It has been roughly five months since Toy Story 4 was released in theaters. The 21st Pixar film and the latest sequel to their first ever film, which came out 24 years ago, proved to be a critical and commercial smash, though between the success lie some divisiveness over the film’s narrative choices and whatnot. This is less my review of Toy Story 4, as I already talked about it on Letterboxd after seeing it opening night, but I wanted to talk about something else since the decade is coming to an end in a little over a month…
Toy Story 4 might possibly mark the end of two eras of Pixar…
Their early days when they had a contract with Disney and were simply making movies for them, and this ending decade that was loaded with sequels with a few sporadic originals.
Massive spoilers for Toy Story 4 are ahead, so if you still haven’t seen it, do not read on…
Outside of Cars 2 and Cars 3, these were all sequels to older movies of theirs. The gaps between these sequels were rather sizable, and in turn, a lot of young’uns who caught the films were old enough to be “nostalgic” for them, and thus flocked to the belated sequels. These films were Toy Story 3, the Monsters, Inc. prequel Monsters University, Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, and now… Toy Story 4. Toy Story, of course, was Pixar’s first feature-length film.
If you know me well, I am very critical of nostalgia. Sometimes I borderline dislike it.
Used in small doses, I think it’s fine. Far too often, I think too many writers, commentators, and other folks misuse it. That is just my personal opinion, though, and maybe it’s partially based on how I once misused it over a decade ago. The other half of it is based on how animation – a medium I unabashedly love, can’t you tell by this point? – is perceived by many. In addition to animation’s many stigmas, there are several folks who won’t fully embrace animation unless they want a nostalgia trip, and this probably no doubt fuels a lot of Pixar’s blockbuster sequels to their 90s/early 00s movies.
The one time, in a post-Toy Story 2 world, where Pixar readied a sequel not too long after the original was… Summer 2011, with the Cars series. Cars 2 debuted five years after the first film, which was still arguably fresh in a lot of folks’ minds by then. Many animated sequels, historically, have opened either below their predecessors (see the recently-released Secret Life of Pets 2, or something like Kung Fu Panda 2) or right on par with them. As expected, Cars 2 opened on par with the first, and the third entry in the series opened below those two, but not by too too much. Gradual downward slope in attendance from film to film.
Pixar’s other post-Toy Story 2 sequels have opened long after their predecessors, due to various circumstances. They didn’t “wait” roughly 14 years to make Incredibles 2, nor did they spend years and years trying to get something like Finding Dory right. That’s not how things work at Pixar, or have worked. For example, Finding Nemo was just a one-and-done movie, like most of Pixar’s movies that were made in the early 2000s. You also have to keep in mind that there was a time when Pixar wasn’t owned by Disney, but they had a contract with the mouse. Pixar was contractually obliged to only make original features for Disney (a novel concept nowadays!), so one of the bones of contention in the legendary Disney-Pixar feud of the early aughts was… Sequels. Oddly enough. Even if Pixar wanted to start working on a Finding Nemo follow-up in 2004/05, they would’ve had to have dealt with absolute hell on Disney’s end. It had happened with the one sequel they made during this era: Toy Story 2.
In 2004, after many months of bad relations with their hit-making studio, Disney instead decided to play dirty. If Pixar were to split from Disney after their contract was up (which would’ve ended with Cars), Disney would technically own all the rights to the movies Pixar created up unto that point. They knew that very well and went back on a gentleman’s agreement they made with Pixar heads, and began development of their own sequels to Pixar’s movies. These included a Toy Story 3 where Buzz Lightyear gets recalled, a Monsters, Inc. sequel where Sulley and Mike look for Boo in the human world, and a Finding Nemo sequel that’s shockingly similar to the one Pixar ended up making and releasing in 2016. Disney was basically blackmailing Pixar, and Pixar’s heads were distraught at the idea of Disney having an animation division – titled Circle 7 – of their own making sequels to the movies that they poured their collective hearts into… And in turn using those sequels to compete with them. One could only imagine what would’ve ensued if Pixar did indeed split from The Walt Disney Company in 2004, with Cars being the last “Disney-Pixar” film, and with Ratatouille and all of the following movies being from Warner Bros. or Universal or some other distributor.
