It apparently has become de rigeur to refer to a “Pixar decline” whenever talking about a new film from the animation company. In a randomly selected scanning (from the “top critics” section of Rotten Tomatoes) of about 15 different reviews of their latest effort, Monsters University, right around 2/3 of the reviews made some mention of a decline or slump, some even positing a connection to Pixar’s buyout by Evil Overlord Disney. On the whole reviews for the film have been positive but far from overwhelming, with very few rave reviews. MU currently has a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes but only a 64 on Metacritic (which tries to take into account how much a critic liked a film) compared to the plus 90% averages on both sites for most of the “Golden Age” Pixar films (Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Ratatouille, etc). A pleasant exception is Matt Zoller Seitz’s review over at RogerEbert.com. (As a side note – Seitz note? – MZS has been on a bit of a streak lately of regarding movies more highly than most critics, including Man of Steel and the instant flop The Lone Ranger. He’s perhaps in danger of having his name changed to Matt Troller of Sites, but I’ve enjoyed his amiable takes on these films). Having recently seen the film, I find myself disagreeing with both its tepid reception and the overarching narrative that has been constructed around Pixar’s supposed slide towards mediocrity.
Narratives are a tempting thing for critics to pursue. They help make sense of data, and make for engaging frameworks for readers to latch on to. Unfortunately these narratives often lead to oversimplification and become explicitly unhelpful, especially when critical group think takes over. This has certainly been the case regarding “the Pixar slump”. Here’s my slightly punched up version of the critical narrative surrounding Pixar at the moment:
“Once upon a time Pixar was the leading light of intelligent animated films. They consistently set the bar high, not just using their films as coat racks for pop culture references and celebrity voices but really exploring and pushing boundaries. Films like Ratatouille and Wall-E succeed not just as animated films but as films, period. Furthermore, they have as much to offer adults as kids – there is an emotional maturity about them. But, in recent years, influenced perhaps by their new bosses at Disney, the masterminds have started to churn out subpar work that serves more as cash grab than thoughtful art. This cycle has been dominated by retreads: either sequels (even Toy Story 3 is troubling as an indicator of future recycling), or stories that conform to traditional storytelling modes (the fairytale-esque Brave.) For whatever reason Pixar has decided to abandon its forward looking approach in favor of diminishing trips to familiar wells.”
There are so many deeply flawed but widely held assumptions in this narrative that it is difficult to know where to start. I’ll brush aside some of them for now (the equating of “Disney” with “commodified garbage”, which ignores the large body of quality work put out by Disney, and also the ebb and flow nature of their releases over the past half century; ignoring what a truly incredible streak of films the company made in the early 2000′s, etc) to focus on two primary interconnected charges. First, that Pixar has as a matter of general policy abandoned its daring nature to make “safe” films. Second, that this has resulted in a denaturing of Pixar’s heart and an infantilization of its films. While I can certainly understand if critics – as individuals or even as a whole – have not connected as much with the past few Pixar films, these charges strike me as spurious and untrue.
To situate you, let me explain my Pixar viewing experience. I have seen every Pixar film, with the notable exception of the two movies in the Cars franchise. I have never been disappointed by a Pixar film, but I certainly have them arranged in my mind in a rough tier system (at the top stand Up and the latter 2/3 of the Toy Story trilogy, while I find The Incredibles and Ratatouille to be overrated, though still good). I have always found their films to be engaging on both a visual and thematic level.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. As stated above, I have not seen Cars 2. That was an intentional decision, based on the overlap of little conceptual interest in the film, the savage reviews, and my relative lack of monetary resources. Obviously a vast majority of critics consider Cars 2 to represent the bottom of Pixar’s barrel, by a wide margin. They very well may be right in that assessment. A few notes about this. First off, one film does not a trend make. Just because Cars 2 came on the heels of Toy Story 3 does not mean the two should be closely associated. Let’s assume, as many seem to, that Cars 2 was a blatant cash grab. Why should that taint the legacy of Toy Story 3, a film that expands the world of its predecessors in daring, devastating ways? And why should it forwardly taint MU by association? Crafting a prequel or sequel to a film does not of necessity imply that a filmmaker is attempting to coast. Some do, but many use sequels as a chance to push boundaries or tell a new, interesting story within a familiar context. Second, and I admit I’m on tenuous ground here since I have not seen it, to what extent can the failure of Cars 2 be considered a result of laziness, rather than simply a misfire in execution? The film does not seem cut whole from the same cloth as the original Cars – from what I understand it is largely a spy comedy, definitely not the genre of its predecessor. Could Pixar perhaps simply have overestimated the mileage to be gotten out of focusing on Mater (voiced by the motor mouthed Larry the Cable Guy)? It’s also worth pointing out that, with the exception of the venerated John Lasseter, the people ultimately responsible for the film were relatively new to the Pixar stable. Couldn’t this explain the film’s failure?
