental and is after 2009, I like Coco.
I feel so called out right now lol :/
Literally no one:
Some redditor: AUTISTIC PEOPLE SO STOOPID AND PATHETIC AMIRITE
Again I repeat, up yours too.
The failure of Brave was largely a directorial problem. The studio decided to replace the director with a guy who straight-up did not understand the point of the movie and so halfway into the film the original plot basically gets thrown out the window and it becomes "Oh no, My mom is a bear" and it just kinda spiraled from there.
Wow. What was the original intention for the film then?
@@jamesstanley792 I can't say for sure, but I'm gonna say the plot would have actually been a lot more consistent a f focused morenon the Mom and Merida conflict.
@@jamesstanley792 I'm pretty sure I have seen a review where someone talked about it... don't remember what it was though...
"My mom is a bear."
"S-so your dad...?"
"Y-yeah..."
@ano_nym. From what the movie showed it's socitial Disgonation tosward something new like a women being a capable hunter.
Being that the main strife was with the family and their daughte, mainly the mother and her.
Theres a video essay going into it's missed pointential, but thats whta I remember.
I definitely missed this kind of video. Your new stuff feels very impactful, it's like a documentary level quality that I must set aside time to watch and take in properly. This feels a lot more cozy and relaxed
When the Merger with Disney happened it totally destroyed their entire production line. So many staff were moved from Pixar to Disney and so many from Disney to Pixar. The blurring of the lines wasn't just in the movies, it was in the creators. People who had previously been technicians or animators were now promoted and put in charge of writing and were collaborating with the same people from Disney who specialized in rehashing old ideas instead of actually writing original content.
The brand changed because the teams behind the movies changed.
Pixar changed because there was a clash of the older generation and newer generation. Lasseter and friends wanted to tell compelling stories, but the newer generation? Who the heck knows what they want. They're the same people who went in hard for the lesbian romance in Lightyear, and who knows what they'll do to Inside Out 2.
They were tight with disney since forever. Back in the day, theyd made some pretty decent shorts (amazing from a cgi perspective, decent from an animated short one), and when they set about to make toy story, no one had any idea what they were doing, nor how to make a full animated feature. It was folks from disney (who were onboard to be their distributor) who came in and taught them how to actually make movies.
Hey remember Toy Story 3 where all the toys were about to accept their fate and die in the fire? Gosh how did Toy Story 4 top that? By making Woody leave Bonnie and destroy everything he used to believed in.
These gen x weirdos are going to be writing theirs and their parents’ divorce into every script they touch until they’ve passed on.
@@OrchinX wasn't bad enough to let Woody leave. But Buzz is okay with that. Buzz Lightyear. The toy that said "Somewhere in that pad of stuffing is a toy that taught me life is only worth living when being loved by a kid." in Toy Story 2.
That’s really my problem with Toy Story 4. It’s not Woody leaving his friends and Bonnie to be with Bo Peep, but the existence of a fourth film really makes that scene you mentioned in Toy Story 3 of the toys accepting their death in the incinerator scene less impactful and intense for a first time viewer because now they know with the knowledge of a 4th film that they’re going to survive.
@@hunterolaughlin I get what you mean. Toy Story 4 felt unnecessary
@@MatTen532 Woody wasn't loved by his kid tho, Bonnie didn't appreciate him like Andy did. He didn't feel he could do anything about it until he saw Bo and the other lost toys. They showed him life can be worth living, even if you don't have a kid to serve. I think that was very important, especially when there's only so much love a toy can have before they're outgrown, forgotten, etc. I personally really respect Toy Story 4 for exploring those ideas through a different lens and flipping the status quo.
“Animation is not a genre”
-Albert Einstein
"Animation is a medium."
-Sun Tzu (Art of war)
"Animes are not cartoons!"
-The Amazing Athiest
"Animation rizzes Ohio out of Sigma Fanum Tax."
- Skibidi Toilet
"He never said that" -Don Juan of Austria
"Mr Kailing, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan
"This isn't Disney's America, or DreamWorks America, this is Animations's United States of America!!" - Barack Obama
The Incredibles is one of the most mature movies ever made, especially once you grow up and have a family. Those conflicts presented on the movie hits so much harder.
The movie implied Helen thought bob was cheating on her, something I didn't get when I first watched the movie as a 6 year old. It wasn't until I rewatched it last year that I fully understood the movie and everything really did hit so much harder
@@BananaPhoPhilly + the movie essentially being about Mr. Incredible having a mid-life crisis. The movie has so much more to say when you watch it as an adult
only if you are a manchild.
"One of the most mature movies ever made" might be a bit of an overstatement. Just guessing, I haven't seen every movie ever made.
@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 "one of the most mature _family-friendly_ movies ever made," maybe
31:30 You're kinda on point, though it wasn't really the cynicism that differentiated Pixar from the pack but rather the fact that their movies never sugarcoated shit. Even in it's more goofier movies they all moments that genuinely felt grounded in reality. Every protagonist and villain had a genuinely realistic motivations and goals the average person could get behind and for that reason it made people actually care about the films a lot more.
Incredibles was about a aging father chasing his glory days and a mother trying to protect her family from her and her husband's past.
Cars was about a young, cocky racer being humbled for his arrogance and learning a thing or two by normal everyday people.
Ratatouille is (practically) about two guys trying to find their place in the world while dealing the stressful reality of being a chef for a high class, respected restaurant.
They're all simple premises but effect because the audience can *relate* to it.
I feel like these newer movies are more focused on giving people an *adventure* to watch rather than a story to tell. They can be good, they can fun, but in terms of lasting impact they're a flash in a pan...
Very well said.
That’s my problem with movies like Inside Out, Coco, Soul, and Toy Story 4. I love their themes, but the actual plot elements don’t feel unique. They each follow a similar fetch-quest-like structure, which, despite having good themes and concepts, makes the storytelling fall flat
I think Emp meant more like the people in the worlds that Pixar presented were far more cynical and self-interested which sold the actual struggle far better
nah, Pixar is another example of americans thinking animation needs to be cartoony and family friendly. Is not deep, Pixar was always more childish fluff but decently written
@@j.2512 You have no idea of what your talking about, do you j.2512
The problem of "every character is perfect" is a problem in a lot of media now. It's part of the reason why they removed the "misogyny" of Sokka even though that was a big part of his development. "Good guys" can't have damning qualities. They have to be perfect so I can self-insert my perfectly shit self onto them.
Villains are suffering from the opposite a bit, where they're just one dimensionally evil for evil's sake or to make thinly veiled political points like "racism bad" or "colonialism bad."
>villains are one dimensionally evil
Are they though? Because it seems like every modern villain can be boiled down to "I'm le bad because of muh trauma, I'm damaged actually and I'm not totally evil as long as I learn friendship! I'm so gray area you guys!"
@@horpuscorpus8299i think the problem is so many villains only ever fall under what you mentioned or one-dimensionally evil, and there's so rarely ever any in between
Basically the way it's been is if the villain is evil by Current Year standards (-ist/phobe or what have you) then they are pure evil with no nuance whatsoever. If they're any other type of villain then they're just "misunderstood" and "redeemable"
@@horpuscorpus8299yeah i see that more too
one-dimensional villains are totally fine, just make them entertaining and don't try and pass them off as some kind of good guy or overly complex character when they're blatantly not
It's a shame because Peter Sohn (the director of Elemental) is an animation veteran, working a long time with Pixar and even branching to other projects (he voices Miles's roommate in Spiderverse). Hearing the way you described the film, as touching on elements rather than delving deeply, makes me wonder if he had a much more substantial film before it was corporately neutered
No, the movie was just meant to be really sweet and cute. Pixar is cool with letting directors do their own thing nowadays
@@jeffreyquinde6707Ah. Probably reading too much into it, then. He just seems like a cool guy.so it's a bummer people aren't super interested in his movie
@@jeffreyquinde6707don’t forget he also voiced Emile in Ratatouille, that one monster in Monsters University, and the cat from Lightyear.
@@marioalfredo5542 It's a bummer the writers didn't make it a more interesting movie
It's a pretty good film, I actually like that it doesnt give too much detail into why they're discriminated against because then you make the experience more universal, I actually couldn't pinpoint what immigrant population were trying to portray with this and that was kinda cool honestly.
This reminds me of the rant videos you made when you first started moving away from YTPs.
