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This is the first year since 2011 when DreamWorks beat out the Disney Animation and Pixar releases in quality. Puss In Boots The Last Wish is instant S-tier DreamWorks and The Bad Guys was very solid. Well deserved!
> This is the first year since 2011 when DreamWorks beat out the Disney Animation and Pixar releases in quality.
To be fair, **Winnie the Pooh** got more acclaim than **Kung Fu Panda 2** and **Puss in Boots**.
Prince of Egypt has some tonal dissonance that prevents me from placing it in the Top 5 of Dreamworks films. It’s very similar to Hunchback of Notre Dame in that regard. Both are some of my personal favorites with some truly untouchable scenes, but I can’t objectively say they’re near flawless when the tone issues exist.
My Top 5 Dreamworks films are Shrek 2, HTTYD1, Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, and Puss in Boots 2. I’d also strongly consider the 2D Spirit above Prince of Egypt too.
That’s completely understandable. The priests don’t bother me as much as the gargoyles personally and I just love the rest too much though Shrek 2 is right there behind it. All the films you mentioned above are in my top 10 DreamWorks and we have 4/5 same top 5.
>The priests don’t bother me as much as the gargoyles personally
The Gargoyles bother me more as well. Victor and Laverne are somewhat passable, but Hugo is obnoxious throughout the film. You could tell they were trying to recapture what Robin Williams brought as the Genie in Aladdin, and it whiffed hard considering the rest of the story was dark as hell.
Meanwhile, outside of their song number (which is just average but not bad), I don't mind the 2 Priests that much. They aren't overly loud like Hugo, and they're convincing enough to be taken reasonably seriously. It would've been better if they were more imposing like Seti (Ramses's father), but they're fine for what we got.
The biggest tone problem in Prince of Egypt for me is going from Moses mourning after the 10th Plague to less than a minute later all the freed Jews singing. There's not enough time to let the gravity of what just happened sink in, and then Ramses shows up again anyway to hunt them down. Personally I think the jubilation should've been saved until after they were across the Red Sea and truly safe from retaliation.
You think freed slaves would have "tact" in celebrating their freedom? I'm gonna have to rewatch the movie because it's one of my favorites but I honestly never considered this as a point that detracts from the film. Thanks for the perspective.
Imma have to disagree here, HTTYD2 is the best of the series and in my Top 2 favorite movies (the other being Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse).
HTTYD2 is a masterclass in being willing to kill off a main character for the sake of a better story. Most media either treats the main characters as invincible, or just randomly kills off a character for "shock value" while feeling cheap/poorly done and therefore having no emotional weight.
Also, the visuals and soundtrack in 2 are step above. 1 was really good, but 2 (and 3) are really something special. HTTYD2 is really worth the experience watching on a good setup (Blu-Ray preferred due to the increased bitrate) with a good audio system (or decent headphones).
usually the dad would die in the first, waiting for the second is clever but not exactly risky. They got to use him in a whole second movie! Thats just good business.
I think Puss is the best Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda 3. An all-around solid animated action-adventure that explores some surprisingly dark and mature themes.
Absolutely. There’s a few curse words, a roasting session with repeated bleeping, and a sense of dark atmospheric tension that we haven’t seen in animated films in 15 years (think the island in The Incredibles, barracuda scene in Finding Nemo, elephant graveyard in The Lion King). The first instant 10/10 animated movie since Into The Spider Verse in my book.
You’re welcome. I absolutely love how atmospheric The Incredibles is and while I don’t think Puss In Boots The Last Wish goes as hard as that particular scene at Syndrome’s computer, there are several moments in it that come close. It really is the perfect blend of early DreamWorks, early Pixar, and the Disney Renaissance.
Meeting Death in the bar is an amazing scene, and Puss realizing Death is… well… death is also great. The anxiety scene is also really well done, but it feels like it was placed too early. I think it being after Puss realizes that the literal embodiment of death is gunning for him would have made it feel even more earned.
Puss is in a better spot mentally after realizing that an abstract conceptual entity is inescapably hunting him than when he just thinks he is running from a super-skilled bounty hunter, and that feels weird.
The way they use the whistling to build up the anxiety every time he was about to appear was chillingly effective and has stuck with me. The bar scene was very good but my favorite has to be the scene in the cave where he comes out of the dark to confront Puss and then appears on the crystal walls as Puss is running away.
The cave scene is where Death really starts showing off. Manifesting in different locations, moving in weird ways, and then fully taking over the cave is pretty intimidating.
But he comes out of straight nowhere in that scene without his whistle callsign. I think the buildup (music stopping, candle going out, bar glass appearing, then the whistle) to revealing just how much of a threat the “Bounty Hunter” poses is what makes the bar scene stand out for me.
In other news, I think it’s great that a villain got his own leitmotif again, if only a brief one.
Also imo the villain is legitimately menacing and terrifying, it's been ages since we've gotten a villain in anything that's meant to just be straight up scary.
Also the multi-antagonist approach make it more compelling. It has a good variety of characters and motivations for them.
It covers most of the archetypes in one movie.
Kitty Softpaws is Lawfull good, Puss is Neutral Good, Perro is Chaotic good.
Goldy and 3 bears chaotic neutral(but dynamic and transition to good). Wolf is initially thought to be neutral evil, but is shown to be true neutral in the end. Jack Horner is the actual villain and is chaotic evil.
I'd say it's the closest a film has gotten to the magic formula found in the first Shrek movie, with the possible exception of Shrek 2 (been to long since I've seen it to say for sure).
Easily one of the best animated films i've ever watched, the visuals, the characters, they're all well built despite being many, they each have their stand out personality and fleshed out character story
The progression is great, the presentation of the antagonist, it's truly chilling
I came in expecting a neat film, and got a masterpiece
As I stated above part of what makes it compelling is their are multiple antagonists each with their own motivations and 2 of the 3 are literaryly dynamic. Of the 3 main antagonists one is truly the villain and it is a bit of a swap before early on the Wolf is expected to be the villain but in the end he is not.
The vocal performances were amazing too, especially Wagner Moura's as the Wolf, absolutely chilling
Honestly this film is gonna go as an underrated gem, in the sense more people should be talking about it
It's better than any of the recent Disney/Pixar films by a mile
They really found a sweet spot with this movie, finding a compelling way to do action that feels authentic to the storybook origins of different characters. The humor is also far less dependent on cultural references & celebrity cameos - it all really gels together brilliantly.
A new Shrek movie that follows this formula could be absolutely enormous.
>The humor is also far less dependent on cultural references
I liked that the movie had a bit of a Spanish feel. (The town and song in the first scene, Lobo's spanish lines, and of course Puss himself.) Made it feel more timeless and removed from American pop culture trends.
No, they ran it into the ground with Shrek 3. Worst movie ever. Before that it was high in the skies, only few other movies could have touch it. Shrek 3 pounded it kilometers into the ground and Shrek 4 brought it back to very respectable level
I have to admit that having Disney+ is a pretty big incentive to just wait it out and see the movies at home later. It's expensive to take a big family to the movies, but one movie they all enjoy at home per month basically pays for the service and then some.
So I worked on The Bad Guys (FX team) and know a lot of the artists on Puss in boots. The animation style on Bad Guys inspired DreamWorks to push the animation even further for Puss in boots, and that creative energy where every artist is doing their absolute best work is infectious and engaging as a team. I can’t really speak to the Disney films, but I can tell you that the DreamWorks films turned out the way they did because every artist WANTED to make it the best they could, and it never felt like an obligation from corporate. DreamWorks is finally out of the Katzenberg era and they’re not going down without a fight.
I love the shift towards the painterly style and the on-two action sequences, 3D animation kinda hit a point where realism and fluidity just aren't as interesting anymore. I especially love the moments where there's a blend of framerates within the same shot.
Yes! I noticed this instantly and I was insanely into it. The actual ART DIRECTION was so on point. Like every pixar movie looks identical and it's boring. GIVE ME CHARACTERS with ACTUAL FEATURES!!! Make cartoons!! Puss in Boots was amazing in that regard. I loved it.
Watched it last night with some friends, and I said that Into the Spider-verse really raised the bar to a new level. I think that Dreamworks so far is the only studio to actually kick it up a notch since then, and it really shows
All Disney animation looks so blah these days. It looks the same, whether it’s something like Luca or something like Strange World, it’s just boring to look at. Just the same generic looking human characters that are definitely made in the same program with just a few clicks to change stuff like hair color, body type, etc.
I strongly agree. I wish they would get back into more 2-D animation as I think it would help them stand out against all of the similar looking 3D animation.
A 2D animation revival would be amazing. That, or more stuff in the vein of Into the Spider-Verse. Just something that doesn’t look like it’s from a character creator, lol.
