Toy Story 4: Just Say No

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For fifteen years, Pixar animation had the longest, high quality streak of success any American production company has ever enjoyed. The list of films they released between 1995 and 2010 is a ridiculous who’s who of some of the best animated features ever made. Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Monsters Incorporated, Up, Wall-E. Hilarious, moving, beautiful masterpieces every one. The number of consistently high quality films they produced without a single fail in such a relatively short period of time is really remarkable.

Then, after this period of unprecedented success, Pixar made Cars 2 and even though it made more money at the box office than the Gross National Product of Ireland, it was considered kind of a flop. It still looked great, but the story was weak, the new characters failed to make an impression, and worst of all – it felt like a sequel. Derivative, pandering, and just there to make the bucks. The fact that it was a pet project headed by Pixar’s founder and grand poobah John Lassater gave it the unwelcome sheen of a vanity project.  Their next film, Brave, was lovely and really hit home for me as the father of three brilliant, strong-willed daughters, but the movie underperformed critically and commercially. Monsters University suffered from some of the same problems Cars 2 did – a faint whiff of desperate sequel-itis. When Pixar announced its upcoming slate of films, it was a surprising and disappointing list – half of them were sequels to earlier films. It seemed the age of originality at Pixar was over.

However, with films like The Incredibles or Finding Nemo, one could see how there were still stories left to tell. In the hands of talented people, it’s still possible that good films could be made with these characters. I felt wary but not totally hopeless. Maybe Pixar hadn’t completely sold its soul in the name of the all-powerful sequel dollar.  

Doesn't Woody look sad?

 My cautious optimism was not rewarded. Two weeks ago, Disney/Pixar made the announcement that they are in the process of producing Toy Story 4 and that it will be directed by Emperor Lassater. This is one of the worst Hollywood decisions I’ve ever heard.

Is this the face of a man making wise decisions?

 The Toy Story trilogy is perfect. I know that’s a big claim to make, but I’m putting it out there. Each film stands on its own, complete with fully-realized characters with genuine relationships, and a story with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. More importantly though, the three films operate beautifully as components of one larger story. Like the technology used to make them, the films progress and develop with each installment. If you follow Woody, Buzz, and company from when they first meet in Andy’s bedroom back in 1995 to the moment the entire crew stands on that sunlit porch and waves goodbye as Andy leaves for college, you have watched an entire narrative arc as whole and complete and perfect as any story in American film.

And now Pixar wants to add lipstick to the Mona Lisa, paint the Eiffel tower orange, and add Herbert Hoover’s face to Mount Rushmore. They want to make a totally unnecessary and unwelcome addition to something that is not just fine as it is but perfect as it is. It’s a bad idea. It’s letting-Willie-Nelson-do-your-taxes bad. It’s letting-your-daughter-date-a-drummer bad. Fourth films are notorious for being weak, misguided flops, even when or perhaps especially when it comes to really good film series. Fourth films are responsible for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and the franchise demolishing Batman and Robin. 

Years ago, just as the tv show Seinfeld was finishing its enormously popular 9-season run, a reporter asked Jerry Seinfeld if he’d ever come back to the show to do a short run of the series or maybe a movie version. The comedian wisely just said, “Why? What for? To wreck everything?” He, unlike John Lasseter and Pixar, understood that some great things just need to be left alone.


P.S. Props to my friend Chris Mattesen for the Willie Nelson joke.

Big Hero 6

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Disney has been making feature-length animated films since it released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. That’s 77 years and over 50 full-length cartoon movies in the theaters – not to mention the countless tv shows, animated shorts, and straight-to-DVD sequels they’ve made. In other words, Disney animators are like the Olympic athletes of animation. They are the very best of the best. When it comes to cartoons, Disney is the NBA, the Yankees, Jack Nicklaus. They have been at the game longer and found greater success and influence than anyone else in the world.

With that kind of longevity, of course, there have been ups and downs. Disney’s classical period began with Snow White and more or less ended with Sleeping Beauty in 1959. They had a mixed middle period in the 60s with great films like The Jungle Book and not so great movies like The Sword in the Stone. Then came their murky, uneven, kind of depressing low period that lasted most of the 70s and 80s. (The studio lost so much money on 1985’s The Black Cauldron, the company seriously considered shuttering the animation division permanently.)

