“The basic trouble with you is that you’re honest.”
Screenplay by Harry Kurnitz
PIXAR Movies from Best to Worst
With Finding Dory set to be the latest PIXAR Animation Studios latest release next week, now seems like a good time to reflect on their past films and rank them from best to worst. Over the past two decades PIXAR Animation Studios has become the number one producer of animated films. They’ve dominated the Oscars for Best Animated Feature, and more importantly they’ve dominated the box office, leaving other studios like Walt Disney Feature Animation and DreamWorks Animation in their rear view mirror. They’ve done this by being the masters of manipulating emotions and allowing you to leave the theater believing that you’ve actually felt and experienced something rather than just watched something.
However, even though their box office returns have remained fairly consistent over the last 10-15 years, they actually haven’t been as consistent with the quality of the content. I have some very definite opinions on that, so here is one man’s list on PIXAR from best to worst.
1. The Incredibles (2004)
Brad Bird’s second masterpiece (The Iron Giant being the first) remains the gold-standard of PIXAR films by combining the super-hero genre with the best motifs of James Bond. This story about a family of super heroes who come out of hiding and save the world turns into a story that is much more about family than about super heroes. The Incredibles is also PIXAR’s most complete film. It has a strong story, a strong theme, entertaining action, more than enough humor, and a group of characters that are easy to fall in love with. Honestly. I can’t find a single fault with this film, and I could watch it on a loop.
2. Toy Story 2 (1999)
PIXAR’s 3rd feature was initially slated to be released directly to home video, but the studio knew that they had such a strong film that they decided to release it theatrically and it is among the best films the studio has ever put out. The second installment of the adventures of Woody and Buzz Lightyear and their friends became a world-wide sensation and really got PIXAR’s ball rolling. This is a bit more of a road movie, but it has a strong narrative and John Lassiter and his team did an outstanding job of giving familiar characters new challenges to overcome that felt organic and natural by making it about embracing who you are and where the real love in your life comes from. If the Academy had any guts, this film would have been nominated for Best Picture in 2000.
3. A Bug’s Life (1998)
I’m sure a lot of people are going to take me to task over ranking this film so high, but bear with me for a moment. This is essentially an animated version of Seven Samurai, and to me this film has the best written screenplay of any PIXAR film. There is not one thing that happens in this story that doesn’t either effect or is effected by something else that happens. It’s a deeply layered story with dialogue that drips with subtext. It’s just as strong thematically speaking and any film that PIXAR has made since, and it has multiple characters that have satisfying character arcs. If you haven’t seen this film for a while, it’s a terrific film that’s worth another look.
4. Ratatouille (2007)
The ultimate in dramatic irony, this is a story about a rat who longs to become one of the great chefs of Paris. Most every film is about overcoming obstacles, but Ratatouille is the ultimate underdog story Remy the rat teaming up with an unlikely sidekick to save the name and reputation of one of Paris’s most famous restaurants. But like Brad Bird’s other great PIXAR film, The Incredibles, this film isn’t really about what you see on the surface. This film is about dreaming big while also remembering the importance of the simple things that really make life worth savoring.
5. Toy Story (1995)
The film that started is all for PIXAR, Toy Story is a seminal film if for no other reason than it showed that CGI could carry and entire feature, and thus changed the industry of Feature Animation forever. From that standpoint, the argument could be made that Toy Story is one of the most important films of all time. However it would have been nothing more than a footnote had it not also been a great film, and that’s exactly what it is. Thematically it’s about the old versus the new and the modern versus the quaint. This is a story about embracing who you can become rather then who think you’ve been. Rather than relying on a new technology to carry the film, PIXAR used the new technology to tell a story that a universal audience could relate to.
