Hollywood Hackery

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Finch
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#101 Post by Finch » Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:06 pm

Munich is one of his better movies even though I personally thought that the very powerful and disturbing "rape" scene where Bana and the other men hit and kill the Danish assassin with their taser sticks summed up what the film meant to say more eloquently than the rest of the film. The movie also has the most embarrassing sex scene in living memory (Showgirls is at least unintentionally funny but here it just makes you wince) and it sticks out all the more because Spielberg intercuts it with the Munich massacre: you can see what he is aiming for here but the execution ruins it altogether. Still, I found Munich much more honest than Schindler's List, parts of which I find extremely troubling (in fact, Munich very much reminds me of Amistad in that it's a movie that clearly means well but which is not quite as good as it could have been and ought to be - but both are better than Minority Report and War of the Worlds, both of which are undone by Spielberg's lack of nerve and/or pandering to audiences who want to be reassured by their movies). To bring the thread back on topic as far as hackery goes: I don't think Spielberg is capable of it though he can sometimes come close with stuff like The Lost World or The Terminal.

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Finch
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#102 Post by Finch » Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:12 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:To ask Pixar to aspire to the work of Miyazaki or Spielberg is to really ask them to make more adult fare which would be fascinating, but it's not where the company is right now.
I'd say they had pretty adult moments in their pictures before (the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 and the montage of the old couple's life in Up - shame that the movie peaked that early! - most recently) but I'd love to see them make a movie that's openly aimed at older audiences. Perhaps next year's Brave will signal a tentative step into that direction.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#103 Post by Roger Ryan » Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:17 pm

Yes, Spielberg will usually have one element in each of his films that I feel takes the film off the rails somewhat. In MUNICH, it's definitely intercutting the sex scene with the terrorist attack. In SCHINDLER'S LIST it's that damn red raincoat. Hank's shaking hand does it for me in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. The jetpack inadvertently cooking the hamburger in MINORITY REPORT is a forehead slapper (although I feel this entire film is undone by a creaky formulaic final third). I would qualify these moments as "hollywood hackery". Fortunately, there is enough good moments in Spielberg's best work to make me forgive this stuff.

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Brian C
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#104 Post by Brian C » Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:49 pm

Finch wrote:... as far as hackery goes: I don't think Spielberg is capable of it though he can sometimes come close with stuff like The Lost World or The Terminal.
Um ... hmm. Crystal Skull is as hackish as it gets. If Joe Johnston had made it, it wouldn't have turned out much different. Actually, Johnston himself proved Spielberg's capacity for hackery when he made Jurassic Park 3, which was no worse than Lost World (advance apologies to the inevitable Johnston defense this comment generates). And Tintin is certainly threatening to conjure up Zemeckis-level mo-cap hackery (ditto the inevitable Zemeckis mo-cap defense).

I'd actually consider myself a moderate Speilberg enthusiast. But at the same time, for all his greatness, he's got lots of hack in him. Even his good stuff can have hack in it, like the shameless shower scene in Schindler's List or most of the family scenes in Close Encounters.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#105 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:21 pm

I agree about Crystal Skull, but I thought the family scenes in Close Encounters were Spielberg's actual sensibility, not hacking box office pandering. And yeah, neither Munich nor Minority Report have strong endings, but I thought the movies as a whole survived that- Minority Report in particular is one of the most imaginatively realized sci-fi environments I've seen since Blade Runner, in a relatively subtle way.

I think Spielberg is capable of hackery- remember Hook?- and certainly willing to foster it in others (he is the executive producer of the Transformers movies) but of the big blockbuster directors that have any kind of 70's-80's film brat sense in them (which I would say are him, James Cameron, and George Lucas) he is easily the most varied and interesting.

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Brian C
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#106 Post by Brian C » Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:27 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:I agree about Crystal Skull, but I thought the family scenes in Close Encounters were Spielberg's actual sensibility, not hacking box office pandering.
Oh, I didn't realize we were defining "hackery" as "pandering". I agree that the family scenes in Close Encounters were Spielberg's actual sensibility at play. I called them hackery because man they're bad.

And I love the movie overall.