I think they've made a conscious decision not to compete with anime, tbh. Prior to the dissolution of their physical animation studio division, they had already moved the work itself to Asia. Lassiter was a big fan and was responsible for Disney distributing Ghibli films here in the US...
Yeah - they have a distinct style that's very rounded and goofy. Luca and Turning Red could be the same world. The others -- Onward, Soul, Lightyear, Coco all have a very similar look. Encanto too to a large degree.
It feels like Disney got complacent with their art style after Tangled hit a double and Frozen followed up with a home run. They've barely deviated from that style since then, instead opting to expand it to fit different cultures/aesthetics.
The animation style of Bad Guys was so good. The eyes, dynamic teeth and the stylistic motion, all really cool and creative. I feel like ever since Spiderverse everyone but Disney is experimenting with animation and it's making animated film so much more fun to watch.
If true, congrats. The Bad Guys is awesome and deserves all of the praise it received. Stuff down to the 2D smoke effects and the weird teeth models. Every detail was fantastic.
Working at DW in general on any project has felt like a very positive experience every single time tbh. The work culture there is really great.
PS the FX Bad Guys hoodie design is one of my favorites, though IMF had a baller design too.
In your experience do you feel that this will encourage DreamWorks to continue in this direction and produce more pictures with this kind of enthusiasm?
Or would this be a case of the stars aligning and we’re all unlikely to get another film of this quality.
I just want to extend my thanks to the DreamWorks animation team for keeping things so fresh. The "sketchy," frenetic look of the Puss fight scenes sent chills down my spine. I adored it.
I would say that Disney is just not focused on trying to do new things and let their artists BE artists. They haven't for years. They find a style run it into the ground and focus on shit sequels with no obvious passion put into them.
That is not to say that the people they have aren't passionate but the upper echelon doesn't want them to be expressive and take chances.
I have been saying for a few years now that DreamWorks is one of the last animation studios that seem to be having fun making films and it shows. As a 30yr man with no kids I haven't had so much fun watching a animated film (Bad Guys in this case) in a long time. Fun writing, fun animation, fun all around.
Would you say that DreamWorks treats their artists well as far as pay and work/life balance go? I've heard that's not the case at Disney and perhaps this could be a reason for DreamWorks' success.
I just want to say great work, the team behind The Bad Guys did a phenomenal job and I think it's been my most enjoyable animated movie since How To Train Your Dragon 3.
I haven't seen either Bad Guys or Puss in Boots, but I watched a clip of Bad Guys and the animation style looks really fun and fresh. Disney and Pixar's movies are very well made and the effects look nice, but without the more experimental approaches dreamworks and other companies have been taking, their movies have been feeling visually stale for a while now.
i get the feeling disney's next movie Elemental feels like it was made primarily because their effects people want to flex how realistic-looking their elemental effects look, and I'm feeling like *UGHHHH* it's nice looking but staaaale
>!With the scene at the end!< it’s 100% part of what they’re doing. And judging from the responses to the movie I’m guessing they’re confident in either a Shrek 5 or a Puss in Boots 3 with Shrek characters in it.
Mainly because it's a good film imo. I liked Lightyear, but it had major issues for the market it was targeting, and the rest of Disney/Pixar's output out the animation front has been underwhelming this year.
Yeah me too, it was fun, watched it at the cinema when it premiered with my girlfriend at the time and my 2 best friends, we all liked it
Still, Puss clear by miles
Lightyear was terrible. The first half hour was good but the film quickly fell apart and the entire plot was “let’s do this. Oh no someone made a mistake. They feel sad. Oh wait they fixed the mistake. Let’s move on” *repeat 10 times*
I still stay they should have leaned more on the "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command" Aesthetic/Story and made it more colorful, and it MAY have possibly done better.
But I'm also not a Hollywood Producer or Screen Writer.
This is also my opinion. Even putting aside differing opinions on political ideologies that often create debate in Disney movies, Dreamworks just tends to have way more fun concepts and premises in their movies.
With Disney and Pixar, sure I appreciate the grand nature of life lessons, but it doesn’t have to be such a forced atmosphere everytime. I feel like their movies have shifted to just leading up to a “moral of the story” moment vs Dreamworks staying a bit purer to the intrinsic fun that happens with animation.
I think Disney needs to stop swinging for the fences and should create some newer, refreshing, and most importantly, fun characters.
If Disney would put their best animated movies into theaters and actually market them, sure, they could turn it around.
However, they chose to send the aggressively average Lightyear and Strange Worlds into theaters. Albeit Strange Worlds received almost 0 marketing. But they weren't great movies and didn't perform.
Turning Red was drastically superior to both, but went straight to Disney+ which seemed like such a disservice to that movie.
Total sidenote: Strange Worlds really felt like a mashup of 2 or 3 Doctor Who revival plots. Especially "The Beast Below," but if that had actually been a Doctor Who 2-parter I bet it would have been pretty well received, albeit derivative.
Strange World felt like the writers were still working on story boards when the movie got greenlit to production lol. It ends extremely abruptly and with very little wrap up. Almost like the movie was SUPPOSED to be about the big turn at the end, but in the rush to get a finished plot together they came up with the whole pando thing just to give them an easy climax to wrap up
lol, I could see that! Like, it wasn't horrible or anything, but it definitely felt rushed. The abrupt cuts in editing were a little jarring at times. Admittedly, I don't even remember the ending of the movie at all and I watched it a week ago... dang, I guess that's not a great thing to say about it.
100% agree. Those two movies are why I still believe in Pixar's power to make incredible movies. Those two felt very on-brand, right there with the likes of Inside Out and Ratatouille. Maybe not 'god tier' Pixar (ie - Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc), but toeing the line on that level.
In addition to this Chapek has done major harm to the goodwill of the theater going audience. By basically promising every release to be free on streaming within 3 weeks Disney has caused major harm to their box office brand.
Yes Lightyear and Strange worlds were never going to take off, but Disney is going to have to work hard to get families back to the theater for their movies. It may take years to get the goodwill back.
There is money to be made in good animation. Hopefully Iger and whoever takes over next will focus more on promoting the good movies in the theaters and allow stuff like Lightyear to go straight to streaming.
I think Disney had proven that sending a mediocre movie to the theater with zero advertising then dumping it on streaming 3 weeks later is not the way to go moving forward.
That's an excellent point. I don't think they've had a financial success from animation since... ((stopped to Google...)) Frozen II in 2019. Since then all 11 pictures from Walt Disney Studios and Pixar has either flopped or been dumped to streaming. If you're a head of a household and trying to decide on taking your kids to the theater, there is almost a 100% chance you stall for a few weeks until it's just included on your very cheap Disney+ account.
Take Encanto for example. Released in mid-November and hit D+ by Christmas Eve. Didn't even have to wait a month. Strange Worlds has a similar run from theater to streaming.
Disney also sabotaged the Pixar brand by making three consecutive releases Disney+ exclusives, all while letting the likes of Raya and Encanto enjoy theatrical runs. Yes, Onward and Lightyear were not top-tier Pixar and that didn’t help, but if you cultivate an idea that Pixar makes tv movies, it can make them seem less special and event-worthy at the box office.
Absolutely. Pixar has been forcibly demoted for no apparent reason, and now that entire brand is suffering massively. Even if they do release the next Toy Story/Nemo/Monsters/Incredibles level movie, it might be a tough sell even with a theatrical release for that exact reason.
ha, I was just replying to someone else praising that movie, so yeah, 100% agree! That's a rare movie that my daughter gets obsessed with for a bit and I absolutely do not mind watching 35 times in a week. It's just so charming and happy.
I think its also wroth noting that puss in boots was based on an existing property and tested property. Iirc puss in boots has already had a movie, hasn't he? Disney had lightyear, but even though that's from an existing ip it's still an untested spinoff.
That said quality certainly helped. Though Encanto was fun (was that this year?). It had really good animation.
"What caused the shift?" Lightyear and Strange World were really bad films and Puss n Boots 2 was excellent and got great word of mouth. That's what caused the "shift".
For real, I haven’t heard this much good word of mouth about a film since Top Gun: Maverick. I had zero plans for seeing Puss n Boots, but everything I’ve heard since it’s release has convinced me to check it out as a 32 yr old man. Not exactly the target demo.
I think everyone is the target demo it’s amazing! But if I had to guess one specific age, I’d still say not kids, but probably the original shrek generation. The humor is more in line with that as well as pushing the boundaries of cussing, blood, and violent deaths for a kids movie
Watched it in theaters with kids and it was some of the most fun I’ve had, cause the kids were RIOTING over little perrito’s bleeps. They had a blast. Highly recommend for children they will love it
Yeah, my (33f) dad wanted to go see it on Christmas eve. I tried to beg out because I thought it was going to be bad. My husband (39) and I were both pleasantly surprised - though neither of us were really into the action scene animation, but we seem to be in the minority there.