6. Inside Out (2015)
One of the biggest grossing films of all time, Inside Out tells a coming of age story from the perspective of individual emotions inside a 11-year old girl named Riley. Her life is upended when her family moves from the open spaces of Minnesota to the crowded city of San Francisco. While this goes on, the leader of her emotions Joy, struggles to keep Riley happy, while also learning that sadness and disgust and fear and anger are not necessarily bad things. In fact, Joy learns that we need to feel those emotions in order to appreciate how happy we really are. I’m not a huge fan of the film’s plot because I feel the story has some holes in it, but the emotional roller coaster that the story sends you on is as effective as it possibly could be.
7. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
In an alternate universe where monsters’ jobs are to collect screams from kids which they use as the energy source to power their world, two unlikely heroes discover an alternate energy resource and learn that many fears are unfounded. The themes of this film are a little more on the nose, but it’s an entertaining film and John Goodman and Billy Crystal are hilarious as the reluctant heroes of this world. Technologically speaking, this film advanced the look for fur and hair in order to make it much more realistic looking than it had been in the past. The story is also well constructed and actually leaves the audience guessing, who-done-it style until the very end. It’s an entertaining film with one of the most heartwarming final shot in the history of cinema.
8. Brave (2012)
This is probably the most Disney-like film that PIXAR has made. In fact, almost the whole time I was watching it, I felt like I was watching a Disney movie. If there’s one word that comes to mind with this film, it’s “average”, which stands to reason as it comes in the middle of the list. It’s not a particularly memorable film, for good reasons or for bad. Like many other PIXAR films, familial relationships, specifically the relationship between the spunky and free-willed Merida and her traditional mother Elinor, and the struggles that they each have as Merida wants to control her own fate while Elinor tries to push her towards what she’s supposed to do. This might be PIXAR’s least emotionally accessible film, but it took their storytelling in a direction it hadn’t gone before.
9. Finding Nemo (2003)
This might be the most visually beautiful film that PIXAR has ever made, and that is truly saying something. And yet, I have to admit that I missed the boat on this one (no pun intended). This has one of the weakest storylines of any PIXAR film, and the only thing that keeps it from being lower on the list is the outstanding B-story of Nemo trying to escape the fish tank before the Dentist’s pescicidal niece arrives. However the storyline of Marlin and Dory trying to find him is nothing more than an episodic road movie where any of the challenges that they face could be swapped in order with any of the other challenges and it wouldn’t affect the narrative at all. Each individual scene is good, but when they’re all combined into one narrative, they become less than the sum of their parts.
10. Up (2009)
This film has perhaps the most gut-wrenchingly emotional opening 20 minutes of any film in history. The first half of this film is so strong and emotional and entertaining that it makes it that much more of a shame when the story completely falls apart over the second half. The story of the elderly Carl Fredricksen lifting his house with thousands of helium filled baloons and then flying it to South America to realize a life-long dream that he’d had with his late wife is implausible enough until he meets his childhood hero, the adventurer Charles Muntz. They actually have a show-down where the two of them, one in his 80’s and the other pushing 100-years old very spryly fight around a dirigible. All movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but Up just went a little too far for me.
11. WALL-E (2008)
Another half a great movie. The first half of this film is a brilliant experiment in dialogue-less film making. Director Andrew Stanton did an amazing job of making us like and care about WALL-E, a solitary robot who’s job it was to clean up a now inhabitable Earth. When Eve, a security robot shows up, the two of them communicate largely non-verbally. It’s only when WALL-E follows Eve back to her space ship and they come across humans that the story goes off the rails. This film is a classic example of how no dialogue at all trumps bad dialogue every time and that cinema is a visual medium where showing is always better than telling.
12. Toy Story 3 (2010)
The most recent and most frustrating film in the Toy Story franchise. I call it frustrating because it was essentially a rehashing of Toy Story 2 and also because it made so much money that we’re going to get a Toy Story 4, even though this film essentially closed out the series. While it had it’s moments, the first hour and 15 to hour and 20 minutes were real hard to get through. It was the last 15-20 minutes of this movie that won it the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and even with that it never should have beaten How To Train Your Dragon, which was a superior film in every way. I was also frustrated because the toys had now spent 3 films trying to get back to Andy, and what does Andy do at the end of this film? (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT) He gives them away to a stranger.
