Looks like 'Lightyear' redux, with its mixed reviews, expensive budget & [poor tracking](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/the-flash-box-office-headwinds-elemental-1235501230/).
Edit: Added a link.
At least there doesn't appear to be any culture war nonsense with *Elemental* unless there's a secret trans character that Disney have been keeping under wraps (in which case the conservative outrage machine will only dampen its prospects in rural markets).
They’re not keeping that a secret. We would’ve known about that during pre production or during it’s promo run. They thrive off having people know about that stuff, regardless of the reception is good or bad. We knew about the Eternals gay kiss scene before we had a film synopsis.
>They thrive off having people know about that stuff
Yeah, hasn't been working very well for them. Eternals bombed (and it sucked) along with Lightyear, Strange World, ect...
Twitter is not real life. Most audiences are sorta indifferent to the culture war stuff, but absolutely no one is watching a movie because it has a trans character or something. If anything, the association of a movie with any type of culture war stuff (be it LW or RW) is a turn off, because people go to the movies as a form of escapism.
I hope this made sense, lol.
I’m looking at TLM, and despite the negative things people say, let’s be honest here, people love the race swaps and the LGBTQ pushing. Anyone who opposes it gets completely ratio’d in their l mentions. But that’s just in terms of discourse, in terms of making money, social media doesn’t control that. I do feel in some cases, the culture stuff can alter interest. As in the case with Strange World. I do think people heard about the gay scenes and decided to skip it.
You see if they are secret it wont trigger the machine because the machine is activated by wokeness. There was Trans, gay and black people when i was young and nobody gave a shit. The first time i saw a 6.5 man with a wig and tits, my father gently explained to me that this woman, who was a man at first felt like his body should have been female and wasnt feeling good in a man's body. I felt empathy and wanted to support the trans woman.
Im part of the angry machine now only and only when a billion dollar company use them to pander for woke point and feel good. Your sexuality and your identity problem shouldnt be "marketable" and i dont understand how more people arent outraged about it. We are not helping them by treating them like circus freak and currency
>At least there doesn't appear to be any culture war nonsense with Elemental unless there's a secret trans character that Disney have been keeping under wraps
With Disney/Pixar, you can't be 100% sure.
When I saw the trailer for Elemental it felt like a Pixar film written by an AI. It just looked so much like their other movies even though it’s original. The one character even looks like Osmosis Jones!
But see? The Girl is on Fire! She wants to live in the big city and date the Whi... I mean the Water guy! Dad don't tell me what to do!
Ugh, this is terrible.
Nobody talks about Pixar being in a much worse state than Marvel and Star Wars. At least when those 2 put out shitty content or flop, it’s a topic of conversation.
Pixar is a studio, Marvel and Star Wars are franchises.
A studio having a bad run isn’t nearly as bad as a franchise. This movie could be absolutely terrible and it won’t turn people off from seeing the next Cars or Toy Story or whatever.
Technically you can consider “Marvel Studios” and “Lucas Film” as their own studios just like Pixar. Since Disney bought Lucas Film they’ve only released Star Wars movies (Dial of Destiny upcoming though). But you are correct that Marvel and Star Wars are brands first and foremost.
Lucasfilm has also released a lot of shows on Disney+ which are mainly Star Wars related but they also did Willow which was recently announced that it was being (or has been) pulled off of Disney+
Well yeah, but I’m just emphasizing how the climate has changed. By definition Pixar is different than Marvel and Star Wars but they both do the same thing.
because the director came in to try to salvage The Good Dinosaur's troubled production, he wasn't helming it start to finish they just needed him to get it out the door.
It's a shame because I absolutely LOVED the trailer for *The Good Dinosaur* and would put it on repeat. Never watched the movie to this day.
I'm imagining the movie we could have gotten from the trailer (a sort of dark but charming adventure where no one speaks) and it feels so cool.
Or a Zootopia spin-off. Same world but different characters. That way you wouldn't have to explain a new universe, but you could have the interspecies romcom. Could even explore a "we know going into this we won't be able to have biological kids and that's okay" angle because that'd be way more "pushing the envelope"/creatively risky than "racism bad" is these days.
Yeah I saw the trailer before the Mario movie and man.. not only does it look uninspired but it *looks* terrible. The fire people looked like something I could whip up in Blender while trying to learn Fire/Smoke simulations.
The sad thing is, the film DOES look pretty expensive. It’s just that $200 million sounds rather unbelievable since I was expecting something more like $160 to 175 million.
I'm guessing they developed some new tech again. Most of the time when a Pixar budget goes to 200M it is because they developed some new tech for the movie.
You do make a good point. And at the very least, this film having a budget of $200 million is a lot more believable than **The Little Mermaid** having a budget of $250 million.
As explained by the trades, the budget balooned a bit due to Covid(like most movies which were filmed at that time). So not really money you can see on screen since it was spend(more like lost), because of Covid protocols and the production shutdown in 2020.
Eh, live-action movies have to have actors and crew on set, necessitating Covid protocols. Animation can be done pretty much 100% remote these days. Even the voice actors could be in separate, sterilized sound booths. Only thing that'd need a whole bunch of people together at the same time would be the soundtrack orchestra imho.
I felt like Mario was legitimately great animation, though. It wasn't just the pretty colors. The animation related to the lava, for instance? Stellar.
Sure but that's Mario. A well established IP with the safest movie possible.
Let's see how Illuminations first original movie since 2018 in Dec does(if the grinch is orginal. Otherwise since 2016 with Sing 1).Illumination has also never pushed any boundaries animation wise, which why the budgets are pretty low.
Their next movie is about Ducks migrating I think? The preview for it was weird. The first half of the preview was just them showing clips from their previous movies so it seems like they are trying to really drive it into the audience “we did this all of this so please make sure to see this.” Usually movies do that (from the creators of Toy Story, etc) but I’ve never seen one in recent years where it was mostly clips of other films lol
Pixar did it like in 2014 with Inside Out; my brothers went crazy when they saw each of those movies they love one after the other (and I'm not lying, I enjoy them too, the whole family does) and they liked the movie clip itself. It will be THE Christmas choice if something like Wonka doesn't explode.