He doesn't sound as angry anymore though, and it sounds more scripted
@@mlalbaiterotbh some of those rants were a lil bit much so I get why he’s more reserved now
Lol
I found him out with the Behind the Meme video. I must admit some of my favorites are from this era (the Jimmy Kimmel video is top notch, and Trump's journey to the presidency through memes is great). I think I prefer the old content though the new one has value too. This channel has been a little disappointing in the latest videos yet I don't know exactly why, I think he's getting bad at complaining, which was his calling back in the day.
@@not_emerald I think his new videos are just too safe. I understand why he doesn’t use copyrighted meme material like before, he’s trying to monetize and make money. But beside all that his new videos are really milquetoast in subject matter and seem to be more directed towards his Reddit audience. My favorite videos of his, like you mentioned, probably wouldn’t be made in this new era because they’d be to controversial or drama inducing which seems like Emp is trying to distance from. Whatever, but his videos have been lacking lately and your not the only one to see that
The reason that Pixar started slipping and Disney started to get good at the same time is because once Pixar got bought out almost all of their senior talent got moved into Disney Animation to lead the helm there. The actual talent left and the people holding the bag had to continue on without any of the Founding Generation talents or spark to guide them.
People make art and entertainment, not brands. Once the people making quality movies at Pixar left, Pixar stopped making quality movies.
Pixar’s certainly doing better than Disney now
@@jeffreyquinde6707 debatable
Disney went hard with Encanto. But overall, I feel like Pixar is found better than Disney. But still, I loved Luca for example, but Encanto felt more mature like a classic Pixar film. It’s hard to say who’s doing better
They also fired Lazatar over nothing and most of the talent left with him in disgust and they got headhunted by Skydance.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Soul” was their last good movie.
This channel is fascinating because it's like you raised the standard too high on the main channel to post things like this video to it. But there was still clearly effort placed into sourcing assets and making little gifs of cartoon emp typing away. This was clearly planned out, but not strictly scripted. It's fun to see where the effort line is as to what gets posted here and what goes on the main channel
It's a sEmpsin
We so Fanum Tax Ohio into Skibidi rizz sigma.
28:40 This is a common sentiment, and it's happened to Disney animation studios as well. Villains are barely a thing anymore, instead it's the personal journey or flawed main character or family dynamic that's the antagonistic force
Encanto is an exception since that one is grounded compared to the other personal struggle ones
I actually liked Coco because it manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls in its storytelling outlined in the video.
The villain, a TWIST villain no less, was a total bastard, and even if the audience could catch onto the twist, it still manages to act as good dramatic irony for the characters. And to compound on how much of a bastard he is, he kills a guy ON SCREEN! Pixar had shied away from that sort of stuff for a long while, not since the Incredibles I imagine. And the family is BRUTAL in how they treat the main character and his ostracized ancestor. And I fee the sentimental last scene actually ties into the overall narrative and themes way better than most of the other similar moments from other pixar films. I think it’s because it captures a real moment that many people have to sadly face in life with family, tying it back with how Pixar used to not hold punches on depressing topics.
It’s such a shame that the movie released during a big downturn in the studio’s cultural relevance, and I do feel it would have been even better if it was made by the older Pixar veterans. Because while the designs of the skeletons I think hold up, you see Disney’s soft edges in the human designs that do detract from the film’s visual vocabulary and quality.
Hollywood now are using the trope "villains are good actually, its the heroes who are assholes"
@@DORAisD34DAbuela is not a good antagonist, though
@@jemm113I gotta be honest, I saw Coco, and that one is probably the most engaged I recall being when watching a Pixar film in the last 14 or 15 years.
Personally I think that Pixar's run from 1995 to 2010, beginning with the release of Toy Story and ending with the release of Toy Story 3, was its Golden Age.
Same.
Same. Plus this eras ending in 2004 mentality is BS anyways.
I’d argue it ended by about Incredibles 2 or Toy Story 4.
Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up started production before the Disney acquisition.
The first original movie fully conceptualized after the acquisition was Brave. It's not a coincidence.
@@joshslater2426
Pixar had already died a few years before those movies were released. They were just the final nails in coffin to remind us why.
oh my god its another pixar YTP
anyway to make a non-stupid comment
yes the quality of storytelling as a whole has declined significantly. even as low as independent works of fan fiction - stories arent engaging, villains have no black and white, and there isnt any nuance any more.
I believe that this is because of the lowered quality of content now. The stories themselves become diluted (the source of the dilution is irrelevant) to be super simplified, and those simple stories become the standard for new stories. New ideas aren't given the elevation they could have because they pose challenges.
then again i havent seen a movie in years so what do i know
It's Frying Dory, FINALLY!
🙃
@@HAV0X_ Do you rizz Skibidi out of Ohio?
@@CassandraPantaristi Skibidi Dory
@@WhehW3056 No.
The Incredibles is one of the greatest movies (not just animated ones) of all time. Seeing Pixar fall from grace this hard is disheartening
It's genuinely a masterpiece. It's a cut above all the other pixar movies.
How did Pixar go from The Incredibles to Elemental? I swear Elemental looks like a movie Dreamworks would make.
@@JonathanGaetanot even dreamworks would make sth like that
Imo dreamworks is an Unironicly good company , not their TV series but movies
@@sourlab well when I say Dreamworks I’m talking about that era where you had movies like Shark Tale or Bee Movie
@@JonathanGaeta
Eh, sometimes they had hits and other times… well… uh…
It's the Theseus' ship thought experiment:
"If all the parts of a ship are gradually replaced, at what point does it cease to be the original ship and become a new one?"
Today's Pixar is Pixar only in name and appearance, the Metaphorical ship can still sail the waters, but not nearly as well as the original legendary ship, as what made it legendary in the first place, was its ORIGINAL components, which have been long replaced...
I'd like to rub that quote into the faces of all brand-attached people.
Coco is a movie about how a broken family needs to be mended. They lost their dad, and that took the music from them. The point of coco isn’t that family comes first, or even that you need to be in touch with family, but that family needs to be whole. Honor our family, cherish and love them, and reconciliation as a whole. I really thought they did a great job on that movie.
30:19 I think the cynicism is only half the picture. Pixar movies used to make people cry because they would show the audience this grim, dark world, and set their happy moments in it. Because just happiness on its own means nothing, just like sadness on its own is meaningless. The world is dark and sad, so when we see the light, we want to protect it. That is the most fundamental, basic part of emotional storytelling.
I'm a bit younger so I started to notice the shift after Inside Out. While I did like that movie, after Inside Out, I pretty much lost all interest in Pixar films. For a while I attributed this loss of interest as just "growing out of animated films", however both of the Spiderverse movies, as well as the second Puss In Boots movie, made me realize that the problem may have actually been Pixar themselves. While this is certainly sad for a studio as culturally significant as Pixar, I'm at the very least glad that we have competing studios giving Pixar a run for their money. It wouldn't be good if we just had one animated studio having a full monopoly over the CGI film industry. Maybe the success of Spiderverse will push Pixar to try harder, or maybe Pixar will continue to fall into irrelevancy as they are overtaken by the competitors, either way, we'll at least continue to have good animated movies coming out for the foreseeable future, hopefully...
Inside Out in particular really overdid the whole "tugging on heartstrings" thing. There were like three moments that were made to bait the audience into crying. Only one of them actually worked for me.
It's a shame because I legitimately have quite a soft-spot for Inside Out. It was a comfort movie for me and I have watched it several times, but I cannot deny its flaws...
The problem with Pixar right now is Disney.
Elemental to me feels like they thought up an idea for a cool animated short and didn’t have anything better to make into a movie so they just went “uhhh fuck uhhhh ok let’s make this a movie”
"A couple weeks ago I went to see Elemental and Across The Spiderverse" oh damn this really is a vid you were sitting on for a while
The main thing you miss in this video is that it's less the "filmmakers" (which is extremely vague) who don't want to take risks in their stories, but it's "the mouse" (which is also pretty vague). The non artists who are the ones who greenlight pitches, who get to make final decisions on the story, the style, character designs, the script anything and everything that goes into a movie, _they're_ the ones who refuse to take risks. They're too concerned about money and don't have faith in their audiences, that they don't allow their artists, the _actual_ filmmakers to craft good stories.
I wholeheartedly agree
Perhaps post financial crisis, studios viewed projects that didn’t seem like obvious hits as risky investments.
Thank you! I was hoping someone would say this. Audiences don’t give a damn about a writer. Elemental literally wasn’t marketed. There was a new Spiderverse promo/trailer for nearly every main spiderperson. Writers do NOT make these decisions.
