The Pixar Touch

In class this week we talked about two trends in Disney animation: Walt’s Princesses and Team Disney. Now I believe we are in a new era, one that isn’t as popular as those two but a trend just the same.

Team Disney fell apart after a lot of internal struggles. Jeffrey Katzenberg was let go and he went on to form Dreamworks as a vengeful attack on Disney. Years later Michael Eisner and Roy Disney left the company as well. The new CEO, Bob Iger, is a strong businessman but not a creative innovator.

Then something bizarre happened. During this time Pixar was booming. After a decade of designing technology, they were finally able to make feature films. Toy Story was a cultural phenomon. Years later Toy Story 2 was another box office and critical success. However through a contractual loophole, that film was not seen as part of the deal between Disney and Pixar. This led to a long argument which led Pixar to break off from Disney. Disney still had the creative properities of Pixar and started to make Toy Story 3 without Pixar. (The story involved Buzz malfunctioning and being sent back to the factory in Japan with Woody and the gang traveling across the world to save him.)

Months later, a deal was finally created. Pixar returned, that version of Toy Story 3 was scrapped, and the creative genius behind Pixar is now the chief creative officer of Disney animation. That man is named John Lasseter.

As great as some of the films of Team Disney were, they were led by producers instead of writers or directors. Walt Disney was a very creative person with rich ideas and vision. John Lassater is closer to Walt more than Eisner, Katzenberg and yes even more than Roy Disney.

So I’m going to call this new era “The Pixar Touch.” This is a term that has been used plenty of times but it’s becoming relevant now to Disney animation. Just like the time before Team Disney, the company’s animation was losing the world’s attention. They were making films like The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and the underrated masterpiece The Great Mouse Detective. Disney in the 2000s was making films like Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.

With films like The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, Lassater is evoking the spirit of Walt’s films but bringing a more advanced level of storytelling. All of the character are more three-dimensional with their motivations and goals. Despite being princesses, the women are stronger role models and not just vague archetypes.

Pixar will still outshine Disney animation because they are making groundbreaking films that are consistently masterful. Pixar is making great films while Lassater is taking that mentality to make great Disney films. He’s satisfying a niche and bringing a level of care and creativity.

Disney has said they are going to take a break on princess films until they find a new take on the material. Yet next summer Pixar will be releasing its very first princess film (and their first film with a female lead). There is early and exciting information about it here.

--Austin Lugar