By Jose Anguiano
Jan. 27th, 2024
During its theatrical run, Pixar’s “Elemental” struggled to make its budget back while audiences deemed it another critical disappointment from the beloved studio. After watching the film on Disney Plus, I can say that it is one of Pixar’s best offerings without comparing it to their golden age.
Unfortunately, the internet does not let go of such nostalgia that shaped many childhoods with back to back hits like “Toy Story”, “Monsters Inc.” and “Finding Nemo”. That’s because the Pixar standard has turned against itself.
Ever since bursting onto the scene with commercials, short films, and their groundbreaking feature film, Pixar has been held to the highest standard in storytelling and animation. However, following the release of “Cars 2” in 2011, audiences noticed that “modern Pixar” didn’t match the back to back success of their golden age. I’ve been guilty of this practice with films like “Brave” and “Monsters University”, but looking back this has locked both the studio and its new content creators in a box they can’t escape.
The State of Pixar
As of this writing, Pixar is in the same situation Disney was in during the 1970s.
A large portion of the original crew is gone including John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Lee Unkrich, Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs and Brad Bird.
Lasseter was exiled from Pixar and Disney at the end of his six-month sabbatical in 2017 following a series of sexual abuse allegations. Shortly afterwards, he was hired as the head of SkyDance Animation which released their first film “Luck”.
Ranft died in an automobile accident during the postproduction of “Cars” in 2005 after voicing characters like Heimlich the caterpillar in “A Bug’s Life”, Lenny and Wheezy in the “Toy Story” films, and Jacques the cleaner shrimp in “Finding Nemo”.
Jobs passed away in 2011 from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor with films like Andrew Stanton’s “John Cater” and Brenda Chapmans “Brave” paying tribute to his legacy.
Unkrich left Pixar in 2019 after directing “Coco” to spend more time with his family.
Catmull retired from Disney and Pixar in 2019 and is currently an advisor at ThatGameCompany Inc. in Santa Monica, CA.
Finally, Bird is developing his next film “Ray Gunn” at SkyDance Animation with Lasseter.
Meanwhile, those who are still at the studio like Pete Doctor, Bob Peterson, Peter Sohn and Stanton are using their positions to give new animators a chance to tell their stories.
Doctor was promoted to Chief Creative Office (CCO) of Pixar in summer 2018 and he also co-directed new hits like “Soul”.
Peterson was the original director of “The Good Dinosaur” before he departed the project in 2013, and he is now developing a new story.
Stanton is Pixar’s Vice President of Creativity and is directing “In the Blink of an Eye” for Searchlight Pictures.
Sohn took over “The Good Dinosaur” following Peterson’s departure and he also directed “Elemental”, which made the initial box-office numbers more heartbreaking.
A majority of the films that are listed as the studio’s best are directed by only four animation veterans. With so much focus on them, there is no room for new talent to put their stamp on the medium.
Furthermore, each new film following “Luca” and “Turning Red” has seen an increase in pre-release doubt, whether it’s a sequel to an acclaimed classic or an original idea despite many viewers complaining about franchises hurting the latter.
That’s not even bringing up the “Turning Red” review by YouTuber the Mysterious Mr. Enter, who criticized it for not depicting a post 9/11 society in Canada, though he eventually reevaluated his review.
Back on the subject, “Onward” was accused of looking like a Dreamworks movie despite the story taking a lot of inspiration from the likes of “Toy Story”, “Wall-e”, “Up” and “Inside Out” – two characters that go on a road trip and grow closer in the process.
Additionally, “Finding Dory” was seen as an unnecessary sequel like “Cars 2” in how the comic relief was given the spotlight. However, Stanton handled Dory’s search for her parents with grace and heart, which is more than can be said about the glut of live-action Disney remakes in the past decade.
And whether or not people liked “Incredibles 2” after begging for it over a decade, it’s worth noting that the movie lost a year of story development thanks to the switched release date with “Toy Story 4”. In the grand scheme of the company’s recent history, these sequels and original ideas put a new spin on familiar concepts and yet audiences paid more money to watch an uncanny valley edition of “The Lion King”
Is it jarring to see Pixar fall from their pedestal as the best animation studio? Yes, but much like Disney not all of Pixar’s films are going to be big hits like in the golden age. There will be times when their films won’t reach the same heights as “Ratatouille” or “Toy Story 3”, but how is that any different from their parent company who has been in business for 100 years?
The proof is in the “Cars” films which people viewed as cliche upon its initial release, and that’s not even mentioning the equally despised “Planes” spin-off and the canceled “Trains” movie by the now defunct Disney Toons Studio. Keep in mind that the franchise was born from Lasseter’s love of automobiles, and the mixed reception around both the “Cars” franchise and SkyDance Animation’s “Luck” proved that he is not always the key to quality entertainment.
What’s even more confusing is that many lamented Disney buying Pixar similarly to when they bought Lucasfilm in 2012. However, they forget that when Pixar was on a winning streak during the early 2000s, Disney was not and some even blamed Pixar for the downfall of hand-drawn animation in America.
Compared to Pixar’s films from 1995 to 2005, Disney movies like “The Emperor’s New Groove”, “Dinosaur”, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and “Treasure Planet” ranged from financial disappointments to some of the biggest box-office bombs in the company’s history despite gaining a following years later.