Of course, we know the rest. Michael Eisner stepped down as CEO of Disney, his “deputy” Bob Iger assumed the mantle and because he had witnessed everything, he sought to bring Pixar back. Trashing the Circle 7 sequels and burying the hatchet, The Walt Disney Company acquired Pixar for a historic $7.4 billion in 2006, all being settled by the time Cars rolled into theaters. Problem solved, right? Pixar could now make sequels, without having to battle Disney on whether they counted as part of the contract or not. No more contract, they’re part of Disney now, they could do whatever. Pixar always sort of said “we don’t do sequels unless we have a good idea”, and because of all the issues that went on during the early 2000s, no Pixar sequels entered development for a little while. This is why, throughout the 2000s, all of Pixar’s movies were original movies. The studio were never “too good” for sequels; Pixar actually wanted to make a third Toy Story movie as far back as 2000, and reportedly they had ideas for a Monsters, Inc. follow-up as well, but again… Disney wasn’t going to allow that after Toy Story 2 happened. Barely any movement was made on these projects. No Toy Story 3, no Monsters 2, no A Bug’s Life 2, etc. I think Pixar, had Disney not given them so much trouble over sequels circa 2000-2002, would’ve pursued at least one or two of them prior to the decade’s end.
So throughout the 2010s, we got plenty of sequels, with Toy Story 3 kicking everything off.
Toy Story 3, unsurprisingly, entered production right after the acquisition was announced in January 2006. Pixar had only waited about six years to really get started on that movie, so it makes sense, it all lines up. Still, Circle 7 got very far with their Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo sequels, so Pixar had to get to those eventually and overwrite them. Plus, both of those movies were bonafide blockbusters, and Disney obviously wanted more coin from those characters and worlds. Night and day difference from the Disney of 2001, that wanted Pixar to keep making new characters and worlds.
In spring 2008, Pixar had announced an extended slate that officially revealed that a Cars 2 was in the works for a summer 2012 release. A fairly recent film from the studio, getting a sequel. Then you heard that the classic Monsters, Inc. was getting a follow-up, then a Finding Nemo sequel, and so on and so forth. Why was Pixar pumping out so many sequels at once? Why just their older films, even? None of the originals Pixar made after Cars got sequels or will be getting them. Were these movies just nostalgia sequels made for people who were young when the originals first came out?
I don’t view Toy Story 3 & 4, Incredibles 2, and Finding Dory as nostalgia sequels. Same with Monsters University. Just sequels that happened to be a long time coming. Or were they? Then again, creators may not want to revisit certain worlds of theirs. Brad Bird, writer-director of The Incredibles, is usually pretty critical of Hollywood’s sequel binge, and often wants to tell new stories. Bird had various ideas for an Incredibles sequel in the 13 1/2-year gap between the first movie and the second one, but he had often said in interviews that he wouldn’t pursue the project until all the ideas were in place, in turn creating a great, thorough story. That was probably the logic behind Toy Story 4 as well, which got delayed twice and opened *NINE* years after the previous film. Instead of just belting these movies out, Pixar’s creators took their time in order to create what they felt were the best movies possible.
It’s not like Disney’s live-action/CG remakes, which indeed are calculated nostalgia movies. They’re being made because Disney wants to capitalize on people my age: Young adults born in the late 1980s/early 1990s with spending money, who experienced a lot of the Disney Renaissance firsthand, in theaters and on video. Several Disney animated classics were coming to video for the first time during that era, too. Disney is outright capitalizing on the “nostalgia” these folks my age have for their childhoods, when they regularly watched those movies without worrying about being scolded for it… Like they were when they reached age 10 or something.
Of course, I’m not everybody else. I never “outgrew” animation, cartoons, etc. I never “outgrew” toys either, I actually regularly collect them, I buy LEGO sets and build them. I would say that I outgrew things you’re supposed to outgrow. Various immature things that a lot of adults still seem to hold onto, and how! This was because I learned, at age 8, that animation wasn’t kiddie-kiddie stuff. It wasn’t this stupid thing meant to entertain 8-year-old me and other 8-year-olds. I learned that it was an art form, that it took many adults to make off of several drawings, paintings, and other works of art. I draw, I make art, I’ve been doing that since I was a toddler. Put the two and two together: I draw, these Disney movies I love are made of drawings, I love animation! Of course, as I got older, I caught onto forms of storytelling, film-making techniques, and other things that went over my head when I was 8. Or did they? Throughout my preteen years, I came home to my animation and my love for it just grew and grew, no matter what my peers might’ve thought of that.