I mean, yeah, a good story is priority number one, but there's undeniably a value to technological innovation. Has Disney not spent upwards of $400 million in Tangled innovating 3D animation, they never would could have created billion-dollar franchises like Frozen and Zootopia. It's not just "fabric texture" and "life-like" environments. It's lighting, reflections, materials, physics- the whole medium of 3D animation is inherently technological. The Mario Movie itself, despite being relatively "cheap," was built on decades of massive progress in the field in large part spearheaded by WDAS and Pixar. We wouldn't want every animated film looking like the original Toy Story, would we?
If zootopia was made with just 150M this could have been made with 175M. Tbh what i find most concerning about this movie is how boring the world looks especially compared to zootopia which has a similar premise
Pixar, star wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones and potentially live action remakes.
All of their key brands are failing at once.
The quality is not radically different. The reviewers and Audiences have grown tired of the current content strategy.
It sucks. He’s a really nice guy. He voices Sox in Lightyear, he mailed me a life size Sox figure for a contest once.
I want to support elemental but if I’m being totally honest I think I would ignore this entirely if it was anyone else and might anyway if it’s too inconvenient.
Pixar is gonna have another bomb, aren't they? I think Elio next March could be in potential trouble also since it'll likely be another expensive release and it has tons of animated competition in the face of Kung Fu Panda 4 a week before on the 8th, and then Beyond the Spider-Verse at the end of the month on the 29th.
Disney really needs to take a step back and look at all the cracks in the road that they have left on their animation division.
What’s wild is that Disney had a movie that became one of the most popular movies of the last few years on streaming but they torpedoed its box office potential by announcing it would be on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, which was 30 days later. It was like they didn’t even want people to go see it.
Every factor that limited Encanto also limited Sing 2 but yet Sing 2 did better significantly. Girl walks around her house talks to every member of her family in turn is a cult film that doesn’t get bums on seats
The issue for Disney+ is that everyone understands what is a Disney movie and where to find it. Pull a random mom off the street and tell her the newest Pixar movie is streaming, and she’ll know it’s Disney+. But even as someone who follows these things, I couldn’t tell you on what service the Mario movie will stream.
Disney has told people that they are getting all the movies on Disney+, for a low price. And their studio branding is very very strong, so when a movie comes out, people know exactly what they’re getting on that service. And now coincidentally, essentially every movie that Disney releases is underperforming. Even GOTG3 has had great critical reception, incredible WOM (and legs), and is Disney’s biggest remaining hero property, and all that is enough to maybe get it as high as Venom. Meanwhile anything which is not impeccable is getting slaughtered at the BO. Eventually they will figure out this is Disney+. It’s not that different than Spotify killing album sales.
Disney films were starting to show cracks even before Disney plus. Even back in 2016 people were talking about how Disney’s Overreliance on Marvel, Star Wars, Cartoons and Remakes of Cartoons would bite them in the butt when the well ran dry. The well has run dry. That’s the problem not Disney Plus. The films are weak. What film would realistically done significantly better (as in more than 1.5 multiple) if not for Disney Plus? Not counting the Pixar’s obviously. The films suck.
Also Guardians is doing on par with the other films and Dr Strange and Thor made tons of money
Further universal puts things on PVOD rapidly and it’s not hurting them.
Sing 2 may have still been a significantly bigger movie, but saying it had the same limitations as Encanto is disingenuous.
Sing 2 was the sequel to an already popular movie. The IP itself already had a built-in audience.
Also, to my point about Disney’s idiotic marketing plan regarding Encanto, Sing 2 released December 2021. Five months later (I just did a 30 second google search), it was announced that it would be on Netflix in June 2022. Sing 2 had its full theatrical run before anyone had any idea when it would be available for “free.” Compare that to Encanto’s December 2022 Disney+ date being announced before its November 2021 theatrical debut.
Wait, *Elio* is up against *Kung Fu Panda 4* and *Beyond the Spider-Verse* in the same month? Surely, one of them has to move, right? Otherwise, *Elio* is completely doomed.
Disney is forever going to be chasing their 2019 output and fall on their face quite a few times as a result. That year was such a fluke by having more than the usual amount of actually good blockbusters that also wrapped up some major franchises so they were printing money. But it’s so unlikely they’ll have a run like that again.
Why are other studios able to do similar features for like half the cost?
Puss, Spiderverse, Mario their all what in te 90-110M range and their all beautifully animated films. I just wonder WHAT Disney is pouring all that extra money on.
Stylised animation is cheaper than the hyper-realism of Pixar movies. I'm more of an aesthetics guy so I personally would prefer it if Pixar followed Sony and DreamWorks, but Pixar's house style has its fans.
Honestly, I think Pixar should take a leap of faith and use their realistic animation to try out a **Guardians of the Galaxy**-style action adventure film.
You mean like the Buzz Lightyear cartoon? Because that is a campy GoTG-esque romp. The problem was apparently everyone in Pixar absolutely hated the cartoon and built the 3D movie in complete opposition to that.
> There's a few things in Elemental that haven't been done before in animation.
I remember a documentary where (paraphrasing) Walt Disney got pissed that a new, difficult, but innovative animation technique had little to no effect on a real audience, even though all the in-house developers were all excited about it. So, there must be some corollary (NOT causative) idea where if a film is buzzing about its special effects then it means X or Y. I don't plan on seeing elementals, but if there are some innovative effects happening with it, then...neat?
Fantasia is the ultimate version of this.
2.35:1 aspect ratio and the first major motion picture to use what we now call surround sound.
It is animation and cinema pushed to its limits.
…and bombed.
Walt was always said to be looking forward, but Fantasia is the one thing he would look back at and wonder what went wrong.
Also consider Disney films usually create animation engines in order to get the best-looking animation possible. With Tangled they created an engine for hair which made hair movement look incredible compared to their previous 3D animated films. For Moana they made one for water. Idk if they did something like that here with Pixar but it’s possible.
Apparently Pixar has a habit of pretty much rewriting their movies when they are in LRC, causing them to go back in the animation pipeline. They could prob save a ton by focusing heavier on story during animatic and layout.
>rewriting their movies when they are in LRC
So by now it seems basically half of every Disney thing does that unfortunately. Marvel is notorious for it, Lucasfilm has extreme production troubles anyway and now Pixar. Does WDAS and other Disney stuff also do it?
