And it shows: There is a special quality to these films that makes them different from anything before and almost anything since: an audacious, outside-the-box, un-Disney-ish quality that defies all expectations for a Hollywood family film. These three films - Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up, released from 2007 to 2009 - were all vitally shaped during that transitional two-year period when people at Pixar were thinking about life after Disney. Andrew Stanton ( Finding Nemo), who had been developing Wall-E since 1994, worked on the project throughout this period. In 2005 Brad Bird ( The Incredibles) took over development on Ratatouille, and Pete Docter ( Monsters, Inc.) began writing Up. Those two years between 20, when Pixar hoped to break with Disney and go in a new direction, turned out to be a crucial transitional period. Phase 2: Looking beyond Disney ( Ratatouille to Up) ![]() Disney, meanwhile, began to develop a third Toy Story film to be produced without Pixar’s involvement.īut this parting of ways was not to be: Two years later, in 2006, Disney announced that they had come to an agreement to buy Pixar outright, with Pixar chief John Lasseter taking the reins of Disney animation as a whole. ![]() Then, in 2004, wanting more ownership and control over its future films, Pixar broke off fractious negotiations with Disney for more films after Cars, announcing that they would be looking for a new distribution partner other than Disney. ![]() This is phase 1 of Pixar’s arc as a family entertainment giant: the Disney distribution phase. The best of these (the two Toy Story films Finding Nemo The Incredibles) were flat-out masterpieces, and even the slightest ( A Bug’s Life Cars) were solid entertainments. Pixar’s first seven films, from Toy Story in 1995 to Cars in 2006, were produced in partnership with Disney, which distributed them and reserved sequel rights. Phase 1: Disney partnership ( Toy Story to Cars) Finding Dory could break that trend, though it could be a terrific film and still fall far short of the dazzling achievement of Finding Nemo, the best father-son story in Hollywood animation history.įor several years I’ve mentally grouped Pixar’s feature films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, into three broad phases, following a theory proposed by my friend Peter Chattaway nearly seven years ago. Perhaps the most melancholy thing about the parade of sequels is that Pixar has yet to produce a non– Toy Story sequel that lives up to its predecessor. Last year’s emotional powerhouse Inside Out was as brilliant as anything they’ve done, but it was followed by the much less magical The Good Dinosaur. In recent years, alas, Pixar has stumbled more often than not. ![]() Now, with the release of Finding Dory and The Incredibles 2 in the works, the only original Pixar film from that 15-year run that remains untapped for sequel potential is A Bug’s Life. In those days Pixar seemed to be bursting with such constant invention that sequels (the early Toy Story 2 aside) were redundant, if not unthinkable. Imagine if popular music were basically Frank Sinatra, the Bee Gees, and an anonymous girl group or two, and out of nowhere the Beatles burst on the scene. SDG Original source: Catholic Digestįor 15 astonishing years, from 1995 to 2009, Pixar created a body of work - 10 films - so revolutionary and beyond mainstream Hollywood animation that it’s hard to quantify. Three ages of Pixar In theaters June 17, Finding Dory is the latest in a long string of sequels from a once-brilliant company that, at its peak, seemed never to look back.
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