Pixar Animation Studios is easily the king of the animation hill nowadays, in terms of both quality and box-office take. Of its nine feature-length films, only one has grossed less than $190 million in the United States: 1998's A Bug's Life. They average a healthy 90% or so on websites polling movie critic reactions like metacritic or rottentomatoes. Since the animated film feature award was introduced in 2001 Pixar have only lost it twice (to Shrek in '01 and Happy Feet in '06) and have more animated feature Oscars than any other studio. Their films, year in and year out, just seem to get better and better (with the exception of Cars, which left several critics cold). So things should, ideally, be all happy in Pixar land, right?
Well, maybe not necessarily.
Since the arguably underwhelming performance of A Bug's Life, Pixar movies experienced very healthy box-office returns with Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles each making at least a quarter of a billion dollars at the United States box office. Cars nearly reached the quarter of a billion benchmark as well. In terms of box-office, however, Ratatouille made heads turn by having both the lowest opening weekend box-office AND final box-office returns of any Pixar movie since A Bug's Life. In fact, it was estimated that allowing for inflation, Ratatouille is the lowest grossing movie ever to come from Pixar. It seems that although critics (and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) loved it, a lot of people were not thrilled with the thought of rats preparing gourmet food.
This year's WALL-E should have marked a return to form. Written and directed by Andrew Stanton, one of the masterminds behind Finding Nemo, Pixar's biggest hit to date, it's a superb film that should pretty easily walk away with yet another Best Animated Feature Oscar for the studio next February. Critics loved it. The protagonist is cute and lovable, the story is moving and relevant, and the visuals are astonishing. It DID make over $200 million dollars and surpassed Ratatouille's underwhelming (for Pixar) grosses. However, like that movie about the gourmet chef of a rat it looks like it'll sputter out long before the quarter billion mark, which Pixar films used to hurdle without popping a sweat. Taking inflation since the release of those older films into account and the chasm becomes that much bigger.
My question, then, is: what one earth is going on here? We're talking about a company that makes some of the best MOVIES, let alone animated ones, around. With our childhood heroes like Spielberg and Lucas now producing tripe like the latest Indiana Jones movie and the Star Wars prequels (including a VERY poorly received cartoon prequel), these guys feel like the only true pioneers left (i.e., filmmakers that make their living off purely original, as opposed to adapted, material) with passion and vision. Since the traditional animation industry basically breathed its last a few years ago these guys have taken the baton and have led animated films into a new age. It got kind of crazy two years ago when something like a dozen CGI films came out, but things have since settled down again and the last two years have had a much more reasonable number of films come out.
It's hard to form any real box-office trends from Pixar movies considering that, with the exception of Toy Story 2 and the upcoming sequel to Cars, each movie they come up with is a fresh one and stands or fails on its own merits or weaknesses, but it is genuinely dismaying to me that WALL-E didn't do better at the box-office considering it easily stands head and shoulders above anything else out there in movie theaters. I liked it better than my previous favorite for the year, Iron Man, and certainly better than the much ballyhooed The Dark Knight. Though we're essentially talking apples and oranges, it appears the critics liked it better, too.
There's no point in prescribing any cure for this apparent downtrend because Pixar are, and will probably remain, better at what they do than anyone else. Audiences will watch what they want to watch, and no one can tell them otherwise. I'm just pointing out that for a film so in keeping with everything that has made Pixar such a giant of the industry to perform poorly relative to its predecessors is slightly perturbing.
If I were to hazard some "advice," it would be that, maybe, just maybe, audiences are looking for something new. Considering that Pixar's next offering will have 3-D portions, maybe they've already figured that out, and I hope their leap of faith pays off, because if anyone deserves to be rewarded for boldly going where no one has gone before, it's them.
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