Then in 1989, The Little Mermaid debuted and began a renaissance for Disney that, with minor dips here and there, hasn’t abated.

Disney is now in an interesting period of trying to embrace computer animation while still trying to acknowledge and capitalize on its rich history of hand-drawn movies. The company wants to be classic and cutting edge at the same time.

 

This brings us to Disney’s latest, Big Hero 6, a sci-fi superhero movie for the kid and tween set. It’s the story of a 14 year old robot-building boy genius portentously named Hiro and his sidekick, a tubby medical robot named Baymax. You’ve undoubtedly seen Baymax in the commercials. He looks like the Michelin Man and Shmoo had a baby and sounds like the world’s most pleasant GPS voice. The movie is about how they and four other friends become superheroes, the Big Hero 6 of the title. It’s a Disney film, so there are spunky sidekicks, sight gags, a nefarious villain out for revenge, a few scary moments, and a happy sunlit ending. Story-wise, it does what Disney movies are supposed to do – in spades. 

 

But in addition to the feel-good story, there is also, of course, some deliriously good animation. In one gorgeous, minute-long sequence, Hiro and Baymax fly around and through the gleaming, futuristic skyscrapers of San Fransokyo in their new superhero identities and land on an airborne wind turbine to watch the sun set. When the two characters landed, one little kid in the theater where I saw the film actually started clapping. It was an act of spontaneous appreciation, something you might do when watching Hank Aaron hit a home run or Baryshinkov dance. The kid seemed to know he was watching the very best in the world do something they are the very best at.

Disney is a massive powerhouse in the entertainment world these days, and plenty of people have problems with their business practices. Those concerns aside, these particular athletes of animation still know how to deliver a colorful, beautifully designed, emotionally satisfying movie that can entertain kids and adults alike. 

This review originally appeared on Q90.1. For more information, visit www.deltabroadcasting.org.

Interstellar

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Interstellar is a sci fi film set in a future when Earth is ecologically unsustainable. Blighted crops are dying all over the planet and massive dust storms plague the world. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, an engineer and former pilot who is asked to help man a space mission through a wormhole, a kind of extra dimensional shortcut tunnel through space, in order to find habitable planets in another galaxy.

When I previewed Interstellar here a couple of weeks ago, I got a few things wrong and a few things right.

First of all, I said that Cooper had two daughters he was hesitant about leaving. He actually has a son and a daughter. The son gets few lines, little screen time, and mostly just makes you wonder why Cooper isn’t as worried about leaving him as he is about his daughter. Second, I predicted that it would take Cooper about thirty minutes to make his decision to leave his kids behind and save the world. In reality, it took almost forty five minutes. So I was a bit off there.

But I predicted a few things that I got right. Beautiful, glossy images? You bet. Director Christopher Nolan has a wonderful eye for arresting, epic imagery. Think of the city scape folding up like a game board in Inception or Tesla’s field of lights illuminating the night in The Prestige. In Interstellar, some of the most memorable images come from the new planets Cooper and his team explore – one is covered entirely by water with mountain-range sized waves, and another is so cold that the clouds above their heads are frozen glaciers.

I also predicted a plot that would make you wonder what kind of film you’re actually watching. Even though it’s a sci fi film and essentially a survival tale, the movie is actually about very big ideas. It uses real scientific practice and theory – about gravity, relativity, the possible 5^th dimentionality of time, and astrophysics to drive its story. The film explicitly asks whether or not love is an actual, measureable force in the universe. In other words, Star Wars it’s not.

In fact, at times, Interstellar walks a fine line between bring epic and being a bit too big and metaphysical for its britches. Some of the debates Cooper has with the other astronauts sound more like the screenwriters working out some of their own tripped out ethical and philosophical issues than actual dialogue.

Interstellar has allusions to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff. These are big movies that verge on myth and icon and it’s no accident that Nolan references them. His movie has the same kind of lofty grandeur.  Not coincidentally, Hans Zimmer’s score is full of holy-sounding church organs.

