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All Three of Pixar’s Billion-Dollar Movies Are Sequels. Now What?

Pixar

From Animation World Network:

Incredibles 2 became just the seventh animated film to cross the $1 billion mark at the global box office. It is Disney’s fifth animated and 18th-ever billion-dollar release and joins Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War as Disney’s third release to reach the $1 billion milestone this year.

Egregious success for Disney in 2018 aside, Pixar is now the first animated studio to release three films with $1 billion worldwide box office. And all three of these films are sequels: Toy Story 3, Finding Dory, and now Incredibles 2. And yet people wonder why Pixar continues to make sequels in the first place. Money speaks louder than critics, I suppose.

Go on…All Three of Pixar’s Billion-Dollar Movies Are Sequels. Now What?

The Real Reason Why Pixar Keeps Making Sequels

sequels

I’ve commented on this topic a lot, particularly this week with the release of Incredibles 2, but Victor Luckerson seriously nails the rise of Pixar sequels with this piece on The Ringer.

How Pixar Became a Sequel Factory:

This decade has been different. Pixar’s next 10 films included six sequels or prequels, among them the newly released Incredibles 2. Its next movie is Toy Story 4, an addendum to a conclusive trilogy that no one asked for. In addition to its two sequels, there has even been a Cars spinoff, Planes, which recalls the low-budget direct-to-video sequels Disney pumped out in the ’90s.

Go on…The Real Reason Why Pixar Keeps Making Sequels

Review: ‘Inside Out’ Is More Than Some Feelings

I’ve written a more comprehensive review for Inside Out elsewhere, but I thought it would be fitting to craft a shorter review for this site’s readers, many of them being longtime fans of Pixar Animation Studios.

Yes, Inside Out is the latest Pixar feature. It takes you inside the head of an 11-year old girl and tells you her story through her five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust.

Directed and produced by the team behind Up, this new story is all about the struggles of growing up. Its lessons aren’t cliche, however, in that the final message isn’t simply “do whatever makes you happy.” This is a staple of children movies that Inside Out rightfully tosses in favor of emotional truth.

inside out review

The movie doesn’t pull its heart-wrenching punches, but it’s also decisively clever and humorous. I haven’t laughed this much during a Pixar movie since Finding Nemo, which I consider Pixar’s funniest film ever. For that reason and others, I consider Inside Out Pixar’s overall best movie since Finding Nemo, and I’ve heard many say that the movie even surpasses that level of praise.

It’s easy to give Inside Out a little too much credit. Many of us have been yearning for an original Pixar feature of this caliber for years, and I’ll admit that I wanted this movie to be good. But I know myself, and I think I’m giving Inside Out the proper amount of praise based on both viewings I’ve had of the film so far.

Grade: A.

This is due to some minor nitpicks I have, including a missing antagonist for the movie and some of the film’s over-reliance on themes from other Pixar movies. If you’re curious about the score, then you can check out my full review on Moviepilot, where I discuss the film in detail.

Extra Credits

  • Yes, the movie will likely make you cry, so I suggest you pick a 3D showing that will hide your eyes.
  • Richard Kind voices Bing Bong, who has some of the film’s biggest laughs, next to…
  • Anger. Lewis Black killed it as my favorite emotion of the bunch.
  • I watched this movie in San Fransisco, which is where the movie takes place. This hyped up the setting for me, in that I recognized some of the locations they took right out of the map. I confirmed this with Ralph Eggleston, the art director, when I met him a few months back. Great guy.
  • LAVA is a fun short, especially if you love the ukulele as much as I do. For that reason, it’s a lot higher on my list of favorite shorts than some others, but I also didn’t love Blue Umbrella as much, so my opinion is weird.
  • Yes, this fits into the Pixar Theory. More on that later.

Inside Out was directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen. It was produced by Jonas Rivera and stars Amy Poehler (Joy), Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Mindy Kaling (Disgust), Lewis Black (Anger), Bill Hader (Fear), and Kaitlyn Dias (Riley).