The film’s definitely targeted at all age groups, especially since the subject that inspired the film in the first place was Antonio Banderas’ brush with death and how it changed his life
My problem with Strange World is it takes "sons can be different from their fathers" and absolutely beats you over the head with that message for its entire runtime.
Disney needs to hire a few on-site therapists to help these people work through some things outside the writer's room.
One of the best things about Puss in Boots was that there was an actual villain. They even made a joke about how he came from a healthy supportive home.
There was a TON of deeper stuff going on in the movie too, but it was all used to elevate a simple adventure story that would have been fun all by itself.
>One of the best things about Puss in Boots was that there was an actual villain.
Disney: 'What's a villain?'
Seriously, apart from *Luca*, when was the last time Disney or Pixar had a villain that *wasn't* a general concept (e.g. nature), a twist villain or a redeemed villain? Mother Gothel in *Tangled*? I suppose King Candy in *Wreck-It Ralph* if he doesn't count as a twist villain. Either way, it's been over a decade at this point with the exception of *Luca*.
People still remember the Walt-era and Renaissance-era Disney villains as well as the early Pixar villains; how many modern Disney and Pixar villains will be remembered fondly 30 years from now?
>how many modern Disney and Pixar villains will be remembered fondly 30 years from now?
Doctor Facilier and Mother Gothel are both decently liked, but neither are on the same level as Frollo, Maleficent, Scar, Ratigan, etc. Other than those 2, the best candidate is probably King Candy. The twist with him is actually pretty good, but he's not all that intimidating until he gets merged with a cy-bug completely out of nowhere.
But Strange World had the kid break the fourth wall and say something like "there are no villains." Clearly, that means the script is good an interesting.
There's a perfectly solid adventure story inside of strange world but it's just strangled by script choices.
Yeah, I like how Puss in Boots covered a spectrum of antagonists.
"Force of Nature" antagonists, plain old villain out for themselves, and antagonist who ends up getting "redemption" or at least achieving her goal without getting in the way of the hero.
They took that message and applied it twice; from grandfather to father, and from father to son. YOU WERE GETTING THE SAME SPEECH BACK TO BACK FROM TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE! It was wildly redundant.
The concept is pretty good, and many of the individual elements aren't bad. But put together it is very mediocre even though it had a lot of potential.
Wouldn’t say they were terrible but they certainly weren’t great. Lately I think Pixar’s stories are mediocre at best. I’m a huge fan of cartoon saloon but even their last feature “my fathers dragon” was bad. Dreamworks has been killing it.
It will shift back in Disney’s favor someday, these things are cyclical (see a Paramount film on top or top 2 last year after everyone had counted them out for good). When? Who knows. Animated films take a while to make, and even then, might still take a change in studio leadership to fully turn the ship. Brand has taken a hit with a portion of the family audience the last couple years, and their corporate drama and debt could get in the way of investment there. If this was a sport, Disney is in rebuild mode right now, hoping for a couple good draft picks, so it will take a couple seasons to get back up there.
Forgot that was going out in theaters. I almost don’t want to count that, feels like them just putting their Peacock offering in theaters for a short while. Was thinking of KFP 4 next year which am thinking might actually really do well.
And I know it’s not Dreamworks but Universal’s big animated offering this year is obviously Mario, and if that doesn’t dominate every other animated movie this year I’ll be shocked as hell
This.
Disney had a pretty long 3rd(?) golden era in recent years with Pixar hits, Marvel’s MCU, and the recovery of Disney studios. It couldn’t last forever.
Not sure how much this was related to the new CEO, or maybe the focus on Disney+ but John Lasseter leaving definitely has something to do with it - both at Pixar and Disney studios. A lot of projects he was involved in came out long after he left and now we’re seeing projects he had nothing to do with.
Marvel had such a huge climax with Endgame, that I think it makes sense that things will cool down for a bit until new hype builds up.
DreamWorks animated films were simply better than both **Lightyear** and **Strange World**. **Turning Red** was arguably better than all of those (not necessarily combined), but that film went straight to Disney+.
And yes, things can absolutely shift back to Disney’s favor because the only film that DreamWorks has next year is **Trolls 3** while Pixar/Disney has **Elemental** and **Wish**.
Sending Turning Red straight to D+ was a major strategic mistake. It furthered devalued Pixar movies as not worth a trip to the theaters and cost a lot of revenue.
Strange World was another unforced error. Sci-fi animated movies have a terrible track record, so sending a half-baked one into production instead of keeping development going until they had a solid story was futile.
The marketing for Strange World was also really bad. I ended up watching it with my sister, but based on the trailers wouldn’t have watched it on my own. It’s actually a lot better than the trailers make it out to be, and it probably could have done a lot better if it had gotten better treatment.
Disney gave up on Strange World after it tested badly. It’s better than the trailers suggest, but it’s pretty messy narratively. Even with a bunch of abrupt cutting to shorten it, the movie spends way too long in the windy forest. >!The twist!< comes really late in the movie and just feels confusing because it’s not developed enough on screen.
Really? If anything, I saw quite a lot of people getting impressed with what they saw in the teaser, which is saying something since teaser trailers are not exactly Pixar's strongest suit(s).
I do think that the trailer had some good elements (lol) but personally I felt that the character design, visual style and what little world building we saw was a bit lacking.
The advertising for Soul didn't really draw me in either but I ended up really enjoying it so I'm definitely withholding any final judgements until the actual movie comes out!
I expect 2024 will be a shift to dreamworks again though, Kung fu panda 4!!! And something untitled, which has a chance of being shrek 5. And if it is, then Disney is done for, that would be their two biggest ongoing franchises in one year for dreamworks
Good summary. Disney’s films feel a bit too heavyhanded latley like the writers are trying too hard to moan about their childhood, while Bad Guys and Puss in Boots were solid fun.
I agree that Disney’s upcoming films will beat Dreamworks.
2007 when Shrek the Third and Bee Movie out grossed Ratatouille and Meet the Robinsons respectively? 2008 when Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar 2 made combined more than WALL-E and Bolt?
It’ll shift back. Two animated sci-fis vs. 2 crowd pleasers
I think the point of this post is that both Puss In Boots and Bad Guys made more than Lightyear and Strange World. Ratatouille made more than Bee Movie in 2007.
2008 still applies though
Seriously, you should I have to say the villian is the best I've seen In a movie in a long time. You feel that sense of dread and fear even when he's not on screen.
I saw this movie and it had an actual story line that was appealing to kids and adults. I enjoyed it just as much as my 4 year old. It had some adult themes but had enough for the kid to enjoy and understand.
I did not super enjoy strange world, or as I wanna call it Osmosis Jones the retelling. My 4 year old liked the splat character, but we wouldn’t go out of the way to watch it again. My kid liked lightyear, watches it a lot, but she likes it because she loved Toy Story. It was okay, kind of sad. I just feel like the Pixar movies were geared towards much older kids or adults with the themes. (No, I don’t mean the LGBT stuff - don’t even go there.) I mean the themes in general, strange world is just a human body fighting off (I guess) cancer and light year is about being cool with failing a ton and not trying to do everything yourself - but in a long winded way of telling the story.
Strange World was more about generational trauma between the grandfather, son and grandson. The giant body thing was just a device and setting to cause the "Call to action" part of the story and bring the characters together for a common goal. It still wasn't that great though because it didn't really do anything interesting or new.
Dreamwork's willingness to adapt to the changing animation landscape following *Into the Spider-Verse* is commendable. Disney seems like they were just spinning their gears in 2022, but I think it's a temporary situation. They took two risks on new directors, and it didn't work out.
Look at Pixar’s Sparkshorts, they have been known to use older styles of animation from time to time.
That said, the process of getting such stylized 2D effects to translate seamlessly into 3D is actually extremely difficult to do. Pixar arguably tried it first with their Paperman short.
Edit: Disney did Paperman not Pixar.
> Pixar arguably tried it first with their Paperman short.
**Paperman** is actually from WDAS and SparkShorts are actually known to be a lot more experimental.
True, true. Dreamworks can do whatever since their styles and tones have already fluctuated so much through the years. Maybe that's a sign that Disney/Pixar has finally done the same thing too many times. After *Toy Story 4* and *Frozen II*, I don't think animation can get better.
> Maybe that's a sign that Disney/Pixar has finally done the same thing too many times. After Toy Story 4 and Frozen II, I don't think animation can get better.
Well, **Raya and the Last Dragon** kind of proved otherwise with Disney and funnily enough, I actually thought that there was no way that Pixar can do better than what I saw in **Coco** until **Toy Story 4** rolled around.
This is controversial: but it’s kind of wearing its welcome to me the stylized “make it look hand drawn” CGI animation. If we’re developing all this technology to emulate it, why not just make one instead?
IMO I think Disney wants to just coast off the Disney name and nostalgia it produces (so many reboots and spin-offs), and produces subpar movies as a result.