Clik here to view.
They call me Mater Salad. Or something.
Let’s leave the Cars franchise in the dust to discuss the two most recent Pixar films, Brave and Monsters University. Both have been accused by critics not just of falling short of the Pixar standard, but of being somehow inessential, showing a marked lack of ambition by the studio. With Brave, the critics seemed to bemoan the very fact that Pixar had undertaken to tell a fairy tale at all, and also tended to regard the film’s plot as predictable. With Monsters University they have again brought up the charge of recycling, as if the desire to revisit a known property propelled the film forward and the plot and setting came strictly as afterthought.
In the case of Brave, I think the film suffers by comparison on a few fronts. First, it was released within a few years of two other animated films set in a broadly Celtic setting. 2009′s The Secret of Kells is an astounding feat of independent animation, featuring some of the most stunning art work in an animated film that I have ever seen. How to Train Your Dragon (Norse, but populated by Scottish voice acting – apparently anything North of London works for Vikings) marks the high point of Dreamworks Animation Studio’s output, a daring, inventive film. To compare a story set in a fairy tale world to one indebted to Medieval illuminated manuscripts or to contemporary YA fiction seems crude at best, but the greatness of those films definitely dimmed Brave’s star to an extent. Second – and this is key – Brave seemed to take a hit from critics simply because it was a fairy tale, a genre which Pixar had not yet explored. It seems paradoxical that a film would be criticized as being safe for exploring new territory, but such is the baggage when your parent company has as its bread and butter depictions of fairy godmothers and wishing star crickets.
Taking a moment to evaluate the claim that Brave features warmed over story beats, it seems a bit misleading at best. Pixar films, as inventive as they can be, have always operated within the bounds of traditional storytelling. In some ways it seems like critics have confused the skill of world building with that of labyrinthine plotting. Pixar’s skill at creating fully fleshed out worlds (think of Finding Nemo’s epic ocean, or the complicated world of Monstropolis) has gone a ways in obscuring its often well worn plots. Indeed, moments of narrative daring that people often point to (the wordless opening of Wall-E, the gut punch of Up’s opening montage) have more to do with world building than the narrative thrust of those films. I suppose you could make the case that Brave, with its already established world of Scotland and somewhat limited scope, fails to world build to the extent of other Pixar films, but the plot itself does not seem any more hackneyed than the classic bildungsroman/rescue template of Finding Nemo or the prison break at the center of Toy Story 3. Pixar has always flaunted convention around the edges of its films, but the center of those films remain fairly traditional. Beneath the strange locales, Pixar films tend to be slightly askew versions of classic genre films. (To be clear, this is not, from my perspective, a reason to criticize the studio).
Which brings me (finally) to Monsters University. Criticisms of the film seem to focus on its genre: the campus comedy centered on the rivalry of jocks vs. nerds. On the surface this genre certainly seems less ambitious than sci fi, superheroes, or rescue missions. However on closer examination the ambitiousness of Pixar undertaking to tell this type of story is clear. First it should be noticed that this genre itself marks new and strange territory for the studio. The choice seems especially daring given the essentially adult nature of the genre. That the film manages to translate the anarchic energy of films like Animal House into a kid friendly format (which necessitates the removal of Dionysian substances and sexual pursuits, both bulwarks of the genre, from the equation) is remarkable. Second, the film successfully continues the world building begun in Monsters, Inc. - no small feat given how inventive that film is. The university at the heart of this prequel stands simultaneously as an homage to classic ivy covered institutions and a knowing tweak at them, flipping the script on universities in the same way Monsters, Inc. presents an off-center depiction of big business.