You talk about "non artists", but you include character designs and visual styles which are developed by artists.
@@carloscauan7967
Reread what I wrote carefully, because I did _not_ say these things are made by non artists. I said that non artists are the ones that get to make the final decisions. They have to approve of the story, the style, character designs, the script etc. which leads to the issue I'm discussing.
To help you understand better; artists will create something, then send it off to be reviewed, and those who get the final say on the end product are the non artists. Essentially the art is passed through many hands (many of which are non artists) who all give revisions and changes which change what the artist originally had in mind. While this is an extremely simplified version of what happens, most industry professional will tell you something similar.
I hate that Soul got zero advertising or push. I randomly found it while babysitting my nephew and looking for something new on Disney. I was surprised at how solid of a movie it was, but there is zero buzz online about it.
I won’t say it was a top 5 Pixar movie by any means, but it was still a great movie.
"Wow, there really ARE no cats in America! Great!"
"Fievel! Where are you?"
"I'm over here, papa!"
"Oh thank goodness, we almost lost you!"
Roll credits
"An Americal Tail" by Pixar, 2025
Lmao fun fact, American Tail AND The Secret of Nimh were originally supposed to be Disney movies.
At least I think, that’s something I’ve heard about.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 'Mrs Brisby and the Rats of Nimh' was pitched by Don Bluth to Disney for adaptation. Disney turned it down for how dark it was. So Don, and a group of defectors, left and developed it into the Secret of Nimh on their own. The critical success of that movie got them the funding for American Tail from other studios.
@@bobi200samatar6 Oh, yeah that’s right.
My bad, but it is interesting.
@@bobi200samatar6
Also seriously?
Right, yet they made The Cauldron, hands down becoming THE darkest Disney movie yet.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 Execs are the most fickle people on the planet.
the core of pixar films are not cynicism. earlier films definitely had darker elements and themes, but it was always juxtaposed with hope and overcoming tough challenges, which are still present in modern movies. the dark nature of the world is something everybody has to confront, but that wasn’t what made the early films special. it was the opposite, it was the idea of compassion and family and connection and *emotion* (which I know is not a word you like judging by this video) that truly allowed these films to connect with people.
nobody watches a movie like Toy Story and thinks the highlight is how dark and serious everything is, the highlight is always in the connections and aspirations of the characters and how they reach that conclusion.
not to mention, in Luca there’s plenty of moments where it’s spelled out that the main characters (who are secretly fish) will be explicitly ostracized and killed if they reveal their true forms. Coco and Soul are inherently rooted in death and finding purpose in life. Coco literally has a scene where a character dies from poisoning on-screen. it just seems so strange to act like modern pixar movies have no semblance of dark themes and then praise the first Cars as some kind of gritty look into our society
Carss is one of the OG Pixar films and it uses a similar apporach to every other Pixar film from its time. But honestly it's the shittiest out of all of them due to its bad pacing and over reliance on toilet humor. The themes it wants to show just get buried and forgotten.
Thank you for saying this! I believe the bigger reason Pixar has had its share of the industry greatly cut into is just the fact the competition has caught up, and the technology has become much more accessible. For any animated film to stand out nowadays has a greater challenge than what Pixar had in the 90s and 00s.
And the omission of Pixar classics like Coco and Soul, and the reductive analysis of Up and Inside Out was really jarring to hear.
Slow
Sloppy
Sad
When he started talking about cynicism, I couldn't help but think he doesn't know what that word means. Those early films are definitely not cynical
Cars talked about how small towns are being erased like radiator springs.
If the Incredibles was made today, when syndrome sends the missiles to shoot down Helen’s plane, they would 100% not show the family escaping in order to try to tear jerk you
Yup, that scene was intense and I was like 5 when I saw it, heck at one point there was suppose to be a pilot piloting the plane instead of Helen and died during the explosion, but the sequence we got now is probably the best we got as I think Helen piloting makes more sense than some unknown character we don’t know.
They simply wouldn’t have done that scene
@@MANTHELEXUS Yes they would
So fucking dark
americans value their kiddy shit so much, Like, get into 80s and 90s anime instead of praising soy cartoons
I don't think Sid Philips is a bad kid, he seems to do what he does to his toys as a means of self expression since he has neglectful/ not so great parents, he never understood the toys were living up until Woody convinced all of Sid's toys to appear in the backyard in a creepy fashion during Buzz's rescue, and I doubt he ever did his pretend surgeries or experiments ever again.
Mean to his sister, but not beyond what you'd expect from a boy his age. Glad to see him get closure in Toy Story 3 too, and that's where the whole franchise should have ended.
he is now homeless and addicted to Fentanyl.
Toy Story 3 was such a sentimental and perfect end to the series. In my mind, TS3 is the true ending
@@TracksWithDax I agree. I thought 4 was decent but I think Woody leaving his friends that he's probably known for well over a decade or two just felt wrong, especially with Buzz since they became best friends after a rough start.
@@RoninCatholicone shot of him as an adult with a job isn't closure lmao.
I feel like seeing as Pixar was back-to-back firing out the very best in that golden early 2000s era, the amazing heights they reached sort of make us all look to the extreme highs and lows when talking and reminiscing about this stuff.
Especially the "Dark and Gritty" thing, a lot of Pixar and good storytelling overall has to have pretty horrible and nasty stuff in it to contrast and seriously highlight the good stuff - The emotional journeys and climaxes of these characters we resonate and relate to. The incredibles isn't my favourite film of all time because of the "le epic supers are all dead?!?" scene that's (deservedly) revered all over the internet, it's the way that the family's EMOTIONS all push them and bounce off each other to further a proper and solid story.
The Incredibles is about a man who experienced and treasured the highs and lows of his golden years, and now feels numb and discontent with settling down into a decade or so of mediocrity. The villain literally exploits his emotional vulnerability because of this slump and it's only when Mr. Incredible realises to treasure and synergise with all of the quirks, untapped potential and EMOTIONS he can only feel with his family in the present that they can overcome any of the threats and move onto an ending where he's miles away from the long gone glory days or unthinking idle he was stuck in.
None of these dark reveals, depressing worldbuilding aspects or grim themes would really resonate much if there wasn't strong emotional highs seen with the bonds these characters are inspired or dedicated to. The morbid shit isn't gonna show up on top 10 dark kids' shows moments if there isn't STRONG love, passion or wonder to contrast it.
Pretty fitting how Mr. Incredible's arc matches up with how people feel about Pixar. Are they gonna let people exploit their need to tell the 20th Family trauma story like in the past, or move on to innovate what can only be seized now?
Frying dory when
Ohio rizzing out of Sigma Fanum Tax Skibidi
You mean this in good fun & not sincerely right? Lol
@@kitemporal No we seriously want Frying Dory. Make Frying Dory NOW.
💀
we want dory to be fried because this saga needs to end
Pixar's writing has devolved into "what if X had feelings".
Em...
What if toys had feelings
What if cars had feelings
What if robots had feelings
What if rats had feelings
What if ants had feelings
The "what if x had feelings" is the basic Pixar formula, since Toy Story.
@@GeorgeTankerYT this
people really started getting onto Pixar about it after Inside Out, which was literally "what if feelings had feelings"
It’s always been like that
@@DWN037 and despite being a good movie, that somehow makes inside out more broken than the cars universe
@@matthewvalente5877 and why? Why do you have to compare it to previous works? What is that idiot necessity to compare current movies to old ones?
Of course the new ones won't probably be our cup of tea. But that is because of how our lives have shaped us.
A kid in the 2000s experienced a whole other world than those of the 2010s.
Not to mention that not everyone gets to live the same lives. You don't like inside out, but i like it. I like it as much as older films.
The fact that you don't like something made by someone is not co-related to the quality of the product.
Most people praise "Prince of Egypt" for different reasons. I cannot get myself to like the movie.
Monsters Inc had Mike, this absolute greaseball protagonist who is rarely asked to "do the right thing" in the story. It's those moments when he is kind that are the most satisfying, and they completely miss that in the spin off where he's this pure ball who does "the right thing" at every given opportunity. It's flanderization 101
Finally, someone who says "melancholic" instead of "melancholy" as an adjective!
I can personally forgive Inside Out for being emotional and sappy given the fact that the main characters are literally emotions, I mean it would be kind of a waste of potential not to tell an emotional story with that very premise
fr like what is inside out going to say about society? it is, practically by definition, an internal journey
Something about Inside Out is that the journey itself is literally just a plot device, the story isn't there to really cement anything into the characters that is inherently based on the specifics of the events we see. It feels like a non-fungible part of the movie, like these events (internal or external) could've been triggered by almost literally anything or even nothing at all and still had more or less the same effect.