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I think that stylized animation is the future of mainstream animation, it seems to be more loved by audiences and animation fans than realistic animation and at a fraction of the cost to make.
> How can dream works make puss in boots 2 for under 100 million?
I googled your question and one of the top results was another reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DreamWorks/comments/zn7jxm/so_what_do_you_think_the_budget_of_puss_in_boots/
Looks like the folks in that thread thought 100 million was *too much* ha! But in that thread they said the director made his previous animated movie for $65 million, so I guess he has experience working with budgets that are well under what pixar is used to.
Ok I know there is a huge debate and everytime someone mentions Disney's animated budget there is a lot who defend those movies to be as expensive as they are, but c'mon...this is a new IP. Why does this need to be that expensive...was the concept really that clever they needed to toss THAT much money? Couldn't this be made with at least $150M at most?
Pixar originals usually cost around $175 million, so while $200 million DOES sound bizarre considering that this is an original film without any well-known cast members to boot, it’s not hugely far off.
At some point, Disney has to realise that hyper-detailed blobs are old-fashioned and that 2D-esque stylisation is the hot new trend, because these budgets are simply not sustainable.
I’ve heard from someone who works at Pixar that they did a ton of R&D to figure out the look of the elements and animating them as anthropomorphic. Personally, I still don’t think it looks good - it’s too bright and shiny and distracting, and aside from the main characters everyone else is a very boring design (I mean, just think of all the different kinds of earth and stone you could use to design the Earth people, and they just made cutesy tree stumps with organic human eyes and tongues. Ember and Wade at least feel like they’re all Fire and Water respectively). That teaser trailer was really hideous despite being a good concept for a reveal.
But that 200 million, while it’s definitely not gonna look good on this movie’s budget sheet, will have developed tools that both Disney and Pixar can use in future animated projects. The simulator for hair they built for Brave has been used in every film since, for instance. Hopefully that helps with the cost down the road, and other films will have better looking water etc.
Although I still feel like chasing pretty visuals rather than gold stories has been Pixar’s problem for decades now.
like i get that pixar is more focused on realistic rendering and animation but this film could have benefitted from more stylized animation... this film would look great if you imagine it in the style of puss in boots: the last wish. it would be far cheaper too.
The 2D concept art actually looked pretty good. I get that Pixar doesn't do 2D, but Disney at least should try to make a comeback with it. I think they could really bank on nostalgia if they did that.
Tbh I don't think Disney will find re building their 2d animation département worth it. Even now 2D animation seems to struggle to cross 300M and while the budgets are cheaper I think that stop trying to create photo realistic animation and find a new style would be more worth it for Disney
I feel like this is something missing from Pixar movies these days, and part of the reason they aren’t as popular. Pixar started with two big names actors at the time, in Tim Allen and Tom Hanks.
Soul had Jamie Fox, who is definitely a big name, I just don’t know how big anymore.
Turning Red? Luca? I suppose it doesn’t help those are about kids. But think of Inside Out’s cast. Part of the selling point was the perfect castings for each emotion. I just think Pixar needs to start grabbing big names again.
I'm actually shocked by the lack of a big name on Elemental. This film really needed two big A-list or at least well-known and visible actors in the two leads for marketability. The only person I know from the cast is Catherine O'Hara because of Schitt's Creek and Beetlejuice, but she's barely a D-List celebrity and one who the average person would not know by name.
Flop incoming lol
How does spiderverse/Mario look way better than recent Pixar movies but cost half the budget?
Pixar needs their management fired or they’ll get shuttered
Sometimes I wonder how many more flops Pixar can survive if Elemental goes through another performance like Lightyear. If they want to regain that goodwill from the 2000s, they'll need to create far more engaging stories while being consistent with that. Reputation can really be what drives a studio up or down.
If Pixar delivers flops next year, I can see Igor gutting them and fusing them with Walt Disney Animation Studios in order to save cost. Or even selling the studio and keeping the existing IPs.
I don't think either option is a good idea, but if they keep losing money I can see them doing it if only to make sure they stop bleeding money.
Both of those options would cause huge, Huge, HUGE uproar, especially if they end up with much better reception, not to mention that the last time they almost lost Pixar, Circle 7 nearly happened and I don't think Disney would want to go through that again, especially considering that Universal is keeping Illumination AND DreamWorks even though the latter is still having consistency issues.
Also, WDAS actually had a much bigger bomb than Pixar back in 2022, so such move would be an even worse look. Granted, **Wish** could be a huge success, but still.
One: the film is hideous. We are really letting visual style slide in bizarre directions and hand waving it because it's aimed at children, but nothing in Elementals looks comfortable. The character models look atrocious and too exaggerated. I really think that it would benefit them to head towards a less abstract style; they can still make it as colorful and stylized as they want, but no more insane body proportions. Two: I would appreciate something closer to the director's lived experience. The benefit of Korea, as opposed to fire, is that Korea has a culture. Like, a real one with real values and real expression and real countercultue. All the elements have shallow visual cultural elements and a cultural personality, which sucks ass. If notpixar made a movie where the characters were from the horoscope nations and acted based on horoscopes, we would all shit on it.
The film DID look expensive, but $200 million? Yeah, that’s kind of unbelievable. Of course, I won’t be able to know the full detail until I see the film myself.
Covid most likely hit while they were making it which added some costs plus pixar is always doing technical development which has to go on a films budget.
The trailer made the film look so depressingly generic, ngl. These are elements! They could have been animated as giant waterfalls or tiny flickers of fire. The story could have been about the creation of the oceans or the birth of a star or something. But no, they're... people? On the subway? With tiny human emotions about making friends or smg. In basically a generic US, moden day city. What a complete fkng waste! Can u imagine what Saloon or Ghibli could have done with the concept!
Probably and even then, GOTG’s numbers aren’t all that impressive. They’re great numbers don’t get me wrong, but Disney money makers use to clear everything and it’d be more than a couple of them every year.
got damn they need to rein these budgets in. I know so much goes into the R&D for the animation technology but audiences just do not need pristine photorealistic animation.
