Prehistoric Mysteries

The Good Dinosaur may not be out for another two years, but movement on it seems to be slow...

No new director has been named since the announcement of the removal in September; original director Bob Peterson was booted off of his prehistoric picture long before that. One could speculate that he was taken off of the project as far back as June, since he went on Twitter hiatus between then and the official announcement.

When Jan Pinkava was removed from Ratatouille in early 2005, Brad Bird took over right away, but this was probably because there were no plans to delay it. Pixar brass had confidence in the Incredibles director, and they felt that he could fix the story in time. And he did...

Cars 2 is a different story, the original director was removed at the eleventh hour. Brenda Chapman was removed a little too late from Brave as well. Both films kept their release dates, which was more detrimental to them more than anything. I don't think Mark Andrews "ruined" Brave at all, had he had another year to really sort things out, he could've turned out something excellent. (No, I don't believe that evil king John Lasseter had him retool the film/dumb it down so that it would suit him.)

I just find it odd that no new director has been named. Last we heard, Lasseter, Andrews and Lee Unkrich were working with co-director Pete Sohn (is he still co-director without a lead director?) to retool different sections of the film. But how long have they been doing that?

Maybe there is a new director in place, they just haven't said anything yet...

But why?

With two years to go, they ought to get one soon...

I also firmly believe that this will not be another Newt situation, because...

#1. When Newt was pushed out of its unspecified summer 2011 spot in late 2008, it was now just "summer 2012". When Brave took the spot, Newt was "to be determined". This film moved from its planned May 30, 2014 release date to November 25, 2015. A specific date.

#2. Word on Newt was scarce. Between the first announcement of its existence to its unfortunate cancellation, you heard nothing about the film. The Good Dinosaur had been detailed at the D23 Expo, and we've heard different things about it over the years such as plot details and whatnot.

Again, I just think the director removal and the delay are a result of an unreasonable one-a-year schedule. Andrew Stanton said so himself...

The other mystery concerns the now confirmed fake poster that hit the other day...

Think about it for a second. How in the world did the individual(s) who put this poster together get those designs? The same goes for the fake Frozen posters that leaked in February. I have a feeling that someone at Disney (flipping on conspiracy theorist mode) takes early designs and throws together fake posters, and then quietly gives them to some site. Remember how an Argentine movie site of all places got the Frozen posters first?

It's like they want to play this little game with the fans who are craving for the real look of the films, as opposed to pieces of concept artwork. As noted elsewhere, The Good Dinosaur's fake poster uses the foliage from the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 poster, plus that sky background looks like a stock image. The logo is poorly integrated into the poster, too. Of course, Pixar wouldn't reveal the look of the film itself this early, either.

Arlo and Spot are identical to what we've seen in the concept artwork, and bugs do play a role in the story but these are probably very early models. Frozen's posters had very strange-looking versions of Anna and Elsa (why some Disney consumer products are using this artwork, I don't know) set against a still of Arendelle with text, snowflakes and other things that looked like they were tacked on. They screamed "fan posters"...

But how did those posters come about? Who is making them? Who is getting the designs? Are they mock posters made in the studio just to get an idea of what the posters in question may look like? What do you think?

If anything, The Good Dinosaur's first legitimate teaser poster will show the bronto protagonist from a distance, and perhaps the kid as well. Who ever is making Pixar's posters (whether it's them or Disney marketing) is good at making teaser posters; the posters are minimal but yet they give you an idea of what the films will look like and feel like...

The Good Decision

Yesterday, I talked about how Pixar's decision to delay The Good Dinosaur was actually a good move. One that inspired confidence in me rather than fear. Now, I will expand on this...

In addition to the announcement of the delay, Ed Catmull once again spoke...

"Nobody ever remembers the fact that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film. Our conclusion was that we were going to give the film some more time."

There you have it. This tells me something... This tells me that the Brain Trust is well aware of the consequences brought on by the Cars 2 and Brave fiascoes. Of course, my theory about those films and what they went through is that the problems were rooted in the release schedule. In April 2008, Pixar confidently felt that Newt would be ready for summer 2011, The Bear and the Bow/Brave would be a fall 2011 release and Cars 2 would be the summer 2012 film. They announced these dates very early on, which may have put tremendous pressure on the filmmakers.

Moving Cars 2 from its original summer 2012 date to summer 2011 most likely put a lot of pressure on original director Brad Lewis, so much so that the film probably was a giant mess by the time John Lasseter took over as director in fall 2010. I think that project was a salvaged one, big time. Not that it says anything negative about Brad Lewis' abilities as a director, I just think that cutting the time given to him took a toll on him and his project. If anything, Cars 2 could have been much, much worse. You heard next to nothing about Newt between summer 2008 and February 2010, when it was reported to be "dead" by a commenter on the TAG blog only for its shelving to be officially confirmed by Pixar in May of that year. I don't think it had anything to do with Rio similarities, that film was in trouble for a while - Rio coming out just didn't help. Brave's director change made more people say that Pixar was on the decline, and Brenda Chapman's comments added to that. But is her dissatisfaction with Pixar's work ethic all just sour grapes? Insinuating that Pixar does the same old story over and over makes me question her, I didn't hear such talk from Jan Pinkava or Brad Lewis. Bob Peterson seems to be taking his ousting from his project pretty well, I'd say. Or were the Brain Trust truly unfair to Chapman? No clear cut answer here, as both sides are contradicted. (I'm not getting into that again.)

