Disney/Pixar In General

So elementals has a budget of 200 million per the Hollywood reporter and mixed reviews.

That's an absolutely ridiculous number, that means it needs to make 400 million to break even and 600 million to be a success.

I wonder what the budget was spent on.

well its an animated film so presumably it went into the animation but I could be wrong..

But across the spider verse looks just as good. And Thats half this budget.

The main characters are made of water and fire, two elements that are hard to get right in CG. To make characters that look and behave like water and fire and have them look believable and appealing while being able to emote properly requires a lot of R&D. You'll notice that in most films, water and fire effects are used sparingly because of the expense; here, they are used for the main cast, so they appear in virtually every scene.

Although the movie itself looks generic, I have to say the animation looks beautiful. They really put in a lot of effort making a world of different elements come to life. It looks bright and colorful.

I just learned my cute lil' niece hates Brave. I have never been more proud of her.

I don't hate Brave but the bear scared me and my brother so much we couldn't sleep the night after.

I always appreciate the effort and care Pixar puts into their productions, but at the same time I sometimes question spending money for a level of detail the vast majority of the audience doesn't care anything about or will even notice.

Edited by Robbery on May 28th 2023 at 9:12:13 AM

Aw, why are people hating on Brave?

I just shared the sincere thoughts of my niece and how I felt about it. I didnt even influence her in any way. She came to that conclusion on her own.

It is, but this normally wouldn't be a problem from Pixar and Disney animated films because they usually make gangbusters prior (as detailed by Cinemablography) . The pandemic affecting family going audiences to theaters, immediate home releases on three Pixar films back to back, and possible lukewarm reviews have really hampered Disney's animated films the most.

There're myriad of reasons for why the budgets for other animation studios are lower (such being located in non-US locations that have tax credits or cost of living wages. Spider-Verse, for instance, has the advantage of the Canadian-based Sony Pictures Imageworks, where that country tends to help out with domestic productions).

Edited by XMenMutant22 on May 28th 2023 at 1:05:12 PM

> Aw, why are people hating on Brave?

they hate Scotland!

I love Scotland. It is an awesome and beautiful land full of awesome and beautiful people.

Yes, like Conner MacLeod.

Ah, Elemental got quite poor reviews both on Rotten Tomatoes and on Metacritic (and is apparently the second Pixar film, after Cars 2, to get a "rotten" score on RT; that's lower than The Good Dinosaur and Onward, which are both considered among the weaker Pixar films). Poor critical score does not mean financial failure though, as the Mario movie demonstrated (but that film had the advantage of being tied to an extremely nostalgic brand, and represented said brand very faithfully).

Brave has a snot joke. That alone makes it dead to me.

Joking aside, Id probably like the film more if Merida actually acted and spoke mature, as it would better combat her mother's overbearingness (no pun intended). It's hard to really get on Merida's side when she's throwing a tantrum (not that her mother is much better).

As for Elemental. The concept looks interesting, but there was a single line in the trailer that put me off. The lead female character saying something like "For years I've followed in my father's footsteps. I never thought about what I want to do."

I immediately thought "Oh, it's one of those movies. Skip!"

Edited by Brandon on May 28th 2023 at 10:49:24 AM

Merida's throwing a tantrum, but it's a tantrum over being pressured into an Arranged Marriage, which may have been commonplace in their Ambiguous Time Period, but which has me totally on Merida's side.

Plus, the whole character arc for Merida and their mom is the need for diplomatic communication, rather than just "nuh uh"ing each other.

It feels like for Brave and Wreck-It-Ralph Disney and Pixar swapped movies that year. Ralph is the standard "What if X had feelings?" movie that Pixar usually makes, while Brave is a standard Disney Princess movie.

I think Brave visibly suffers from its troubled production similarly to the Good Dinosaur. That, and it won the Best Picture Oscar that year despite being the weakest of the contenders.

This fun idea just occurred to me. I'm going to schedule my Disney Animated Canon marathon so that I watch Sleeping Beauty on the 18th of July, the day when I first started playing World of Warcraft. What better way to celebrate when I started playing one of the ultimate Medieval European Fantasy games than by watching a very fun Medieval European Fantasy movie? ;)

Thinking about it now, I'm suprised Disney hasn't tried to create some kind of online World of Warcraft style game but with Disney characters.

Actually I suppose it would just be Kingdom Hearts just online, but I could see it working.

Well, we've had an online Kingdom Hearts game.

They've taken a swing at an MMO before, but that one only had classic short characters in the briefest of roles.

...the idea of a Disney take on FusionFall with reimagined characters and all does tickle me, though.

I'm generally ambivalent on Brave. It's okay, but not great in my opinion.

One of the better twists to the story, in my opinion, is when we find out the three suitors aren't any keener on marrying Merida than she is on marrying one of them.

Thought it was a bit silly that the witch's solution to everything seems to be "turn someone into a bear." Also thought it was a bit silly that if the queen isn't around, apparently the king and all of his allied lairds are just gonna end up killing each other.

In general, when you have this kind of film, with a medieval fantasy setting, what you'll get is an adventure story with some kind of moral subtext—in this case, an adventure story with a subtext of a mother and daughter coming to understand each other better. Brave, though, feels entirely like a story of a mother and daughter coming to understand each other better with the medieval-fantasy-adventure setting just there for color.