And yet, Toy Story 4 *did* kind of hit me in a way. I did get a little nostalgia, yes, but it wasn’t what made the movie good. Even with the other Pixar sequels, I do get a hint of past me experiencing their predecessors back in the day when they were fresh and new.
Yes, I pretty much grew up with Pixar. I was three when the first Toy Story came out, and watched it for the first time on video, the VHS of the movie was released nearly a full year after the theatrical release. Different times, kids. You had to really wait for something to come out on video, back then. So Pixar has been part of my life since I was four years old. I had Toy Story on VHS, I had some toys from it (such as a Buzz Lightyear plush and Buzz Lightyear coin bank), I even dressed up as Buzz Lightyear one Halloween. Might’ve actually been Halloween of 1996, just days after the movie came to VHS. A Bug’s Life was the first Pixar movie I saw in theaters, and never missed one since. I caught the Toy Story 3D theatrical re-release in 2009, so I have seen ALL of them in theaters. So seeing Toy Story 4 was like being visited by a friend you’ve had since the beginning. Ditto Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory. In a way, Pixar movies have been like friends. Lifelong friends, not necessarily childhood memories. It kind of makes me think of all the good times in my life, from childhood to now. I enjoyed this movie in 1998, 2003, 2010, that one time in 2014, etc. You can make memories with the movies, but the movies themselves shouldn’t just be memories.
Still, this doesn’t cloud my judgment. Pixar’s movies are not “kids’ films”, they are simply family-friendly movies with stories meant to entertain the young and old and everyone in-between. Toy Story 4 worked on many levels for me because of its story and what it did with the world it is set in, not because “Toy Story was my childhood! OMG I’m a kid again!” I actually didn’t get that with these sequels, though sometimes I do remember being younger when experiencing these films. For example, The Incredibles came out in fall 2004. Fall 2004 was, looking back on it, a time where I should’ve been miserable, but I wasn’t. Outside of various stresses and school issues, I managed to be happy in my life as it was then. I associate many of my fonder memories of fall 2004 with that movie and other things. That being said, I never left it and the other Pixar movies behind. Like “friends”, I stuck with them and they stuck with me my whole life. Various other things I enjoyed back in 2004 (using it as an example again), I don’t enjoy anymore… The Incredibles was just as important to me in 2004 as it is to me now, and every other year of my life. Yes, these movies, these fictional stories set in fictional worlds starring fictional characters, yeah… They’re a bit like “friends”, along with other great movies. I wonder if other movie lovers out there see it the same way I do.
So this brings me to the idea that Toy Story 4 is possibly the end of two eras for Pixar.
Now that Toy Story 4 has been out, the game plan going ahead is all original stories. The aptly-titled Onward is mere months away, Soul has a teaser rolling in theaters, the next five films after that are all said to be original movies. No sequels are currently in store. That applies to both their older movies and their more recent ones. That means no Inside Out or Coco sequels, not that they need any to begin with. Heck, Toy Story didn’t even need sequels, but we got them anyways and they all turned out to be solid to great. Pixar’s movies are all these one-and-done stories that don’t set up sequels (yes, even The Incredibles), which is often why the subject of Pixar sequels usually led to heated conversations. These sequels always face that insurmountable mission. They have to “justify” their collective existences. In a way, this decade being filled with sequels to older Pixar movies (and by older, I mean pre-acquisition Pixar movies… But now you could argue Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up are “older” Pixar movies too) suggests that Pixar wanted to revisit some old wells before saying goodbye altogether and going on new adventures with new characters in new worlds.