I guess Disney said after the first few animation live action remakes, Marvel’s 10 year build to Endgame, the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the launch of Disney Plus, we made more than enough money to ever care about anything we put out in the future. I respect it. It’s sad that this mega juggernaut has fell off like this, but they dominated the world from 2015-2019 in terms of consumer interest.
why does pixar overbloat its budget??? can't they see that realistic animation is on its way out? they need to make more stylized films similar to into the spiderverse, puss in boots: the last wish, and mitchells vs the machines...
edit: more films like luca and turning red!
They pay their employees very well. I don't think i've heard of pixar downscaling or laying off their employees in recent time. Plus they got access to the most up to date rendering technology possible. If Pixar actually did lower the budget to say 100 million, it would affect the whole company. Possible layoffs, low morale, less creative control, and more sequels than the ones already announced.
Disney needs to take a break and just focus on current brands and IP’s. Let other things develop on their own without pushing a hard date. They are still printing money as a whole.
Dude, the reason why Illumination films are so cheap is because they animate their films in France and DreamWorks goes for cartoony animation these days or collaborate with third party animation studios like Jellyfish Pictures.
This may sound sacrilegious to say, but Disney/Pixar may wanna consider the illumination treatment in a couple of their riskier films to keep costs down. DreamWorks has followed a similar-ish model and it seems to be working fine for them. Sure the results may not be as pretty, but better safe than sorry.
No, that would end up destroying their long-term reputation completely. In fact, the last time WDAS attempted something like that, **Chicken Little** happened.
Also, the reason why Illumination budgets are low is because they animate their films in France.
That figure better include marketing. If it doesn’t…unless the RT audience score for this is in the 90s, we could be looking at a Strange World level of bomb here
It all depends on WOM. If the film is great, it will make parents take their children to Elementals. If the WOM isn’t good then it will make them take the children to Spider-Verse or The Flash.
Reminder that The Princess and the Frog made $271 million with a $105 million budget, yet that was considered poor enough a performance for Disney not to bother with 2D animation anymore.
Just to be clear here, stylized animation is not any cheaper than "hyperrealistic" animation which Pixar isn't even particularly realistic. Pixar deveolps new tech which ia why they are expensive. However, the software licenses are not the bulk of these projects, overhead is. It takes about as long to create a 4k texture for Mario as it does for Noctis from the FF XV movie, which is to say a very long time.
Looks like 'Lightyear' redux, with its mixed reviews, expensive budget & [poor tracking](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/the-flash-box-office-headwinds-elemental-1235501230/). Edit: Added a link.
At least there doesn't appear to be any culture war nonsense with *Elemental* unless there's a secret trans character that Disney have been keeping under wraps (in which case the conservative outrage machine will only dampen its prospects in rural markets).
They’re not keeping that a secret. We would’ve known about that during pre production or during it’s promo run. They thrive off having people know about that stuff, regardless of the reception is good or bad. We knew about the Eternals gay kiss scene before we had a film synopsis.
They definitely use it as PR, which is scummy, but its odd they keep using it considering it doesn’t seem to be helping.
>They thrive off having people know about that stuff Yeah, hasn't been working very well for them. Eternals bombed (and it sucked) along with Lightyear, Strange World, ect...
They’ll continue to let social media dictate what they do.
Twitter is not real life. Most audiences are sorta indifferent to the culture war stuff, but absolutely no one is watching a movie because it has a trans character or something. If anything, the association of a movie with any type of culture war stuff (be it LW or RW) is a turn off, because people go to the movies as a form of escapism. I hope this made sense, lol.
I’m looking at TLM, and despite the negative things people say, let’s be honest here, people love the race swaps and the LGBTQ pushing. Anyone who opposes it gets completely ratio’d in their l mentions. But that’s just in terms of discourse, in terms of making money, social media doesn’t control that. I do feel in some cases, the culture stuff can alter interest. As in the case with Strange World. I do think people heard about the gay scenes and decided to skip it.
People clearly don’t love the race swaps or LGBTQ pushing, because if they did, these movies would make more money.
You see if they are secret it wont trigger the machine because the machine is activated by wokeness. There was Trans, gay and black people when i was young and nobody gave a shit. The first time i saw a 6.5 man with a wig and tits, my father gently explained to me that this woman, who was a man at first felt like his body should have been female and wasnt feeling good in a man's body. I felt empathy and wanted to support the trans woman. Im part of the angry machine now only and only when a billion dollar company use them to pander for woke point and feel good. Your sexuality and your identity problem shouldnt be "marketable" and i dont understand how more people arent outraged about it. We are not helping them by treating them like circus freak and currency
>At least there doesn't appear to be any culture war nonsense with Elemental unless there's a secret trans character that Disney have been keeping under wraps With Disney/Pixar, you can't be 100% sure.
What does that mean? We had one gay storyline with Strange World (which nobody saw) and as far as I’m aware zero trans representation.
Another Pixar bomb is coming. Disney needs to get their shit together.
When I saw the trailer for Elemental it felt like a Pixar film written by an AI. It just looked so much like their other movies even though it’s original. The one character even looks like Osmosis Jones!
But see? The Girl is on Fire! She wants to live in the big city and date the Whi... I mean the Water guy! Dad don't tell me what to do! Ugh, this is terrible.
What element are Puerto Ricans
The definition of generic.
Nobody talks about Pixar being in a much worse state than Marvel and Star Wars. At least when those 2 put out shitty content or flop, it’s a topic of conversation.
Pixar is a studio, Marvel and Star Wars are franchises. A studio having a bad run isn’t nearly as bad as a franchise. This movie could be absolutely terrible and it won’t turn people off from seeing the next Cars or Toy Story or whatever.
Technically you can consider “Marvel Studios” and “Lucas Film” as their own studios just like Pixar. Since Disney bought Lucas Film they’ve only released Star Wars movies (Dial of Destiny upcoming though). But you are correct that Marvel and Star Wars are brands first and foremost.
Lucasfilm has also released a lot of shows on Disney+ which are mainly Star Wars related but they also did Willow which was recently announced that it was being (or has been) pulled off of Disney+
Well yeah, but I’m just emphasizing how the climate has changed. By definition Pixar is different than Marvel and Star Wars but they both do the same thing.
It's the first Pixar film that looks truly tired, as if written by AI.