The strength on Inside Out comes from it's emotional moment, but this moment was truly earned not by nature of the story itself but by the character development and the very real and human side of the events and how relatable the core of the story was to the personal experiences most of us have had, even if those experiences relate in no way to the story at hand.
To me, Inside Out was Pixar _knowing_ what they were able to do nowadays, and just executing _perfectly._ You don't remember IO because the story just goes inside and out quickly, but the *impact* it has is probably the strongest a Pixar movie can ever have.
Its an even bigger waste to just pretend the dark and unsavory emotions dont also exist in everyone. Ya know like envy, hatred, violent aggression, avarice, lust, v o i d , nihilism, and so on
Despite insisting that there's no nostalgia bias, there is and it's quite visible. That doesn't mean that the main message is wrong. But the guy is trying so hard to make a very subjective aspect of the video, look like an objective one. Like talking about the good movies and bad movies. To prove his point right, he has to degrade many of the movies that people like the most from Pixar. Instead of looking for reasons why those movies don't follow the overall tendency, he just says "it wasn't that good, I never agreed" and that's it. GG.
Every pixar movie is different. He may not like Up as much as Monsters INC. (I prefer Monsters INC. too), but that's a matter of taste. Up is great and not just due to the very good intro scene. Just like Inside out is great, and not just for moms and children (a lot of mom and children work for review magazines then).
The essay lacks research. It's too personal, too hard to get anything truly useful. This video is about the feelings of a generation, full of the bias required to fit that generation.
I suppose that has some value too. Not so much for me.
I agree, this feels just like an opinion piece.
Yeah, I kept hearing his opinion about UP and I couldn't help but wonder if he actually watched the movie or not. Because there's WAY more to UP than just that intro, and ONLY talking about the emotional impact of those first few minutes does a disservice to them. It wasn't there solely to be emotional and sentimental, it was literally laying the groundwork for the themes of the whole movie.
It feels like this guy just took what was blatantly obvious (that Disney is intentionally suffocating Pixar to boost WDAS and take their niche) and warped it into a subjective take that misses the forest for the trees.
You make valid points. Yet the cultural inpact has decreased by a lot. I only knew of Elemental because they had it on the plane. Nowhere else was anybody talking about it. Luca, Soul.. they had some kind of impact. But nothing like Toy Story or Wall.e
Ironically, newt seemed to be pixar's only pixaresque project and it got scraped.
WALL-E is my favourite Pixar movie, they sure went out with a bang. If only they were able to continue projects of that level...
Let's hope they don't bastardize it with a s*quel
@@gliiitchedWALLMART-E coming soon
Nobody stays on top forever.
Pixar's "Golden Era" in my personal opinion, would be from Toy Story (1995) to Toy Story 3 (2010) and everything in between.
Every movie released during this time region, you could tell had a lot of love and extensive care put into every single one.
Obviously, they've still released some alright movies after 2010, but they just don't even compare in my opinion.
Almost every movie, regardless of its quality, has love and effort put into them.
Yeah but Cars exists lol
@@ChiangKai-Shrekand?
@@ChiangKai-ShrekSo? They had Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 afterwards. It’s not like it ruined their critical streak, so we can put up with having one “lesser” film in their Golden Era.
@@hunterolaughlin Sure I guess but people tend to praise this era of Pixar a bit too much. Emp does it too within this video.
Pixar films were teachers that could subliminally prepare children for the horrors of life and adults could appreciate and respect it too. Pixar just made the formula that both parties could enjoy. Thats the real magic
16:45
Inside Out is one of my favourite pixar movies purely because I was going through the exact same situation as the girl in the story in my life when I was younger and it had understood my feelings more than any other film before that.
I think for some movies, the age at which you watch them is extremely important too.
I never saw it, but I used to watch Herman's Head when I was in middle school.
And that's why I never saw it.
older pixar films are the type of films that you enjoy as a kid because of the visuals, even if you don't understand the story much, but as you get older and rewatch it, you realize how deep and emotional the story-telling and worldbuilding actually is
Remember. A good pirate never takes another person’s belongings.
My favorite Pixar trivia comes from the very early days, when a bunch of the creative heads at the time (John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor, and the late Joe Ranft) all met up at the Hidden City Café in Point Richmond to come up with ideas for their next movie after Toy Story. Apparently they formed concepts for A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and even WALL-E right there during a single lunchtime while they were all just doodling on napkins. Imagine having that much creative talent together in the same room that you could create four hit movies that would go on to form a cultural legacy just from a single lunchtime brainstorm session.
"I'm not a hater"
*picture of Mr. Enter appears*
I cackled
THEY HIT THE TWIN TOWERS
You're right it was with the movie 'Up' that Pixar went all in on cornball melodrama. At that point it seemed like they were more interested in making sappy scenes designed to make you cry than they were on telling interesting stories.
As an EmpLemon subscriber, I didn't even know about this channel until just now.
same
Literally same.
This video just popped up in my recommended and I thought "Hey, that looks a lot like an EmpLemon video."
Then I check the channel and... wait a minute... WAIT A MINUTE.
@@RJS2003 same thing happened with me lol
Literally thought he rebranded his channel for a moment.
@@Rusty_Spy I thought for a second this was a ripoff channel, lol.
I take some comfort in knowing that most of Pixar's OG heads haven't been there for a long time. In my eyes, the Pixar of 20 years ago is a different studio. Its like the Ship of Theseus. The OG Pixar dissolved a long time ago, a different studio just took it's name.
Just now noticed that the laptop has progressively more stickers added to it with each topic.
"laptop" BRUH
Laptop? My guy, that's an old-school desktop with a chunky CRT monitor. It's the furthest you can get from a laptop without being like, an ancient 1940's room-filling computer.
Finally someone who sees UP for what it is. I agree 100%
I don’t get it 🤷♂️.
I got curious and asked my friends what happened in the movie and most of them couldn't remember past the dog appearing. Movie is a downhill ride
Fascinating, I agree with a lot of points : the pixarisation of the animation industry, the multiplicity of sequels, all pixars from the golden age is not just a good movie but classic from the 2000, etc.
However for me a key point in the downfall of Pixar is the semi-failure of The Princess and the Frog (2009), which put a definitive end to any Disney attempts to creats 2D film. For me it was the perfect compromise: Disney is doing traditional 2D animation and Pixar new generation 3D animation, but reality decides otherwise...
The main element which push Pixar to creats new licence was contractual, except for Toy Story 2, the contract between Disney and Pixar didn't allow Piwar to creat sequels. It why at the new decade (2010's) with Toy Story 3, where were a suddent sequel-mania in the studio.
Another issue with Pixar today, is like the Simpson, they are victim of they own success. People associate good Pixar with the classic Pixar formula. Like Tim Burton, if it not like they imagine what Pixar is suppose to be they don't care, and also you don't always have good idea, I mean if we count Pixar golden movies in a strict way (=between Toy Story 2 1999 and Toy Story 3 2010), is 7 movies in total, it already HUGE!
In conclusion I just want to say that, I'm european btw (so sorry for my english), as a children Pixar movies in the 2000's was a rare unanimity with the audience. Everyone knew the movie would be a commercial and critical success, it would be one of (maybe the) best movie of the year (decade even) and a cultural refenrece for the 20 years at least. And only few studio were able to manage, Great Respect to Pixar!
This prompted me to watch The Incredibles again, and in one of the scenes I believe Elastigirl talking to her kids summarizes perfectly the mantra of OG Pixar, and I literally had to quote this: "Remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well *these* guys are not like those guys. They won't exercise restraint because you're... children. They will kill you, if they get the chance. Do not give them that chance."
Bro wrote a whole thesis statement in the comment section 💀😭
And the craziest thing is Disney Animation itself isn’t any better than Pixar anymore since 2018 when they released Ralph Breaks The Internet
Like who the fuck gives a shit about Raya and the Last Dragon, Strange World, or Wish that isn’t a die hard Disney fan?
No one. But to me Encanto felt like a Pixar film (expect for the songs) I wish Pixar could make movies like Encanto that feel mature. Encanto feels like the movie that Soul, Turning Red, and Coco (which is still really good but feels like it purposely through in silly scenes) wanted to be
I Care About Encanto
And then people get pissy when Disney announces two Frozen sequels wondering why they never make original movies “anymore.”