Nothing
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#107 Post by Nothing » Sat Jun 25, 2011 10:56 pm

Pretty sure I have, dom, although it's really not that fascinating, my taste is very conservative when it comes down to it :)

And sorry, not trying to be argumentative, but I find it really hard to see Cars as the weakest Pixar, although that line of reasoning is undoubtably popular. The quality of the animation is one of their high points, but the animation is pretty weak in the first 2-3 films, which I would therefore highlight as the weakest. Otherwise, the films are similar, trading in the same kinds of heavy-handed moral lessons, praising the value of all-American (predominantly white) community and family with the predictability of an episode of Barney, with the Saturday morning cliches of anthropomorphism and good guys vs. bad guys clearly in place. The combination of small real-life details and flourishes of surreal imagination that make Miyzaki such a joy are generally absent. Up is the only one that really stands out to me, being somewhat more surreal and imagistic than usual + of course there's that opening montage, which the rest of the picture sadly and inevitably can't quite live up to, although the Capra-esque twist with the book is quite good too. Nb. Totoro and Ponyo if anything are pitched at a younger age group than Up, Wall-E and The Incredibles (whilst retaining a universal appeal).

Re: Munich, this is probably the closest anyone has come to persuading me to empathise with the Zionist perspective, perhaps because Speilberg makes so little effort to do so, focusing on character and a faithful depiction of event without shying away from unpleasant or ambiguous detail. Tying the Middle East conflict directly to 9/11, as Speilberg does in the final shot, is a particularly brave move (not to mention sexualised murder and gratuitous pregnant lovemaking - who woulda thunk it from the beard :)) Not sure what folks have against The Terminal, it's no masterpiece for sure, but a nice little single-setting comedy-drama that draws genuine humour and pathos from real-life events; the presence of Andrew Niccol is usually a positive sign of sorts; Hanks is dreadful, but in an entertaining way. The Crystal Skull is Speilberg's worst film as a director imho, and definitely open to the hackery charge (although the new Tintin picture could give it a run for its money by the looks of things!)

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#108 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:20 pm

Nothing wrote:And sorry, not trying to be argumentative, but I find it really hard to see Cars as the weakest Pixar, although that line of reasoning is undoubtably popular. The quality of the animation is one of their high points, but the animation is pretty weak in the first 2-3 films, which I would therefore highlight as the weakest. Otherwise, the films are similar, trading in the same kinds of heavy-handed moral lessons, praising the value of all-American (predominantly white) community and family with the predictability of an episode of Barney, with the Saturday morning cliches of anthropomorphism and good guys vs. bad guys clearly in place.
Really? There aren't many Pixar movies built around biological family relationships- the Incredibles and Finding Nemo, yes, but the only other one that comes to mind which even features a family among the main cast is Ratatouille, and the character there is hugely alienated from his family. Very few of the movies feature humans as main characters, so 'predominantly white' seems off base (though it is true of the voice casts.) Wall-E is hardly about community struggle or bonding- the whole first reel is a nigh-meaningless struggle to create order in the face of an apocalypse, and then it becomes a satire of consumerist culture- how is that anything like the same message as Monsters Inc, or Cars?

The irony is that what you're describing is routine to the point of cliché in American children's cartoons, but I think the more imaginative Pixar work (of which there are quite a few) avoids it nicely.
The combination of small real-life details and flourishes of surreal imagination that make Miyzaki such a joy are generally absent. Up is the only one that really stands out to me, being somewhat more surreal and imagistic than usual + of course there's that opening montage, which the rest of the picture sadly and inevitably can't quite live up to, although the Capra-esque twist with the book is quite good too. Nb. Totoro and Ponyo if anything are pitched at a younger age group than Up, Wall-E and The Incredibles (whilst retaining a universal appeal).
I would say my favorite, Wall-E, also can't live up to the genius of its opening, but I would also argue that it is absolutely filled with hints of surrealism (the Hello, Dolly clips Knives mentioned are a good example.)

I think I know what you mean, in general terms, about Pixar- a lot of them get sort of bogged down in routine children's adventure sequences, particularly in chases and action sequences, a lot of which have a samey feeling. But to some degree, that's like complaining that Westerns all feel the same because they all have horse chases and gunfights; in the specific iteration of the children's genre Pixar's movies inhabit, they're just part of the language of storytelling.