Adding more salt to the wound was Pixar’s strained relationship with then Disney CEO, Michael Eisner. Following the success of “Toy Story”, Pixar’s reputation infuriated Eisner who felt Disney Animation was overshadowed during the latter half of the Renaissance era.
At one point, Pixar was in danger of losing the rights to all their movies when they initially failed to renew their contact with Disney. Eisner even created the studio Circle 7 Animation to churn out direct to home media sequels to “Toy Story” and “Monsters Inc.”.
Considering the infamous reputation of their direct-to-home entertainment movies, things could’ve been worse in an alternate timeline. While that never happened, it proves that not everything at Pixar was the land of milk and honey despite all the profits and Oscar wins.
If that’s not enough, the hatred behind films like “Lightyear” for presenting an same-sex couple as normal for five seconds saw people react as if someone opened a porn shop next to a daycare. “Lightyear” had a lot of problems that wasted the potential of one of Pixar’s most iconic characters, but the diversity had nothing to do with it.
In fact, I’d argue that the opening montage contrasting Buzz’s determination to complete his mission and his commander settling down with a family is one of the best parts of the movie.
While YouTubers boasted about “Puss in Botts: The Last Wish” stopping “woke Hollywood” in its tracks, those same critics turned on Dreamworks Animation when “Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken” failed to make half its budget on opening weekend. This shows how toxic the “Pixar standard” has made the animation community just because a movie doesn’t live up to the studio’s high expectations, which leads us to why “Elemental” struggled to find its footing.
Why ‘Elemental’ Struggled
Contrary to the unfounded allegation that a non-binary character showing up for five seconds caused the film to flop, “Elemental” struggled for a number of reasons that debunks the “Go woke go broke” mentality that infected YouTube clickbait in the beginning of the 2020 decade.
Marketing
Admittedly, the marketing didn’t entice people to see this in theaters on opening weekend since the world looked and operated similarly to “Zootopia” and “Inside Out”.
Despite the pedigree of the Pixar brand, the idea of taking a different noun and giving them emotions became the new animation cliche while other studios experimented with different narratives.
Expensive Budget
Elemental cost $200 million plus $100 in marketing and animation is a costly medium with the various stages it takes to make the impossible believable.
This was not an isolated incident as “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “The Flash” suffered the same fate despite strong box-office numbers. In fact, the latter became one of biggest box-office disasters of all time.
Even positively received movies like “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One” struggled to break even with its large budget.
If “Elemental” had a lower budget, it probably would’ve offset the initial low numbers. However, it eventually made nearly $500 million worldwide thanks to its universal message of immigration proving popular in countries like South Korea.
While it’s still unknown if the studio experienced a loss, it’s worth noting that animation producers play an important role creatively and financially despite the negative reputation they’ve earned in recent years.
Summer Competition
More than any other summer in the past couple of years, the number of highly anticipated movies in summer 2023 doubled with the likes of “Dial of Destiny”, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Flash”, “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3”, “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie”.
This meant that people had a harder time deciding which film to see on the big screen. Obviously, blockbusters are more likely to be profitable as opposed to smaller films that people wait to catch on streaming But aside from the Barbenheimer craze, one particular movie yanked audiences away for various reasons.
‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’
To no one’s surprise, the sequel to the biggest animated film of 2018 broke its own box-office records and pulled in over $600 million worldwide. Even when pitted against an original idea from Pixar, fans were more curious about where the new adventure involving Miles Morales would lead, despite the behind-the-scenes controversy reported in a Vulture article after the movie’s release.
Positive word of mouth brought more attention when the movie received critical acclaim despite social media users using the great replacement conspiracy to argue that Miles Morales is not Spider-Man, even though he has been cannon in Marvel for over a decade and one of the core themes of Spider-Man is that anyone can wear the mask.
This culminates in the biggest obstacle “Elemental” had to overcome in its path to recouping its cost.
Disney Plus
When the world shutdown from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, companies released their content to streaming services like Max, Hulu, Netflix and Disney Plus. Some titles like 2020’s “Mulan”, “Black Widow”, “Raya and the Last Dragon”, “Cruella” and “Jungle Cruise” were walled behind a premier access fee on top of the subscription price, despite protests from movie theater owners:
After three years, the World Health Organization (WHO) declassified COVID-19 as an emergency, but people are still trying to ease into a new society.
Coupled with inflation for basic needs and expensive ticket prices, the fear of missing out (FOMO) did not affect families who were more than willing to wait for these films to drop on streaming for free since they’ve become accustomed to this practice.
This is in spite of the company removing content and increasing subscription prices after losing millions of subscribers.
Why would a family spend $52 to see the latest movie once, plus $25 minimum for popcorn and drinks, when a yearly subscription at the same cost brings more content to you at home and on the go?
Theater chains like Regal and AMC offered subscription services for unlimited movies, but that only covers one person as opposed to an entire family. Further details are covered by YouTuber John Campea:
Ironically, Bob Iger’s strategy of evolving the company backfired in the long run when the writer/actor strike halted both theatrical and streaming productions plus marketing for newly released content.
Cinematic Bandicoot 
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