I really love the subtle stickers being put on the computer when you go to the next part of the video. It really adds a lot.
It's also very funny to me that Elemental is just Zootopia. Like, its about a quirky, diverse society of non-humans trying trying to make order out of chaos by ultimately disenfranchizing a portion of the population for the perceived safety of the others.
The difference there is that, in Zootopia, not only is the threat of predators self-evident, it's also explored in a tenser way; Nick is a bad person, but having a heart of gold proves that it's not some biological function that stops him from being a more empathetic, less manipulative person. There's character to his growing and shifting relationship dynamic with Judy, and tension as to whether their adverse relationship will have them ultimately succeed or not.
It's, well... it's a Pixar movie. They took a creative hook (a society of animals living like modern humans), explored the topic for themes to explore (species diversity and the creation of law in nature), found relatable ways for the audience to associate the film's problems with theirs (racial relations and systemic disenfranchisement), and the results are a film that feels built to explore a fantasy setting, rather than to support a stilted political message. It's fundamentally the same process that created classics like Monsters Inc. or Toy Story, and whether you believe it's as good or inferior, I don't think it's as easy to say that they didn't have a fun universe they wanted to explore and teach lessons through.
Zootopia's segregation message worked because predators and prey do have fundamental biological differences, so it adds complexity to the topic above just a 1-1 parallel of the real world. Elemental's message doesn't work because "you get it--because water and fire can't mix!" is more a cheesy joke than an actual, legitimate fantasy concept to explore. It doesn't add a film runtime's worth of depth.
I've got to disagree because elemental and zootopia's stories serve different purposes.
Zootopia is a buddy cop mystery that tackles racism while Elemental is a romance and family drama that tackles interracial relationships and being a second-generation immigrant. The comparison between the two movies feels very surface level.
Elemental does work in its own right because Ember chooses to forge a relationship with Wade when she previously thought it would be impossible due to her upbringing and the prejudices she is raised with. She realizes she doesn't live in the same hostile world her parents immigrated to. She also doesn't have to hold onto the dreams her parents had for her (to run their store) she can be an artist, which Wade encourages her to be. Idk elemental is no masterpiece, and maybe Zootopia is a better movie, but at their core the movies really have nothing to do with each other and it's best to evaluate Elemental in its own right and merits as a movie. Especially since the movies are not about the same thing.
@@platanoluver What I'm evaluating is the logic present in both movies--not whether they're literally the same plot.
Like, just look at how you describe the two movies: "Zootopia is about racism" is a pretty broad topic. "Elemental is about falling in love as a second-generation immigrant" is direct and overt, and barely builds on anything in-universe. Zootopia's plot mostly revolves around its own in-universe logic--with racism being a logical result of that.
Elemental, meanwhile, feels like it was built from the ground-up to tell a story meant to parallel real-world situations without consideration for just what the setting serves; there isn't much novelty brought to the topic by making the parties involved like... water and fire. It doesn't add to the themes or make them more difficult to explore, it just kind of sits there as an accessory to the real point of the movie.
Zootopia, meanwhile, is about animals--the differences in needs for each species, how they're catered to systemically, and the gaps in the system that appear specifically because they are animals. You can't remove the 'they're animals' element of Zootopia's plot, because the entire plot revolves around that specific novelty, but Elemental? I kinda struggle to see the film being much different thematically or mechanically by removing the whole 'elements' aspect.
Millenials finally realizing their bing bing wahoo and Pixar fluff was never deep.
And it only took them 40 years
I agree that after Zootopia, Elemental doesn't seem to add as much that's new, but I still found it to be an adorable film in its own right if I watch it more for the fantasy escapism and for Ember and Wade instead of trying to apply it too much to real life issues. Although, I've heard immigrants specifically (not just to the US but also to Korea) say that it really resonated with them.
lol
I forgot who said it but it perfectly describes modern Disney.
"Disney are effective at creating profitable movies without any value whatsoever"
That intro made me laugh hysterically for some reason. I was legit not expecting it.
HOW LONG HAS THIS CHANNEL BEEN HERE WITHOUT US NOTICING!!!!!!!!!!
Something about Inside Out is that the journey itself is literally just a plot device, the story isn't there to really cement anything into the characters that is inherently based on the specifics of the events we see. It feels like a non-fungible part of the movie, like these events (internal or external) could've been triggered by almost literally anything or even nothing at all and still had more or less the same effect.
The strength on Inside Out comes from it's emotional moment, but this moment was truly earned not by nature of the story itself but by the character development and the very real and human side of the events and how relatable the core of the story was to the personal experiences most of us have had, even if those experiences relate in no way to the story at hand.
To me, Inside Out was Pixar _knowing_ what they were able to do nowadays, and just executing _perfectly._ You don't remember IO because the story just goes inside and out quickly, but the *impact* it has is probably the strongest a Pixar movie can ever have.
I think one film emp forgot to mention regarding dark subject matter is Coco. The film's overall themes are deep and complex that has a lot of potential for great storytelling. And the villain is probably one of the darkest to come out of the new Pixar era (obviously not as dark as Syndrome or any other Pixar character who has a track record of murder). But the execution of it was such a missed opportunity in a way that felt somewhat formulaic and, tbh, a little bit pandering. i mean, as a Mexican i like being represented, but it didn't really feel 100% authentic or genuine, much less powerful. So just because a Pixar might have some deep themes and dark characters doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be a hit. I'm actually a little ashamed cuz there's so much more Mexico-related content out there are have made much more of a cultural impact than Coco, even during the time of its release and after, not only in the US but worldwide.
That’s my exact problem with movies like Inside Out, Coco, Soul, and Toy Story 4 is their plot elements don’t feel unique. They each follow a similar fetch-quest-like structure, which (despite having themes and concepts that I love) makes the storytelling fall flat. They have scenes that don’t really connect to their overarching themes and feel like they take breaks between what the movie is trying to say
The older Pixar movies felt much more magical.
35:12 This makes we worry about Cartoon Network being in the same situation, because in recent years, they've been releasing less and less things. Their channel is just full of reruns of shows from a decade ago that made them popular. Even some of their shows have been moved onto Adult Swim, with some of them airing on the Checkered Past block. The channel used to take risks making high quality shows like Regular Show and OK K.O., but now it's just a shell of it's former self, especially since the merger. Most of it's category of shows were easily assessable on HBO Max until 2022 and slowly decreased from there. CN Studios' building even got taken down. Some of the worst things to come out of that studio were the Ben 10 and Powerpuff Girls reboots, with Problem Solverz being their weakest show. CN Studios Europe, the studio that made Gumball, has now rebranded to being apart of the Hanna-Barbera brand, which has been absorbed into Warner Bros Animation. I really hope Cartoon Network stays as it's own thing and doesn't get absorbed into Warner Bros Animation brand like their predecessor, Hanna-Barbera, which worked on a few CN shows in it's early years. Cartoon Network used to be my favorite channel, growing up in the 2010s, but my least favorite thing about it was the constant TTG reruns, which had slowed down slightly in recent years, but the show is still airing over 10 years later. They even put a lot of effort into their overall branding during the 90s and 2000s, and I even associate them with the CYMK palette that they used in the Check It and Dimensional eras. Their current era doesn't even scream "Cartoon Network" at all and looks like a lazy mess, they got rid of the CYMK palette, the CN Bold font, and even the US website looks depressing. To make things even worse, they even introduced a preschool block, which I don't think CN needed at all. Copying Nickelodeon instead of being their own thing is a bad decision on CN's part. For as long as the merger will last, I barely see any signs of improvement for CN.
Watching the downward diary is like watching everything around you become less fun as you become adult.
Regarding what you said about the older Pixar films looking at the world in a darker and more cynical way, it is worth noting that despite their darker thematology compared to the more wholesome and light-hearted newer films, these movies still had wholesome and happy endings just like the newer ones. In fact, we could probably go as far as to say that despite how much they are trying to make their world look like the way an adult would interpret it, ultimately their endings are kind of idealistic or ''child-like'', if you will.