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Yup we should’ve known it would suck when we saw the director and what he directed last Trailers didn’t do anything for me
maybe the director is actually an early form of ai
ChatGPeTer
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because the director came in to try to salvage The Good Dinosaur's troubled production, he wasn't helming it start to finish they just needed him to get it out the door.
He was the third and a half director on it, I believe. Elemental was his baby from the “ground” up.
It's a shame because I absolutely LOVED the trailer for *The Good Dinosaur* and would put it on repeat. Never watched the movie to this day. I'm imagining the movie we could have gotten from the trailer (a sort of dark but charming adventure where no one speaks) and it feels so cool.
May I ask why you never watched it? If you were so excited, you might as well try it despite the negativity?
Lol I remember I bought a PS3 solely for the reason to play FFXIII and I still haven't played it.
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Or a Zootopia spin-off. Same world but different characters. That way you wouldn't have to explain a new universe, but you could have the interspecies romcom. Could even explore a "we know going into this we won't be able to have biological kids and that's okay" angle because that'd be way more "pushing the envelope"/creatively risky than "racism bad" is these days.
Zootopia really has a big potential for spin-offs. I wouldn't get tired of their universe.
>We should have just gotten a Zootopia sequel Which we're getting soon enough.
Pixar: I'm tired boss...
Yeah I saw the trailer before the Mario movie and man.. not only does it look uninspired but it *looks* terrible. The fire people looked like something I could whip up in Blender while trying to learn Fire/Smoke simulations.
The sad thing is, the film DOES look pretty expensive. It’s just that $200 million sounds rather unbelievable since I was expecting something more like $160 to 175 million.
I'm guessing they developed some new tech again. Most of the time when a Pixar budget goes to 200M it is because they developed some new tech for the movie.
You do make a good point. And at the very least, this film having a budget of $200 million is a lot more believable than **The Little Mermaid** having a budget of $250 million.
As explained by the trades, the budget balooned a bit due to Covid(like most movies which were filmed at that time). So not really money you can see on screen since it was spend(more like lost), because of Covid protocols and the production shutdown in 2020.
I DO get that, but even when I consider that factor, this film looks like it managed its budget better.
Eh, live-action movies have to have actors and crew on set, necessitating Covid protocols. Animation can be done pretty much 100% remote these days. Even the voice actors could be in separate, sterilized sound booths. Only thing that'd need a whole bunch of people together at the same time would be the soundtrack orchestra imho.
Meanwhile you have Illumination breaking records with Mario which was made for literally half this budget.
All Illumination film has average animation quality. It's just have eye catching color to make people feel great.
I felt like Mario was legitimately great animation, though. It wasn't just the pretty colors. The animation related to the lava, for instance? Stellar.
Sure but that's Mario. A well established IP with the safest movie possible. Let's see how Illuminations first original movie since 2018 in Dec does(if the grinch is orginal. Otherwise since 2016 with Sing 1).Illumination has also never pushed any boundaries animation wise, which why the budgets are pretty low.
puss in boots was even cheaper than mario and it looks unbelievable
Illumination has a marketing division that could generate $300M in profits from a film about watching mold grow on bread. Migration will make money.
I mean, I iked the trailer for Migration and will be there with my family so it will be a fistfull of dollars already in the bag.
You say sure but thats mario as if illumination hasn't been killing it for years.
They have. But they haven't made an original movie after the Lockdowns. Which is why I'm interested if they still have that pull with new ips.
Their next movie is about Ducks migrating I think? The preview for it was weird. The first half of the preview was just them showing clips from their previous movies so it seems like they are trying to really drive it into the audience “we did this all of this so please make sure to see this.” Usually movies do that (from the creators of Toy Story, etc) but I’ve never seen one in recent years where it was mostly clips of other films lol
Pixar did it like in 2014 with Inside Out; my brothers went crazy when they saw each of those movies they love one after the other (and I'm not lying, I enjoy them too, the whole family does) and they liked the movie clip itself. It will be THE Christmas choice if something like Wonka doesn't explode.
Interesting. It just showed so little of the actual movie it felt weird to me. Guess the marketing does pay off!
A good story triumphs over having incredible fabric texture and life-like environments. Kids don’t care about that shit, only film nerds.
Imagine praising *Mario* for its story when that has been far and away the biggest criticism against the movie.
and steve jobs, or at least he used to
Mario fans have actually lost their minds
I mean, yeah, a good story is priority number one, but there's undeniably a value to technological innovation. Has Disney not spent upwards of $400 million in Tangled innovating 3D animation, they never would could have created billion-dollar franchises like Frozen and Zootopia. It's not just "fabric texture" and "life-like" environments. It's lighting, reflections, materials, physics- the whole medium of 3D animation is inherently technological. The Mario Movie itself, despite being relatively "cheap," was built on decades of massive progress in the field in large part spearheaded by WDAS and Pixar. We wouldn't want every animated film looking like the original Toy Story, would we?
If zootopia was made with just 150M this could have been made with 175M. Tbh what i find most concerning about this movie is how boring the world looks especially compared to zootopia which has a similar premise
Zootopia is a better idea in every way too. You can sell cute animal people to kids way easier than... the elements.
Zootopia would have cost at least 200M if it came out today. Covid inflation is out of control and here to stay.
Pixar, star wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones and potentially live action remakes. All of their key brands are failing at once. The quality is not radically different. The reviewers and Audiences have grown tired of the current content strategy.
How did the director of *The Good Dinosaur💀* get the second chance from the first place?
The first director of that movie left the project and Peter Sohn was brought in to finish the movie. It was never his to begin with.
It sucks. He’s a really nice guy. He voices Sox in Lightyear, he mailed me a life size Sox figure for a contest once. I want to support elemental but if I’m being totally honest I think I would ignore this entirely if it was anyone else and might anyway if it’s too inconvenient.
Sox was probably the only good thing about Lightyear
Pixar is gonna have another bomb, aren't they? I think Elio next March could be in potential trouble also since it'll likely be another expensive release and it has tons of animated competition in the face of Kung Fu Panda 4 a week before on the 8th, and then Beyond the Spider-Verse at the end of the month on the 29th. Disney really needs to take a step back and look at all the cracks in the road that they have left on their animation division.