I also predicted an ending that would send audiences away talking about it for days. This is a Christopher Nolan specialty, so I knew this was a safe bet. Sure enough, when the final image faded to black and the credits began to roll, the woman sitting in front of me in the theater loudly said, “What?!” It’s ambiguous for sure, and you will probably either love the ending or hate it depending on how you feel about not knowing exactly how things turn out. I loved it and would like to see the movie again to savor the ambiguous possibilities of the ending a little more.

Interstellar is Oscar-bait for sure but deservedly so. It has ambition, originality, and artistry but still fits nicely in the multiplex. Look for it to be mentioned when Oscar nominations are announced in January.

This review was originally broadcast on Q90.1. Visit www.deltabroadcasting.org for more information.

Riverside Saginaw Film Festival

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This week, I interviewed Susan Scott, board member and organizer for the Riverside Saginaw Film Festival. We chatted briefly about some of the films coming to this weekend's festival as well as some of the venues where the movies will be playing. Enjoy.

Coming Soon: Cold Weather and Fancy Movies

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I grew up in southeastern Idaho – a land of potato fields, extinct volcanoes, Mormons, and exactly two seasons of the year. In Idaho, it’s either the mild, extraordinarily dry summer or the deep, bitter, windy, punishing winter. Fall and spring are each very pleasant and last for about ten minutes apiece.

In that way, Hollywood is a lot like Idaho. There are two main seasons and nothing else really counts. With Hollywood film releases, it’s either the gigantic, expensive, generally brainless summer blockbuster season or it’s the serious, calculated, prestige-project winter awards season.. Both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association collect their votes for the Oscars and the Golden Globe awards in December and January. This means November and December are packed with the kinds of high budget, high profile, high gloss pictures that are meant to be award-worthy. So if you’re a movie fan, this means the holiday season is busy not just with buying presents, attending parties, and navigating the icy roads, but also because you’re trying to make it to the theater every weekend.

This week I’d like to look at a few of the more interesting films coming our way during the winter awards season.

November 7 will see the release of Interstellar, director Christopher Nolan’s first picture since he shut down the Batman franchise in 2012. In the film, Earth is environmentally devastated and unable to sustain our population any more. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper a widower engineer who is asked to help man a space expedition through a worm hole in hopes of finding a more habitable place for humanity to live. He has to decide if he wants to stay with his two daughters and watch the planet die, or leave his girls possibly forever in order to save the human race. I anticipate Cooper making that decision within the first 30 minutes of the film and spending the rest of the movie exploring freaky hostile planets on the other side of the universe. If you go to Interstellar, plan on beautiful, glossy images; unexpected plot developments that make you wonder what kind of film you’re watching exactly; and probably an ending that you will spend the rest of the night talking about with your friends. Award voters tend to be big fans of films with an epic scope and of genre pictures that take sci fi or westerns or musicals a little beyond their usual borders. Interstellar will probably fit that bill.

 One week later, Foxcatcher comes to theaters. It tells the true story of John DuPont, a multimillionaire member of that DuPont family, who was a huge supporter of amateur athletics. He even went as far as to turn part of his Foxcacher Farm estate into a wrestling training facility for young Olympians. DuPont’s mental illness and paranoia ultimately led him to murder Dave Schultz, an Olympic champion freestyle wrestler. The film is directed by Bennett Miller whose films Capote and Moneyball have both been smart and unsentimental takes on true-life stories. The fact that the insane murdering millionaire is played by Steve Carrel only makes the film that much more intriguing. The Academy loves to acknowledge it when formerly silly actors take on serious, dark, and/or disturbing roles. If Carell pulls off his performance, look for him to be nominated for making the transition from Michael Scott to the dark side. 

 One film I’m particularly interested in coming out in December is Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, a retelling of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Mel Gibson’s extremely lucrative The Passion of the Christ reestablished the Bibical epic as a prestige movie project and different directors have tried them with varying degrees of success in recent years. The director of Alien, Blade Runner, American Gangster, and Black Rain taking on Moses just sounds fascinating to me. Of course, he’s directed ancient history epics before with Gladiator and the Kingdom of Heaven – but I’ll be interested to see how Scott addresses the inherently religious or spiritual components of this particular story. Having Batman as Moses definitely makes it more commercial than it might otherwise be. 

There are a lot of other interesting, big budget, big ambition movies coming out this season and I hope to find time for them all before the season is over. Unlike winter in Idaho or Michigan, the winter movie season passes all too quickly.