NEWS: Pixar Gits-Er-Done

CULTURE: Pixar Gits-Er-Done

On the heels of its debut of The Incredibles, Disney/Pixar has released a teaser trailer of their next -- and possibly last -- collaboration, Cars.

The new movie caters to the NASCAR crowd, which has become one of the most popular sports in the country. Voices for the new movie include Owen Wilson as "Lightning McQueen", Bonnie Hunt, Richard Petty, Larry the Cable Guy, and Paul Newman, who remains the oldest driver to win a professionally sanctioned race.

The movie also marks the end of Pixar's run with Disney, who has distributed all of Pixar's feature length films to date. Deals between Pixar and Disney fell through earlier this year, and Pixar was only required to do two more movies, The Incredibles and Cars before it could find another distributor.

Reviews have not been as glowing for The Incredibles as it has for past films, like Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and A Bug's Life; however, Cars has something going for it not seen in a Pixar film since 1999 -- John Lasseter.

Lasseter is Pixar's co-founder and was the director behind Toy Story and A Bug's Life. As a racing fan himself, Lasseter claims his latest film will be unparalleled to his others.

Though we won't know for another year how good the movie will be, it's slated for a November 2005 release date; I'm optimistic. I just hope Larry "the Cable Guy" isn't as predominant in the movie as he is in the trailer.

Fuck it, I don't care what anyone says, The Incredibles was one of their best. Possibly their best, but I'll have to see it again.

In the meantime...LARRY THE FUCKING CABLE GUY???? I've never really fallen in love with one of Pixar's trailers, but that one looked outright bad on the teaser. Owen Wilson is a great choice since his voice is really awesome, but man. I hope they know what they're doing.

Also, John Lasseter is extremely talented and all, but Brad Bird is a better director and the rest (Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton and the other guy who co-directed Finding Nemo) seemed to me to be at least as good, so I don't see being more optimistic about this movie than any of their others.

[Edited on Nov 07, 2004 by TedKoppel]

I could be adding to the ignorance of this thread, but I seem to recall that they just closed their traditional (non-CG) animation studios.

Yeah, but as far as I know, Pixar was their CG studio. And they still do direct to video shit, so I don't think they closed them entirely. I keep hoping Pixar will start a hand-drawn studio since everyone else seems to have given up on it. They're the only ones who seem to know that their movies are successful because they're good, and not because it's 3D animation.

Based on what? His only other movie is The Iron Giant. Compare that to Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Toy Story 2. It's because of Lasseter that this is even a genre.

I would love it if Pixar never had to deal with Disney again

And by the way... why would you call making a movie about race cars "pandering" to the NASCAR crowd? Is there something disreputable or base or common about NASCAR? Maybe if they were making a movie about race cars crashing or drivers killing each other, it might be fair, but I surmise it's only "pandering" because it's a demographic you have a problem with.

I second that.

I dunno, Pro-Wrestling seems much more ripe for a Pixarization and would appeal to the same demographic.

they're only people other than the insanely talented group of chinese and japanese animators currently blowing my mind with their hand drawn / 3d / 3d that looks hand drawn skills, i.e. appleseed.

edited to add: this guy, who is also awesome.

[Edited on Nov 07, 2004 by d20]

Yowch. I didn't catch that on the edit. I'll change it to "caters".

[Edited on Nov 07, 2004 by Sorcha]

Ohhh Pixar...how I love you for focusing on good stories instead of marketing schemes. Seriously. Sometimes I wake up in cold sweat of frustraton when i dream about how much better movies would be if other genres wrote screenplays that had the creativity and cleverness of Pixar.

incredibles. looks sweet.

checked the cars trailer.

Pretty ciertain, that the backing money to start pixar did come from Disney, but that in return Pixar just leased its soul to Uncle Walt for their initial movies. And I believe Disney just closed their in house studio's finding it cheaper to just outsource traditional animation work to other sources based off their own initial designs and artwork.

I saw the trailer for "Cars" for the first time today and well it really didn't impress me all that much, but neither did the visuals in "The Incredibles".

As for work out of the other studios "Shark Tale" is the only thing Dreamworks has done (that I can remember) that has left me flat


TKS

Just goes to show you, one man, however pale and skinny, can make a difference.

Disney had absolutely nothing to do with the start of Pixar. Pixar was originally a subsidiary of Lucas' ILM, which was bought by Steve Jobs and turned into Pixar. Disney is only a distribution partner, much like Fox is with Lucasfilm.

[Edited on Nov 08, 2004 by AceTracer]

exactly acetracer.
pixar is distrubuted by disney.
disney closed its drawn animation studio and opened an 3d animation studio (not pixar)
word has it that pixar opened a drwn animation studio
and will continue to blow disney out of the water.

the incredibles is incredible.
cars looks lame.

is that everything?

listen: this isn't a NASCAR movie. while it has stock car racing elements, 'cars' is about many different sorts of cars. the working title of the project was 'route 66'.

consider: the teaser for 'a bug's life' featured a scene which wasn't in the movie (all the bugs congregating out on the leaf), 'the incredibles' featured a scene which wasn't in the movie (mr. incredible squeezing his fat gut into his hero suit). i'm sure that is what is happening here. and john fucking lasseter is directing it. he knows what he is doing.

Based on the quality of the direction in his two movies. Iron Giant was a feat that is nothing short of stunning without even taking into account that he was working in a studio that was being shut down while he was making the movie. And I thought that the direction in The Incredibles was far superior to anything Pixar has done before. In previous movies, in general the camera was generally invisible. (Generally. There are a few notable exceptions, like in Monsters Inc. when the monsters see a sock on the one guy's back. There is a shot during the scramble for the button that does a really neat job of simulating a running shot on a handheld camera. Just for one example.)

Let me be clear, here. John Lasseter is a fucking genius. I love animation of all kinds, and think he has helped to found what has to be one of the greatest studios of any kind, as well as bringing 3D animation to the masses. In the film history books, his name will deservedly be mentioned as a pioneer of animation. Aside from all of that, he is a very good director of animation. I just don't think the direction in any of his three movies matches either The Iron Giant or The Incredibles. I am speaking very technically here, and not talking about the overall quality of the film at all. I was simply stunned by a number of shots and sequences in The Incredibles, not only in the creativity of the scenes, but the shots and angles that were chosen to show them. The merging of computer and hand-drawn animation in The Iron Giant was incredible and I don't think it's ever been done any better than in that movie.

I'll post my thoughts about the art direction later, but my friend is here. Yes, I get stupidly excited about movies. Fucking bite me.

Have you seen the Tomatometer? The incredibles has 97% good reviews. Granted Nemo got 99, and Toy Story 100, but A Bugs Life got only 91%. Monsters got 95% by the way. All amazing scores, just pointing out that reviews of the incredibles are more than fine. (Shrek 2 got 90, if anyone was wondering.)

I never said they were bad reviews, I said they weren't as glowing as the previous movies. I doubt Pixar could ever make a bad movie, they can't afford it.

The reviews I've seen have been quite glowing. Here, here, and here, just to name a few. And having just come from it, I'll also say it was quite glowing.

We don't always have to put something down to hype something else up.

i'll just go ahead and say that The Iron Giant is one of me and Syd's favourite movies. ever. it rules so hard.

hmmm. pretty sure disney did not close their traditional animation studio...that's their bread and butter and they usually prefer to get by by making derivative animated movies in between award winning masterpieces, and then they exploit those masterpieces by making twelve sequels for video release...

That's why Pixar left...they didn't want to be known as a studio that made a few good movies now and then, they want to be known for making good movies.