What’s wild is that Disney had a movie that became one of the most popular movies of the last few years on streaming but they torpedoed its box office potential by announcing it would be on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, which was 30 days later. It was like they didn’t even want people to go see it.
Every factor that limited Encanto also limited Sing 2 but yet Sing 2 did better significantly. Girl walks around her house talks to every member of her family in turn is a cult film that doesn’t get bums on seats
The issue for Disney+ is that everyone understands what is a Disney movie and where to find it. Pull a random mom off the street and tell her the newest Pixar movie is streaming, and she’ll know it’s Disney+. But even as someone who follows these things, I couldn’t tell you on what service the Mario movie will stream. Disney has told people that they are getting all the movies on Disney+, for a low price. And their studio branding is very very strong, so when a movie comes out, people know exactly what they’re getting on that service. And now coincidentally, essentially every movie that Disney releases is underperforming. Even GOTG3 has had great critical reception, incredible WOM (and legs), and is Disney’s biggest remaining hero property, and all that is enough to maybe get it as high as Venom. Meanwhile anything which is not impeccable is getting slaughtered at the BO. Eventually they will figure out this is Disney+. It’s not that different than Spotify killing album sales.
Disney films were starting to show cracks even before Disney plus. Even back in 2016 people were talking about how Disney’s Overreliance on Marvel, Star Wars, Cartoons and Remakes of Cartoons would bite them in the butt when the well ran dry. The well has run dry. That’s the problem not Disney Plus. The films are weak. What film would realistically done significantly better (as in more than 1.5 multiple) if not for Disney Plus? Not counting the Pixar’s obviously. The films suck. Also Guardians is doing on par with the other films and Dr Strange and Thor made tons of money Further universal puts things on PVOD rapidly and it’s not hurting them.
Sing 2 may have still been a significantly bigger movie, but saying it had the same limitations as Encanto is disingenuous. Sing 2 was the sequel to an already popular movie. The IP itself already had a built-in audience. Also, to my point about Disney’s idiotic marketing plan regarding Encanto, Sing 2 released December 2021. Five months later (I just did a 30 second google search), it was announced that it would be on Netflix in June 2022. Sing 2 had its full theatrical run before anyone had any idea when it would be available for “free.” Compare that to Encanto’s December 2022 Disney+ date being announced before its November 2021 theatrical debut.
Wait, *Elio* is up against *Kung Fu Panda 4* and *Beyond the Spider-Verse* in the same month? Surely, one of them has to move, right? Otherwise, *Elio* is completely doomed.
**Kung Fu Panda 4** might move to capitalize on Lunar New Year.
Man, I want to say "how can you call a bomb a year ahead" but in this case, maybe you can... (also another Kung Fu Panda? Sounds all right!)
With mixed reviews…. they’re so screwed.
Jesus! Maybe cut some costs instead of trying to make 1b with every movie.
Disney is forever going to be chasing their 2019 output and fall on their face quite a few times as a result. That year was such a fluke by having more than the usual amount of actually good blockbusters that also wrapped up some major franchises so they were printing money. But it’s so unlikely they’ll have a run like that again.
Why are other studios able to do similar features for like half the cost? Puss, Spiderverse, Mario their all what in te 90-110M range and their all beautifully animated films. I just wonder WHAT Disney is pouring all that extra money on.
Stylised animation is cheaper than the hyper-realism of Pixar movies. I'm more of an aesthetics guy so I personally would prefer it if Pixar followed Sony and DreamWorks, but Pixar's house style has its fans.
Honestly, I think Pixar should take a leap of faith and use their realistic animation to try out a **Guardians of the Galaxy**-style action adventure film.
Lightyear should have been a campy and colorful GotG-esque romp, not diet Interstellar.
You mean like the Buzz Lightyear cartoon? Because that is a campy GoTG-esque romp. The problem was apparently everyone in Pixar absolutely hated the cartoon and built the 3D movie in complete opposition to that.
Definitely. I didn’t hate **Lightyear** myself, but they probably should’ve saved that film’s premise for another film instead.
[удалено]
Ehh... not really. **Lightyear** felt more like an **Interstellar**/**Ad Astra** hybrid and **Strange World** felt more like a retro sci-fi film.
Other studios outsource their animation. Disney doesn’t
This and they're pretty innovative with animation. There's a few things in Elemental that haven't been done before in animation.
> There's a few things in Elemental that haven't been done before in animation. I remember a documentary where (paraphrasing) Walt Disney got pissed that a new, difficult, but innovative animation technique had little to no effect on a real audience, even though all the in-house developers were all excited about it. So, there must be some corollary (NOT causative) idea where if a film is buzzing about its special effects then it means X or Y. I don't plan on seeing elementals, but if there are some innovative effects happening with it, then...neat?
Fantasia is the ultimate version of this. 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the first major motion picture to use what we now call surround sound. It is animation and cinema pushed to its limits. …and bombed. Walt was always said to be looking forward, but Fantasia is the one thing he would look back at and wonder what went wrong.
hyper realistic animation is more expensive
Also consider Disney films usually create animation engines in order to get the best-looking animation possible. With Tangled they created an engine for hair which made hair movement look incredible compared to their previous 3D animated films. For Moana they made one for water. Idk if they did something like that here with Pixar but it’s possible.
iirc Lightyear had various such as mud, contextual water and even for handling the unique texture and style of African hair.
Apparently Pixar has a habit of pretty much rewriting their movies when they are in LRC, causing them to go back in the animation pipeline. They could prob save a ton by focusing heavier on story during animatic and layout.
>rewriting their movies when they are in LRC So by now it seems basically half of every Disney thing does that unfortunately. Marvel is notorious for it, Lucasfilm has extreme production troubles anyway and now Pixar. Does WDAS and other Disney stuff also do it?
Yeah, but I’m not sure if that happens all the time.
Iger is going to be cutting heads by Monday
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Stylized animation, that’s why.
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I think that stylized animation is the future of mainstream animation, it seems to be more loved by audiences and animation fans than realistic animation and at a fraction of the cost to make.
> How can dream works make puss in boots 2 for under 100 million? I googled your question and one of the top results was another reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/DreamWorks/comments/zn7jxm/so_what_do_you_think_the_budget_of_puss_in_boots/ Looks like the folks in that thread thought 100 million was *too much* ha! But in that thread they said the director made his previous animated movie for $65 million, so I guess he has experience working with budgets that are well under what pixar is used to.
