The Incredibles 2. 2015

[FatherXmas]

I read somewhere that Pixar's long term plans are to develop 2 new movies and 1 sequel every 2 years.

I worry if they can keep the quality up.

[JWBullfrog]

Your Mileage May Vary, I guess. To me, I took the appearance of the Underminer at the end of the film to be a signal that the era of the costumed hero had returned (Of which we saw the death of at the beginning of the film), not a prospective sequel villain.

The underminer was also a(nother) shout out to Fantastic Four, popping up just like the Mole Man in the first issue.

[JaguarX]

I read somewhere that Pixar's long term plans are to develop 2 new movies and 1 sequel every 2 years.

I worry if they can keep the quality up.

depends. If they can make money off crap, they will, especially if it makes the goal of 2 new movies and 1 sequel every two years easier to obtain.

[Arachnion]

Cars 2 wasn't bad.  It was okay.  Better than the first, at least, which was Pixar's weakest by far.  But those are just money-builders.  Cars makes money.  Money they can use to make other films.

So, okay, maybe Cars 2 wasn't a good sequel.

I disagree.

Cars 1 is a moving, great film.

Cars 2 is weaker, by a good amount, still I enjoyed it.

IMO, they pushed the whole "spy flick" angle too far in 2, then couldn't backup/buildup the other aspects of the movie.

My two cents.

[Segev]

I admit to not having seen Cars 2, so take this as the second-hand analysis it is.

What I have heard of its plot sounds like it has little to actually do with the first movie, and shoehorns an excuse to get the main character from the first into it. It then makes the grave mistake of being an anti-business paean to the theory that oil is evil and profits are evil and good and noble government agencies (possibly international government agencies) employ secret agents to fight these monsters who profit from poisoning the planet.

So, it's basically Fern Gully or Captain Planet done as a Cars-setting movie.

(The fridge logic of the fact that oil to that setting should be what agriculture is to our real world only makes it worse.)

In short, yes, Cars 2, from all I've heard, is somebody's anti-business, anti-oil screed given a veneer of Cars's setting and branding to try to sell it. From what I heard, it did well opening weekend, then word of mouth made it flop overall. So it's not even a well-done screed.

[FatherXmas]

Then you really need to see it because it's not like that.

Have you ever seen any mistaken identity spy spoofs before?  That's the fundamental basis of Cars 2, the spy who isn't a spy but everyone believes is a spy.  Most notable example of the genre is the French film "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" which was remade in the US as "The Man with One Red Shoe" with Tom Hanks in the lead role.  The original French film is funnier.

Have you ever seen any Bond films before?  How many Bond villains are trying to control some industry?  Try not to read anymore into it than that.  If you insist on drawing analogies remember fuel is food in the Cars universe so what saves the day was "organic" fuel so if any business was being bashed it's big aggro.

[Segev]

I might give it a look, but I still think "spy movie" is not a logical sequel to Cars. (I did enjoy The Man With One Red Shoe.)

And I tend to dislike bashing industries in general. ("Organic" foods are such a scam.)

*cough*

Anyway. I'm excited to see an Incredibles 2. I liked all 3 Toy Stories, and Incredibles, unlike Cars, was left wide open with hooks for sequels.

[Rust]

Cars 2 suffers not for plot (or lack there of) or changing up the story. Cars 2 suffers because it makes the comedic relief character the central focus.

Basically, Cars 2 is The Ewok Adventure.

[Arnabas]

Cars 2 suffers not for plot (or lack there of) or changing up the story. Cars 2 suffers because it makes the comedic relief character the central focus.

Basically, Cars 2 is The Ewok Adventure.

This.

I liked Mater just fine in the context of the first movie, but switching roles so that he is the lead and McQueen is basically the sidekick just doesn't work for me.


I have this odd feeling that with all the sequels, we are moving into Pixar's Silver Age.

[Rust]

I can't blame Pixar for going for the low hanging fruit of Sequels. It's easy money for them, and that makes them look good to their Disney overmasters. Disney's "doing it right" by not ransacking the management of the companies they buy (Thus being relatively "low impact" across the board and making their monopoly a generally accepted one), but Pixar still has to be really pressed to show positive growth to keep things that way. If that means drinking from the sequel cup, then that's what will happen.