13. Cars (2006)
I’m not as down on this film as many other people are. Like nearly every other PIXAR film, it had amazing art direction and was beautiful to look at. The character growth of Lightning McQueen, the main character, is well developed and organic. Plus any animated film with Paul Newman doing a voice is worth your time. The main problem with this film is that, even with that said, we were never really given the opportunity to really engage with the characters, especially Lightning McQueen. We really don’t care enough about him by the end, so the climax comes off as anti-climactic and flat. In fact, the word that I would use to describe the entire film is “flat”.
14. Monsters University (2013)
I must admit that my expectations for this film were pretty low going in, and even those low expectations weren’t met. This film is funny at times, but that’s going to be the case with any film with Billy Crystal. PIXAR’s on prequel, it felt in this film like they were trying to recapture the magic of the first film while also interjecting some Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds to the plot ad theme. Once again we have a film that has some nice individual pieces that just don’t fit together and the result is a boring movie with characters about whom I could not care less.
15. The Good Dinosaur (2015)
This is the one PIXAR film that we know about that just had too many problems to overcome. IT was racked with story problems all along, and it got to the point where they couldn’t push it any further and just had to release something. While the hyper photo-realistic backgrounds are amazing to look at, they were too jarring when the very cartoony looking characters were placed in those environments. Add to that the fact that the story was just Finding Nemo without the excellent B-Story, and this film was a recipe for disaster. The ingredients on their own were good enough, but the final product came out very bland and uninspired.
16. Cars 2 (2011)
Can we all just come out and admit that this film was nothing more than a consumer products money grab? Actually, the opening sequence of this film is super-entertaining and drew me in. I was thinking that maybe it would be better than I anticipated coming in, and then the rest of the movie happened. Using Mator, the sidekick from the first film and voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, as this film’s hero was perhaps the most bone-headed decision of PIXAR’s illustrious history. Larry the Cable Guy is great in small doses, but should not be carrying an entire film. They attempted and failed at creating a James Bond-esque story, and we care even less about these characters than we did in the first installment of the franchise. But not to worry. Cars 3 is headed your way in 2017.
Today’s Movie Quote – Gone Girl
“I like men who are funny… Not funny.
Screenplay by Gillian Flynn
Three Reasons Why it Matters That Han Shot First
Prior to George Lucas saving the Star Wars franchise by effectively firing himself and selling it off to the Disney Empire, much outrage and gnashing of teeth had been happening within the legions of Star Wars fans over the direction in which Lucas had taken it. If, for whatever reason, you’re not familiar with the depth of the consternation Star Wars fans were experiencing, check out this documentary on Youtube called The People Vs George Lucas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pAl5pZlOp8
One of Lucas’ biggest sins according to many Start Wars fans was one of the key changes he made to Episode IV: A New Hope when he re-released it with all new CG effects so that it was closer to his original vision. Many of the changes were added eye candy which from a certain point of view enhance the film visually and bring it up to date from a visual standpoint. Not everyone loved these changes, but on their own they did little to decrease the charm and feeling of the original. If that was all he had done, then I don’t think there would have been the outrage that there was. Lucas’ biggest sin was changing a key scene in which Han Solo is confronted by the bounty hunter Greedo.
Most everyone knows what happens next. In the original version, keeping in mind that we’ve only just met Han Solo one scene earlier, Greedo pulls a gun on him as the two of them sit down in a booth in the cantina. Greedo tells him that Jabba the Hut has put a price so large on Solo’s head that every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be looking for him. Solo tells him that he had to drop his shipment because he was being boarded and he didn’t have a choice. Meanwhile the camera pans down under the table and we see Solo is getting his blaster ready without Greedo noticing. Greedo tells Solo to explain it to Jabba and threatens that Jabba may only take his ship. Solo says, “Over my dead body.” Greedo then says that’s the idea and he’s been looking forward to this for a long time. Solo then famously says, “Yes, I’ll bet you have.” and he fires his blaster from under the table, killing Greedo before he even knew what happened.