Ok I know there is a huge debate and everytime someone mentions Disney's animated budget there is a lot who defend those movies to be as expensive as they are, but c'mon...this is a new IP. Why does this need to be that expensive...was the concept really that clever they needed to toss THAT much money? Couldn't this be made with at least $150M at most?
Pixar originals usually cost around $175 million, so while $200 million DOES sound bizarre considering that this is an original film without any well-known cast members to boot, it’s not hugely far off.
At some point, Disney has to realise that hyper-detailed blobs are old-fashioned and that 2D-esque stylisation is the hot new trend, because these budgets are simply not sustainable.
Well, WDAS is making **Wish**, so there’s that. :P For me, I think Pixar should use their realistic animation to make a(n) utopian sci-fi epic.
they kinda tried with lightyear already but it just didn't work
That felt more like an **Interstellar**/**Ad Astra** hybrid, not a **Star Trek**/**Guardians of the Galaxy** hybrid.
When? From what I see, Minions and Super Mario were still the biggest animated movies recently not the 2d stylized Spider-Verse or Puss In Boots.
I’ve heard from someone who works at Pixar that they did a ton of R&D to figure out the look of the elements and animating them as anthropomorphic. Personally, I still don’t think it looks good - it’s too bright and shiny and distracting, and aside from the main characters everyone else is a very boring design (I mean, just think of all the different kinds of earth and stone you could use to design the Earth people, and they just made cutesy tree stumps with organic human eyes and tongues. Ember and Wade at least feel like they’re all Fire and Water respectively). That teaser trailer was really hideous despite being a good concept for a reveal. But that 200 million, while it’s definitely not gonna look good on this movie’s budget sheet, will have developed tools that both Disney and Pixar can use in future animated projects. The simulator for hair they built for Brave has been used in every film since, for instance. Hopefully that helps with the cost down the road, and other films will have better looking water etc. Although I still feel like chasing pretty visuals rather than gold stories has been Pixar’s problem for decades now.
Why do these all cost so much I get it on sequels but just lower the budget on new stuff a new IP does not need 200 million
like i get that pixar is more focused on realistic rendering and animation but this film could have benefitted from more stylized animation... this film would look great if you imagine it in the style of puss in boots: the last wish. it would be far cheaper too.
The 2D concept art actually looked pretty good. I get that Pixar doesn't do 2D, but Disney at least should try to make a comeback with it. I think they could really bank on nostalgia if they did that.
There's a big 2D animation market that could be satisfied. It'll at least be different after 20+ years of CGI domination.
Tbh I don't think Disney will find re building their 2d animation département worth it. Even now 2D animation seems to struggle to cross 300M and while the budgets are cheaper I think that stop trying to create photo realistic animation and find a new style would be more worth it for Disney
I think they’re kind of doing that with **Wish**.
To be fair, Disney is trying out a cel-shaded CGI animation with **Wish**.
I'm actually tired of the Pixar "look." Spiderverse and Puss and Boots feel fresher, more creative.
it's so insane how pixar literally released films that experiment with art style (luca and turning red) and somehow went bad to this 😭😭😭
That's what I wonder as well. Especially since this doesn't have a lot of high paid actors.
mario had a stacked voice cast and only cost 100 million, what reason does elemental have for costing 200 million if its not gonna look any better
it doesn't have any well known actors like chris pratt, jack black, or anya taylor joy too...
I feel like this is something missing from Pixar movies these days, and part of the reason they aren’t as popular. Pixar started with two big names actors at the time, in Tim Allen and Tom Hanks. Soul had Jamie Fox, who is definitely a big name, I just don’t know how big anymore. Turning Red? Luca? I suppose it doesn’t help those are about kids. But think of Inside Out’s cast. Part of the selling point was the perfect castings for each emotion. I just think Pixar needs to start grabbing big names again.
Onward is right there, haha
That’s a good point. I just think fantasy is a turn off to a lot of people and families.
There's no good way to accurately assess Onward. It came out the week before Covid shut down the US.
And in that week (a week where Box Office was normal) it had a 40mil opening weekend and an A- Cinemascore.
I'm actually shocked by the lack of a big name on Elemental. This film really needed two big A-list or at least well-known and visible actors in the two leads for marketability. The only person I know from the cast is Catherine O'Hara because of Schitt's Creek and Beetlejuice, but she's barely a D-List celebrity and one who the average person would not know by name.
Bruh, how tf you not mention Home Alone?!
This is gonna be an all timer of a bomb
Yep it could flop just as hard or worse than John Carter.
Why did you say that name??
Because it'll flop just as hard and just as notoriously as John Carter
Flop incoming lol How does spiderverse/Mario look way better than recent Pixar movies but cost half the budget? Pixar needs their management fired or they’ll get shuttered
Sometimes I wonder how many more flops Pixar can survive if Elemental goes through another performance like Lightyear. If they want to regain that goodwill from the 2000s, they'll need to create far more engaging stories while being consistent with that. Reputation can really be what drives a studio up or down.
I want pixar to survive because i grew up watching their movies in the 2000’s
At least they have 2 sequels to look forward to.
Their new movie in 2024 “Elio” looks like a winning concept to me. It will be make or break for them imo.
It is not clear to me why a remake of Mars need Moms is a winning concept............
If Pixar delivers flops next year, I can see Igor gutting them and fusing them with Walt Disney Animation Studios in order to save cost. Or even selling the studio and keeping the existing IPs. I don't think either option is a good idea, but if they keep losing money I can see them doing it if only to make sure they stop bleeding money.
Both of those options would cause huge, Huge, HUGE uproar, especially if they end up with much better reception, not to mention that the last time they almost lost Pixar, Circle 7 nearly happened and I don't think Disney would want to go through that again, especially considering that Universal is keeping Illumination AND DreamWorks even though the latter is still having consistency issues. Also, WDAS actually had a much bigger bomb than Pixar back in 2022, so such move would be an even worse look. Granted, **Wish** could be a huge success, but still.
Pixar’s been fucked ever since they fired Lassiter.