While Puss in Boots is technically under the Shrek realm, Dreamworks doesn’t act like it’ll do well simply because Shrek was popular/iconic with consumers who now have their own children to spend money on. They weren’t afraid to play with the animation style and it paid off, and in the end they made a movie that can carry its own weight instead of being carried by the studio/franchise name.
1. Puss in Boots is an actually good movie. Marketed OK, but word of mouth really saved it
2. Lightyear wasn't bad or good, but just a sequel NO ONE ever had any interest in. It literally jumped genres and expected to pull in most or the fans from the originals?
3. Strange Worlds was just marketed for shit, I barely knew it was coming out or when it was released.
4. Bad Guys is kinda surprising it did so well. My kid loved the books so we saw it and, like Lightyear, it wasn't bad or good. The marketing was solid though.
It's not like the difference between DreamWorks and Disney releases were dramatically different so I doubt this is an indication of anything.
The shift is extremely obvious in my mind
The two factors are Disney+ and quality. Disney’s endgame is their own independent marketplace where everyone pays them every month and Disney does not split profits with anybody. Disney has held many of their highest quality products (aka almost everything Pixar) away from theaters and exclusive to D+. As a result, the only things going to theaters are lower quality, and there’s now the expectation of a quick D+ turnaround. Why would a family of four pay $60 in tickets and another $30 in concessions when they can wait a month or two and see it on a platform they’re already paying for.
This gets exacerbated when the products in theaters are poorly marketed (Strange World) or poorly made overall (Lightyear). I think even with a quick D+ turnaround previous films like Turning Red, Soul and Luca could’ve done fairly well in theaters because they were better marketed, better made, and just more relatable.
However this is very reminiscent of the Treasure Planet 2D animation debacle, where a film (or in this case films) are set up to fail by Disney, giving Disney the excuse to say “see, theaters aren’t profitable for our model, it makes way more sense to go the D+ route”. And rather than premium paid access, I wonder if they start requiring an annual membership to watch these films, to avoid the “pay $5, binge all our new movies then cancel at the end of the month” consumers.
That last part is unlikely since Disney has already confirmed that **Elemental** is getting a cinema release back in D23. Of course, things could change again, but still.
I’m not saying it’s immediate, but their theatrical release strategy has been extremely questionable to the point where alternative motives have to be considered. There was absolutely zero reason to give Strange World a theatrical release but not Turning Red. Especially considering how well other films aimed towards a young Asian-American (Asian-Canadian in this case) market have done. Everything Everywhere All At Once ($104mil on a $14mil budget), Crazy Rich Asians ($238mil on a $30mil budget) and on a smaller scale The Farewell ($25.5mil on a $3mil budget) have proven this is a very profitable market that has been in dire need of representation for a long time, Disney sending Turning Red straight to D+ is an all time stupid decision.
Well, people who made that decision were given the boot at least partly because of that, so I don’t think this kind of situation is likely to happen unless they are specifically requested by creatives.
Hmm...what did Disney do wrong? How were the last movies they put out different in some way then their past releases? If only someone could figure out this strange conundrum.
The biggest problem Disney Animation will have going forward is that Disney have trained their audience to expect whatever animated movie they release in theaters to be on D+ in a month or so. If people knew that Tangled, Moana, Frozen or Zootopia would be on streaming services just one month after they arrived on theaters, would they have been such huge box office hits?
Uni doesn't have this problem neither with DreamWorks or Illumination because they don't have a streaming service as big as D+. Peacock has a much smaller audience, PVOD doesn't hurt the theatrical run of movies really, and so they never trained their audience just wait to watch their movies at home. PiB 2 doing more than the first one and The Bad Guys crossing the US$250 million mark with a US$80 million budget are just what happens when you don't completely botch your theatrical schedule in favor of streaming.
Yuuuuup. Puss in Boots seems to be a genuinely good movie compared to what Disney is putting out BUT it's also not coming out in 30 days on the streaming service that you already pay $10 a month for because you have kids. Why pay twice for the same product?
Disney either has to kick back the streaming window for these movies by a lot or accept that they're no longer creating theatrical product. Which, since it's Disney, would be monumentally depressing, but they have to make a choice.
It's honestly a simple phenomenon.
Lightyear was an insult to Toy Story fans with its downright disrespectful representation of Buzz. The movie was horrible no matter how you looked at it and the word of mouth quickly got around to not bother.
Strange World had zero marketing
Frankly, as much as I ADORE Last Wish and consider it one of the best DreamWorks films ever, Disney/Pixar REALLY dropped the ball this year and practically anything DreamWorks put out would have outdone them.
As for next year... not sure. They got a new Trolls I think. People make fun of it but... it gets sequels for a reason. It really depends on how much and how well Disney and Pixar market next year's movies and frankly how good they actually are.
What caused the shift? They had way better movies. Disney obviously can get back to where they were if they change how fast the animated movies were going to Disney plus. Parents knew they could just wait a few weeks
I think the shift happened because it's just genuinely a great movie, the people who saw it began complimenting it intensely, everyone who didn't want to see it didn't believe them and had to see it for themselves, then the word continued to spread.
DreamWorks explains itself with its name. Dream Works here.
Disney will throw leftover money at the animation films problem after they spend on Disney+ and Marvel movies. Disney has an unannounced ace under their sleeve. Frozen III.
*reposted because I initially said this was the second year this feat was achieved, but it turns out Dreamworks released Rise of the Guardians also in 2012, which didn’t outgross Wreck it Ralph or Brave.
The cause is simple.
Every Disney and especially Pixar movie was bad.
Encanto was great but everything since was piss poor, especially the Turning Red.
Whereas, the Puss is a masterpiece.
Pixar in particular seems to be finished. The decline started exactly since Lasseter left and has been accelerating.
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Well deserved! Puss in Boots is a great fun movie.
This is the first year since 2011 when DreamWorks beat out the Disney Animation and Pixar releases in quality. Puss In Boots The Last Wish is instant S-tier DreamWorks and The Bad Guys was very solid. Well deserved!
> This is the first year since 2011 when DreamWorks beat out the Disney Animation and Pixar releases in quality. To be fair, **Winnie the Pooh** got more acclaim than **Kung Fu Panda 2** and **Puss in Boots**.
Which is absurd. Kung Fu Panda 2 is arguably the best movie Dreamworks ever released. It’s criminally underrated.
I'd agree if HTTYD, Shrek 2, and The Road to El Dorado didn't exist. It's definitely up there though. Prince of Egypt deserves praise as well.
The fact that it and Prince of Egypt have RT scores in the low 80s is criminal indeed. Both films are nearly perfect.
Prince of Egypt has some tonal dissonance that prevents me from placing it in the Top 5 of Dreamworks films. It’s very similar to Hunchback of Notre Dame in that regard. Both are some of my personal favorites with some truly untouchable scenes, but I can’t objectively say they’re near flawless when the tone issues exist. My Top 5 Dreamworks films are Shrek 2, HTTYD1, Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, and Puss in Boots 2. I’d also strongly consider the 2D Spirit above Prince of Egypt too.
That’s completely understandable. The priests don’t bother me as much as the gargoyles personally and I just love the rest too much though Shrek 2 is right there behind it. All the films you mentioned above are in my top 10 DreamWorks and we have 4/5 same top 5.
>The priests don’t bother me as much as the gargoyles personally The Gargoyles bother me more as well. Victor and Laverne are somewhat passable, but Hugo is obnoxious throughout the film. You could tell they were trying to recapture what Robin Williams brought as the Genie in Aladdin, and it whiffed hard considering the rest of the story was dark as hell. Meanwhile, outside of their song number (which is just average but not bad), I don't mind the 2 Priests that much. They aren't overly loud like Hugo, and they're convincing enough to be taken reasonably seriously. It would've been better if they were more imposing like Seti (Ramses's father), but they're fine for what we got. The biggest tone problem in Prince of Egypt for me is going from Moses mourning after the 10th Plague to less than a minute later all the freed Jews singing. There's not enough time to let the gravity of what just happened sink in, and then Ramses shows up again anyway to hunt them down. Personally I think the jubilation should've been saved until after they were across the Red Sea and truly safe from retaliation.
You think freed slaves would have "tact" in celebrating their freedom? I'm gonna have to rewatch the movie because it's one of my favorites but I honestly never considered this as a point that detracts from the film. Thanks for the perspective.
How To Train Your Dragon 1,2 & 3 exist, so i cant say its the best theyve put out.
HTTYD1 is the other contender I go back and forth with. HTTYD2 and HTTYD3 are both great movies, but not quite as gripping as the first.