Also, I know a fair number of little children, and they're all absolutely bonkers about one Pixar movie or another- it's hard to make claims about what kind of movies all children like based on anecdotal evidence, and obviously box office numbers reflect ad campaigns more than the content of the movies.

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knives
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#109 Post by knives » Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:31 pm

While I think I mostly agree with you on Pixar insofar as it concerns Lasseter and Stanton (though I'm far more forgiving) Nothing I don't think you're giving Bird enough credit. Firstly he's the only director in the company's history to be an outsider starting off as a script writer and even directing a film separate from the company. The key to separating him from the rest is Ratatouille. That one which did not originate with Bird clearly started off as the sort of generic Pixar fair you describe before he came on and switched things up to better suit his themes. For example the first two acts set up the moral as the generic be yourself thing before turning over completely into a story on passion and purpose. This is really important for your second point too as the way it is dealt with prevents a simple good and evil story to take place. The man who is set up as the antagonist is revealed to simply be passionate and holding high standards. Actually I'm surprised you didn't relate to his willingness to champion greatness even at the risk of alienating everyone.

The Incredibles too isn't concerned with the typical Pixar items and instead tries to understand how people are able to live when they have dreams. Bird in regards to the film always repeats these two words the mundane and the fantastic and that's the perfect summary of his work in general, but particularly that film. He explains it better than I could (I've typed up what I want to say seven times to no satisfaction), but the point is that he's not working with simple moral lessons nor simple characters.

Nothing
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#110 Post by Nothing » Sun Jun 26, 2011 2:42 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:Really? There aren't many Pixar movies built around biological family relationships- the Incredibles and Finding Nemo, yes
Well, I did say family and community. The toys in toy story are a strong community / surrogate family, also the Bugs. Lightning McQueen finds a surrogate family and learns to value community over individual gain and achievement - making Cars perhaps the most left-leaning of the bunch. Obviously Wall-E goes in a somewhat different - and yet inherently similar! - direction with its rather heavy-handed environmentalist message. Toy Story 3 is probably the most dubious, in which the prospect of 'going to day care' - ie. being communistically shared - is demonized, an environment which begets the rise of an authoritarian leader (with Lotso given a sneakily Dubya-esque demeanour to distract the lefties!), whilst the possession of property is underlined as an unalienable right, to a degree that would make Scarlett O' Hara feel at home ("We belong to Andy!"). Been too long since I saw Ratatouille to really comment on that one.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#111 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Jun 26, 2011 2:53 am

I'm not sure I disagree with any of that, but I don't think you're really building a case that the movies are all fundamentally the same, and of the same quality. I mean, broadly speaking, positive messages are something endemic to children's movies (at least those made in America) and Pixar is unlikely to skip them, and certainly there are some aspects of branding that link them all as the products of the same production company. That's true of Disney's golden age, too- yet I think the story, storytelling, and quality of say Snow White vs. Peter Pan are enormously different. Ditto Pixar.

I haven't seen Cars 2, and I don't plan to, but it's not at all hard to imagine that it would represent a significant dip in quality from even Toy Story 3 (which I also thought was fairly weak)- there wasn't much left to mine out of the characters in Cars, and it's truly hard to imagine a Larry the Cable Guy centered movie that wouldn't fall short of Dreamworks' average productions, much less Pixar.

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knives
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#112 Post by knives » Sun Jun 26, 2011 2:55 am

You should watch Ratatouille again. It's the best movie in the history of the company.

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Tom Hagen
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#113 Post by Tom Hagen » Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:42 am

I agree. It got lost a little in the shuffle of all of the other great films that came out in 2007, but I think it's probably the best Pixar.

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colinr0380
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#114 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:54 am

Roger Ryan wrote:Oh, and yeah, THE TERMINAL is one of Spielberg's worst films. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, MUNICH and AI would be his best work over the past decade.
Very much seconded, although I only like A.I. from that bunch. Minority Report was not that bad either, if you buy the Brazil-style theory that everything after Cruise is placed in the prison is a happy ending hallucination in which he gets the opportunity to right the wrongs that have been done to him. Which gets borne out in the amusing edit from Cruise in the tank to Von Sydow approaching the camera 'confessing' that "It's all my fault"! And the recent discussion in the 90s list thread about L.A. Confidential reminded me of the way that Spielberg obviously borrows the betrayal and shooting of the Jack Vincennes character in that film for the murder of Colin Farrell's character in this film.