The 2020s may very well be just like the 2000s, where it’s just an uninterrupted streak of original stories. Of course, all their classic stories will live on and always be there, but new ground and new stories have to be told in order to build the legacy, to add to an already big smorgasbord of movies. Walt Disney certainly knew that, and mostly avoided making sequels or follow-ups to his animated features. Disney surprisingly respected that tradition for a long while too, but did make the ocassional in-house sequel or follow-up (Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000), now it seems they’ll be more open to making in-house sequels since we are well past the direct-to-video sequel era.
So how about those originals that came out this decade? The originals, for the most part, seemed like a mixed bag for many observers. This decade, we saw Pixar tackle the fairy tale (Brave), along with a new spin on the idea of your emotions being little people inside your brain guiding you through life (Inside Out), a sort of classic frontier/wilderness adventure movie setup with civilized dinosaurs (The Good Dinosaur), and Dia de los Muertos (Coco). That’s a staggeringly small amount of original movies, and we also have to acknowledge the few that were announced (Newt) or hinted at (an untitled film that was to be directed by Teddy Newton and written by Derek Connelly) that didn’t make it into production. Half of the four originals were plagued by highly publicized behind-the-scenes drama, stories that suggested that maybe ascended leader John Lasseter’s highly-praised managing style was actually not all that conducive to the filmmakers. His ouster in the latter half of this decade more than ends the chapter, for sure, but a couple of the next few projects in the works might still have traces of his influence. Might. Onward may still give us a real taste of a new phase Pixar.
The originals themselves, though, I found to be solid to good to sometimes great. Inside Out and Coco were met with universal praise, and both happened to be directed by established Pixar directors, Pete Docter on the former and Lee Unkrich (who left the studio back in January) on the latter. Inside Out was a logical extension of the raw heart of Docter’s own Up with a few very imaginative stretches that Pixar hadn’t quite attempted before (“Abstract Thought”, hello!), and Coco was half a new kind of Pixar film with a story that focused on a culture hitherto untouched by the studio, and one that wasn’t afraid to go down some dark and even downright bleak avenues. Instead of being nostalgic, I embraced these films for what they were. I didn’t want Inside Out and Coco to be “my childhood Pixar!”, because I don’t have a particular “childhood Pixar”. Truly, I want to see a Pixar that grows much in the same way the Disney Studio did from its humble beginnings in 1923 to the release of their fifth feature, Bambi. I extended that same attitude to Brave and The Good Dinosaur, the two originals that were fraught with production difficulties and the two that were unsurprisingly met with more contention. Whoever directed what in Brave, be it original director Brenda Chapman or replacement director Mark Andrews, I still find that film to be a low-key attempt at something new for the studio. Some dismissed it as “Pixar making a Disney film”, because Disney apparently is “only princesses and fairy tales” (literally half of the Disney feature animation library says hi), as if Pixar had no business making a film about a princess. But I saw a film that is first and foremost about a mother and a daughter, who are both stubborn in their own ways and eventually bond with each other during a lightly fantastical journey. The Good Dinosaur I feel is one of the most fascinating films they’ve made this decade, dismissed outright by many and it was sadly their first-ever box office miss. Since this one was outright restarted after its original director (Bob Peterson) left, it doesn’t feel like a hybrid of two peoples’ approaches, and it’s also Pete Sohn’s first feature. I saw a weirdo mix of old-school Western movies and Jack London-type stories and dinosaurs, with a tone that favored a more stark presentation of how ruthless nature can be. It didn’t sit well with a lot of people, but it’s actually a little favorite of mine, and the true outlier of 2010s Pixar offerings. Sorry, Inside Out. Whatever we may me think of these individual films, I didn’t see them as tired attempts at rehashing old magic. I don’t think the likes of Brave and The Good Dinosaur are attempts at recreating the excitement of films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Inside Out and Coco may be clever and full of neat worldbuilding, not dissimilar to what we saw in older Pixar hits like Monsters, Inc. and Up, but they are – for the most part – their own beasts.