Then you got the sequels, but that's a moot point because Toy Story 3, Monsters University and Finding Dory had to be made - no two ways about it. Circle 7, anyone? Plus, Andrew Stanton himself confirmed that Disney did some nudging, but Stanton essentially said, "We tell them that we'll do it when we are ready." This is why you didn't see a Nemo sequel 3 years ago, and why you won't see one for another 3 years. Cars 2? Bob Iger probably coaxed John Lasseter into making another one, but again, that's my own little conspiracy theory. It's a coincidence that these director changes occurred when all these sequels were coming, because three of the four sequels had to be made, the fourth was obviously greenlit for the green paper, and Pixar wanted to take their time on the main three that they had to do. Toy Story 3 is considered a masterpiece, and Monsters University got better reception overall than Cars 2 and Brave... As if sequels/prequels are such a bad thing...

About Monsters University... The only big complaints I see about the film basically say "It was too safe." I heard no criticisms of the story or comic relief or whatever, just "It was safe/dull/bland/lacking/vanilla/etc." The consensus seems to be, "It's Pixar's best since Toy Story 3, but it's not all that great."

That didn't go through a director change either, as the story was pretty consistent and smooth. Cars 2 and Brave's stories aren't bad, they just have some problems, Cars 2 especially. Monsters University was always a summer 2013 release too, it wasn't announced back in 2008 or 2009. By the time it was announced during the spring of 2010, it was probably already in good shape. The November 2012 date was probably just picked by Disney to hype it up, after all it was first announced as "Monsters, Inc. 2" back then. Looks like Dan Scanlon had time to craft a solid story, because he had a lot of time to do it and he had no officially announced release date on his back.

Not to mention, nothing is ever set in stone in the world of animation. A film could be well into production when the people behind it realize that there are problems. Sometimes a last-minute fix or two can work, just look at Toy Story 2! Many Disney films apply as well, and probably countless other animated films from other studios. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois didn't have much time to retool a very problematic How To Train Your Dragon over at DreamWorks, but they gave the project their all and saved it from becoming a possible disaster. Sony Animation's Hotel Transylvania went through six different directors and took six years to finally complete. Heck, the world of live action films is no stranger to this!

But the two-in-a-row director musical chairs debacles at Pixar inspired a lot of skepticism in fans and many other people, and when it seemed like The Good Dinosaur would restore the studio's "former glory" (in their eyes), Pixar surprised us yet again. This time, it was a veteran who was being removed from his project... Not a relative newcomer or someone who hasn't been there for a long, long while. Even I got very worried, but now there's hope...

I personally believe that John Lasseter and the Brain Trust are more than concerned about what just happened between the fall of 2010 and the summer of 2012...

The Cars universe is very near and dear to John Lasseter, it's such a personal endeavor for him... And he thought he saved the sequel from turning out to be a complete disaster, only to see the finished film get fired at with scorn and absolute disapproval - to the point where people gave up being fans of Pixar. Lasseter defended his film, using "audiences loved it" as an excuse... If anything, that suggests that the criticism really hurt Lasseter's feelings and he wouldn't be willing to address the film's problems. Listen to commentary on the Cars 2 Blu-ray; he clearly loves this universe and is very passionate about it.

He's also been rather quiet about Brave and even Monsters University. You don't sense much enthusiasm from the Brain Trust towards those films, the way they were enthusiastic about films like Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 didn't seem to be there. I think they've realized that removing the directors and not delaying the films in order to salvage them was a series of bad moves. The critical reception of the last three films, the general "Pixar is declining" mood coming from the ever-so-nice press and the overall backlash didn't pass by them. I think they are aware that they inspired so much worry, skepticism and even anger.

This all explains to me why The Good Dinosaur was ultimately delayed by a year and a half... Pixar truly wants a quality production here, and they'll do whatever it takes to ensure that the film is great. Ed Catmull more than sums it up in his statements. The Brain Trust and Lasseter aren't the heartless creativity-killing bastards that everyone is making them out to be, or so it seems for now. Should The Good Dinosaur turn out to be a bad film, then I say we should question what the Brain Trust is doing - not necessarily yell "They were evil!"

Pixar delayed it knowing that they wouldn't have something ready for audiences next summer, they were willing to break the one-film-a-calendar-year tradition to save this film from being below par. Catmull points out that people will remember a "bad" film (although many will say "But Cars 2 was bad! Catmull is just sugarcoating things!")...

If anything, this situation is a combination of the Ratatouille pre-production woes and the release schedule causing problems...

