Pixar ( studio )
A -
Pixar is obviously great, but I think someone needs to take them, or maybe their fans, down a peg or two. Pixar has had a string of great, sometimes incredible, movies, but they have had misses. Toy Story I and II, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and especially Ratatouille are all masterpieces, but 5 movies does not a dynasty make. Finding Nemo was the most overrated movie in the past 7 years (Memento holding that honor before it), and Cars was downright bad; a major ball drop from the savvy Toy Story director. Can anyone remember 3 lines from A Bug’s Life either? I mean 5/8 is great, especially when you consider the percentages, but this is somewhat a matter of raw numbers, not averages.
The truth of the matter is that in 13 years of existence as a studio that releases feature-length films, Pixar has only come out with 5 good movies. I have all the faith in the world that with the recent announcement of 5 major movies coming out in the next 4 years, Pixar will emerge as one of the most dependable and bankable studio’s (not that they aren’t already bankable, but let’s be honest here, cashing in on 8 year olds isn’t that hard) around. Until that time though, please stop hitting me in the face with your collective boner.
As one last note about my grade of an A-, I would like to point out that even though I have been nit-picking, it’s hard to deny the overall quality and care that Pixar puts into filmmaking. The visual delight, the incredible scripts, beautiful music, and actual humor that almost every film has is impressive. The “minus” is for the quantity of movies they have produced, and the fact that 4/5 of their upcoming movies are either sequels or rip-off’s of other people’s work (Cars II and Toy Story III are obviously sequels, Wall*E is the most unoriginal realization of a robot I’ve ever seen, being almost an exact clone of Johnny 5, and Up is a retelling of Don Quixote).