In the redone version of the film, everything happens the same until Lucas awkwardly cut in a shot of Greedo shooting first and missing (from about two feet away) before Solo shoots him.
Now, talking about Lucas’ motivation for this change is a topic for another blog post. The true importance of this change is the result of how we look at Han Solo as a character. The fact that Han doesn’t shoot first changes his character in three fundamental ways.
It turns Han Solo from a streetwise, proactive character into a reactive character.
I would imagine that one of Lucas’ motivations in having Greedo shoot first is to turn the action for Han into one of self-defense, and thus make the audience more empathetic towards Han. Lucas’ fear must have been that a modern audience might feel alienated by a character who shoots another one in cold blood from under a table in a manner that was tantamount to shooting him in the back. However the argument could be made that Han was already acting in self defense because Greedo had the drop on him and was indicating that he was going to kill him anyway. At the very least, Greedo was going to take him to Jabba which in Han’s mind equaled a death sentence, so Han shot Greedo before he had the chance. This simple act shows us right away that Han is a character who literally shoots first and asks questions later. He will also demonstrate throughout not only the rest of the film, but also the rest of the series right through The Force Awakens that he’s willing to proactively attack every situation. Having Greedo shoot first takes away that trait from Han the first time we see him. Rather than taking control of the situation, he lets the situation dictate the terms to him and he reacts. That is not the way he ever acts in any other situation, and the fact that Greedo shoots first actually makes Han less heroic.
It lessens Han Solo’s scoundrel factor.
In The Empire Strikes Back Princess Leia calls Solo a scoundrel (several scenes after calling him a Nerfherder). In A New Hope, right before the scene with Greedo, we were introduced to Han when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker negotiated passage to Alderaan. Solo boasts about how fast his ship is an demands what seems to be an unreasonable price for the passage. Then when they’re on the Death Star he only agrees to attempt to rescue Leia once there’s a promise of a reward. Then finally as Luke Skywalker and the rest of the Rebellion prepare to launch their attack on the Death Star, Han appears to pack up that reward and leave the others behind facing seemingly insurmountable odds. “What good’s a reward if you ain’t around to use it?” he mockingly asks Luke after Luke chastises him for turning his back on them. This is clearly a character who is all about himself and taking care of his own interests. This is a man who seems to be untrustworthy at first. This is a character who walks the line between right and wrong. Having Greedo shoot first completely blunts that notion. Look, all characters need to have depth. No character can be completely good or completely bad. The most interesting heroes have some sort of flaw to their characters, and Solo is a scoundrel. We have to believe that he’s only out for himself because we need it to be a surprise when he shows up at the last second and saves Luke, which allows Luke to blow up the Death Star and be the hero. It needs to be a surprise in order to give the audience that maximum emotional reaction. Characters also need to have character arcs throughout a story, and a guy who shoots an alien in cold blood in a bar in some remote desert planet, only to grow over the course of the story to become one of the heroes of the galaxy is about one of the most complete character arcs in the history of cinema, and it was blunted.
It makes Han Solo less dangerous which actually makes the story less dramatic.
The bottom line is that this is just a bad look for Solo. He lets a 2-bit bounty hunter take the first shot and miss from 2 feet away before blasting him. Solo is introduced to us as the classic anti-hero. He’s mostly a good guy, but there is a darkness and a mystery to him that makes him dangerous. We’ve been following Luke and Obi-Wan and the droids for a while now, and we don’t know what this Han guy is all about. Will be betray them? Will he steal the droids and collect the reward for himself? He dumped a shipment at the first sign of Imperial trouble, will he do the same with Luke and Obi-Wan? The fact that Han shot Greedo in cold blood before Greedo had a chance to do anything makes the audience concerned that Luke and Obi-Wan are putting their trust in a loose cannon who seems to be the farthest thing from trustworthy. Having Han shoot second removes that level of suspense which in turn removes a layer of drama from the story. That simple act makes the character less interesting and in turn makes the story less interesting.