Let's take a look at Monsters Inc. for example. While the film indeed presents its world within the factory as very corrupt and greedy, the way things are eventually resolved feels very ''fairytale-like'' when you really think about it. I mean, the film establishes Waternoose as a ruthless corrupt owner who doesn't stray away from silencing and basically killing his own employees or the human children who accidentally learn more than they should about the shady things happening within the factory. Monsters Inc. as an inside business is absolutely repulsive, yet the film just ends with the classic fairy-tale message: ''Oh, the bad guy lost, now the good guy will set everything straight without any kind of realistic consequences for the actions that occurred and were exposed. Everyone lives happily ever after.'' I mean, yeah sure, Waternoose gets arrested and the factory almost shuts down but what about the rest of the city? The other monster employees? Everything that Waternoose developed with Randall to get rid of all his employees, all the innocent employees who were exiled to the human world. Everything is just forgotten when Sally realizes they can produce energy more efficiently using laughter instead and everyone goes back to working and functioning like it's just another day at the factory, how can the employees or the civilians trust this company anymore after everything that has been exposed?
What about Wall-E? The film has arguably the darkest setting out of any Pixar film and yet it still ends with a very positive and ''tied with a nice bow'' way. The humans despite believing the Earth had become completely inhospitable disprove this when Wall-E finds a random plant inside a fridge, and in the end instead of teaching the audience about the true consequences of materialism and pollution and how we should protect the Earth because at some point it will be too late for us to do anything, it just ends like: ''Hey kids, turns out one plant managed to develop through all the destruction that our behavior and lifestyle caused to the planet, so now I guess Earths plantation will be completely restored, somehow, and everything will be nice and dandy from now on!''.
I think what would feel more appropriate and fitting with your statement about the maturity of older Pixar films would be if these films also had cynical endings along with their cynical settings. Like no, don't make the Earth hospitable again, try to show that some things cannot go back to they way they were, there are consequences to pay for what has happened, don't just switch to a nice ending with rainbows and sunshine because this is not in line with the atmosphere the film established at the beginning. I am not saying Pixar films shouldn't have good endings or anything like that, but if you want to make the claim that A Pixar film is better than B Pixar film because A film portrays the world how an adult would see it and B is full of nice characters with no negative traits whatsoever then film A better sticks to its ideology throughout its entirety, not switch at the last second and show an ending that coincidentally feels like the resolution you would expect from the newer, more child-like films.
By the way, I don't disagree with what you said about Pixar films falling to mediocrity, I am just pointing out that, looking back on them, the old Pixar films despite being praised for their maturity, don't completely follow the format that audiences praise them for. They have similarities with the ones being considered average today.
I love the middle ages style of EmpLemon content. I need a Lessons in Meme Culture rant like crack
Behind the Meme 2.0 rant : Electric Boogalo
When you rizz Nemo from Ohio into Skibidi Sigma Fanum Tax.
I think youtuber "ibz" made one
@@PETRIXXXX it would mean more if Emp made it. There's really not much more to be said about LiMC that hasn't been said already.
@@PETRIXXXX ibz swagging ohio
Its because of the death of Joe Ranft. He worked on The Brave Little Toaster, Toy Story, A Bugs Life and pretty much every golden age Pixar hit until Cars. He was a storyboarder and illustrator and was kind of the heart and spirit of the studio. He introduced Tim Burton to the Jewish folktale that later became The Corpse Bride. There are a couple short videos with him on youtube.
A Bug's Life is pants.
Why the heck do I keep getting recommended the same exact things that the LaFave bros watch.
No disrespect to him, but there were multiple other people responsible for most of the original movies and some of them still involved to this today.
I agree with just about everything stated, but on the point of cynicism and bastard characters, Coco at least had those things going on with Ernesto. He's on par with other past villains if not worse.
He was kinda limp imo but at least he was there
@@sagedamage109True he kinda does suffer from being yet another twist villain, but he serves his purpose with being a despicable character.
He was a good twist villain but he felt kinda…cartoonish? Like he did some messed up things but when we see him on screen he doesn’t act all that cynical and kinda just runs away from the heros
@@DORAisD34D Guy kills a man so he can steal his songs and even tries to kill Miguel by throwing him off a building. He seems very cynical to me
that’s true. I think my criticism has to do more so with the tone of Coco. Sometimes it’s serious, and other times it’s silly (like when they jump in front Ernesto in the hallway and instead of jumping him they just look at him like “it’s you against us!”)
For all the praise Coco got when it was released, I'm surprised by how underappreciated it's come to be
Loved how woody was such a vicious bastard in toy story, so relatable to kids and funny to us adults, teaches why kids need to stop acting like bastards and shows what happens to adults who don’t grow up and relinquish control. Great film.
I thought old Pixar films felt grand because the setting of the story is so different from each other. Modern ones fail to intrigue me because they are either set in the real world, or the scale of the story feels small.
I like that you still have rant videos but they're in their own space from your documentaries. I enjoy both, and this video being a little bit of a throwback was a little refreshing.
They didn’t start coasting, they got bought by Disney and forced to do safe shit for 10 years unfortunately
I just found out today that planes was not a Pixar movie
Same.
Side note: Not that either are anything of note, but I heard Fire & Rescue was better than the first Planes.
@@fortynights1513 Fire and Rescue was pretty okay in story, but I absolutely love the jokes.
a few explanations:
1)the merger of Disney and pixar might have meant that pixar animators and Disney animators changed priorities. Perhaps because Disney had more control over pixar meant that the company had to abide by what Disney viewed as success.
2)John Lassater. His behavior raises serious questions as to how the company promoted its employees, what John and others like him in the company more or less forced the staff to make one film. John, and im only using him because his decisions were high profiled, with the success of pixar meaning he could afford to get away with stuff meant pixar would follow his whim. John's sexism became more apparent, writers quit because they felt the studio did not reflect a working environment that could explore more diverse stories. A good article pointed ut the weird paternalism john feels for young boys, and how he constantly strives to make content for them...except he never if ever talks about girls.
3) Franchises exploded after the 2000s in large part to marvel and others movies. Makes sense that Disney which made the direct to video sequels asked pixar "make more." or that pixar thought "lets do it."
4)competition. its not just sony, its foreign markets, smaller American animated studios that make more interesting, more visually interesting stories. Nimora, that Irish animation movie about wolves and oliver comwell. There are better animation stories right now on tv, and in theatres that beat pixar more and more.
5)A lack of creativity. adding onto what i already said. pixar movies dont deviate from making cool things "look modern." Did elemental really need to be in a modern city? As you said, why are the elements acting like real life people...? THEY ARE ELEMENTS! Why is outward modeled after real life scenarios that we've seen over and over? Look, bug's life showed ants' perspective. Toy story was how a toy looked the world. nemo was in the water. up yes took place in a modern world but most of the film was in a new world. ratatouille looked at a rat in a french cafe! Thats unique. You know whats' cooler than upward, elemental or the good dinosaurs? Land before time, a final fantasy story where your mascot is a black mage in a land where science and magic exist, a tv show where a young Hispanic girl gets sucked into a magical world and battles imperialism, a animated show where a person is reincarnated into a god-like figure who controls all four elements. Pixar did a great job showing themes that were subtle enough and show them in different ways.
This comment deserves way more attention than it’s likely to ever get
For me Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the pinnacle of modern animated movies. Pixar has been super boring studio and I loved Cars and Ratatouille very much. These days I don't even bother watching them because as EMP said it's one movie with different characters. It's just not exciting anymore unless you are a kid.
Those first 10 minutes of puss and boots 2 made the last 10 years of pixar look like shit.
@@lv1543Especially since I consider Toy Story 3 to be better than that movie.
I know, weird response, but when _you_ worded it right, you right.
What Inside Out says about the importance of understanding and embracing the sadness in life is a great message that is organically introduced and is as sophisticated as anything in the earlier films.
wrong.
@@AnAverageGoblindamn you make some good points, I might have to agree with you
@@AnAverageGoblin based
Sucks that it was the great nuanced film that they made in the 5 year span from the release of ts3.
What did you think of the 2019 animated film “Claus”? Aside from some of the soundtrack choices, I think it was one of the best animated films to come out in the last 5 years.
Not only did I really like the story, but the animation being 2.5D. They made their own engine that was built for 2D to look like 3D with lighting and materials
One very important thing is that a lot of Pixar's worlds are more grittier and realistic, but despite all of that the characters within manage to persevere. They always overcome the challenges and grittiness, which is more inspiring than living in a relatively fine world with a couple of inconveniences.
If you want strong proof of this, you need to check out Lassider's pre-Pixar work The Brave Little Toaster. As that movie gets quite dark, realistic and gritty on a smaller 2D animation budget. As many of its themes and tones are replicated in Toy Story, largely older appliances getting replaced by new ones and have to prove they are not worthless.
