Yes, Pixar has made some great films.
Yes, they are definitely amongst the best in the world when it comes to computer animation.
Yes, they helped basically change the whole industry.
So why make such an awkwardly shallow "pat-on-the-back" film about them, consisting of nothing but a bunch of people saying how great they are? I wanted to see this because I was fascinated with animation, and hoped to learn some behind-the-scenes secrets and technical insight into how Pixar films are actually created. However this was never addressed in The Pixar Story.
I also thought it would be interesting to hear the back-stories of all the competitive titles that has come out from other companies at about the same time as Pixar films (A Bug's Life/Antz, Finding Nemo/A Shark's Tale, The Incredibles/Meet the Robinsons), but this was never mentioned either.
At some point the "documentary" (if you can even call it that) briefly mentions that it was technically impossible to have more than 50 characters on the screen at once, and this caused a problem during production of A Bug's Life. "Oh," thought I, "this'll be interesting. What was the technical limitations? What computers were they using? How did they work around it?" Instead of answering any of these questions, the film simply moves on to talk about how great the people were who came up with a solution. Of course they never mention what that solution was.
The Pixar Story also goes into great lengths in making it appear as they were basically the inventors of all computer generated images. But what about The Mind's Eye series? Or what about the hundreds of thousands of computers games? What about the hundreds of other animation studios around the world who have been, and are still constantly punching out a great stream of amazing animation? What about the fact that producing high quality animation has become easier and easier, so much so that the greatest computer animated films are not from Pixar at all? Do the people at Pixar feel threatened by all the competition? Do they continue to look for new talent? The Pixar Story also dwells a short while amongst the first Jurrasic Park movie, and how the computer generated dinosaurs in that film changed the way action films were made. But why did nobody question if that was actually a good thing? Why weren't Pixar nailed to the wall with questions about CGI versus authenticity? Again, there was a brief moment towards the end when the death of old-school 2D animation sparked some interest, but again the makers of The Pixar Story moved past it with a few simple statements about how sad it was.
All in all, this could have been an amazing making-off documentary which had 88 minutes to really dig deep and portray a world very few know anything about.
Instead it's just your average "oh, I am so great, and so are all my colleagues" snore-fest, which runs three times as long as it should have.
Yes, they are definitely amongst the best in the world when it comes to computer animation.
Yes, they helped basically change the whole industry.
So why make such an awkwardly shallow "pat-on-the-back" film about them, consisting of nothing but a bunch of people saying how great they are? I wanted to see this because I was fascinated with animation, and hoped to learn some behind-the-scenes secrets and technical insight into how Pixar films are actually created. However this was never addressed in The Pixar Story.
I also thought it would be interesting to hear the back-stories of all the competitive titles that has come out from other companies at about the same time as Pixar films (A Bug's Life/Antz, Finding Nemo/A Shark's Tale, The Incredibles/Meet the Robinsons), but this was never mentioned either.
At some point the "documentary" (if you can even call it that) briefly mentions that it was technically impossible to have more than 50 characters on the screen at once, and this caused a problem during production of A Bug's Life. "Oh," thought I, "this'll be interesting. What was the technical limitations? What computers were they using? How did they work around it?" Instead of answering any of these questions, the film simply moves on to talk about how great the people were who came up with a solution. Of course they never mention what that solution was.
The Pixar Story also goes into great lengths in making it appear as they were basically the inventors of all computer generated images. But what about The Mind's Eye series? Or what about the hundreds of thousands of computers games? What about the hundreds of other animation studios around the world who have been, and are still constantly punching out a great stream of amazing animation? What about the fact that producing high quality animation has become easier and easier, so much so that the greatest computer animated films are not from Pixar at all? Do the people at Pixar feel threatened by all the competition? Do they continue to look for new talent? The Pixar Story also dwells a short while amongst the first Jurrasic Park movie, and how the computer generated dinosaurs in that film changed the way action films were made. But why did nobody question if that was actually a good thing? Why weren't Pixar nailed to the wall with questions about CGI versus authenticity? Again, there was a brief moment towards the end when the death of old-school 2D animation sparked some interest, but again the makers of The Pixar Story moved past it with a few simple statements about how sad it was.
All in all, this could have been an amazing making-off documentary which had 88 minutes to really dig deep and portray a world very few know anything about.
Instead it's just your average "oh, I am so great, and so are all my colleagues" snore-fest, which runs three times as long as it should have.