Today’s Movie Quote – Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
“I have a very bad feeling about this.”
Screenplay by George Lucas
May the 4th Be With You.
Cameron Crowe and a Character/Story/Theme Addendum
Last week I posted a blog on how Story, Character and Theme represented the Holy Trinity of screenwriting. I received generally positive comments on the post, a couple of which referred to it as a “back to basics” post and crediting me for reminding people about the importance of the foundations of screenwriting. In truth, the reason that I wrote that blog was because, as a professional screenplay reader, I cannot tell you how many times I receive a screenplay, especially an early draft, that is very weak in one or more of those components. It might seem like a basic idea, but in reality putting all of that into practice is one of the great challenges of writing a good screenplay.
With that in mind, I have something to share that I found on The Uncool, a website devoted to Cameron Crowe. The link that I’m going to share with you will take you to the entire 25-page Mission Statement that Crowe wrote for Jerry Maguire. While the release of this Mission Statement serves as the catalyst for everything that comes after it in the film, we are exposed to only a very few lines from it. Crowe could have easily written just what he needed, or perhaps a little more, to tell his story and called it a day. That’s not what he did, however. He wrote the entire Mission Statement from Jerry’s point of view, knowing that it would have been impossible to get it all into the film, but also knowing that it was crucial in knowing who Jerry was and what was motivating him.
We’ve all done character bio’s. Those if you who have used David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible have probably used his questions and guidelines to create all of your characters so that you feel like you really know them. The difference here is that Crowe actually got into the head of his main character. He became Jerry Maguire for however long it took him to write and re-write this document as though it was going to be in the script, but probably knowing that 95% of it would go unseen. This Mission Statement plays an integral role in the story, and is often referred to but very few details of it are ever revealed. However, Cameron Crowe took the time to meticulously write it because he knew that within it was the story of his main character. The things that motivate his character are within this document. The fears and desires of Jerry are all in it as well. Reading this document allows you to see why Jerry acted the way he did throughout the film and accurately predicted the man he would become. We believe that Jerry could change in the ways that he did because Cameron Crowe took the time to write the Mission Statement that would not only serve as the film’s inciting incident (story), but would also define his main character and show what that character’s growth would be (theme).
With that, here is a link to the Mission Statement, and I encourage you to read it if you’re interested in developing deep and interesting characters.
http://www.theuncool.com/2016/04/25/jerry-maguire-mission-statement/
Today’s Movie Quote – Ben-Hur
“Your eyes are filled with hate, Forty-One. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. Gives him strength.”
Screenplay by Karl Tunberg
Character/Story/Theme: The Holy Trinity of Screenwriting
Much ink and many pixels have been spent over the years over how to write a quality screenplay. Many people with more experience than I have waxed on about structure, mythology, inciting incidents, plot points, subplots, twists, turns, and every other theory imaginable. I, myself, have written about many of those same things here in this very blog, and I don’t want to devalue any of those components in any way. The more tools that you have in your toolbox, the easier it should be to craft an excellent screenplay.
However, I think that something has gotten lost in all of the theories and ideas on how to fill that tool box, and that is the basic notion of where a good screenplay comes from. First off is the premise. It’s hard to turn chicken shit into chicken salad, and if you don’t start off with a solid idea, then you’re going to struggle to turn it into a compelling story. But beyond that, I think there are three basic tenets to writing a compelling screenplay, and they are character, story and theme. If you have interesting characters, a compelling story and a captivating theme, then you’re well on your way to writing a successful screenplay. If you’re missing even one of those things, then all of the bells and whistles in the screenwriting pantheon are not going to help.
Now that might sound obvious to you, and if you think that, I agree. I don’t believe I’m saying anything controversial here. However, you’d be surprised how many screenplays I’ve read over the years that are missing these components, especially in early drafts. It’s no sin to be missing anything in an early draft, but the longer it takes you to find all of these components in your script, the longer it’s going to take you to get it to the point where it’s ready to shop around. With that in mind, these three components serve as the lifeblood of your screenplay.