There was a time when you had to wait for Pixar films, you did not have the privilege of getting a new film from the Emeryville studio every year. I became a big fan of Pixar at the age of 10 back in fall 2002, after numerous repeat viewings of my Monsters, Inc. DVD and immersing myself in the set's two discs worth of bonus features. When Finding Nemo came out (I was in fifth grade at the time) and I saw the release date for The Incredibles at the end of the teaser, I was basically thinking, "Wow... That's a long wait. I'll be in seventh grade by then!" When Cars was delayed from November 2005 to June 2006 - a month after the trailer debuted no less! - I was pretty upset about that. I remember thinking, "Awwww, that's way too long!"

Flash-forward to today. Pixar releases one film every summer, and plans on releasing two in a calendar year every once in a while in addition to one every year. That's a big feat. DreamWorks releases 2-3 films every year, but to be honest, I don't think all of their films are of high quality. For every How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda 2 leaving me satisfied, there's a Megamind or Croods that fails to impress me.

Andrew Stanton spoke up about this new scheduling problem a few moths ago...

"We can’t have the amount of labor it takes to do these movies at the same time because it becomes unsustainable economically, but it means if one director has a problem, everybody’s connected to the same bed sheet. You pull one end and it makes wrinkles in the other one. It’s a new problem."

He hit the nail on the head. A Brain Trust member no less! In addition to that, he mentioned that hefty $200 million budgets and the ramping up of the schedule puts "strains" on the studio's resources.

I mentioned this earlier in the month, the whole "one-a-year" thing can create problems and Stanton more than sums up what I thought: It was the problematic schedule all along, not the Hawaiian Shirt Man being some egotistical devil or the Brain Trust being control freaks. Again, look at Walt Disney Animation Studios' last five films...

Cars 2 and Brave could've been beyond messy due to the release dates approaching so soon, and the director changes were a result of the Brain Trust acting fast. Consider it like panic mode for them: "The film is in trouble and the release date is almost here! It's got to be fixed!" Again, Cars 2 had the unfortunate date switch happen when the film was still in development. Brave had to be finished in less than two years. The new director of The Good Dinosaur has more than two years to fix the film, and with no film coming out next year, there will be more concentration from everyone else involved. I'm more than glad that Pixar delayed this film.

Now you may ask, "Now that they have time, why is Peterson not back on board?"

Again, Jan Pinkava... Pinkava just wasn't fit for directing his personal project, Ratatouille. It was chock full of issues and it just wasn't working. Brad Bird had to save it, but in the process, he made a modern masterpiece and one that's called the pinnacle of Pixar's storytelling prowess. Perhaps Bob Peterson just couldn't make this film work, much like how Pinkava couldn't make Ratatouille work. Brad Lewis and Brenda Chapman, from the way I see it now, couldn't work wonders within such a tight schedule. If Cars 2's release date was undetermined for a long while, it probably would've been a pretty strong film, ditto Brave. Pixar can't assign dates to films anymore, but rather let them and their creators breathe... And when one is truly ready, then ink a release date for it.

I understand that competition is wild, and first pick is a big deal, but... Disney and Pixar proved earlier this year that you can pick a bunch of release dates for films, but not tell anyone what exact films are hitting theaters on those dates. If I didn't read up on Blue Sky Disney prior to this year's D23 Expo, I'd have no idea that Zootopia was going to be the March 2016 release. I'd have no idea that the November 2016 and March 2018 films would be Giants and Moana. If I knew about the latter two films, I wouldn't know exactly when they'd be coming out. Remember, Bleeding Cool's Brendon Connelly implied in an article that Giants could very well arrive at movie theaters long after 2016... But we all know it's definitely the fall 2016 release for now thanks to Blue Sky Disney and the information that Honor Hunter gets.

So in the future, Pixar should just pick dates and not say what's coming out on those dates. Teddy Newton's film for example - don't say it's slated for fall 2017 two or more years before it's expected to hit theaters! Same goes for Mark Andrews' untitled project and Dia De Los Muertos! Disney Animation isn't outright saying that Giants is coming in November 2016, heck they're not even saying that Zootopia is the March 2016 release! By not setting the dates in stone, you're not pressuring your creative teams with ticking clocks. It all brings me to a specific line from Toy Story 2... I bet you can guess what it is...

That's right... "You can't rush art!"

In the end, I think Pixar just learned a lesson. It's life, people make mistakes and learn from them - Pixar is no different. The people there are not gods of perfection or anything of the sort, and they know that. Let what happened from the fall of 2010 to the summer of 2012 be the mistakes, and these few weeks being the "learning" phase. The resulting films released from 2011 to 2013 forms the sort of punishment (okay, that may sound harsh - but you get the idea, Pixar doesn't need to be "punished") for what they did, and now they're attempting to do better next time around. And if you ask me, that's welcome.

At the same time, I can accept the fact that not every Pixar film is going to be perfect. I'm totally fine with a string of greats and a string of not-so-great films. I'm no longer in shock, because we got two films that had problems and a film that was not spectacular plus... They're only human and they can't make every film great or perfect. It's reality, Walt Disney's animation unit went through the same kind of phases where the films weren't up to snuff and no one seems to bat an eye.