In terms of The Terminal I just find the racial, sexual and office politics are iffy and reductive, even before we get to the cliched airport officials, contrived world politics to avoid dealing with the real thing, and unrelenting product placement. The underlying subplot about the photo of all the jazz greats is interesting but then if you find your interest *piqued* by that just go straight to the documentary on the same subject, A Great Day In Harlem
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Jun 26, 2011 6:24 pm, edited 5 times in total.

Nothing
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#115 Post by Nothing » Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:22 am

A Speilberg movie that fails the PC test, that's gotta be worth something :wink:

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colinr0380
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#116 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 26, 2011 11:22 am

It's a Spielberg film - it's going to be almost insultingly reductive in it's contrived 'messages' as any 'Politically Correct' film! (And I could have done without Hanks doing another variation on his saintly fool routine, or Zeta Jones doing another icy lady who shockingly has feelings too, or Kumar Pallana doing another variation on the grumpy, violent and antisocial yet somehow wise, Indian honed on the Wes Anderson films. But then a Spielberg film is more often than not all about the appropriation of turns that actors have done more successfully on other films to fold into his own, and packaging them safely and more palatably for a mainstream audience who would likely never have seen the original performances)

I think what Spielberg was going for in The Terminal was a kind of fable in which the airport stands for purgatory and while all the people within it are grotesques of one sort or another and treat newcomers badly as they fight for their small corner of the airport or their jobs within it some people find redemption and get to leave the rest of damned souls behind, e.g. Hanks at the end or Pallana when he presumably returns to India to confront his past - expressed in head-slappingly reductive terms as threatening a plane with a mop (or some similar piece of equipment symbolising his sanitation work job, I cannot remember for sure!)

The idea of the terminal being purgatory would also make the product placement less problematic, suggesting that while you are trapped there at least all your desires will be superficially catered to. But Dawn of the Dead tackled those themes better.

Yet the biggest problem is that fables have to charm you with their characters and draw you into a contrived situation. None of the characters are in any sense likable here, and moreover are trying to be actively off-putting, at least at first. Unfortunately Hanks perhaps fares the worst here since I get the impression that we are supposed to like him. It all plays like an extended episode of Lost.

I'll stick to After Life for my purgatory-related entertainment!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jun 27, 2011 3:23 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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tarpilot
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#117 Post by tarpilot » Sun Jun 26, 2011 12:00 pm

I'm pretty sure Tony Shalhoub should have starred in that movie instead. Him and Tucci riffing would have at least been more amusing than whatever Hanks was doing

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HistoryProf
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#118 Post by HistoryProf » Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:56 pm

colinr0380 wrote:...but then if you find your interest peaked by that...
*piqued

sorry...just a bit of a pet peeve. :-"

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colinr0380
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#119 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 26, 2011 6:23 pm

Sorry :oops:

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HistoryProf
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#120 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:23 am

no apology necessary...I hate being that guy, but it's one of the very few common mistakes I see that I just can't stand. Like it will seriously bother me if I don't correct it.

I have issues.

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Brian C
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#121 Post by Brian C » Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:32 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:... it's truly hard to imagine a Larry the Cable Guy centered movie that wouldn't fall short of Dreamworks' average productions, much less Pixar.
Saw this tonight, and the funny thing about it is that I doubt that the filmmakers set out to make Mater the center of the movie. Instead, it feels so slapdash and so poorly conceived that it just sort of happened that way.

There are two main storylines, the first with Lightning in a series of international races, and the second with Mater getting caught up in a James Bond-type spy scenario. They share more or less equal space for a while, but Mater's story gets so convoluted and so epically pointless that I think Lasseter and company just got distracted by it. They lost sight of what they were doing and why, and Mater ends up stealing so much of the story oxygen that it suffocates the movie. It feels like something that started out in the brainstorming stages as a fun subplot and then got out of control during the writing, and I guess QC was on vacation that week because apparently no one said, "Um ... really?"