I suspect that much of the criticism for the film comes from the relative smallness of its scope. The campus comedy genre, by its very nature, deals in low stakes plotting and localization. The action stays primarily in one spot – none of the international intrigue of The Incredibles, or the oceanic feeling of Finding Nemo, or the intergalactic/planetary sweep of Wall-E, or even the world of Toy Story, where the diminutive protagonists make even traffic cones seem like immense obstacles. It lacks even the constant presence of “the other” found in Monsters, Inc., where the human world played a large role in the action (here we get only a brief glimpse of the other side). Come to think of it, this localization has a lot in common with Brave’s limited scope – something also fairly important in the fairy tale genre. Because of the stage of life chronicled – the college years, where nothing seems real – Monsters University also seems to lack some of the emotional stakes of previous Pixar tales, where characters confront a life lived mundanely (Up), family separation (Finding Nemo) or the destruction of the earth (Wall-E).
I say “seems to”, because in actuality Monsters University ranks as one of Pixar’s most emotionally daring films. Playing within the bounds of a “lesser” genre, the film uses its laid back setting to its advantage in several ways. First – and this is one reason that in hindsight the film’s existence seems not only justifiable but necessary – the film focuses on friendship and real interaction between characters. Monsters, Inc. makes Sully (John Goodman) the star, relegating Mike (Billy Crystal) to comic relief. While Monsters University reverses that, keeping a closer eye on Mike, the film really brings out the relationship between them. Starting as rivals, the two only gradually become close. Though this dynamic has obvious echoes of Buzz and Woody (and, well, pretty much every cinematic bromance ever), the Mike/Sully relationship becomes so well shaded over the course of the film that it stands out from any other Pixar pairing. Again, this parallels Brave, which puts at its center the strained relationship between wild Princess Merida and her proper mother. That relationship offers a more nuanced picture of family relations than any other Pixar film (save perhaps that bravura montage from Up, which is an unfair comparison since it stresses a different sort of relationship, and also because it is the best 10 minutes Pixar has ever put on film).
The low stakes of Monsters University also disguise its poignant message, apparently so well that I found only one reviewer who even brought up the main theme (kudos to Justin Chang over at Variety!). True, Mike does not wrestle with anything as grandiose as mortality, or separation from loved ones, but his struggle is among the most melancholy in the Pixar universe. Since childhood Mike has struggled to fit in with his fellow monsters, but dreams of becoming a professional scarer to prove them all wrong. He works harder than anyone, memorizing tome upon tome of scaring theory, practicing technique relentlessly, and acing every quiz thrown his way. In the end, the film’s uplifting, totally sugar coated message is: If you want something with your whole heart and work really hard at it, there’s a good possibility you still won’t achieve your dreams because some things cannot be taught. Some critics have suggested that the film simply parrots college movie cliches, but I’m hard pressed to think of a film in this genre with such a stark ending (SPOILER: both Mike and Sully get kicked out of Monster’s University). Mike has faced up to the realization that he will never be a professional scarer because he just isn’t scary, so he channels his energies into a secondary career choice (scaring coach). What strikes me as bold about this theme is this: to this point in Pixar’s filmography, most of their films have dealt with wrenching emotions that can be situated in childhood. Death and loss may frighten children, but they are very real, plausible situations for them to face. Some Pixar films have touched on work (The Incredibles hints at workplace ennui, and Ratatouille deals with some similar issues, but in a much more positive way), but Monsters University seems like the first world weary Pixar film. If you prefer, the film feels middle aged, aimed more at adults than kids. For all its fun and vibrancy, MU’s color palette comes swirled with gray.
Perhaps Pixar has become a victim of its own success. Critics have become so sure of what a Pixar film will entail that, when one tries something out of the mold, it ironically gets labelled as unambitious. We have confused bigness with goodness, epic ambition with quality. If you like we have come to the place where we so value bangs that whimpers go unappreciated. It is time to reassess the last few Pixar films and stop wringing our hands while proclaiming Jeremiads. I don’t know that Brave stands among the absolute best of Pixar’s work, but it hardly represents a step backward, either – within the confines of what it sets out to accomplish, it works remarkably well. With regard to Monsters University, I hope at least that time will be kind to its legacy, that viewers will come back and appreciate what it has to offer. And let’s stop crying about the souring of Pixar’s brand. Cars 2 lemon aside, the studio’s prospects still seem pretty sweet.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