Just think about it too... Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur are both coming out in the same calendar year... What if both are bonafide critical hits? What if both are considered excellent by critics and audiences? I can just hear it now... "Pixar, what a comeback!" "They picked themselves up out of that slump!" "Looks like John Lasseter isn't so bad after all!" The tides will turn fast, really fast. People will be praising them out the wazoo and covering up their snide comments they made during the last few years. I bet it'll happen, and I'd gladly eat crow if it doesn't.

Almost as if Pixar is well aware of the backlash and the reaction to their last three films, and they're up to something... They're making sure that they make a big splash in 2015...

Moving Away

It looks like Pixar's big green brontosaurus is not stomping into theaters next summer...

Yes, in a rather shocking but inevitable move, Pixar's The Good Dinosaur has been delayed. It makes sense because no new director was announced for the project after Bob Peterson was booted off. Only a few Brain Trust members are "shepherding" it and fixing whatever problems they have with it.

So when is it opening now? November 25, 2015...

That was Finding Dory's original release date, now that sequel has been moved back... To June 17, 2016. This one will go head-to-head with How To Train Your Dragon 3, and it'll make for a very interesting animation box office battle. If I were Fox, I'd move Dragon 3 as soon as possible. Finding Dory is poised to be a box office gargantuan, and if Dragon 2 pulls a Despicable Me 2 next summer, then it'll be massive as well.

On top of that, it looks like we'll have to wait till summer 2017 at the earliest for Lee Unkrich's "Day of the Dead" project... Disney not officially announcing that his film wasn't the summer 2016 release makes a lot more sense now, ditto its absence from D23...

Inside Out is still slated for a June 19, 2015 release...

2014 will be a Pixar-less year...

It makes me wonder if Party Central - the Monsters University short that was supposed to be attached to the dinosaur film - will end up going on the Monsters University Blu-ray. That is, if they haven't produced the actual discs yet...

Pixar's higher ups can't deem that Inside Out is strong enough to enter production for the summer of 2014, there's very little time and Disney decided to fill The Good Dinosaur's original May 30th spot with tentpole/pointless fairy tale reboot Maleficent.

Could this be like the old times? When you didn't get a Pixar motion picture event every summer?

If anything, this could be a very good thing. You heard that right, a good thing...

I'd rather have a good Good Dinosaur than a rushed Good Dinosaur, and I think Lasseter & Co. are well aware of this. They've already got a bad reputation for firing directors, so it's better that they give whoever takes the throne a lot of time to sort out the problems. I just sincerely hope that this is not a Newt situation where they delay the film, only to outright cancel it. I still think that Newt isn't dead in the dirt, it's just sitting on the shelf, waiting to be re-evaluated.

Logically, nothing can really take the summer 2014 spot now, so we'll have to wait till a 2-a-year deal the following year. It's almost like Walt Disney Animation Studios' schedule, two films in 2016 and two in 2018 due to Pixar releasing two of their films in 2015 and 2017. Maybe Pixar will release two films every other year (was Ed Catmull alluding to this a couple months ago?), rather than one each year. If it ensures quality/non-rushed films, then I welcome that. It'll be abrupt, since we've been used to getting one Pixar film every year.

When Peterson was removed from the project, I speculated that Pixar's recent director-change problems were due to their one-a-year schedule and the fact that their films' release dates are set in stone a long while before they hit theaters. Maybe breaking that current one-a-year tradition will relieve the animators and directors of tremendous pressure, so they'll be able to have their stories in fine shape before production begins thus... No more director changes! That is... If it's not true that John Lasseter is an evil tyrant hellbent on tooling everything to be his way.

Anyways, see where I'm going with this?

No films are scheduled for release in 2014, thus allowing Pete Docter to perfect his film, the replacement director to perfect The Good Dinosaur, and Andrew Stanton to perfect Finding Dory. Unkrich will have more than enough time with his film, and Teddy Newton's film could very well be the autumn 2017 release rather than what a lot of people think will be the autumn 2017 release - a sequel. Give them time, I say.

We might see even more changes to the schedule, but in the mean time, I hope that The Good Dinosaur turns out to be a fine film whoever is directing it. Maybe things will start looking up, and all these troubles with director changes will be a thing of the past. A rather rough phase, if you will.

Stay optimistic...

And just watch... People think Pixar is on the decline? Well what's a better "comeback" than two great, original films being released the same year?

Good Dino, Bad Times

It's official... Bob Peterson has been removed from the director's chair of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur...

Co-director Pete Sohn is still on board, John Walker has "left" the project to work with Brad Bird on Tomorrowland. This makes sense, since the film is coming to theaters the same year and he also produced Bird's The Incredibles. So, why was Peterson removed from his very personal film?

