I should’ve known Pixar had a few hidden tricks up their sleeve for this one. We’ve known for some time that Onward centers around two elvish brothers on a quest to find some trace of magic left in the world connected to their deceased father, which is a relic of an idea that traces back to director Dan Scanlon’s real life experience of finding an old object containing a memory of his own dad.
Now, we see this “quest” has a few curveballs, as shown in the trailer. Looks like the “magic” object is a staff, and there are some cartoony rules that dictate how and when their dad can actually come back to life. So it’s a blend of Brave and Coco in that respect.
At first glance, this familiarity worries me. How many times have we seen kids in Pixar movies trying to beat a deadline to save their parent, or the other way around? It’s well-worn plotting at this point for the studio, but this is a unique enough setting to keep me interested, plus the two main characters (voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland) have no shortage of charm and chemistry to make this one a proper Pixar feels trip.
The “modern mythological” setting is still a blast to discover and learn new details about, including the gag of pixie bikers harassing the dad corpse. Speaking of which, said corpse is a fun nod to Weekend at Bernie’s, which is one of many references to 80s pop culture in the movie we can connect back to Scanlon’s work on Monsters University. There’s a reason that “Quests of Yore” spell book closely resembles a Dungeons and Dragons manual, which for me is just brilliant world building.
The look, feel, and energy of this movie is just so Monsters University, down to the humor itself. As a lot of you know, I absolutely adore that film despite its baggage as a prequel, so this familiar tone only boosts my expectations for a road trip movie with enough twists and turns to make the latest original story from Pixar a positive step forward for their brand.
Pixar Theory stuff:
- The voiceover narration says that “in times of old, the world was filled with wonder and magic.” This might squash any early speculation that Onward takes place in the future, post Monsters Inc., but all that said, it’s hard not to notice a lot of similarity in design between some of these characters and “Monsters.” One era Pixar has never really covered is the long stretch of time between WALL-E and Monsters Inc., so take that as you will.
- The “Visitation Spell” sounds pretty similar to the rules of how the dead can visit the living for “one day” in Coco. And we see the same sort of thing in Brave with how the “wisps” are implied to be spirits of dead ancestors.
- At minute 1:29, you can just barely spot an ad in the gas station referencing Poultry Palace, a fast food restaurant seen in Toy Story 4 and the Toy Story short “Small Fry.”
- In the gas station scene that follows, you can clearly see “Triple Dent Gum” being held by the pixie uttering “you got a problem, Shades?” This particular gum brand traces back to Inside Out, of course. Don’t act like you forgot the theme song…
- At minute 1:38, you can see a formation of rocks that resemble not just Stonehenge, but the rock formation where Merida encounters the wisps for the second time in Brave.
- The tavern is full of creatures that resemble monsters, as noted before. Worth considering if this movie shows us an early inception of how the monsters came to be, but it’s hard to square that sort of assumption with the movie’s established vibe of European folklore. Plus, we would have to explain those two moons, and writing it off as some sort of alternative universe just seems boring to me.
Did I miss anything? Of course I did. Let me know what stuck out to you in this trailer by commenting below.
I wonder if the second moon has to do with an experiment by the ai to create energy somehow. Or maybe it’s another planet that monsters terraformed since earth was overpopulated. They could still go back to Earth but they use doors to travel. I’d be interested to know how that would fit without stretching the theory too much.
EXCUSE ME?! THOSE TWO MOONS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PROOF OF AN ALTERNATE UNIVERESE, AND YOU ONLY WANT THAT NONSENSE FAN THEORY TO CONTINUE?!
This is supporting my OWN theory about you, Mr “TruePixarFanatic”. Check out my comment under “what Pixar means to you”.
It’s interesting that the leading theory on the formation of moons is due to a large body (bigger than mars) crashed into the earth. Is it popular that an event of this kind happened and caused the humans to be wiped out and intelligent animals to evolve into monsters? This could explain why some buildings and structures are slightly adapted by the monsters due to the damage of the collision. Not to be to revolutionary but this could even mean that the monsters are not actually travelling back in time to harvest screams but are traveling to pockets of land that humans survived in. But this may be a stretch. Feel free to add or debate this below
Those two moons in the sky were supposed to be proof of an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE; therefore, “Onward” was NOT suppoosed to be added to that STUPID Pixar Theory! So JUST GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW!!!!
I would rather you just let the whole thing go NOW instead of continuing to profit off your stupid nonsense fan theory…WHY DID YOU EVEN TURN THE WHOLE THING INTO A BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE? IS THIS SOME KIND OF SCHEME?!
No need to shout TheTruePixarFanatic. We’re all just having a bit of fun. However, I think you’re probably right about it being an alternate universe; it’s just more fun to think about different ideas that, however stretched, make for a fun discussion.
I think it might be after or during Wall-E… An Axiom could have had an error in it’s course and crashed on the “Onward planet“ (that’s why we have two moons)… Also, the mountains (Ravens Point) in the back really look like the back of an Axiom if it had crashed… and maybe an elf found out about technology from Earth there and started the whole industrialization of the “Onward planet”. Ravens Point aren’t metal looking cause it has been a very long time ago as said in the beginning of the movie. That’s what I think anyways!
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I DON’T GET IT, WHY DID YOU EVEN TURN THE WHOLE THING INTO A BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE? IS THIS SOME KIND OF SCHEME?!
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Completely random but I like the fact that it’s a book so I can dive deeper into what his theory is. Just like a history theorist or a science theorist who’ve made books why shouldn’t he have the right to? Anyways about onward, I feel like it most definitely has play in the theory but maybe after monsters inc. maybe the witch from brave went into the future to try to help sully due to the history of humans leaving earth, so she shows them more magic hence the magic being taught in the beginning of onward. But magic doesn’t save them because once again, everything needs humans! So they are evolving into more of a human form, taking on cars, school, cities, which in my opinion makes them more connected.
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Did the Earth seen in Wall-e’s Axiom have multiple orbiters?
I’m curious to hear how that fits without overstretching the idea.
The first trailer is so amazing. I am looking forward to the nyt sudoku day the Pixar’s “Onward” release.