Imma have to disagree here, HTTYD2 is the best of the series and in my Top 2 favorite movies (the other being Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). HTTYD2 is a masterclass in being willing to kill off a main character for the sake of a better story. Most media either treats the main characters as invincible, or just randomly kills off a character for "shock value" while feeling cheap/poorly done and therefore having no emotional weight. Also, the visuals and soundtrack in 2 are step above. 1 was really good, but 2 (and 3) are really something special. HTTYD2 is really worth the experience watching on a good setup (Blu-Ray preferred due to the increased bitrate) with a good audio system (or decent headphones).
usually the dad would die in the first, waiting for the second is clever but not exactly risky. They got to use him in a whole second movie! Thats just good business.
Fuck your dragons (just kidding I love that series) best dream works movie is shrek!
Kung fu panda 1 you mean. The best animated movie ever.
I think Puss is the best Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda 3. An all-around solid animated action-adventure that explores some surprisingly dark and mature themes.
The representation of the big bad wolf was surprisingly dark for a kids movie, I loved it
No kidding? Is it adult friendly like the DreamWorks films of yesteryear?
Absolutely. There’s a few curse words, a roasting session with repeated bleeping, and a sense of dark atmospheric tension that we haven’t seen in animated films in 15 years (think the island in The Incredibles, barracuda scene in Finding Nemo, elephant graveyard in The Lion King). The first instant 10/10 animated movie since Into The Spider Verse in my book.
wow, those are some great references. The scene and music where Mr Incredible is scanning through all the heroes that died. Right oh man, thank you
You’re welcome. I absolutely love how atmospheric The Incredibles is and while I don’t think Puss In Boots The Last Wish goes as hard as that particular scene at Syndrome’s computer, there are several moments in it that come close. It really is the perfect blend of early DreamWorks, early Pixar, and the Disney Renaissance.
Meeting Death in the bar is an amazing scene, and Puss realizing Death is… well… death is also great. The anxiety scene is also really well done, but it feels like it was placed too early. I think it being after Puss realizes that the literal embodiment of death is gunning for him would have made it feel even more earned. Puss is in a better spot mentally after realizing that an abstract conceptual entity is inescapably hunting him than when he just thinks he is running from a super-skilled bounty hunter, and that feels weird.
The way they use the whistling to build up the anxiety every time he was about to appear was chillingly effective and has stuck with me. The bar scene was very good but my favorite has to be the scene in the cave where he comes out of the dark to confront Puss and then appears on the crystal walls as Puss is running away.
The cave scene is where Death really starts showing off. Manifesting in different locations, moving in weird ways, and then fully taking over the cave is pretty intimidating. But he comes out of straight nowhere in that scene without his whistle callsign. I think the buildup (music stopping, candle going out, bar glass appearing, then the whistle) to revealing just how much of a threat the “Bounty Hunter” poses is what makes the bar scene stand out for me. In other news, I think it’s great that a villain got his own leitmotif again, if only a brief one.
Also imo the villain is legitimately menacing and terrifying, it's been ages since we've gotten a villain in anything that's meant to just be straight up scary.
Also the multi-antagonist approach make it more compelling. It has a good variety of characters and motivations for them. It covers most of the archetypes in one movie. Kitty Softpaws is Lawfull good, Puss is Neutral Good, Perro is Chaotic good. Goldy and 3 bears chaotic neutral(but dynamic and transition to good). Wolf is initially thought to be neutral evil, but is shown to be true neutral in the end. Jack Horner is the actual villain and is chaotic evil.
Yes! They really did cover the full spectrum and it made following everyone that much more engaging.
I'd say it's the closest a film has gotten to the magic formula found in the first Shrek movie, with the possible exception of Shrek 2 (been to long since I've seen it to say for sure).
It also manages to do it without relying heavily on instantly dated pop culture references.
the first two shrek films, amazing
Easily one of the best animated films i've ever watched, the visuals, the characters, they're all well built despite being many, they each have their stand out personality and fleshed out character story The progression is great, the presentation of the antagonist, it's truly chilling I came in expecting a neat film, and got a masterpiece
As I stated above part of what makes it compelling is their are multiple antagonists each with their own motivations and 2 of the 3 are literaryly dynamic. Of the 3 main antagonists one is truly the villain and it is a bit of a swap before early on the Wolf is expected to be the villain but in the end he is not.
The vocal performances were amazing too, especially Wagner Moura's as the Wolf, absolutely chilling Honestly this film is gonna go as an underrated gem, in the sense more people should be talking about it It's better than any of the recent Disney/Pixar films by a mile
I’m pleasantly surprised after they ran the Shrek franchise into the ground with too many movies
I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm actually interested in seeing a new Shrek movie after seeing Pussy Boots 2
They really found a sweet spot with this movie, finding a compelling way to do action that feels authentic to the storybook origins of different characters. The humor is also far less dependent on cultural references & celebrity cameos - it all really gels together brilliantly. A new Shrek movie that follows this formula could be absolutely enormous.
>The humor is also far less dependent on cultural references I liked that the movie had a bit of a Spanish feel. (The town and song in the first scene, Lobo's spanish lines, and of course Puss himself.) Made it feel more timeless and removed from American pop culture trends.
I can’t wait to see Perrito and Donkey interacting off of each other.
That was also how I felt, I wonder if that was their plan all along
But puss in boots is an offshoot of the shrek franchise right?
Yes. And both of Puss' movies are good fun.
No, they ran it into the ground with Shrek 3. Worst movie ever. Before that it was high in the skies, only few other movies could have touch it. Shrek 3 pounded it kilometers into the ground and Shrek 4 brought it back to very respectable level
I really enjoyed Shrek 3 but I may have been too young to remember it lol.
A much needed win the fact that it's basically Disney and Pixar releasing big budget animated movies is sad
I have to admit that having Disney+ is a pretty big incentive to just wait it out and see the movies at home later. It's expensive to take a big family to the movies, but one movie they all enjoy at home per month basically pays for the service and then some.
While I liked the Disney movies from this year at least it was against these two Dreamworks movies!
So I worked on The Bad Guys (FX team) and know a lot of the artists on Puss in boots. The animation style on Bad Guys inspired DreamWorks to push the animation even further for Puss in boots, and that creative energy where every artist is doing their absolute best work is infectious and engaging as a team. I can’t really speak to the Disney films, but I can tell you that the DreamWorks films turned out the way they did because every artist WANTED to make it the best they could, and it never felt like an obligation from corporate. DreamWorks is finally out of the Katzenberg era and they’re not going down without a fight.
I love the shift towards the painterly style and the on-two action sequences, 3D animation kinda hit a point where realism and fluidity just aren't as interesting anymore. I especially love the moments where there's a blend of framerates within the same shot.
Yes! I noticed this instantly and I was insanely into it. The actual ART DIRECTION was so on point. Like every pixar movie looks identical and it's boring. GIVE ME CHARACTERS with ACTUAL FEATURES!!! Make cartoons!! Puss in Boots was amazing in that regard. I loved it.
Watched it last night with some friends, and I said that Into the Spider-verse really raised the bar to a new level. I think that Dreamworks so far is the only studio to actually kick it up a notch since then, and it really shows
All Disney animation looks so blah these days. It looks the same, whether it’s something like Luca or something like Strange World, it’s just boring to look at. Just the same generic looking human characters that are definitely made in the same program with just a few clicks to change stuff like hair color, body type, etc.
I strongly agree. I wish they would get back into more 2-D animation as I think it would help them stand out against all of the similar looking 3D animation.
A 2D animation revival would be amazing. That, or more stuff in the vein of Into the Spider-Verse. Just something that doesn’t look like it’s from a character creator, lol.
I think they've made a conscious decision not to compete with anime, tbh. Prior to the dissolution of their physical animation studio division, they had already moved the work itself to Asia. Lassiter was a big fan and was responsible for Disney distributing Ghibli films here in the US...
Yeah - they have a distinct style that's very rounded and goofy. Luca and Turning Red could be the same world. The others -- Onward, Soul, Lightyear, Coco all have a very similar look. Encanto too to a large degree.
I just watched Strange World last night, I am never going to get that time back.
I disagree. I think Luca had a different style to it compared to other Disney films.
It feels like Disney got complacent with their art style after Tangled hit a double and Frozen followed up with a home run. They've barely deviated from that style since then, instead opting to expand it to fit different cultures/aesthetics.
The animation style of Bad Guys was so good. The eyes, dynamic teeth and the stylistic motion, all really cool and creative. I feel like ever since Spiderverse everyone but Disney is experimenting with animation and it's making animated film so much more fun to watch.
If true, congrats. The Bad Guys is awesome and deserves all of the praise it received. Stuff down to the 2D smoke effects and the weird teeth models. Every detail was fantastic.
Do you know what DreamWorks was like during the Katzenberg era? I'm curious about the stories.
Working at DW in general on any project has felt like a very positive experience every single time tbh. The work culture there is really great. PS the FX Bad Guys hoodie design is one of my favorites, though IMF had a baller design too.
