Is The Gloss Coming Off Pixar's Animations?

With the less-than-positive reviews that have greeted the release of Cars 2, is Pixar losing its touch after 12 universally acclaimed films?

It was perhaps inevitable that Cars 2 would be the film on which Pixar dropped the ball, given that it was a sequel that nobody was really calling for. On a purely critical basis, you would be hard-pushed to find anyone that considers Cars to be in the same class as Toy Story, Wall-E or Up. However, a sequel was commissioned, and Pixar are now having to learn how to deal with the critical backlash that has accompanied it.

Most of the complaints are based around the characters, who are not as likeable or emotionally complex as Finding Nemo’s marine creatures or Toy Story’s toys, a complicated plot considering that the movie is aimed primarily at children and an over-reliance on action sequences at the expense of the pathos of Pixar’s earlier efforts.

Pixar obviously had confidence in the film – having previously scrapped work on Toy Story 2 and Ratatouille because they were not convinced that the material was any good, they would surely have done the same to Cars 2 if they had had any doubts about it. It has been implied that the Cars series is a sentimental project for Pixar co-founder John Lasseter, and it may have been his influence that secured a sequel for a film that was well-received but never considered a Pixar masterpiece.

There have been suggestions, however, that Pixar’s motivation for making this sequel were cash-based, and for this reason the film was rushed through as quickly as possible. Cars made $5 billion through merchandising, but while it took 6 years to be completed in line with Pixar’s other productions, its sequel was completed in less than 3 years from its initial announcement. If this is true, it makes Pixar’s failure less forgivable – a failure is fair enough if everything is put into it, but when a poor product is released purely to make money, there will be repercussions. Whatever the critical consensus, the merchandising alone from Cars 2 will no doubt be enough to see Pixar through this mini-crisis.

It is possible, of course, that Pixar have simply begun to fall into the trap of making poorly thought-out and executed sequels – after all, animators are no less immune to the pitfalls of filmmaking than filmmakers dealing in live-action. Although the Toy Story sequels each seemed to be better than the last, they are the only sequels that Pixar has previously made. It will be interesting to gauge the reception to Monsters University which, though it is a prequel rather than a sequel, will have to be phenomenally good to match Monsters, Inc. The only other film expected in the near future is Brave, an original, darker story featuring a female protagonist for the first time in Pixar’s history. As they once again venture into pastures new, will their risk-taking come back to haunt them?

Cars 2 appears to be nothing more than a sequel which was ill-thought-out and rushed. Whatever the reason for its poor quality when stacked up against other Pixar films, it is premature to be writing the studio off. Monsters University and Brave are now under a lot of pressure to repair Pixar’s reputation and convince its fans that Cars 2 was simply a blip.