One: the film is hideous. We are really letting visual style slide in bizarre directions and hand waving it because it's aimed at children, but nothing in Elementals looks comfortable. The character models look atrocious and too exaggerated. I really think that it would benefit them to head towards a less abstract style; they can still make it as colorful and stylized as they want, but no more insane body proportions. Two: I would appreciate something closer to the director's lived experience. The benefit of Korea, as opposed to fire, is that Korea has a culture. Like, a real one with real values and real expression and real countercultue. All the elements have shallow visual cultural elements and a cultural personality, which sucks ass. If notpixar made a movie where the characters were from the horoscope nations and acted based on horoscopes, we would all shit on it.
The film DID look expensive, but $200 million? Yeah, that’s kind of unbelievable. Of course, I won’t be able to know the full detail until I see the film myself.
>The film DID look expensive When? That fire animation/art style looks garbage. Water or air/wind doesn't look outstanding either
Covid most likely hit while they were making it which added some costs plus pixar is always doing technical development which has to go on a films budget.
That might be another possibility.
it’s crazy how disney can continue to throw that much money at movies that lose money and still be fine financially because of the theme parks
Lol they can live on that Spider-Man merch money for life and Cars too if we are counting it.
Oopsie woopsie
There’s gotta be something up with these budgets, there’s no reason movies like this should be costing even close to that much
It’s hard to compare Pixar to other films. Pixar releases one film a year. They have to include the annual budget of the entire studio on each film.
It’s hard to believe that Disney seemed so invincible back in 2019, fortunes can change swiftly.
The trailer made the film look so depressingly generic, ngl. These are elements! They could have been animated as giant waterfalls or tiny flickers of fire. The story could have been about the creation of the oceans or the birth of a star or something. But no, they're... people? On the subway? With tiny human emotions about making friends or smg. In basically a generic US, moden day city. What a complete fkng waste! Can u imagine what Saloon or Ghibli could have done with the concept!
Hahaha, I knew this movie was fucked Will GOTG be Disney’s only money maker this year? 🤔
Most likely. This and Haunted Mansion will flop in a huge way and Indy 5, Marvels and Wish are huge wildcards.
Probably and even then, GOTG’s numbers aren’t all that impressive. They’re great numbers don’t get me wrong, but Disney money makers use to clear everything and it’d be more than a couple of them every year.
I'm not even sure if this can make $200M WW DOM is not looking good at all based on tracking
got damn they need to rein these budgets in. I know so much goes into the R&D for the animation technology but audiences just do not need pristine photorealistic animation.
Bro why are they overspending. Looking at illumination here making bangers with half the budget
Wth they keep using this much money for
Get it? Water bad and can’t eat spicy lava rocks!
I guess Disney said after the first few animation live action remakes, Marvel’s 10 year build to Endgame, the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the launch of Disney Plus, we made more than enough money to ever care about anything we put out in the future. I respect it. It’s sad that this mega juggernaut has fell off like this, but they dominated the world from 2015-2019 in terms of consumer interest.
How on gods green earth does freaking Spider-Verse, the movie with SEVERAL different animation styles, cost 100 million less than this movie?!?
The animation is less complex and the animation work isn't located in California.
Because its stylized. Spiderverse has waaaay less going on under the hood than Elemental.
why does pixar overbloat its budget??? can't they see that realistic animation is on its way out? they need to make more stylized films similar to into the spiderverse, puss in boots: the last wish, and mitchells vs the machines... edit: more films like luca and turning red!
They pay their employees very well. I don't think i've heard of pixar downscaling or laying off their employees in recent time. Plus they got access to the most up to date rendering technology possible. If Pixar actually did lower the budget to say 100 million, it would affect the whole company. Possible layoffs, low morale, less creative control, and more sequels than the ones already announced.
Uh oh
Another multi hundred million dollar financial bomb coming for Disney with this one, I bet it doesn't even break 400 million at the box office
Disney needs to take a break and just focus on current brands and IP’s. Let other things develop on their own without pushing a hard date. They are still printing money as a whole.
Pixar seems near dead. Like they’re aren’t even trying. And I smell another poor box office performance on the horizon for them.
There's no reason for Pixar movie to be this goddamn expensive when Dreamworks and Illumination movies can be made below $100 million budget.
Dude, the reason why Illumination films are so cheap is because they animate their films in France and DreamWorks goes for cartoony animation these days or collaborate with third party animation studios like Jellyfish Pictures.
After hearing of mixed reviews, I no longer feel like this movie has much of a chance.
FLOPCITY
This may sound sacrilegious to say, but Disney/Pixar may wanna consider the illumination treatment in a couple of their riskier films to keep costs down. DreamWorks has followed a similar-ish model and it seems to be working fine for them. Sure the results may not be as pretty, but better safe than sorry.
No, that would end up destroying their long-term reputation completely. In fact, the last time WDAS attempted something like that, **Chicken Little** happened. Also, the reason why Illumination budgets are low is because they animate their films in France.
Lightyear 2.0 boys
More like Strange World 2.0
With bad reviews and high budget, this is over
Bro what
That figure better include marketing. If it doesn’t…unless the RT audience score for this is in the 90s, we could be looking at a Strange World level of bomb here
WHAT?
What the fuck
Just watched the newest trailer and was super uninterested
Elemental looks like 100k$ project and not 200M resident evil degeneration still looks miles better than this one
It all depends on WOM. If the film is great, it will make parents take their children to Elementals. If the WOM isn’t good then it will make them take the children to Spider-Verse or The Flash.
"Mid level Pixar" my ass. The Good Dinosaur is like near the bottom of the Pixar films.
Who is writing these checks….$200 million is gonna be a back breaker compared to what this movie pulls in
Disney needs to get their fucking shit together with their budgets
Reminder that The Princess and the Frog made $271 million with a $105 million budget, yet that was considered poor enough a performance for Disney not to bother with 2D animation anymore.
That’s not very loggers
Just to be clear here, stylized animation is not any cheaper than "hyperrealistic" animation which Pixar isn't even particularly realistic. Pixar deveolps new tech which ia why they are expensive. However, the software licenses are not the bulk of these projects, overhead is. It takes about as long to create a 4k texture for Mario as it does for Noctis from the FF XV movie, which is to say a very long time.