The biggest issue I have is Pixar doesn't seem to understand the idea behind "sequel" for their other properties. Cars 2 was a radical departure in style and tone from the first film, and Monsters University just flat out confuses me (It's a Prequel that is also a College Movie...about people that scare others for a living. I'm not able to marry Animal House to Ghostbusters no matter how hard I try). Heck, Toy Story - if I'm going to be brutally honest - shifted tone in each of its sequels too. Toy Story 3 is a very, very bleak story even compared with the eminent destruction of Woody and Buzz in the first film.

It's almost like Pixar itself doesn't understand what magic these properties had that grabbed our attention. I fully anticipate the inevitable Wall*E Sequel to involve another Cruise Ship returning to Earth and the clash between they and those that came before in a sort of twist on the Alien Invasion story.

[Segev]

Shifts in tone are not necessarily bad; in Toy Story, they worked. Pixar has always been a bit of an envelope-pusher, not in the actually-quite-safe-nowadays sense that Hollywood "pushes the envelope" by being increasingly raunchy or otherwise inappropriate (or pushing a political agenda popular in Hollywood that they pretend makes them mavericks), but by actually trying new things, artistically.

Pixar also actually, to my understanding, has an incredibly sweet deal in terms of their liberty and self-control. Recall that Pixar was originally a sub-division of Disney that then later was successful enough (but not quite the direction Disney thought they wanted to go) to split off. When they re-merged, it was because Disney was back in an acquisitions cycle, and Disney saw Pixar as doing really well. Pixar was asked to come back, and got elevated beyond being a sub-division. It's called "Disney-Pixar" for a reason, now. I don't think Disney has quite the level of control to arbitrarily move management around that they might with other properties.

That said, Pixar making sequels is not a bad thing; their design model is CGI, and so re-use of actors and sets is an enormous money- and time-saver. And pushing the design envelope to try out other "feels" that their settings can give is fine, so long as they don't go so far off kilter that it's "just weird." As, apparently, Cars 2 and MU are. (Notably, it could be that some of these will become favorites of different audiences who found the originals to be not to their taste, so it's an interesting approach.)

In short, I think Pixar knows what they're doing, and are not doing it cynically but with an eye towards being originators of new models of movie-making.

[Lightslinger]

I really don't get the Cars hate, but I think its because I'm practically from Radiator Springs.

The town I live in is nothing more than an abandoned Main Street and farms now. It used to be one of the main roads into Nashville, but the interstate changed all that.

Cars was all about slowing down and enjoying things like we used to, not constantly looking to go faster like we've been taught. It's an important lesson and I think people miss that and think it's just a race car movie. Cars was just as good as any Pixar movie to me.

I didn't like Cars 2 at all, felt like a cash in to me, but like I've said before I absolutely don't blame Pixar at all for that. If Cars 2 means we get an awesome Incredibles 2, so be it.

[Golden Girl]

I admit to not having seen Cars 2, so take this as the second-hand analysis it is.

What I have heard of its plot sounds like it has little to actually do with the first movie, and shoehorns an excuse to get the main character from the first into it. It then makes the grave mistake of being an anti-business paean to the theory that oil is evil and profits are evil and good and noble government agencies (possibly international government agencies) employ secret agents to fight these monsters who profit from poisoning the planet.

So, it's basically Fern Gully or Captain Planet done as a Cars-setting movie.

(The fridge logic of the fact that oil to that setting should be what agriculture is to our real world only makes it worse.)

In short, yes, Cars 2, from all I've heard, is somebody's anti-business, anti-oil screed given a veneer of Cars's setting and branding to try to sell it. From what I heard, it did well opening weekend, then word of mouth made it flop overall. So it's not even a well-done screed.

Well, it was kinda hard for them, as Avatar had recently knocked the same message out of the park.

[Rust]

Dancing with Smurfs was nothing the likes of Ferngully and Princess Mononoke hadn't done before, though.

[Golden Girl]

Dancing with Smurfs was nothing the likes of Ferngully and Princess Mononoke hadn't done before, though.

They just didn't have an insanely egotistical tyrant of a director to turn them into a pop culture sensation

[FatherXmas]

Shifts in tone are not necessarily bad; in Toy Story, they worked. Pixar has always been a bit of an envelope-pusher, not in the actually-quite-safe-nowadays sense that Hollywood "pushes the envelope" by being increasingly raunchy or otherwise inappropriate (or pushing a political agenda popular in Hollywood that they pretend makes them mavericks), but by actually trying new things, artistically.