Also to add onto Toy Story, it’s deeper when you realize Woodys journey is about elevated status, with him losing his glory when Buzz comes into the scene. This gets to him so much that he not only gets angry, but has to deal with the fact his possibly once friends just see him as a jealous psycho person who got so fed up with someone he had to “kill them”
Pixar's worlds being cynical meant the hope-driven idealism the characters pushed through to make a dream happen (even if just for a short while) hit a lot more poignantly. It's mature in that the adults are trying to teach a young audience a valuable life lesson, having gone through such hardships themselves. The problem is now we have younger, up-coming directors trying to teach a lesson, however, they have nothing interesting to say or don't have any solutions to show that isn't about "Me, me, me". _Luca_ was just a story of what the director remembered doing one summer vacation as a child in Italy, and it's alright, had almost a Ghibli-esque feel to it, but it doesn't leave an impact and no real life lesson to be had. _Turning Red_ is supposedly based on the director's teenage experience growing up in the 2000s, and she clearly has some mommy issues. It's not teaching children (and parents) anything, it's just the director saying "Pay attention to ME!"
_Up_ may have started this trend in hindsight, especially when it comes to the side-characters and approach to the narrative, yet I still see a story about a cynical person that was trying to run away from his problems only to face reality. While his problems weren't entirely resolved at the end of the movie like he wanted, he still found some new life in the most unlikely place because he moved on from what was holding him back: unfounded idealism. Unlike his "hero", Charles Muntz, Carl had to learn to accept the world around him wasn't going to change to accommodate him, and now he's content. Kind of sounds like it was a way for the old folks to bow out and let the new generation take the wheel, they just didn't expect what was going to happen when they did. They were oddly enough still optimistic about the future.
Feels bad, man.
On that note of cynicism in classic Pixar, it doesn't mean that Pixar was all just dour and dark. Rather, classic Pixar is the prime example of how hopeful, wholesome, and idealistic messaging can be enhanced by a grounded, dramatic story.
The Incredibles may have been a story about special individuals shackled down into mediocrity and a dysfunctional family on the breaking point during hard times, but it's also a story about what makes someone truly a hero. It's not the powers, the fame, and the excitement that separates Bob from Bucky, it's the desire to protect the ones we love, glory and fame be damned.
Cars is the story of an arrogant and lonely sports star in a desolate town forgotten in history, but it's also the story of finding meaning in what you do, appreciating the little things in life, and opening yourself to even the most unlikeliest of friends. McQueen may not have won the big game, but he gained more than what Chick Hicks can ever achieve: happiness and contentment.
And do I even need to mention Ratatouille and Wall-E, the two GOATs? Greatness can come from anyone, even a lowly rat? That hope can live on, even when we all think it's lost?
Nothing enhances an uplifting message better than a grounded story, where it's not some sugar-coated Tumblr fantasy land some California writers dreamt up. It's not because we don't want to feel good with movies, it's that we want to earn those feel-good moments. Stop trying to tug on my heartstrings with cheap, overdone plotpoints and make me feel something different again, Pixar.
Didn't movies like Up, Inside Out, and Coco do exactly what people claim that the newer movies fail to do? Up dealt with an old man who suffered a great loss, but he learned to let go in the end. Inside Out dealt with a girl struggling to find her place in the city, but Joy had to learn to avoid toxic positivity and that while it's okay for Riley to be sad sometimes, there's hope. And Miguel from Coco was tied to the strictness of his family, but found hope in music and friendship. Where the hell are you getting the "sugar-coated Tumblr fantasy land some California writers" bulcrap argument from?
@@Stew91 Up was good but not amazing, Inside Out is overrated and carried hard by the goodwill it got with it's messaging, and Coco had an interesting concept shackled by going through the same-old Disney formula of a sappy faux-deep family cartoon.
Pixar, and the rest of Disney animation for that matter, can only do the same type of movie every single time, and frankly, it's gotten to the point where no one, not even kids, bother to care about them anymore. It's either a sequel, a recycled Disney plot, or a vapid tearjerking heartstrings-pulling arthouse fluff that would get people in their feelings for a bit before moving on to the next thing to ogle at. Nothing uplifts, relates, or even resonates with modern Pixar anymore. You tasted one meal, you ate through the whole menu.
I'm not saying these are bad kids movies. It's inoffensive and mediocre at worst. But the fact that Pixar used to be so much more with so much less condescension, self-importance, and undeserved fanboy hype is what I'm getting at here.
@@wojak-sensei6424 Up was met with critical acclaim, Inside Out was praised, and Coco was met with critical acclaim. As for Up, it being a good movie should not be a knock against it, so I don't get why you have against in, in relation to your argument.. As for Inside Out, overrated does not mean bad, and while I do feel like the movie is overhyped, I do feel like the movie did a great job with Joy's character development and learning about the dangers of toxic positivity. And that's why I feel like the emotions at the end felt earned. As for Coco, and your stance about it being saccahrine drama, the core theme of the movie centers around how music can inspire people, and it being interwoven into the story through Hector's character, is why I feel like your take that the emotions in the movie are forced is something I do not agree with.
Also, if you didn't care for the movies, that's perfectly fine, and we all have our opinion. But the numbers + the praise, show that kids and adults still care about Pixar and it's quality.
So your arguments that it's the same movie every time, that kids and adults dont care anymore, and that nothing resonates anymore, are disingenuous. This is especially true when people are flocking to see a massive hit like Inside Out 2, which is said to be funny and resonate with both kids and adults If you were only talking about Disney in relation to the Wish movie, you would have a point. But compare Up or Coco to something as soulless as Wish? The differences are night and day.
From what I understand about elemental, there was new technological advancements made for the movie, because of the way the water and fire people move. It's pretty niche though.
9 months later, and this is still the first I've ever heard of Elemental...
I would argue Sentimentality was a chore of old Pixar, and the cynicism you talk about was present, but I think you overstate it. Yes, there's a lot of cruel things in Pixar's worlds, but that's usually contrasted agaisnt the character relationships, and moments of whimsy. Sentimentality was always to a greater o lesser degree present in Pixar's work, and it was an important part, but I would agree it had more, finnesse. It was more nuanced, due to the worlds been more nuanced, there was some darkness (in some chases as the incredibles it was way more present) as to be able to enjoy the moments of light. Modern Pixar even when it makes some compelling character drama is in a backdrop that doesnt allow for much darkness to contrast (that and just a lot of generally mid writing). I would argue, that despite mostly being o nthe decline (there's a couple of movies in their modern roaster which I found somewhat enjoyable or charming), ther have been able to pull out a new masterpiece; "Soul". And you could, cynically, argue its on the "character gets on with their feelings" type of story, but I would argue the sort of issues, the emotions and the themes are way more mature than the studio has been on years. I wouldnt get my expectations that high, but hey, its not all soooo bad
I think EmpLemon’s problem is his own cynicism blinding him by the good aspects of the newer films.
None of them are on the level of the golden era, but even so many of them are great.
Turning Red was a lot of fun for me. Luca was IMO, a great underrated film that has a bastard villain that doesn’t get redeemed.
I get he holds a much higher standard, but when I think it’s too the point like he’s sounding more like Mr. Enter than he realizes.
@@thefvguy5648 "grrrr why arent films Made for the whole the whole family more dsrk and gritty like in My time grrrr" ok but in on honesty yeah, I agree with your point
I also feel that the shine of Pixar faded off when the Lassiter scandal happened. And it’s not even the stuff about worker treatment or how he basically became a drunkard who let his success get to his head, it’s how I’ve realized how he was really dismissive of creatives he didn’t see eye to eye with. How he forced the original director of Brave out of the studio and Chris Sanders, the Lilo and Stitch director, off the project that became Bolt because they didn’t fall in line with his tastes tells me that even if Disney didn’t take control, I get the feeling that the overall internal culture of the studio would have soured worse. Both were primed to be distinctive, but they were kicked off and their projects turned into bland things no one remembers. But John can make his Mater goes to Europe fanfic because it makes money from merch (that’s seriously was his pitch). Heck, there’s reasonable evidence that he took credit for Cars since he wasn’t the guy who pitched it originally, but you make the rules when your the boss. Why else are Brad Birds movies far more sophisticated and freer in their execution even compared to the other classic Pixar ones. Because he’s buddies with John. Creative minds can get lost in either the desire to maintain the success or just can’t transition into the high class environment. Just look at Lord and Miller and how they have basically refused to acknowledge the controversy around the poor work environment they created when making Across the Spiderverse. Even then, the fact they are still struggling has nothing to do with the people there now, but with how Disney is basically the controlling entity now and their overall corporate mindset is that they want a specific, marketable brand image rather than any sort of risk.It’s not “wokeness” or whatever buzzwork griftubers use to complain about the recent mediocre blockbuster, it’s that the studio just isn’t able to be free to grow on their own terms. Other studios, in spite of their issues, have a sense of experimentation and varied perceptions. I feel that Pixar itself have become a brand. You can get a great film from them, but it’s like what, once every 5 or 6 films this happens. They aren’t special, they are just another studio.