Overall, it's so different from the first Cars movie that it's honestly quite jarring. There are some stabs at thematic continuity but they get so overwhelmed by Mater's spy stuff that none of that registers (not like the first one was something to aspire to, but still). At first it held some promise that it was going to be so perversely different from the first one that it would free up LasseterCo to do something new and unique, but no, it's just a hackish mess. This should have gone straight to DVD.

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Tom Hagen
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#122 Post by Tom Hagen » Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:52 am

I was looking for somewhere to post this, remembered that this conversation included Pixar, and have now read Brian's post: Cars 2 was pretty, pretty bad. It looks great, and the quality control is still there on the production values, but . . . how shall I put this charitably . . . if you like Larry the Cable Guy, then you'll love Cars 2. Of course, I didn't expect much going into this, so I wasn't too disappointed (and our little guy was very happy, so that made the experience good enough for me), but man was I ever disappointed beyond belief that the short before the film turned out to be another Toy Story thing. I didn't care for Toy Story 3 like a lot of other folks did (for me, it paled in comparison to the preceding three films and The Incredibles), but it certainly wasn't a bad film. I understood why it had the emotional resonance it did for a lot of viewers of a certain age, and it felt like a nice little ending for the franchise with some genuinely earned pathos. So of course, all of twelve months later, they resurrect it for the short, starring Ken and Barbie and including a Latin lover Buzz cameo and on and on. Good God, Disney: let it fucking go already. A thousand bad Larry the Cable Guy jokes were nowhere as irritating to me as the fact that Pixar tacked on a retread short in front of the retread movie.

Oh and one more random irritated note: they let Paul Newman rest in peace, but they found someone else to do the "hey mannnnn" Carlin lines. [-X

Edit: the more I think about, the more I've come to realize that Lasseter is perhaps the weak link in his own company. I don't know to what extent any of these films should be considered auteurist works, but going through the entire Pixar oeuvre, I am ambivalent to or dislike the Lasseter-directed films, and almost uniformly love the films helmed by other directors.

Nothing
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#123 Post by Nothing » Mon Jun 27, 2011 3:19 am

Tom Hagen wrote:our little guy was very happy, so that made the experience good enough for me
That's what matters isn't it? These are all just kids movies, after all...

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#124 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Jun 27, 2011 3:48 am

Nothing wrote:That's what matters isn't it? These are all just kids movies, after all...
It's good, but I think the whole appeal of Pixar has been that parents can actually enjoy the movies and not just use them as a means of babysitting- kids enjoy a lot of fairly irritating things. Besides, that seems like an unfair and unnecessary of 'kids' movies'.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Hollywood Hackery

#125 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Jun 27, 2011 8:48 am

Speaking of the "hackery" aspect here, I wonder if CARS 2 was one of the concessions Disney requested of Pixar when they hammered out their deal a few years back...knowing that the company would soon open a CARS-themed section in the California Adventure park (Anaheim, CA). That way Disney would have a film tie-in to go along with the unveiling of the park attractions. I have a hard time believing that the idea to do this film would originate with Pixar given their hesitancy to create sequels in the past. TOY STORY 2 was originally a Disney-requested effort meant to go straight to video, but Pixar put enough care into it that it made it to the big screen without any embarrassment. The company then stayed away from exploiting it for quite a while. I know one of swords Disney was wielding during their re-negotiations with Pixar was the threat to produce their own TOY STORY sequel; I can see Pixar not wanting that to happen which is probably one of the reasons TOY STORY 3 was developed so quickly after the Disney/Pixar deal closed. Maybe another aspect of that deal was for another title to get a sequel and Pixar felt that CARS would suffer the least amount of damage if a new storyline was developed (as opposed to FINDING NEMO or MONSTERS, Inc.).

Of course, Pixar has now taken over Disney Animation, so it will be interesting if the Pixar brand is afforded the same level of autonomy it has enjoyed in the past. The idea of the TOY STORY short added to CARS 2 is distressing as I agree that particular franchise needed to be put to bed.
Last edited by Roger Ryan on Mon Jun 27, 2011 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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