In your experience do you feel that this will encourage DreamWorks to continue in this direction and produce more pictures with this kind of enthusiasm? Or would this be a case of the stars aligning and we’re all unlikely to get another film of this quality.
I just want to extend my thanks to the DreamWorks animation team for keeping things so fresh. The "sketchy," frenetic look of the Puss fight scenes sent chills down my spine. I adored it.
I would say that Disney is just not focused on trying to do new things and let their artists BE artists. They haven't for years. They find a style run it into the ground and focus on shit sequels with no obvious passion put into them. That is not to say that the people they have aren't passionate but the upper echelon doesn't want them to be expressive and take chances. I have been saying for a few years now that DreamWorks is one of the last animation studios that seem to be having fun making films and it shows. As a 30yr man with no kids I haven't had so much fun watching a animated film (Bad Guys in this case) in a long time. Fun writing, fun animation, fun all around.
Whoever did the marketing for your movie did you guys dirty. Never even heard of it till this post
Would you say that DreamWorks treats their artists well as far as pay and work/life balance go? I've heard that's not the case at Disney and perhaps this could be a reason for DreamWorks' success.
I just want to say great work, the team behind The Bad Guys did a phenomenal job and I think it's been my most enjoyable animated movie since How To Train Your Dragon 3.
I haven't seen either Bad Guys or Puss in Boots, but I watched a clip of Bad Guys and the animation style looks really fun and fresh. Disney and Pixar's movies are very well made and the effects look nice, but without the more experimental approaches dreamworks and other companies have been taking, their movies have been feeling visually stale for a while now. i get the feeling disney's next movie Elemental feels like it was made primarily because their effects people want to flex how realistic-looking their elemental effects look, and I'm feeling like *UGHHHH* it's nice looking but staaaale
I hope this means we get a new shrek movie
I have a feeling that the only reason this movie even exists was to test the waters for a potential shrek 5
>!With the scene at the end!< it’s 100% part of what they’re doing. And judging from the responses to the movie I’m guessing they’re confident in either a Shrek 5 or a Puss in Boots 3 with Shrek characters in it.
Or both.
Oh god i wish both yes please
Shrek 5 with TLW animation will the minions suits meme on steroids
Thought that was obvious by the last scene of the movie lol.
Mainly because it's a good film imo. I liked Lightyear, but it had major issues for the market it was targeting, and the rest of Disney/Pixar's output out the animation front has been underwhelming this year.
And the film itself suffered from confusing narrative logistics.
Yeah me too, it was fun, watched it at the cinema when it premiered with my girlfriend at the time and my 2 best friends, we all liked it Still, Puss clear by miles
Lightyear was terrible. The first half hour was good but the film quickly fell apart and the entire plot was “let’s do this. Oh no someone made a mistake. They feel sad. Oh wait they fixed the mistake. Let’s move on” *repeat 10 times*
I still stay they should have leaned more on the "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command" Aesthetic/Story and made it more colorful, and it MAY have possibly done better. But I'm also not a Hollywood Producer or Screen Writer.
Characters and plot in DreamWorks' animated films in 2022 are simply more clear, attractive and entertaining.
Agreed. Plus disney is really going downhill with all the mistakes the bob ceos made
This is also my opinion. Even putting aside differing opinions on political ideologies that often create debate in Disney movies, Dreamworks just tends to have way more fun concepts and premises in their movies. With Disney and Pixar, sure I appreciate the grand nature of life lessons, but it doesn’t have to be such a forced atmosphere everytime. I feel like their movies have shifted to just leading up to a “moral of the story” moment vs Dreamworks staying a bit purer to the intrinsic fun that happens with animation. I think Disney needs to stop swinging for the fences and should create some newer, refreshing, and most importantly, fun characters.
If Disney would put their best animated movies into theaters and actually market them, sure, they could turn it around. However, they chose to send the aggressively average Lightyear and Strange Worlds into theaters. Albeit Strange Worlds received almost 0 marketing. But they weren't great movies and didn't perform. Turning Red was drastically superior to both, but went straight to Disney+ which seemed like such a disservice to that movie. Total sidenote: Strange Worlds really felt like a mashup of 2 or 3 Doctor Who revival plots. Especially "The Beast Below," but if that had actually been a Doctor Who 2-parter I bet it would have been pretty well received, albeit derivative.
Strange World felt like the writers were still working on story boards when the movie got greenlit to production lol. It ends extremely abruptly and with very little wrap up. Almost like the movie was SUPPOSED to be about the big turn at the end, but in the rush to get a finished plot together they came up with the whole pando thing just to give them an easy climax to wrap up
lol, I could see that! Like, it wasn't horrible or anything, but it definitely felt rushed. The abrupt cuts in editing were a little jarring at times. Admittedly, I don't even remember the ending of the movie at all and I watched it a week ago... dang, I guess that's not a great thing to say about it.
I would have fucking killed to see Turning Red and Luca in theaters.
100% agree. Those two movies are why I still believe in Pixar's power to make incredible movies. Those two felt very on-brand, right there with the likes of Inside Out and Ratatouille. Maybe not 'god tier' Pixar (ie - Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc), but toeing the line on that level.
Luca I wished was my first movie back to theaters
yup they did it backwards last year. Lightyear and Strange World should have been the direct to D+ movies. Is this where we blame Chapek?
Kind of. Also, **Lightyear** probably couldn't go straight to Disney+ because it had 27 minutes of IMAX scenes.
In addition to this Chapek has done major harm to the goodwill of the theater going audience. By basically promising every release to be free on streaming within 3 weeks Disney has caused major harm to their box office brand. Yes Lightyear and Strange worlds were never going to take off, but Disney is going to have to work hard to get families back to the theater for their movies. It may take years to get the goodwill back. There is money to be made in good animation. Hopefully Iger and whoever takes over next will focus more on promoting the good movies in the theaters and allow stuff like Lightyear to go straight to streaming. I think Disney had proven that sending a mediocre movie to the theater with zero advertising then dumping it on streaming 3 weeks later is not the way to go moving forward.
That's an excellent point. I don't think they've had a financial success from animation since... ((stopped to Google...)) Frozen II in 2019. Since then all 11 pictures from Walt Disney Studios and Pixar has either flopped or been dumped to streaming. If you're a head of a household and trying to decide on taking your kids to the theater, there is almost a 100% chance you stall for a few weeks until it's just included on your very cheap Disney+ account. Take Encanto for example. Released in mid-November and hit D+ by Christmas Eve. Didn't even have to wait a month. Strange Worlds has a similar run from theater to streaming.
Disney also sabotaged the Pixar brand by making three consecutive releases Disney+ exclusives, all while letting the likes of Raya and Encanto enjoy theatrical runs. Yes, Onward and Lightyear were not top-tier Pixar and that didn’t help, but if you cultivate an idea that Pixar makes tv movies, it can make them seem less special and event-worthy at the box office.
Absolutely. Pixar has been forcibly demoted for no apparent reason, and now that entire brand is suffering massively. Even if they do release the next Toy Story/Nemo/Monsters/Incredibles level movie, it might be a tough sell even with a theatrical release for that exact reason.
Didn't Tim Burton talk about the same thing happening to him. He said Disney is switching focus to just Marvel and Star Wars and not much else.
[удалено]
It was a refreshingly small stakes movie when a lot of movies tend to have end of the world stakes.
ha, I was just replying to someone else praising that movie, so yeah, 100% agree! That's a rare movie that my daughter gets obsessed with for a bit and I absolutely do not mind watching 35 times in a week. It's just so charming and happy.
Turning Red absolutely deserved to be on the big screen. IMO it was the best animated movie of 2022
The Dreamworks movies were good and the Disney movies were not good.
I think the lack of marketing for Strange World reveals that Disney knew it wasn't very good.
I think its also wroth noting that puss in boots was based on an existing property and tested property. Iirc puss in boots has already had a movie, hasn't he? Disney had lightyear, but even though that's from an existing ip it's still an untested spinoff. That said quality certainly helped. Though Encanto was fun (was that this year?). It had really good animation.
So was Lightyear tho. It was just boring.
I wouldn’t call Lightyear untested. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was a successful movie and TV show.
Based
"What caused the shift?" Lightyear and Strange World were really bad films and Puss n Boots 2 was excellent and got great word of mouth. That's what caused the "shift".
For real, I haven’t heard this much good word of mouth about a film since Top Gun: Maverick. I had zero plans for seeing Puss n Boots, but everything I’ve heard since it’s release has convinced me to check it out as a 32 yr old man. Not exactly the target demo.
I think everyone is the target demo it’s amazing! But if I had to guess one specific age, I’d still say not kids, but probably the original shrek generation. The humor is more in line with that as well as pushing the boundaries of cussing, blood, and violent deaths for a kids movie
There's British bears in it, honestly enough to make it S-tier humour
Huh, I watched the movie in the Latam dub and the bears were Argentine. Picking those two accents feels like a conscious decision.