Ed Catmull surprisingly made a statement. According to him, Pixar's top brass removed him from the project because many creative choices were apparently "unmade" and the release date is approaching fast. This implies that Peterson's film ran into some major story issues, but we heard the same story when it came to Cars 2 and Brave. Why the director removal when they can just fix the script?

He went on to say...

"All directors get really deep in their films. Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors... are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up. I would go so far as to argue that a lot of live-action films would be better off with that same process."

"We've been around long enough to know it will never be smooth. But getting this process smooth is not our goal; our goal is to make the movie great."

So was that the reason why Brenda Chapman was fired from Brave? Is Catmull revealing a legitimate problem with some of Pixar's rookie directors? Or is it all just PR sugarcoating and that Lasseter just wants these directors off of projects so things go his way? "Really deep"? Was Bob Peterson, a veteran who has been there since Toy Story was in production, really taken off of the film because he was really buried in it? ("Dwelling in the Cretaceous") Is it possible that Pixar's Brain Trust doesn't have too much faith in first-time directors and takes them off of projects a little too quickly?

Peterson and the comedic canine he voiced...
Image from Pixar Talk.

However, Catmull's "live action" comment from that excerpt also hints that Pixar is picking up a new business model: Having directors let their ideas flourish for the first few years of production, then remove them, and get other people to "finish" the work. A weird model, one that can be seen as both unfair to directors and unorthodox. It's either that, something else entirely or the executives are losing their minds. If Catmull thinks most live action films should go through this, then there's something we don't know. What if Cars 2 and Brave were seriously problematic and needed salvaging, even if the finished film displayed mixed results?

In my opinion, Monsters University was Pixar's most consistent film since Toy Story 3, and there was no director change there. That kind of says something, or maybe it doesn't. Pete Docter also added that the way the studio chooses directors is "imperfect". That also says a lot. He also said, "We take our best guess. We try to diagnose: What are the necessary skills? How does this person measure up? They're going to need buttressing here, here they totally shine, and try to pair them with the right people. But if you figure it out, let us know."

Maybe that's Pixar's current problem. Maybe the executives' willingness to let rookies take the car for a drive blinds them to the possible ramifications? Perhaps Pixar's top brass needs to choose the directors more carefully, because some may be able to direct while some can't. After all, we also have no idea what shape Disney Animation's Bolt, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were in when their respective original directors were behind them. But it seems strange... Jan Pinkava getting removed from Ratatouille is one thing - during pre-production no less - but why 3 first-time director removals in a row when physical production is underway?

On the other hand, Peterson isn't much of a rookie himself, but he's never been a lead director before. Brad Lewis (he produced Ratatouille) and Brenda Chapman (she never directed, produced or wrote anything at Pixar) were Pixar rookies, Peterson co-directed Up and wrote several other Pixar greats from Toy Story 2 to Finding Nemo, as well as voicing numerous characters such as Roz, Mr. Ray and Dug. This makes the removal all the more confusing, and again, the fact that it's the third one in the last three years makes it suspicious... Very troubling...

Peterson was removed from the project earlier in the summer. His absence (and Walker's) at D23 has been fully explained, and right now, no new director has taken the reins. Currently, John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich and Mark Andrews are working with Pete Sohn to fix various sections of the film... Will they settle on a director? Will it just be credited to Pete Sohn with Bob as co-director? Or will the finished film say it was directed by both much like Brave? Or will they get someone else to helm the project, so it's a [insert Pixarian here]-directed film? Is it Bob Peterson's The Good Dinosaur, but "finished up"?

I've been thinking this for a while, and this is my top theory that explains what is going on with Pixar: Could it be that Pixar's recent problems could come from their release schedule?

Since 2006, Pixar has one film ready for release every calendar year. Starting in 2015, they're going to be releasing two films every other year. Is this schedule causing problems for projects? That could be it, considering that the directors don't have much time to iron out the supposed problems with their films. (Catmull's release date comments add to this, if you ask me.) Maybe Pixar should loosen their schedule a bit, if it means better quality films and less behind-the-scenes worries. Maybe they can space things out a bit, so it doesn't have to be "one every summer". Animated films do very well at several other times, whether it's March or November. Maybe Pixar should take note of this, so they don't come down to rushing films and showing directors the door. Like for instance, what if "X" film was a June 2018 release, "Y" film is a November 2019 release and "Z" film is a summer 2020 release?

What if Pixar got different story/director units to tackle different films? Maybe this could boost rookie directors, and what if they didn't announce and pick dates so soon? What if Pixar simply secured a bunch of dates (for instance, all the 2016, 2017 and 2018 ones that they claimed earlier in the year) and the execs told the various crews, "Take your time, we'll release whatever is ready"? Look at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Nothing is really set in stone for their 2016 and 2018 releases; Zootopia could very well be the fall 2016 release with something else preceding it. Will Giants precede it? Or will it come after some time in 2018? What if something like Moana is going along swimmingly and Lasseter decides that's ready for 2016? Maybe sitting it out for a year allows directors and writers to breathe a bit when running into story problems.

