Better Know A Studio Part II: Pixar

My ongoing series about animation studios continues with Disney's new right hand man in feature films, Pixar.

Pixar's first film was Toy Story in 1995, but the company's history reaches back much farther.  Founded in 1979 by Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, and Steve Jobs, The Graphics Group, as it was originally known, was part of Lucasfilm and developed rendering software and special effects along with Industrial Light & Magic.  In 1983, Jobs bought the company outright from George Lucas who was starting to lose steam after Return of the Jedi.  The name Pixar derives from the Pixar Image Computer that the company produced and sold to high-end clients, including Walt Disney Studios which was at the time experimenting with computer animation to replace the traditional ink-and-paint system.  John Lasseter, a Pixar employee, had been creating short animated segments to show off the computers capabilities.  The first of these, Luxo Jr., features the hopping desk lamp that has since become the company's mascot. This is a much better mascot than the hideous baby that starred in Tin Toy.

Oh, God!  It has come to take our cute children!

After a few years of struggling to stay afloat, Pixar finally struck a deal with Disney to produce three computer-animated films.  The success of Toy Story started to build faith in the company, but the relationship between Pixar and Disney was often contentious until the former was purchased in full in 2006.

Pixar is the current critical darling of the animation scene.  Over the last ten years, they have produced some of the most acclaimed animated films ever and are always the horse to watch when award season rolls around.  This is partly due to the company's emphasis on nurturing creativity and story.  Employees are encouraged to work on their own projects using company resources when available, and the results are breath-taking.  My personal favorite is Enrico Casarosa'a La Luna.  The short is like a children's book come to life and fills me with a sense of wonder that only animation can achieve.

Story is king at Pixar.  Rather than cram in pop culture references and memorable one-liners, Pixar strives to create strong, believable narratives with rich characters that connect with audiences.  Several of them feel like folktales in the way they portray simple messages like love, family, and loneliness and touch something basic in the spirit of the audience.  If you have never felt a swell of emotion watching at least one Pixar movie, you have no soul.

After 25 years of success though, Pixar is starting to wander over a few speed bumps. For one, even though early on the studio had an unofficial policy about not cranking out loads of sequels, that's pretty much what we're getting now.  We've already had three Toy Story movies (with a rumored fourth) and Cars 2, plus a Monsters Inc. prequel later this year and a sequel to Finding Nemo called Finding Dory in the works.  I'm not saying all of these are bad; I'm excited for Monsters University and Toy Story 3 made me cry like Santa Claus just killed my dog in front of me.  Pixar just needs to make sure that they don't just become a franchise factory.

There have also been some issues about the studio being a boy's club.  This isn't unique to Pixar, but the controversy surrounding Brave, its hero Merida, and Brenda Chapman being fired as director all cast a bit of doubt over the studio's ability to embrace a female point-of-view.  Also, with John Lasseter now serving as the chief creative officer of both Walt Disney Animation and Pixar, the lines between the two companies have started to blur slightly.  Compare Brave, from Pixar, and Disney's Wreck-It Ralph.  The two have a slight feel of switched-at-birth syndrome.  I'm even concerned that Disney is placing all of its animation stock in Pixar so that it doesn't have to worry about making animated movies anymore.

The story of Pixar, much like a fairy tale, is the story of a young beautiful princess who goes to live with the successful prince.  The marriage is happy, but after a while, the politics of ruling start to change the way the princess looks at the world.  She's still beautiful, but she has to decide whether she wants to rule with grace or with power. Hopefully, Pixar will make the right choice.

Better Know A Studio Part I: Walt Disney Studios

With animated features becoming more and more successful and prevalent, it can sometimes get confusing about who makes which movie.  In this recurring series I'll cast some light onto each studio, it's history, and where it stands in the landscape of animated films today.  My other, slightly more selfish purpose for this series of articles is to try and teach that not every animated film is done by Disney, nor is every CGI one from Pixar or Dreamworks.  It's a serious pet peeve of mine, and dammit if I'm not going to try and do my part to educate the public.  Now then, onto the first (ironically enough): Walt Disney Animation.

Started by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney in Kansas City in 1923, Disney is the oldest, the largest, and for decades was THE standard by which all other works of animation were measured.  The studio pioneered many early technological and artistic breakthroughs, including sound, color, the multi-plane camera, and the so called, "imitation of life," school of animation.  It was this ambition that led to the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937, the first cel-animated feature length film.  

Snow White was, of course, only the first in a long line of animated films produced by the studio. I have lumped the long history of the studio into three rough periods.  The first, and arguably the best artistically, extended from Snow White in 1937 to Sleeping Beauty in 1959.  This era contained some of the most beloved films (Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Bambi) as well as some of the most experimental (Fantasia, Saludos Amigos).  These films had some of the best artists in the history of the medium working on them and they had no stifling limitations in regards to what was expected of them since they were the first.  The results were some of the best crafted and innovative films ever made.

The next era that I half-jokingly refer to as "The Disney Dark Ages" runs from One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1961 all the way to Oliver & Company in 1988. Starting in the 60's, the quality of the films started to drop for a myriad of reasons. Walt's death in 1966 left the company and studio without his strong leadership and vision.  Additionally, the scores of talented animators who had worked on the earlier films had either moved on to other studios or were starting to get older and their skill had started to diminish. Finally the new, more efficient, method of xeroxing animation cels made production easier, but the image quality suffered, creating a signature look of slightly scratchy line work.  Not all of the movies produced in this time were not bad per se, and you definitely start to see an uptick in quality later on as the studio moved towards it's next big era.

The last major Disney epoch extends from The Little Mermaid in 1989 to the present. This is perhaps the most beloved era and contains some of the biggest and most popular Disney movies.  My generation was raised with these films.  Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan...I could go on and on.  After Tarzan, the studio started playing around again with less conventional stories (Lilo & Stitch, The Emperor's New Groove), all-CGI films (Dinosaur, Chicken Litttle), and some that we have collectively chosen to forget (Home on the Range, Treasure Planet).

After a few real misses in the last few years, the studio seems to be headed back in the right direction with Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph.  Pixar founder John Lasseter (more on him in a later post) is now in charge of the studio, and I had high hopes for what else is coming.  However, recent news about Disney laying off hundreds of employees has me worried that the company may in fact be moving away from producing animated films, or even original films at all.

I could do a separate article about each of the studio's fifty-two animated films, but for now this is where the studio is today.  Aside from Mickey Mouse & Friends, animated films are still the company's hallmark even though it has grown to be one of the largest corporations in the world. While the playing field has grown and more teams are springing up, Disney continues to be the Yankees of animation.  Love 'em or hate 'em the House of Mouse earned its place on the top of the pile, now they just have to not fall off.