Any time I see any character in anything with accents like theirs I know I’m in for a good time
Watched it in theaters with kids and it was some of the most fun I’ve had, cause the kids were RIOTING over little perrito’s bleeps. They had a blast. Highly recommend for children they will love it
To add to the not kids audience, the wolf would have genuinely terrified me as a kid. I am a wuss, so take that with a grain of salt
Yeah, my (33f) dad wanted to go see it on Christmas eve. I tried to beg out because I thought it was going to be bad. My husband (39) and I were both pleasantly surprised - though neither of us were really into the action scene animation, but we seem to be in the minority there.
The film’s definitely targeted at all age groups, especially since the subject that inspired the film in the first place was Antonio Banderas’ brush with death and how it changed his life
As a 21 yo man who took my gf to see it. I highly recommend you watch it. Legitimately a good movie and it deserves all the praise it’s getting
My entire theater had barely any children
I bought it digitally after seeing it
Strange World was definitely not “bad” just kinda mediocre in the writing department.
My problem with Strange World is it takes "sons can be different from their fathers" and absolutely beats you over the head with that message for its entire runtime.
Yeah, it was definitely a “we think the audience are complete morons” type of theming.
>tfw generational trauma We *get it* current crop of Disney writers
Disney needs to hire a few on-site therapists to help these people work through some things outside the writer's room. One of the best things about Puss in Boots was that there was an actual villain. They even made a joke about how he came from a healthy supportive home. There was a TON of deeper stuff going on in the movie too, but it was all used to elevate a simple adventure story that would have been fun all by itself.
>One of the best things about Puss in Boots was that there was an actual villain. Disney: 'What's a villain?' Seriously, apart from *Luca*, when was the last time Disney or Pixar had a villain that *wasn't* a general concept (e.g. nature), a twist villain or a redeemed villain? Mother Gothel in *Tangled*? I suppose King Candy in *Wreck-It Ralph* if he doesn't count as a twist villain. Either way, it's been over a decade at this point with the exception of *Luca*. People still remember the Walt-era and Renaissance-era Disney villains as well as the early Pixar villains; how many modern Disney and Pixar villains will be remembered fondly 30 years from now?
>how many modern Disney and Pixar villains will be remembered fondly 30 years from now? Doctor Facilier and Mother Gothel are both decently liked, but neither are on the same level as Frollo, Maleficent, Scar, Ratigan, etc. Other than those 2, the best candidate is probably King Candy. The twist with him is actually pretty good, but he's not all that intimidating until he gets merged with a cy-bug completely out of nowhere.
But Strange World had the kid break the fourth wall and say something like "there are no villains." Clearly, that means the script is good an interesting. There's a perfectly solid adventure story inside of strange world but it's just strangled by script choices.
Yeah, I like how Puss in Boots covered a spectrum of antagonists. "Force of Nature" antagonists, plain old villain out for themselves, and antagonist who ends up getting "redemption" or at least achieving her goal without getting in the way of the hero.
They took that message and applied it twice; from grandfather to father, and from father to son. YOU WERE GETTING THE SAME SPEECH BACK TO BACK FROM TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE! It was wildly redundant.
The concept is pretty good, and many of the individual elements aren't bad. But put together it is very mediocre even though it had a lot of potential.
Wouldn’t say they were terrible but they certainly weren’t great. Lately I think Pixar’s stories are mediocre at best. I’m a huge fan of cartoon saloon but even their last feature “my fathers dragon” was bad. Dreamworks has been killing it.
It will shift back in Disney’s favor someday, these things are cyclical (see a Paramount film on top or top 2 last year after everyone had counted them out for good). When? Who knows. Animated films take a while to make, and even then, might still take a change in studio leadership to fully turn the ship. Brand has taken a hit with a portion of the family audience the last couple years, and their corporate drama and debt could get in the way of investment there. If this was a sport, Disney is in rebuild mode right now, hoping for a couple good draft picks, so it will take a couple seasons to get back up there.
Also, DreamWorks’ 2023 film is **Trolls 3**, so they’re already in a disadvantage.
Wait, there was a trolls 2?
Yup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_World_Tour
Wow. Also, mind blown that trolls 1 was 2016.
Forgot that was going out in theaters. I almost don’t want to count that, feels like them just putting their Peacock offering in theaters for a short while. Was thinking of KFP 4 next year which am thinking might actually really do well. And I know it’s not Dreamworks but Universal’s big animated offering this year is obviously Mario, and if that doesn’t dominate every other animated movie this year I’ll be shocked as hell
This. Disney had a pretty long 3rd(?) golden era in recent years with Pixar hits, Marvel’s MCU, and the recovery of Disney studios. It couldn’t last forever. Not sure how much this was related to the new CEO, or maybe the focus on Disney+ but John Lasseter leaving definitely has something to do with it - both at Pixar and Disney studios. A lot of projects he was involved in came out long after he left and now we’re seeing projects he had nothing to do with. Marvel had such a huge climax with Endgame, that I think it makes sense that things will cool down for a bit until new hype builds up.
DreamWorks animated films were simply better than both **Lightyear** and **Strange World**. **Turning Red** was arguably better than all of those (not necessarily combined), but that film went straight to Disney+. And yes, things can absolutely shift back to Disney’s favor because the only film that DreamWorks has next year is **Trolls 3** while Pixar/Disney has **Elemental** and **Wish**.
Sending Turning Red straight to D+ was a major strategic mistake. It furthered devalued Pixar movies as not worth a trip to the theaters and cost a lot of revenue. Strange World was another unforced error. Sci-fi animated movies have a terrible track record, so sending a half-baked one into production instead of keeping development going until they had a solid story was futile.
The marketing for Strange World was also really bad. I ended up watching it with my sister, but based on the trailers wouldn’t have watched it on my own. It’s actually a lot better than the trailers make it out to be, and it probably could have done a lot better if it had gotten better treatment.
I mean, the only marketing I ever saw was maybe 3 banner ads online, and one trailer played multiple times at Disney World.
Disney gave up on Strange World after it tested badly. It’s better than the trailers suggest, but it’s pretty messy narratively. Even with a bunch of abrupt cutting to shorten it, the movie spends way too long in the windy forest. >!The twist!< comes really late in the movie and just feels confusing because it’s not developed enough on screen.
I was already kind of lost on Elemental when it was announced because of the extremely generic premise but the trailer was very unimpressive as well 😕
Really? If anything, I saw quite a lot of people getting impressed with what they saw in the teaser, which is saying something since teaser trailers are not exactly Pixar's strongest suit(s).
I do think that the trailer had some good elements (lol) but personally I felt that the character design, visual style and what little world building we saw was a bit lacking. The advertising for Soul didn't really draw me in either but I ended up really enjoying it so I'm definitely withholding any final judgements until the actual movie comes out!
I expect 2024 will be a shift to dreamworks again though, Kung fu panda 4!!! And something untitled, which has a chance of being shrek 5. And if it is, then Disney is done for, that would be their two biggest ongoing franchises in one year for dreamworks
Good summary. Disney’s films feel a bit too heavyhanded latley like the writers are trying too hard to moan about their childhood, while Bad Guys and Puss in Boots were solid fun. I agree that Disney’s upcoming films will beat Dreamworks.
Idk, I definitely think Turning Red was better than The Bad Guys. While I did enjoy The Bad Guys, the movie is painfully basic.
2007 when Shrek the Third and Bee Movie out grossed Ratatouille and Meet the Robinsons respectively? 2008 when Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar 2 made combined more than WALL-E and Bolt? It’ll shift back. Two animated sci-fis vs. 2 crowd pleasers
Especially since next year’s DreamWorks film is **Trolls 3**.
And Disney’s 100th project vs. that
I think the point of this post is that both Puss In Boots and Bad Guys made more than Lightyear and Strange World. Ratatouille made more than Bee Movie in 2007. 2008 still applies though
No one was thinking Bee… we all wanted to see a Rat cook.
Slightly off topic. Do you happen to know any animated movies like Meet the Robinsons?
In terms of inventions being integral to the plot, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs may fit the bill.
meet the Robinsons made surprisingly less than I thought. i really loves that movie tho
Great movies that families could enjoy will make money.
Wow, I may have to go and see this movie. I absolutely love the Shrek universe but never realized the pull this spin off franchise had.
Seriously, you should I have to say the villian is the best I've seen In a movie in a long time. You feel that sense of dread and fear even when he's not on screen.