Pixar also actually, to my understanding, has an incredibly sweet deal in terms of their liberty and self-control. Recall that Pixar was originally a sub-division of Disney that then later was successful enough (but not quite the direction Disney thought they wanted to go) to split off. When they re-merged, it was because Disney was back in an acquisitions cycle, and Disney saw Pixar as doing really well. Pixar was asked to come back, and got elevated beyond being a sub-division. It's called "Disney-Pixar" for a reason, now. I don't think Disney has quite the level of control to arbitrarily move management around that they might with other properties.

That said, Pixar making sequels is not a bad thing; their design model is CGI, and so re-use of actors and sets is an enormous money- and time-saver. And pushing the design envelope to try out other "feels" that their settings can give is fine, so long as they don't go so far off kilter that it's "just weird." As, apparently, Cars 2 and MU are. (Notably, it could be that some of these will become favorites of different audiences who found the originals to be not to their taste, so it's an interesting approach.)

In short, I think Pixar knows what they're doing, and are not doing it cynically but with an eye towards being originators of new models of movie-making.

Actually no, Pixar wasn't part of Disney and then escaped. 

Pixar was part of LucasFilm who sold them off to Steve Jobs and other investors in 1986.  They created one of the foundations to professional 3D ray trace rendering with RenderMan in 1988.  They became a big name in raytracing, showing off various short films at SIGGRAPH, displaying new capabilities they had been adding to Renderman.  But the market at the time was very small, computers weren't very powerful and it didn't pay the bills.  They eventually got a three movie deal with Disney in 1991 from the notoriety from SIGGRAPH shorts and some commercials they had done.  After Toy Story's success the company went public in 1995.

They did have problems with Disney after the original three movie deal was over until there was a change in Disney's upper management in 2005.  In 2006 Pixar was sold to Disney for a stupidly large amount of money and Pixar senior management essentially took over running Disney's entire animation group, which had been dying off due to neglect by the previous Disney management.  Pixar itself is treated as a hands off subsidiary to preserve the atmosphere that made Pixar Pixar.

[Segev]

Ah, I stand corrected. Thanks for the history, FatherXmas!


And if Avatar (by James Cameron, not "The Last Airbender") "knocked [its] message out of the park," then its message requires a ludicrous amount of author on board and different reality of nature and physics to make it work, and demonstrably cannot on Earth.

I somehow doubt that's James Cameron's intent, but hey. (The animation WAS beautiful in it, though. It could have used a little tighter plotting to avoid certain elements of fridge logic that honestly hurt its message, such as the fact that he never actually tried to make an offer, at all, or even remember to mention the impending mining until it was too late to make it anything but a fight.) But that's plot nitpicking.

[Golden Girl]

A message about evil corporations doesn't need to be set on Earth - just look at the Trade federation

[Arnabas]

I really don't get the Cars hate, but I think its because I'm practically from Radiator Springs.

I liked Cars. I was surprised that my wife loved it. My son loved it, too. I never understood the hate either.

[FatherXmas]

I liked Cars. I was surprised that my wife loved it. My son loved it, too. I never understood the hate either.

NASCAR is popular in the south.  And since all southerners, according to liberal northerners, are all uneducated, bigoted, homophobic, gun toting, religious zealots, NASCAR suffers guilt by association.  And therefore any attempt to have a main character of what is a family film being a NASCAR racer, well that's endorsing the uneducated, bigoted, homophobic, gun toting, religious zealotry of the south.

Yes that is an exaggeration.  However I know a lot of people who think NASCAR is the roller derby or professional wrestling of auto sports, strictly blue collar.  Real auto racing is Formula One or Le Mans style duration racing where you turn both left and right and are watched by people in fancy suits and dresses, sipping wine or mix drinks and arriving there by private jet or yacht.  Definitely not beer drinking folks in motor homes who listen to country music.



I feel that this kind of knee jerk dislike for the sport happen as politics in the US became more polarizing resulting in the red/blue state divide.  When Tom Cruise did "Days of Thunder" aka "Top Gun with Wheels" in 1990 that movie was fairly popular even with non-NASCAR fans.  Now NASCAR racing has to be a butt of a joke like "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" for it to be popular for non-NASCAR fans.

For full disclosure I live in a small town with a half mile oval that has racing every weekend in from late spring to early fall and is the towns primary tourist attraction besides a few camp grounds.