This is currently my new theory, but it really could be anything: Lasseter is a tyrant, he's paranoid about his baby, he's unsure about first-time directors, etc. Maybe The Good Dinosaur was shaping up to be a subpar film. Maybe Peterson's direction wasn't up to snuff. Who knows, who knows...

The good news is, Peterson is still there and he's got another project that he's supposed to direct. Pixar's general manager Jim Morris certainly hopes that he stays, but something tells me that he might leave. After all, the other removed directors did so and so did a lot of animators.

At this rate, I can only hope for the best and that bridges are not burned. Hopefully the removal isn't the result of some nasty drama, and that Peterson had to step down for the good of the project. I certainly hope that he stays and gets to tackle his next film, and hopefully The Good Dinosaur turns out to be great. We shall know, come this May...

The Maturing Phase

Yesterday, the animation community was struck by a rather troubling rumor that may very well be true. It seemed that another Pixar production had to go through a director change, always a rocky thing in the world of feature animation. Pixar had done this twice in the last 3 years, to two films - Cars 2 and Brave. Many viewers and critics were indifferent to those two films, and if Brave got positive reception, the reviewers would still say it wasn't up to "Pixar standards". You immediately heard about Pixar's "decline" and people shouting from the rooftops that the "Golden Boy" of animation was no longer golden.

Of course, I reject the notion that Pixar is on the "decline". Instead, I think Pixar has succumbed to reality. A studio, animation or not, can't just make excellent films forever. Cars 2 and Brave more than proved that to me, and it should prove that to others. I've said many times that I'm fine with Pixar not making absolute greatness every year, but the amount of backlash they are getting is misguided in my eyes. The way I see it, people are acting as if Pixar was their parent or something... A parent who betrayed them.

No, I think Pixar is just an animation studio like everyone else. Their first eleven films, I think, are some of the finest animated films out there... But it's totally okay if they make a string of not-so-great films, it was only a matter of when, not if. It's impossible for a group of people to make perfection or greatness with every outing, it's just that their first eleven films (or ten, or nine, depending on who you ask) came as a shock to the world - that many hits in a row!

Walt Disney did the same during the Golden Age, a great streak that was fueled by Steamboat Willie and the Silly Symphonies, one that kicked off with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and ended with Bambi. Notice in the early 1940s, the studio was still relatively young and the people there were young, hungry for ambition and risk-taking. But, alls well didn't end well. World War II not only cut into Walt's ambitions, but Walt was also at odd ends with a lot of his animators as his studio grew. The Disney strike, anyone? "The Reluctant Disney"? Losing great talent like Art Babbitt and Bill Tytla?

Look at where a lot of that talent went: The UPA, a promising, up and coming studio that people started to praise for their innovations and taking animation in new directions. Some even went as far as saying that they were superior to Disney, and that they made true animation. I somewhat liken this to people who are bowing to DreamWorks now that Pixar has made a few arguably disappointing films coupled with nasty studio politics (i.e. the Brave/Brenda Chapman fiasco), taking little PR things like "DreamWorks allows artists to be more creative" and running with that, thinking that they are now the studio to turn to... As if one studio can be the "great studio" in American feature animation.

The whole strike debacle also showed that Walt himself wasn't perfect, and many accounts of the man vary - he was either a great man or a vile monster. John Lasseter is often called the modern-day Walt Disney, and this is probably why. With such power and success, he's bound to make some big mistakes and ruin relations with others. Brave director Brenda Chapman herself is very vocal about her situation, saying to The New York Times that Pixar is "all John's show", but at the same time she burns bridges by saying that they do the same thing over and over again. Pixar is now being accused of the "buddy movie" formula because of this, as statements like let the dissenting voices come into the limelight. This "formula" is something that barely anyone mentioned 5 years ago... And by 2008, Pixar had many "mismatched buddies" as the leads of their films: Woody and Buzz, Mike and Sulley, Marlin and Dory, Lightning McQueen and Mater, Remy and Linguini, WALL-E and EVE, and that following year - Carl and Russell.

But with Pixar showing weakness, it's the cool thing to engage in schadenfreude and start picking apart their earlier films while also making a joke out of the studio in general. In my eyes, that's bending over backwards. I see a lot of the angry and snarky reactions to recent Pixar news as foolish, fueled by emotion and disappointment rather than logical thinking. I get the sense that a lot of people counted on Pixar to do no wrong, and were perhaps a little too connected to them and their films. They act as if the studio was a best friend that spit in their face. Pixar is a studio first and foremost, and a business at that. They are part of a massive corporate empire and have been for 7 years. John Lasseter is also in a very high and corporate position. People also change, whether we like to accept that or not.

It's easier to just dog on them and humiliate the mighty, rather than mourn or be concerned about what's going on and hoping for the best. If this rumor about director Bob Peterson and producer John Walker being removed from The Good Dinosaur recently is true, I'll be very, very concerned. I'm not going to run around saying "That's it! It's the end! Pixar is dead!" or "John Lasseter is a horrible, horrible man!" I'm just going to be a little disheartened, and if the film turns out to be good, I won't be too upset. I'll only fret if it's truly bad, but in my eyes, Pixar has yet to make a truly bad film. The dreaded Cars 2, in my eyes, wasn't even mediocre.

