I understand the concept of standing by one's work, for better or worse, which is why I get why Steven Spielberg is not trashing the last Indiana Jones movie despite the negative reaction to it by many of the franchise's fans, and why Avi Arad is in the habit of making excuses for even the most poorly-received Marvel movies. Therefore, when I read an interview in which Pixar's head honcho John Lasseter, on the eve of the movie's home video release, defended Cars 2 from the brickbats slung its way by film critics, citing the film's global box-office as proof enough that they had made a good film, I understood his position, even if I ultimately disagreed with it.
As a fan of Pixar's, I feel their interests, and those of their global audience would be better served if they acknowledged, at least among themselves, that Cars 2 was a train-wreck of a movie, for reasons I shall enumerate:
1. Citing box-office as indicators of a movie's quality is a merchant's argument, not a filmmaker's. For years, Pixar has made original movies which placed story and character development above all else, with the spectacular animation and visuals actually coming in a distant third, even though they're also well-covered in that department. Because Pixar's rivals at Dreamworks Animation and a number of other studios have shown increasing prowess in the technical department, though, Pixar has always had to rely on their virtually patented ability to come up with moving, clever stories and characterizations to stay ahead in the game, sometimes at the expense of ultimate box-office success. Sure, Shrek 2 cleaned up at the box-office in 2004, but I defy anyone to say that years from now, that film will be remembered more fondly than Pixar's The Incredibles, which came out later that same year to smaller box-office returns but considerably greater accolades. Also, the second Transformers movie made over a billion dollars at the global box-office, but that doesn't stop it from being a steaming pile of shit any more than the box-office receipts of Cars 2 do.
Of course, Pixar has to sell movies; it's how to stay in the animation game at all; but they must think like filmmakers FIRST and merchants SECOND. Moreover, notwithstanding the merchant's argument propounded by Lasseter, Cars 2 is the first Pixar movie since A Bug's Life in 1998 to gross below $200 million in the United States and Canada. Factoring in inflation and 3-D surcharges, Cars 2 is actually the lowest grossing Pixar movie ever, despite being easily the most unabashedly commercial one. Prior to this movie, Pixar had achieved the unprecedented: for years, every Pixar movie after A Bug's Life was an undisputed $200 million sure thing, a unique feat which none of their rivals (or anyone else for that matter, including the likes of Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise or Will Smith) could claim, and one which they achieved by thinking as filmmakers FIRST and merchants SECOND, even when making their sequels (e.g. Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3). Whatever Lasseter's protestations to the contrary, Cars 2 felt like the products of merchants and not filmmakers.
2. The Incredibles was a rare animal among Pixar movies in that writer/director Brad Bird managed to tell a story that incorporated both Pixar's signature flair for all-ages stories with a slightly edgier, more mature sensibility in which violent death, of both good guys and bad guys could occur. The Incredibles remains easily the most violent of all Pixar movies, and the only one to sport a 'PG' rating from the MPAA, but Bird made it work because early on, he established that his was the kind of world where things like that could happen. It's all about context.
In Cars 2, however, Lasseter and his crew make easily the most jarring tonal shift in Pixar's history by going from a peaceful Americana atmosphere, in which a barrel-roll at a racetrack is supposed to be a horrifying moment (which the character involved survives) to a knockoff "James Bond" setting where a number of supporting characters get regularly crushed and/or blown up, with one of them even getting tortured before he gets blown up. There is no context here; if anything, the first film was the anti-context. If one can imagine the sequel Finding Nemo having fish getting eaten by angry piranha or Bruce and his friends going on regular feeding frenzies, one can then imagine how...off the second Cars film felt with its rather gratuitous violence.
The lesson is simple; if future Pixar films are going to feature deadly violence, they should follow the model of The Incredibles, and contextualize it from the get-go instead of spending a whole movie establishing one kind of narrative atmosphere only to abruptly replace it with another in the sequel.
3. Finally, and most importantly, I think Pixar is getting a little too comfortable making sequels. Sure, the Toy Story trilogy is probably likely to go down in history as one of cinema's best, along with the original Star Wars trilogy and the LOTR films, but the fact that they decided to make a sequel of the film that was the least well-received by critics, and the one film that broke their streak of Best Animated Film Oscars was already a misstep, one Lasseter, if his interview is any indication, feels rather smug about, and if I understand correctly, another misstep is on the way; they're making a prequel to Monsters, Inc., a highly satisfying film that doesn't really scream for any kind of sequel, let alone a prequel. The truly chilling thing is the only recent buddy-comedy prequel that I can think of is Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. I'm sure Pixar will make a better movie than that, but it's still rather dubious company for them to keep. I don't think even Pixar will deny that their best movies are their original ones, but even if they have to visit sequel territory, I dearly wish they would craft a sequel for the ONE Pixar movie that was really built for one: THE INCREDIBLES!
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