Well shoot, wish we had more comments as thoughtful and considerate as this one. Or maybe I just also strongly agree with the idea that the people in charge make the biggest difference of all, and how that makes an unstable, easily altered foundation.
That's not even the half of it. I remember the day Lassiter paraded his gleaming white unicorn on to the Disney lot, holding Oswald the Lucky Rabbit up by the ears as if getting the property back were some sort of messed up bribe to soften the blow of what was to come. The guy was lauded for cutting off sequels while halfway through production, which - yeah, of course - nobody wanted all the crappy Disney sequels to traditionally animated classics, no - but each crew was a small army of people who suddenly lost their jobs as Lassiter danced on through, hacking them off at the neck during some sort of manic fit. It all happened that fast, and caused complete chaos throughout the studio, for all productions, as we wondered if we were going to be next on the chopping block. Even back then, he was a nightmare of an ego case. It made me shudder to see how much he was sucking up to Miyazaki, too, who wanted nothing to do with his pathetic advances to get him to join the dark side. I'm no big fan of Miyazaki's personality either, but man did he ever dodge a bullet by not allowing Disney to get its claws into Ghibli properties. Distribution in the US is plenty, thx.
In the end, I don't have to even say how not surprised I was to see Lassiter outed for being a creep. It was pretty satisfying, actually!
@@sashizakura9124But I like Miyazaki's works.
@@sashizakura9124
>believing the #metoo scandal by a bunch of disgruntled women who were "totally" harassed by John
Glad to see youtube commenters are as regarded as ever and hardly express any critical thinking like the sheep you are.
@@sashizakura9124
>believing the m*t** scandal by a bunch of disgruntled women who were "totally" harassed by John
Glad to see youtube commenters are as high IQ as ever by hardly expressing any critical thinking like the 'edditors you are.
You kinda lost me when you started going on about how classic Pixar was cynical. That's just wrong, outright. Yes, they did portray aspects of the world as REALISTIC. With the bad AND the good, both aspects being shown. And I agree that you're right that these realistic dark aspects have been washed out of modern Pixar films. But "cynical" implies that it's just constantly downtrodden and everything is bad all the time and it's only ever going to be bad. That the future only bodes poorly. And that absolutely doesn't stack up with any of the core Pixar classics, which all ended on hopeful notes about confronting or changing these worse aspects of the world.
WALL-E and Up, ironically, are ironically the only classics that have any true cynicism to them, rather than dark realism. WALL-E portrays a cynical future on purpose, as an environmental and societal warning, in the likes of The Giving Tree or The Lorax. Meanwhile, Up's most cynical theme is distilled into the scene where the entire town around Carl's house is reconstructed into a city. The modernization and urbanization is shown as an allegory for the inevitable march of time/progress, for better or for worse, and you can either go with it or get trampled by it, as would've been Carl's fate had he not flown away with a bunch of balloons. And I think him returning to the city with Russell showed how he had capitulated to it at last, not necessarily for bad reasons.
By contrast, I think the sequels and newer films showed significantly more cynicism than the originals ever did:
- Monsters University was a parable about the futility of certain dreams and that it's better to just settle for something mediocre within reach, and that even your best efforts don't mean much in the end. Life's unfair. That's the whole message.
- Inside Out was about the importance of allowing yourself to just be plain miserable at times because sadness is inevitable, and trying to ignore it just makes it worse. Not a bad message, but still pretty damn cynical.
- Cars 3 was a metaphor for athletes aging out of their sport and no longer being able to keep up with the young bloods, forcing them to accept a coaching role from the sidelines to cheer on the young upstarts instead. Very cynical. Even if you reach your dreams and make it big, you'll one day get too old and weak to keep doing what you love and have to watch somebody else do it instead. Basically Rush's song "Losing It" as a movie.
- Coco's entire central conflict is about how simple misunderstandings can ripple to cause trauma for generations. Additionally, a warning never to meet your heroes because they'll inevitably let you down.
- Soul is a parable about how we're all so jaded and miserable in our lives that we've forgotten the simplest joys of being alive, while also basically ignoring each other to look only at ourselves. I actually really liked this movie and felt it was the closest of the new movies to old Pixar. Not because of any sappy scene that makes people cry but because it dealt with themes of life and death with both the perspectives of an adult and a child.
Just a few example as my comment's already long enough. Also, not trying to shade your video or anything, I just wanted to voice my disagreement with your point about cynicism.
As much as I do like Emp and agree with him on a lot of things, I cannot like this comment enough. I also feel as though he’s only looking at the negatives of the newer Pixar films, but you pretty much put my thoughts into words regarding the positives for each of those films above. Nice work!
Edit: I also forgot to add another strong aspect of Coco still being cynical/mature in my opinion:
It had the balls to show a human being murdered via poisoning.
Thank you for putting this point into words. I love Inside Out and other modern Pixar films but could somewhat agree with his point about the newer films being softer- but his point about old Pixar being cynical I just couldn't wrap my head around. How could you watch Toy Story or Monsters Inc and really believe that those stories were cynical? Monsters Inc might be one of the most sentimental Pixar movies with Boo and Sully's relationship.
Good points. Although I have to say Monsters University wasn't really about "settling for something mediocre." Despite Mike simply not having the talent to achieve his initial goal, he finds out that what he's really good at is coaching others who do have talent and pushing them to do great things that neither could have done by themselves. It feels more like realism than cynicism. Or say, a punch of cynicism with a little optimism on the side.
Movies becoming less willing to take risks was actually a few factors, and people in general having less movie money was only one factor. Another one - probably a bigger factor - was the loss of home video revenue in the wake of online streaming. For a long time, movies could afford to not make all their bank at the box office, because home video was like a whole extra stream of revenue from people who wanted to own or rent a film. Now, because people overwhelmingly watch movies on netflix/hulu/Disney+etc., that extra revenue is pretty much gone, and studios rely far more on the box office to make their money.
I disagree with you on a few points about all of the newer films being bad, because I really do think theres a few diamonds in the rough here and there like Coco and Soul and even Monsters University. The latter honestly has a pretty deep message. That being said they're diamonds in the rough they definitely arent as good as golden era Pixar. It's so sad to see how much theyve fallen off.
I like coco and soul more than the Incredibles.
Omg i loved monsters university when I saw it for the first time. i still like watching it. I actually watched it before the 1st movie and for a long time I didn't know there was another movie.
That new Dreamworks movie "the wild robot" looks really good and makes me think of pixars best work.
Hard times create strong studios. Strong studios bring good times. Good times create weak studios.
You've clearly never heard of EA.
Sorry to say, but bastards often times remain bastards no matter what.
@@constipatedwonka8061 I doubt Pixar is the company coming out strong, but I believe strong studios will emerge from weaker competition
Good times create Nemo Characters into Skibidi Fish's from Ohio.
@@plus-boy I disagree I think Pixar I could come back to his glory it's going to take time
@@constipatedwonka8061 EA never made shit though.
How have I been an EmpLemon viewer since middle school, I’ve watched all his vids, continue to watch every single new one that comes out, used to be a patron, then the algorithm recommends this channel to me out of nowhere and it’s the first time I’m hearing about him having more content like what😭😭 I’m so happy there more stuff to watch
Does this mean you’ve eased up on Finding Nemo over the years? Because I remember you saying way back in the day that was your least favourite Pixar movie, or at least one of them.
When did he say that?
Pixar used to be the company that picked up the slack whenever standard Disney animation was in a rut. Nowadays, they're either making unnecessary sequels to their classic films or making movies that are lucky to not be considered financial bombs.
Remember when Pixar only produced 3D movies and Disney only produced 2D movies? Nowadays I can’t tell the difference between both Pixar and Disney Animation use CGI, but only if you see either of their logos by the marketing and opening logos.
Pixar was born during the Straight-to-DVD era Disney Animation, combined with practically zero competitors until Dreamworks came.
Well this aged poorly after Pixar’s newest film Inside Out 2 became a box office smash hit