Many are questioning Lasseter's decisions, and I will do the same if the removal actually happened. I understood why Brad Lewis and Brenda Chapman might've been removed from their projects, as I highly doubt that Lasseter would just soullessly kick them off just to make the films his way or to dumb them down. I still thought Brave was good, and Cars 2 was in big trouble before Lasseter ever got to finishing it - just watch the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray (yes, I own it on Blu-ray) and also consider that Lasseter took it over at the eleventh hour. If anything, he probably salvaged it like he did with Disney's Meet The Robinsons. Brad Lewis was working with a flawed script, and maybe Lasseter felt that he couldn't handle it. Or maybe since Cars is his baby, he felt the need to take it over. We don't know.

To say that Lasseter wants all the films to be retooled his way sounds a bit plausible, since he has a lot of power right now and that Steve Jobs is no longer there... But Steve Jobs was still alive when the director changes happened on Cars 2 and Brave. This leads me to believe that Lasseter and maybe the rest of the Brain Trust know something we don't know. We have no idea if Lewis' Cars 2 and Chapman's Brave were better or worse than the finished products, and I wish people didn't assume that both were better and that Lasseter/the Brain Trust bastardized them. We don't even know if The Good Dinosaur is/was shaping up to be below par, or if it's a masterpiece that won't be. Our answers will come on May 30, 2014... But there's more to it than just director changes.

Let's also not forget that Lasseter has replaced many directors at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the results have been very good: Bolt, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph went through similar phases. But the difference is, with Bolt and Ralph, the directors were removed and new stories were created instead. Chris Williams and Byron Howard's Bolt replaced Chris Sander's American Dog, Rich Moore's Wreck-It Ralph replaced Sam Levine's Joe Jump. Tangled was a different story, as Glen Keane stepped down for health reasons even though his project hadn't quite been perfected in the eyes of Lasseter. Wellins stepped down as well, but he's still there and he's working on a new film for the studio. Keane didn't just leave Disney, he retired. It couldn't have been a Brave situation where things seemed to end badly.

Back to Walt. Walt Disney's studio didn't hit rock bottom after 1942, but they had to scale back. The package features released between 1942 and 1949 certainly weren't Snow White or Pinocchio. A lot of them were a lot safer than the first five films, but with flashes of brilliance. The cartoon shorts were erratic, some of them were on the bland side while others were strange, as if Disney was trying to mimic another style rather than cook up something new. Disney was known for not being like the competition, whether it was Termite Terrace or the Fleischer studio or the MGM studio. For instance, many have the noted similarities between the 1945 Donald Duck short Duck Pimples and Tex Avery's cartoons. In his 1994 book Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation, animation historian Charles Solomon wrote "Duck Pimples is one of the first Disney cartoons that clearly emulates another studio's style - something that would've been unthinkable ten years earlier."

Of course, Cinderella lifted the Disney studio out of their little lull of sorts. Cinderella was not a very risky or daring film, but one that had a strong story nonetheless and the elements that made his first five films so great. Had Cinderella went ahead and tried some grand new things for the medium, it would've easily been a top three contender on my list. By 1950, Disney had adopted a new house style and one that they stuck to for the remainder of the decade, a style that was used after Walt's death until the 1980s. With the success of that film behind him and the live action plans going full steam ahead with Treasure Island that same year, did Walt continue to take risks? Sometimes...

Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, for all their polish and good storytelling, aren't huge daring feats like Pinocchio and Fantasia, but luckily they were still good films and ones that didn't try to recreate earlier successes. The Walt era gets a lot of praise for that and deservedly so, it's something I can't really say about the beloved "Disney Renaissance" era. Walt turned to television, live action and theme parks - he tackled a plethora of different things. But at the same time, Walt was possibly disillusioned with his failures, mainly Fantasia. From 1937 to 1942, Walt really tried to elevate the art form, and he succeeded... But he wanted to try even harder, and Fantasia sums it all up. Fantasia was not only a money-loser, but it was a very divisive film. Some critics praised it, but others ripped it to shreds. Classical music enthusiasts practically loathed it and felt it was an insult. Solomon singles out a particularly worrying review from the time, making one question what the reviewer was thinking and how ready the world was for something like this in the fall of 1940...

"Nazism is the abuse of power, the perverted betrayal of best instincts, the genius of a race turned into black magical destruction, and so is Fantasia."

Another critic also said that Walt was trying to be something he wasn't, which some believe was what brought him down. Walt's work afterwards was decidedly safer, though he took some last jabs at riskiness - The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty - only for them to blow up in his face both critically and commercially. Oddly enough, those three films and Fantasia have been more than vindicated by history. They were certainly ahead of their time. But it was his safer work that was successful, and he stuck with that. Walt only felt disheartened after Sleeping Beauty lost money, resulting in Xerography completely taking over. He had little-to-no involvement with the following features, until he was struck by The Sword in the Stone's quality... So he got heavily involved with his swan song - The Jungle Book.