The characters are draw us in.
The bottom line to any script is that if you don’t have characters that the audience will care about, then you don’t have anything. Stories are about people and the things that happen to them. Taking that to the next level reveals that if the audience doesn’t like, or at least care, about your main character, then they will not be engaged enough to spend two hours of their lives following what the character’s doing. If they don’t care about the character, then they won’t care about what happens to him or her, and therefor won’t care about your story. That means you have to do the leg work with your characters. What motivates them? What do they like? What don’t they like? What is it about them that will make them do something in the beginning of the story that will engage them to the audience, and thus make the audience willing to go with them on their journey? You need to be able to answer all of these questions correctly in order to make your story work.
Remember, your main character doesn’t necessarily have to be likable, especially in the beginning. Two Dustin Hoffman films come immediately to mind in Kramer Vs. Kramer and Tootsie. Hoffman starts out both of those films as relatively unlikable at worst, and deeply flawed at best. However the filmmakers in both of those movies gave us reason to be interested in him early on by making his flaws something we could relate to. Then they quickly got into the story and confronted those flaws, which forced him to reevaluate who he was, and allowed the audience to engage with him by hoping that he would change in the right way.
The story keeps us interested.
The story is the journey. You’ve made us interested in your characters, so now we’re interested in seeing what happens to them. But making your characters interesting is only half the battle. You have to make what happens to them interesting as well. That’s where conflict and drama come in. As an audience, we crave conflict. We want things to become uncomfortable for the characters. That discomfort and conflict are what creates drama, and the more drama in the story, the more interesting it will be. Knowing what your characters want and seeing how difficult it is for them to attain it is what keeps the audience engaged, and the more difficult it is for your character to attain what he or she wants, the more dramatic your story will be. That’s especially true when what your character wants is different from what he or she needs, and it’s great when those two dynamics play against each other.
A great example of that is from the classic Gone With the Wind. Scarlett O’Hara is in love with Ashley Wilkes, but she can never have him because he’s in love with another. And even if she could have him, he’s such a weakling that she’d never be happy with him. Her infatuation with him blinds her to that fact. Meanwhile, the dashing Rhett Butler is in love with Scarlett, and tries throughout the film to show her how happy he could make her. Deep down, she knows that Rhett is the right man for her, and the audience knows that as well because she’s a better person when he’s around. But she believes her heart is with Ashley, and she doesn’t realize that Rhett is the right man for her until it’s too late. The dynamic between these relationships is what guides the story, and the conflict created between what Scarlett wants and what she needs is the basis for a very dramatic story that became one of the most popular films of all time.
The theme makes us care.
Like the Holy Spirit in Christianity, theme is the most difficult and most elusive component to comprehend in the Holy Trinity of screenwriting. Several weeks ago, I posted a blog about theme and how it comes from character. That remains true, and the reason for that is that the theme is what makes us care about your character. In Tootsie the theme was about living in another’s shoes in order to really appreciate what their going through and to garner a new found respect. Sometimes it’s even simpler, like in the western High Noon which is that you don’t know who your friends are, or Gone With the Wind with home is where you find your strength. The theme generally is the point you’re trying to make by writing the script. You might believe that many films, especially lowbrow comedies or action flicks don’t really have an overarching theme or lesson or point. I would first submit that that’s what makes them lowbrow. But I would also submit that even many of those films have some overarching thematic elements to hold the story together. It might be weak and it might be thin, but I’ll be almost anything that they’re there.
Overall, it’s these three components that you have to have that must serve as the foundation of your screenplay. Without all three of these components firmly in place, you’re going to have a very difficult time writing a screenplay that has any kind of quality.
If you’re working on a script that you think could be lacking in any of these components, then we can evaluate it, and let you know how it can be improved. Click the link below to see the kinds of services we provide and which one you think would be best for you.
Today’s Movie Quote – 42
“We win if the world is convinced of two things. That you are a fine gentleman, and a great baseball player.”
Screenplay by Brian Helgeland
In honor of the 69th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier.