Is Pixar losing its grip on the world of animation?

12:39The state of animation today

Director Guillermo del Toro recently had some scathing things to say about animation in North America. He feels it isn't as adventurous and innovative as it could be — and judging by the box office numbers, it appears that audiences might feel the same way.

Recently, Pixar's Elemental had the worst opening ever for a Pixar film. Meanwhile, the number one movie at the box office continues to be Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which has gotten a lot of love from fans and critics alike for the way it mixes traditional CGI with hand-drawn comic book techniques.

Host Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks with entertainment critics Corey Atad and Petrana Radulovic about the creative shift happening in animation right now.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: I think for the past, what, million years? Maybe 20 years or so, the third weekend of June has been known as "the Pixar weekend," right? It's the weekend where all the big Pixar movies drop. Elemental comes out. It does not do particularly well. But there has been something about animated films being co-opted into, basically, kids entertainment. And I want to get back to Elemental in just a moment, but let's talk about how we got to this moment of viewing animated films as only products for kids, Corey.

Corey: I mean, it basically starts from the beginning. Before we even had animated features, it was animated shorts. And certainly in North America, that was defined first by Walt Disney. There were other people, but Walt Disney kind of created the Silly Symphony shorts. And then from there, the first feature animated film in North America was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, so it was all just family films going from there.

WATCH | Silly Symphonies, "Music Land":

Elamin: Petrana, this helps explain why animation is treated as a genre in North America, whereas lots of other places might view it as a medium unto itself. What's going on internationally with animation right now?

Petrana: Well, I feel like the biggest, most obvious difference is that international animation isn't as restricted style-wise. In North America at this point, you have this very-standardized CG look, and it's pretty unanimous across studios — even though you're seeing some break out of that. You rarely see traditional animation, but it's very alive around the world and taken in new directions. You'll have studios like Cartoon Saloon in Ireland, and they're creating these movies with a gorgeous folklore-inspired look to them. But beyond that, because they're not as restricted by this Disney family-friendly fare, international animation also tackles stories that deal more overtly with mature themes and also centre around older characters. It's not like raunchy, Family Guy-esque stuff, but stuff that just deals with a different set of problems. They're not full of quips and one-liners and whatnot.

WATCH | Official trailer for Cartoon Saloon's WolfWalkers:

Elamin: I do love quips and one-liners, I'm not going to lie. I'm one of those people. Corey, what's your read on what's going on internationally with animation?

Corey: That basically sounds right to me. And of course, the biggest producer of animation internationally would be Japan. They do plenty of family fare as well, but a lot of it is very mature — very clearly intended for adults.

Elamin: Pixar has this new movie, Elemental. It had the worst opening ever for a Pixar movie. It's being called a flop. But also the number one film right now is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. That's getting a lot of love from audiences, getting a lot of love from critics as well about how different it looks. Corey, I saw Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and when I was watching it, I was like, "My eyes are clocking that something different is happening than the regular animated movies that I see, but I don't have the language for it." What was I looking at?

WATCH | Official trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse:

Corey: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and the previous film in the series Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — really, they weren't the first, but they kind of brought to the fore this idea of combining CGI-3D animation with 2D animation — in many cases, literally having artists draw over computer animated models, and things like that. There's a lot more going on stylistically in those films, but that's kind of the primary thing, is that it feels like an oddly-shaped kind of thing.

Elamin: Yeah, well this is the thing that my eyes are reacting to, because I've been used to a certain kind of CGI animation for the past 10, 15 years or so. And this felt like a clean break from that, if that makes sense.

Corey: Yes, exactly.

Elamin: Petrana, the other film in theatres right now is Elemental. And, uh, yikes. It had the worst opening for a Pixar film. It's not doing great at the box office. Is this a surprise to you?

Petrana: I feel like Pixar has kind of fallen into a formula. It's something that was super groundbreaking 20 years ago when Pixar first flew onto the scene, but to sum up the formula I'm going to quote this old meme that went around when Inside Out came out: "Pixar movies are: what if toys had feelings? What if cars had feelings? What if robots had feelings? What if feelings had feelings?" And now we see: what if water and fire had feelings?

In the beginning, I think this opened up really cool world- building. I think that they come up with these incredibly imaginative concepts, that often require super-duper technological advancements to achieve them. Like, the look of the water in this film is really, really cool — but that only carries the story so far. It looks stunning, but I don't know if a cool concept can totally tie it up together.

Elamin: Corey, when I think about Pixar, to me it's a brand that people have a deeply emotional relationship with. I mentioned earlier that they take the third weekend of June and they sort of drop a big movie in that weekend. Every year for a really long time, they had a 15-year streak of just never missing — Toy Story, Ratatouille, Up.… they've had successes where they seem to be almost deeply unlikely. But they have kind of been on the back foot, right? Starting with maybe The Good Dinosaur in 2015, with the exception of a couple of films they've kind of been dropping in terms of significance. Do you think that's a generational thing?

WATCH | Official trailer for Elemental:

Corey: I think it really is to do with the formula starting to seem dry. You know, at some point it was fresh — including the animation itself. When they did Toy Story, it was the first feature-length computer animated film. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. Every film pushed boundaries from there. They're still doing technological advancements, but that only goes so far. And when all you have is the formula left, it's less appealing.

Elamin: I think when I think about the last three Pixar movies, I think about Luca, for example…. Luca was impacted by the pandemic, that's why it came to streaming first. But in the case of something like Turning Red, they decided to go with simultaneous release of theatreers and streaming, and not really going hard on the theatreer push. Do you think they're a little bit less confident in the ability of the Pixar brand to bring people in?

WATCH | Official trailer for Luca:

Petrana: It's funny that you mention those two because I feel like within recent years, those two have been the strongest and I feel like if they had gone with the theatrical releases, they might have done better than, like, Lightyear for instance.

Elamin: I literally erased Lightyear from my memory because I would like to forget that.

Petrana: Yeah. But Luca and Turning Red, I think, were movies that kind of stepped out of that formula, and it does sadden me to see that they're not taking as many chances on these atypical Pixar movies instead of the ones that kind of fit in the mold that they've been doing.

Elamin: To go back to Guillermo del Toro, one positive thing that he had to say is the success of Spider-Verse, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which is coming out this summer, he kind of thinks that this could help change things. None of those are Disney or Pixar movies, which makes me wonder, Corey: do Disney and Pixar need to get on board, or do they actually not need to get on board and the future shifts of animation are going to come from outside that particular machine?

WATCH | Official trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem:

Corey: I think a lot will come from outside, but they'll be pushed as well. I mean, Disney itself was pushed at a certain point to switch to computer animation from hand-drawn. I imagine that they will be pushed, yeah.

Elamin: Petrana, what's your read on this?

Petrana: I definitely agree. I think we've seen some bigger American studios already embrace that, like Sony for instance, and DreamWorks with the new Puss in Boots movie, which is like a total 180 from the typical Shrek style. So I think their hand will be pushed at one point because even from a cynical marketing-money perspective, they probably will want to cash in on the fact that these other movies are doing much, much better at this point.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.