But some suggest that Walt went the safe route for many of his animated films after Disney's own Golden Age because of the reaction to Fantasia, and how his post-Bambi risks backfired. What does this all have to do with John Lasseter and Pixar?

Lasseter got into big studio animation in 1980, when he first came to Walt Disney Productions. He was enthusiastic about computer animation and what can be done with it, after a viewing of TRON. Unfortunately, Disney at the time was very conservative but also indifferent towards computer animation, such as fears of computer replacing animators. Lasseter and Glen Keane put together a test that put hand-drawn characters in a fully three-dimensional moving set, for a film based on Where the Wild Things Are, a project that sadly never materialized at the studio...

Of course, Lasseter was going to direct an adaptation of The Brave Little Toaster and see what he can do with combining computer animation and hand-drawn animation. He had big plans, but his plans were too big for a studio that was stagnant. It was canceled due to concerns over the cost, plus executive Ed Hansen felt that computer animation should only be used to go the "faster and cheaper" route. Producer Thomas Wilhite founded Hyperion Pictures, and Jerry Rees would take over. That film, completely hand-drawn, quietly came out in 1987.

So what did Lasseter do? Well, there was a time when Walt was shot down. The story of producer Charles Mintz and how he took away Walt and Ub Iwerks' own creation? Mintz taking all of Walt's animators after the Oswald character proved to be successful? Walt and Ub turn around and create Mickey Mouse, and the Disney studio soars from there.

Lasseter was hit with a lot disappointment - he came to a studio that he dreamed of working at, only to enter at a time when said studio wasn't in a good state. He ended up leaving, but did he stop there? No he didn't: He had made friends with Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, and found himself in Lucasfilm's Graphics Group in no time. John and Ed did their own ambitious things, namely a little short film - I'm sure you know of it - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. - and developing the Pixar Image Computer. Lucas spins Graphics Group off from Lucasfilm, they become Pixar, enter Steve Jobs... Rest is history.

This was all when John Lasseter was in his 20s, like Walt, he was young and hungry for ambition. His colleagues were too. You could say that Pixar's initial run of 11 films were similar to Walt Disney's first five features, an unparalleled run that was beyond impressive. The big difference was, Pixar gained from it financially while Disney suffered losing money. But of course, reality had caught up to Walt and his crew. Now it seems reality has caught up with Pixar...

This is why I'm not fretting over the studio's future. Pixar was never going to be an almighty god amongst animation studios or live action studios, period. Such a long streak of great films may have obscured that for some, which is - I believe - why people are reacting the way they are. I am unhappy as many about the whole direction they seem to be going in right now, but it's reality. Something like this was bound to happen, if not something worse. Like I've said many times before, it makes me wish that for every excellent film they made in the last 10 years, there was a not-so-great one. Maybe people would be used to Pixar changing and possibly making a string of not-so-great films.

Pixar has simply matured. The young upstarts who made their mark in the 1980s and 1990s have grown up, and they've been through a lot. Failure, success, trials, tribulations... Success can possibly change these folks, and if it's true that Lasseter is really fire-happy and that the staff find him to be a stifling force to their creativity, then it's just a result of what happens in life. Lasseter is arguably on top of the world, being the chief creative officer of two acclaimed animation houses - one of which revolutionized the art form in so many ways for nearly a century. Becoming mad with power wouldn't seem implausible, especially when you have that much power and success.

But maybe it's an not egomaniacal thing at all. Maybe Lasseter is just very worried and paranoid, and he's actually afraid of a big failure. Pixar is, after all, his baby. Maybe he's removing directors because he's convinced his vision will work out in the end. Maybe.

Maybe he is being stifled by the suits. Executive interference isn't something that's a stranger to animation, even Disney and Pixar. After all, Pixar films make a lot of money and Disney sees the potential profits from sequels as vital. When the acquisition occurred, it seemed like the suits wouldn't have much say in Disney Animation and Pixar's future films. They'd just let them do their magic and that's the end of that. But what if that's all just rosy PR talk? What if the suits do want to control what Disney Animation and Pixar are doing? Or better yet, just Pixar? Disney plugs the Emeryville studio heavily, whilst somewhat giving Disney Animation the short end of the stick, which is very wrong. Maybe Lasseter is now their pawn, and he has to do what they say.

It's not set in stone, and we don't know what Lasseter's true motivations are. Is he afraid? Is he just power hungry (pictures Ratcliffe singing "Mine, Mine, Mine!")? Or is he being controlled? Who knows! But something like this was bound to happen. Pixar just can't be great forever, they are going to have ups and downs. Like human beings. I personally feel that it is better to realize all of this beforehand. Pixar may be an animation studio, but they are also a business. Moviemaking is both an art and a business, and sometimes, things may not always go as planned. Like they all say, that's business...

Of course, this is all one thing... Reality. Monsters University's ending more than resonates right now...