‘Inside Out’ Is Getting Rave Reviews

inside out reviews

Pixar’s latest film recently debuted at Cannes Film Festival in France, and the reception so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

Kenneth Turan during an interview about the film with NPR’s Steve Inskeep:

Turan: Well, there’s a lot of stuff to like here. Just this morning, “Inside Out” played. This is the new film from Pixar. It’s by Pete Docter, who directed “Up.” It’s a really fascinating, unusual, computer-animated film about what goes on inside the mind of a young girl, the different emotions that hide in her mind, each emotion played by a different actor. It’s very funny. It’s very inventive. And it’s really moving, kind of in the way “Up” was.

Inskeep: And so you came out of that movie with a smile on your face?

Go on…‘Inside Out’ Is Getting Rave Reviews

My Day At Pixar (And Early Thoughts on ‘Inside Out’)

pixar inside out

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Pixar for two days and watch the first 56 minutes of Inside Out. It’s been a lot to process, but I’ve condensed the experience into a post you can read here:

Behind-the-Scenes First Look at Inside Out, INSIDE Pixar Headquarters!

It was a great experience, and I had the chance to chat with Pete Docter, Jonas Rivera, Tony Fucile, and many others. I also saw a screening for the new short, LAVA, which will be paired with Inside Out.

My early thoughts on the movie is that it is a huge step forward for Pixar in terms of narrative. Docter and Rivera have crafted something really special with Inside Out, and I have little doubt it’s going to be a huge success for the studio. The world they’ve created for this movie is more rich, detailed, and inventive than anything the studio has put out so far. I felt like I was stepping into a world built by George R.R. Martin, the author of A Game of Thrones. 

It’s funny. It’s emotional. And it’s fun. I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Once the movie comes out, and you all have a chance to see it, we can talk about how it fits into the Pixar Theory and all of that. But for now, I just want to bask in the fact that Pixar is coming out with another winner.

Dory’s Origins Revealed In New Story Details for ‘Finding Dory’ and ‘Inside Out’

finding dory story

In the last few days, Pixar has come out with a wealth of new details surrounding two of its most-anticipated films: Finding Dory and Inside Out. I’ve compiled some of the new things we’ve learned below!

Finding Dory: Turns out Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) was born and raised at the Marine Biology Institute of California. She was released into the ocean at a young age, and this Finding Nemo sequel will be about the forgetful fish trying to reunite with her long-lost parents,

Go on…Dory’s Origins Revealed In New Story Details for ‘Finding Dory’ and ‘Inside Out’

Why is Pixar Making ‘Toy Story 4?’

toy story 4

When I heard the news yesterday, I almost felt robbed. Excited, but robbed.

The Toy Story trilogy is something I treasure as being one of the few “perfect” (whatever that means) things I grew up with. It’s something that started great, got better and then ended perfectly.

So the news that there would be another entry immediately terrified me. The thought of something sullying the unsullied Toy Story movies is just unbearable.

But that’s my gut reaction, and gut reactions have a tendency to be ruled by emotion, rather than logic. And logically, there a few important things to consider about this news. The “facts.”

This isn’t B Team working on this. Toy Story 4 is reportedly being put together by John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton. If you need a refresher, that’s Pixar’s round table of masterminds. They’re the talent behind pretty much everything good that’s been going on with Pixar for 20 years now.

One thing’s for sure. This project is in good hands.

John Lasseter:

“We love these characters so much; they are like family to us. We don’t want to do anything with them unless it lives up to or surpasses what’s gone before. Toy Story 3 ended Woody and Buzz’s story with Andy so perfectly that for a long time, we never even talked about doing another Toy Story movie. But when Andrew, Pete, Lee, and I came up with this new idea, I just could not stop thinking about it. It was so exciting to me, I knew we had to make this movie — and I wanted to direct it myself.”

Good enough for me.