Expectedly, some of the sequels made this decade felt like reheats of older formulas. Some of these sequels were even directed by first-timers, like Dan Scanlon (Monsters University) and Brian Fee (Cars 3). Three of them had their original directors returning to the chair. Andrew Stanton came back to direct Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory, and that film in particular had some bits that just felt like they were there just to reference an iconic scene from the original (for example, a back-to-back sequence of the trio reading the turtles to California leading to an encounter with a hungry squid), while the majority of it felt more like a Toy Story movie in disguise; right down to the sloppy third act truck chase. Given director Andrew Stanton’s heavy and instrumental involvement in the Toy Story franchise, it’s not surprising that Finding Dory would take heavily from both the Toy Story movies and Finding Nemo. Cars 3 was consciously just like the first Cars, in aesthetic and tone, all over again with a few new ideas and visual choices. Incredibles 2, for me, hit the fine balance, honoring the original and being its own thing. Directed by the original’s originator, Brad Bird, it wasn’t Bob Parr faces his past anymore, now it’s Elastigirl is drawn into a political conspiracy to shut down superheroes for good while Bob struggles to be a better father. It felt like the right progression. Toy Story 4, whenever we’re following Woody, Forky, and Bo Peep, also feels old and new. The rest of the stuff feels kind of “your old favorites”, and the climax with the RV was a bit too cliche and contrived for my liking. Monsters University is Mike’s story arc through and through, no conspiracies going on beneath the establishment or anything like it, no escaped human kids to take care of, it’s just Mike’s bittersweet journey through college. Very little of it tries to slavishly recreate Monsters, Inc. The few scenes where it involves pivotal elements from Inc. (a visit to the factory, the use of a door station during the climax, and simulator kids) never feel like retreads. I suppose, however, that you could argue that Mike and Sulley’s initial beef is taken wholesale from Toy Story. Maybe it is, but I liked how they were enemies at first. (Please, let’s not get into how the entire movie seemingly contradicts the “fourth grade” line from the original.) No matter what you may think of Cars 2, it is absolutely nothing like the first one or the third one, the latter of which barely acknowledges numero due’s events. Was it all a dream? A Mater Tall Tale, perhaps?
Perhaps the real evolution was going on with the short films. That’s right, those little nuggets of goodness we get before the main attraction. This decade delivered some truly divisive entries like The Blue Umbrella and Lava, mere exercises in anthromorphization not too far removed from various Golden Age cartoons, but pleasant nonetheless to me. Works like Day & Night and Sanjay’s Super Team (pictured to the right) were more exciting to me, as they did some fun things visually. The former housed typical Pixar-looking environments and characters within classical 2D characters, and the latter explored another culture for once all-the-while switching styles of animation to channel something a little less realistic. Bao also was the work of its director, someone who doesn’t happen to be a white guy, and also a beautiful piece on a storytelling level. Interesting things are going on in the likes of La Luna, while films like Piper and Lou are more conventional. Toy Story 4 was the first Pixar feature to lack a proceeding short since the original Toy Story in 1995, this is where SparkShorts comes in.
The first three SparkShorts were released onto YouTube earlier this year, and are now, along with a fourth SparkShort, on Disney+ exclusively. They’re all really cool so far: Purl is more for adults than most Pixar works and it meshes slower animation framerates with the typical Pixar framerate (the titular Purl moves more like a stop-motion creation), while Kitbull is like concept art living and breathing, and that one too has a little bite to it. Smash and Grab is sci-fi flavored goodness, and the beautifully-directed Float features Pixar’s first Filipino characters and it also is very much about what life is like for many a disabled or neurodivergent child out there. Wind and Loop look to continue this, and while it’s a bummer that we won’t see these in theaters anymore, I can only hope that this kind of experimentation we’re seeing here (Disney and Pixar themselves are openly touting SparkShorts as an experimental programs) bleeds right into the features. Perhaps Onward and Soul already have it and we just haven’t seen that yet…
Toy Story 4 ends a sequel-heavy 2010s, and seemingly says goodbye to that whole “classic Pixar” bunch. Sure, Monsters, Inc. is getting a Disney+ TV series next year that’s presumably being made by Disney Television Animation without Pixar’s involvement (not dissimilar to the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command cartoon series), sure we’ll see more theme park stuff with these stories, but in terms of movies? It might be a done deal, at least for a while. Pixar revisited some of their old friends throughout the 2010s, and now looks to make lots of new ones.
Like I said, Onward is a fitting title for the studio going forward…