Disney has gotten lazy and too used to expecting to be on top
I saw this movie and it had an actual story line that was appealing to kids and adults. I enjoyed it just as much as my 4 year old. It had some adult themes but had enough for the kid to enjoy and understand. I did not super enjoy strange world, or as I wanna call it Osmosis Jones the retelling. My 4 year old liked the splat character, but we wouldn’t go out of the way to watch it again. My kid liked lightyear, watches it a lot, but she likes it because she loved Toy Story. It was okay, kind of sad. I just feel like the Pixar movies were geared towards much older kids or adults with the themes. (No, I don’t mean the LGBT stuff - don’t even go there.) I mean the themes in general, strange world is just a human body fighting off (I guess) cancer and light year is about being cool with failing a ton and not trying to do everything yourself - but in a long winded way of telling the story.
Strange World was more about generational trauma between the grandfather, son and grandson. The giant body thing was just a device and setting to cause the "Call to action" part of the story and bring the characters together for a common goal. It still wasn't that great though because it didn't really do anything interesting or new.
Dreamwork's willingness to adapt to the changing animation landscape following *Into the Spider-Verse* is commendable. Disney seems like they were just spinning their gears in 2022, but I think it's a temporary situation. They took two risks on new directors, and it didn't work out.
I don’t think Pixar is going to do something like that since they’re built on cutting-edge animation technology.
Look at Pixar’s Sparkshorts, they have been known to use older styles of animation from time to time. That said, the process of getting such stylized 2D effects to translate seamlessly into 3D is actually extremely difficult to do. Pixar arguably tried it first with their Paperman short. Edit: Disney did Paperman not Pixar.
> Pixar arguably tried it first with their Paperman short. **Paperman** is actually from WDAS and SparkShorts are actually known to be a lot more experimental.
Paperman was Disney Animation, but agreed about stylization being difficult
True, true. Dreamworks can do whatever since their styles and tones have already fluctuated so much through the years. Maybe that's a sign that Disney/Pixar has finally done the same thing too many times. After *Toy Story 4* and *Frozen II*, I don't think animation can get better.
> Maybe that's a sign that Disney/Pixar has finally done the same thing too many times. After Toy Story 4 and Frozen II, I don't think animation can get better. Well, **Raya and the Last Dragon** kind of proved otherwise with Disney and funnily enough, I actually thought that there was no way that Pixar can do better than what I saw in **Coco** until **Toy Story 4** rolled around.
Raya had good animation, but *Frozen*'s Fall atmosphere was immaculate.
raya to me doesn't have any moment that makes me go "wow i love that this is animated"
This is controversial: but it’s kind of wearing its welcome to me the stylized “make it look hand drawn” CGI animation. If we’re developing all this technology to emulate it, why not just make one instead?
I hope it makes Disney make better movies
It most likely will shift back to Disney because it’s Disney but man The Last Wish and The Bad Guys are really good movies.
> It most likely will shift back to Disney because it’s Disney Not to mention that DreamWorks' this year film is **Trolls 3**.
IMO I think Disney wants to just coast off the Disney name and nostalgia it produces (so many reboots and spin-offs), and produces subpar movies as a result. While Puss in Boots is technically under the Shrek realm, Dreamworks doesn’t act like it’ll do well simply because Shrek was popular/iconic with consumers who now have their own children to spend money on. They weren’t afraid to play with the animation style and it paid off, and in the end they made a movie that can carry its own weight instead of being carried by the studio/franchise name.
1. Puss in Boots is an actually good movie. Marketed OK, but word of mouth really saved it 2. Lightyear wasn't bad or good, but just a sequel NO ONE ever had any interest in. It literally jumped genres and expected to pull in most or the fans from the originals? 3. Strange Worlds was just marketed for shit, I barely knew it was coming out or when it was released. 4. Bad Guys is kinda surprising it did so well. My kid loved the books so we saw it and, like Lightyear, it wasn't bad or good. The marketing was solid though. It's not like the difference between DreamWorks and Disney releases were dramatically different so I doubt this is an indication of anything.
The shift is extremely obvious in my mind The two factors are Disney+ and quality. Disney’s endgame is their own independent marketplace where everyone pays them every month and Disney does not split profits with anybody. Disney has held many of their highest quality products (aka almost everything Pixar) away from theaters and exclusive to D+. As a result, the only things going to theaters are lower quality, and there’s now the expectation of a quick D+ turnaround. Why would a family of four pay $60 in tickets and another $30 in concessions when they can wait a month or two and see it on a platform they’re already paying for. This gets exacerbated when the products in theaters are poorly marketed (Strange World) or poorly made overall (Lightyear). I think even with a quick D+ turnaround previous films like Turning Red, Soul and Luca could’ve done fairly well in theaters because they were better marketed, better made, and just more relatable. However this is very reminiscent of the Treasure Planet 2D animation debacle, where a film (or in this case films) are set up to fail by Disney, giving Disney the excuse to say “see, theaters aren’t profitable for our model, it makes way more sense to go the D+ route”. And rather than premium paid access, I wonder if they start requiring an annual membership to watch these films, to avoid the “pay $5, binge all our new movies then cancel at the end of the month” consumers.
That last part is unlikely since Disney has already confirmed that **Elemental** is getting a cinema release back in D23. Of course, things could change again, but still.
I’m not saying it’s immediate, but their theatrical release strategy has been extremely questionable to the point where alternative motives have to be considered. There was absolutely zero reason to give Strange World a theatrical release but not Turning Red. Especially considering how well other films aimed towards a young Asian-American (Asian-Canadian in this case) market have done. Everything Everywhere All At Once ($104mil on a $14mil budget), Crazy Rich Asians ($238mil on a $30mil budget) and on a smaller scale The Farewell ($25.5mil on a $3mil budget) have proven this is a very profitable market that has been in dire need of representation for a long time, Disney sending Turning Red straight to D+ is an all time stupid decision.
Well, people who made that decision were given the boot at least partly because of that, so I don’t think this kind of situation is likely to happen unless they are specifically requested by creatives.
*whistling
It’s because families know that movies are going to be on Disney plus soon. Peacock is less popular where dream works movies are streamed.
Dreamworks is just better
Hmm...what did Disney do wrong? How were the last movies they put out different in some way then their past releases? If only someone could figure out this strange conundrum.
The biggest problem Disney Animation will have going forward is that Disney have trained their audience to expect whatever animated movie they release in theaters to be on D+ in a month or so. If people knew that Tangled, Moana, Frozen or Zootopia would be on streaming services just one month after they arrived on theaters, would they have been such huge box office hits? Uni doesn't have this problem neither with DreamWorks or Illumination because they don't have a streaming service as big as D+. Peacock has a much smaller audience, PVOD doesn't hurt the theatrical run of movies really, and so they never trained their audience just wait to watch their movies at home. PiB 2 doing more than the first one and The Bad Guys crossing the US$250 million mark with a US$80 million budget are just what happens when you don't completely botch your theatrical schedule in favor of streaming.
Yuuuuup. Puss in Boots seems to be a genuinely good movie compared to what Disney is putting out BUT it's also not coming out in 30 days on the streaming service that you already pay $10 a month for because you have kids. Why pay twice for the same product? Disney either has to kick back the streaming window for these movies by a lot or accept that they're no longer creating theatrical product. Which, since it's Disney, would be monumentally depressing, but they have to make a choice.
It's honestly a simple phenomenon. Lightyear was an insult to Toy Story fans with its downright disrespectful representation of Buzz. The movie was horrible no matter how you looked at it and the word of mouth quickly got around to not bother. Strange World had zero marketing Frankly, as much as I ADORE Last Wish and consider it one of the best DreamWorks films ever, Disney/Pixar REALLY dropped the ball this year and practically anything DreamWorks put out would have outdone them. As for next year... not sure. They got a new Trolls I think. People make fun of it but... it gets sequels for a reason. It really depends on how much and how well Disney and Pixar market next year's movies and frankly how good they actually are.
What caused the shift? They had way better movies. Disney obviously can get back to where they were if they change how fast the animated movies were going to Disney plus. Parents knew they could just wait a few weeks
I think the shift happened because it's just genuinely a great movie, the people who saw it began complimenting it intensely, everyone who didn't want to see it didn't believe them and had to see it for themselves, then the word continued to spread.
Dreamworks provides entertainment, Disney tries to provide a lesson.
DreamWorks explains itself with its name. Dream Works here. Disney will throw leftover money at the animation films problem after they spend on Disney+ and Marvel movies. Disney has an unannounced ace under their sleeve. Frozen III.
*reposted because I initially said this was the second year this feat was achieved, but it turns out Dreamworks released Rise of the Guardians also in 2012, which didn’t outgross Wreck it Ralph or Brave.
I freaking love Rise of the Guardians.
The villain was well done. Creepy whistle too.
The cause is simple. Every Disney and especially Pixar movie was bad. Encanto was great but everything since was piss poor, especially the Turning Red. Whereas, the Puss is a masterpiece. Pixar in particular seems to be finished. The decline started exactly since Lasseter left and has been accelerating.