Disney/Pixar In General

Power can corrupt people.

Oh yes, I do know that Eisner was a good executive once. Also who is that other guy Chris something something? What did he do?

From Illumination Entertainment.

@lalalei2001 One concept I heard was a direct sequel that involved Queen Grimhilde's evil sister (ugh...) kidnapping the dwarfs and Snow White and the Prince having to save them.

I still dont why why everyone and their mother has such a hate boner for Illumination. Sure their movies bore me to death, but I really dont get why people feel they mediocrify the medium of animation by just existing. Not even Dreamworks at their worst got that kind of hate, sure I love Dreamworks but its baffling. I cant throw that first stone and say Im without bias or random hate for stuff since that would be hypocritical though.

They don't "mediocrify" the field or whatever, their movies are just boring filler that's tailor made to aim to the lowest common denominator and make millions while utilizing rote stories and cheap animation. It's annoying because they just don't seem to want to push further than that. Their character designs are bad, a lot of their films either have a thin excuse of a plot or a plot that's just really average and a cliche'd retread, and they use a lot of cost cutting measures to keep their films cheaper than the average animated film. Compare the budget of Moana, around 150 million dollars, to Despicable Me 3, with a budget slightly over half that much at 79 million dollars, or to Cars 3's even bigger budget of 175 million dollars.

Now yeah, Disney has had a lot of accusations thrown that they're a soulless company, but both them and Pixar put effort into everything. They make the characters, the scenery, the world, all of it feel unique. Even with a franchise like Cars, which is blatantly made to sell toys, the characters are all given unique designs and whatnot. Disney and Pixar put effort into their designs to make them stand out, to make the image of the character embedded into your mind, you know who this character is. Illumination largely doesn't. Sure, I guess you could say it maybe works with Gru, but everyone else doesn't stick in my mind as much. The Minions? Who are they supposed to be? I can't tell them apart. The characters from Secret Life of Pets and Sing? Who are they? There's not much that's memorable, there's no effort to their designs. And it's not like a small budget can hamper the characters from having unique designs or anything. Or heck, with how much money Illumination has made (the Minions movie made over a billion dollars), surely they should be able to up their budget or their effort, but they don't. Disney and Pixar at least seem to try and push further. Even Dreamworks, for all their ups and downs, try and push harder. Illumination doesn't. It's like if Walt Disney made Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and thought "Meh, just gonna coax off of this by making a sequel where Dopey has a bigger role and then give him his own spinoff movie or something".

Of course there's other things that would make this even more off topic but to sum it up: Disney and Pixar go the extra mile and think outside the box when it comes to their movies, while Illumination is content to just ride the coattails of Despicable Me and not do anything unique.

edited 12th Jul '17 12:06:48 AM by AdricDePsycho

Thank you for the explanation. It was nice.

Pixar are artists; Illumination are businessmen.

Didn't Hanna-Barbera make an unofficial sequel with that exact premise, except with the Queen's brother?

That was Filmation, but otherwise, yes.

That movie was weird.

Amusingly weird.

What, I was a kid when I watched it. ^_^;;

Yeah, weird in a So Bad, It's Good way.

I assume we're talking about Happily Ever After?

Yeah, it was a pretty cheesy film. Malcolm McDowell as the villain was enjoyable though, even if I always laugh that Snow White refers to his wyvern form as a "horrid bird."

The thing was that was an unofficial sequel by another company (possibly even playing off other renditions of the fairy tale even), not Disney directly trying to play off their first movie, in fact the first full length movie in Western Animation.

I like Illumination. Their silly cartoons are funny and sometimes that's all I need. If I want more meaningful stuff, there's plenty of places I can get it. (And if their animation is cheap, it certainly doesn't look it. It's very fluid stuff, and I'm a fan of their art style.)

Re: Pinocchio, it's not one of my favorites but I do like it a lot. It's better if you think of it as a long nightmare. Like, not literally a nightmare in-universe, but an illustration of one. It's similar to Spirited Away in that sense.

I liked Secret Life of Pets, even if the plot was pretty derivative and the characters were more personalities without direction. Tiberius the Hawk is one of my favorite animated characters of the past few years, at least in a comedy.

That movie is downright average if I'm going to be honest, but it's not their worst. Sing, the Minions movie, and the Lorax are all worse.

Oh no, they look it. The recycled sets, the recycled stale overly thin stick figure designs, the same lame stock characters and stock plots...to tie this into Disney and Pixar, Illumination basically took influence from Cars 2 and Chicken Little and decided to make their movies about marketing over story. And hell, both of those had better budgets and character designs. Illumination seems to reuse the same stock human designs with cosmetic modifications (though admittedly I've noticed Disney has a slight problem with this too in their CG movies, albeit not as pronounced).

Imagine this: Disney and Pixar are a fabulous restaurant offering a top of the line well balanced delicious meal. Illumination is the local fast food joint that's quick and cheap, it's not awful, sometimes it can be crap, but sometimes you crave something better.

edited 12th Jul '17 10:58:24 PM by AdricDePsycho

Liked The Secret Life of Pets.

Anyway, this is my first time posting here. Care to hear what my fav Pixar films thus far are?

Up?

Wait, are you implying that Sing is worse than Hop? I haven't seen it, but I find that hard to believe.

I enjoyed Sing. But then I like singing contests in general. I won't claim it was the best animated film or anything.

But the Despicable series? I liked the first for its children-redeeming-a-villain concept, but none of the rest.

I haven't seen SING or The Secret Life Of Pets, but I swear to god, they reused the same alligator head CGI model for both a pet and a singing two-legged auditionee both each of these movies!!

But this is about Disney/Pixar...

Actually I forgot that one existed. But I definitely think it's the worst of them.

Anyways, let's steer the topic back to Disney and Pixar before it gets even more off the rails.

I'll try, I'll try.

Hmm, okay, sort of on topic with the whole Snow White thing, is there any Disney franchise you actually would have liked to see them try a sequel with?