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Why are blockbuster movie scripts so... bad?
I've been going to the movies more in the last year than I have in the previous decade, because I have a coworker turned friend that likes to watch films in theaters and it is a cheap way to hang out with him (protip: bring your own snacks and drinks in a backpack instead of buying from the concession stand and watch the morning matinee instead of purchasing the more expensive evening tickets). And what I keep noticing is that, while they are very pretty, the writing in them is absolutely, uniformly awful.
I'm not even talking about politics here. I'm talking about how nobody in Mufasa ever stops to think about "wait a minute, how do I know that Milele even exists?!" the way a level 1 intelligent character would. I'm talking about how half the runtime of Jurassic World Rebirth is pointless action sequences that contribute nothing to the plot. I'm talking about how Brave decided to waste its amazing prologue by focusing the movie around the mom turning into a bear.
If you are already spending $200 million dollars producing a movie and a similar amount marketing it, why can't you just throw in an extra million to hire Neil Gaiman or George R. R. Martin (or, hell, Eliezer Yudkowsky) to write your script for you?
But... it doesn't seem to be a question of money? It is certainly possible to find much better writing in direct to video films than in theatrical films, despite their much lower budgets. Everybody agrees that the DCEU was a pile of crap, while there were have been some very solid entries in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies series. I recently watched Justice League: Gods & Monsters, and I was hooked from the first scene of General Zod cucking Superman's dad to the end credits; I wasn't looking at my watch wondering how much longer the movie is going to last, the way I do when watching a blockbuster.
Previous discussion.
It's probably related to attributes of people who do go to movies in the evening, pay full price, and don't sneak food in for cheap in their backpacks. I'm not sure I know anyone like that, so I can't say what they're looking for in a movie. Personally, I haven't seen a movie in a theater in about a decade, and even then I went about once or twice a year (but would go when convenient and buy some snacks when I did). So the companies don't have to consider my preferences, or the preferences of people like me.
Who went to Mufasa opening weekend? Why did they do it?
Brandon Sanderson occasionally comments a bit, cautiously because he does actually want Mistborn movies, about what it's like trying to work with a big film studio, and it sounds like normal, decent, popular writers have a great deal of trouble interfacing with them, mostly because the studios change things for reasons that are their own, unrelated to the writers or audience members. There are too many fingers in the pie. That shows up when they do try to adapt popular recent franchises -- I watched Good Omens, Sandman, and The Wheel of Time, and enjoyed many things about them, especially costuming, music, credits sequences, and some of the acting. But it's really hard to keep things on track when there are so many people making decisions, some of whom care about aesthetics, and others care a lot about casting disabled angels, stuffing even more queerness into already very queer friendly franchises, getting more screen time for their boyfriend (WoT specific?), and all sorts of other things. And then maybe they get cancelled at an inopportune moment.
No it is not. While theaters would prefer that studios focus on getting these people to buy tickets(I have, personally, never seen a movie at full price unless it was date night), they are not affiliated with the studios. Studios don't care if theaters are solvent. They care about their licensing fees.
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Yeah, I've been reading the complaints that the reason "Elio" failed for Pixar was because of all the changes the studio made (apparently in a panic after the first test screening where people allegedly liked the movie but nobody wanted to pay to watch it in a cinema). That sounds reasonable - too many cooks spoil the broth, after all - but the complaints go on about how they reduced the queerness and cut out its queer heart and dropped all the hints that Elio is gay.
The 11 year old lead character has to be explicitly gay, or else the movie fails? I think it failed because of the damn eye patch in the marketing (what little there was of it, I hadn't a clue there was a new Pixar movie out until I started seeing all the pieces about how it bombed) - you stick an eye patch on a kid character, you make it look like your movie is going to be A Moral Lesson And Lecture About The Differently Abled And Inclusion, not a fun sci-fi romp for the kids.
That, and the bean mouth style.
This is entirely beside the point, but Kubo and the Two Strings is a masterpiece and I won't hear any different. I don't think it performed outstanding but it at least made back its budget. Although interestingly, at least in the posters I can find you can't really see the eyepatch. It just looks like he has his hair pulled over one eye.
Marketing (or lack of) certainly didn't do Elio any favors - this is not how a studio promotes something they have faith in and want to support.
But yeah, I hate that bean mouth style also. It looks ridiculous.
I thought it was good, but weak. The story wasn't well-developed. And there seems to have been no follow-up or sequel as you'd expect.
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It's just... forgettable.
The title doesn't describe what the movie is about, the MC is ugly (chimp face, permanent
blackpurple eye) and [if the critics are to be believed, was if not still is] fag-coded, and the aliens' appearance doesn't suggest any interesting personality traits.So yeah, "I'd let my kid watch it on Netflix, but I wouldn't pay 60 dollars to see it" is a pretty apt observation.
Eye patches are only appropriate on kid characters if they make him/her look like a pirate for obvious reasons.
Oh yeah - make this a pirate movie, it'll work. Even a space pirate movie. But that doesn't seem to be what it is. People judge by the marketing, so seeing something with a kid with an eyepatch, that looks to be "moral lecture about disability". I was going "why the hell is he wearing an eyepatch?" when looking at the posters etc. instead of going "oh this looks like fun kid's SF cartoon and maybe smart as well!"
It’s also strategically inadvisable in a genre that relies on the characters’ large expressive eyes.
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I strongly suspect this was a major part of the flop, especially since the very minimal marketing really made it look like “eyepatch kid movie, also with some aliens or something.” Especially when paired with the very generic artstyle… a big draw for Pixar movies was always the excellent animation, this looked like it could’ve been any random direct-to-streaming slop.
The concept of “kid gets accidentally called up to be Earth’s ambassador to aliens” is a good idea, too! Just bring some actual creativity to the art and don’t feel obligated to make it a coming-out allegory or totally centered on him being a weird outcast or whatever (to be fair I don’t know if that last part is true but it’s hard to imagine it isn’t, what with the eyepatch and all). Clearly that’s a huge ask for Disney these days though (and by extension Pixar).
Edit to add: the title of the movie was pretty awful as well. Like who (or what) the hell is “Elio”? It gives you absolutely nothing to work with, nothing about space or aliens or anything. So matching that up with the bland art and the minimal marketing gives no hook at all to actually want to go out and see it.
I don't necessarily think that was a problem, considering how well liked Coco is, but Coco has a much better hook. There are school field trips to see live musical performances inspired by Coco, for instance, which they organize around Day of the Dead.
Luca was at least very summery, and came out when the art style was a bit fresher. I thought it was cute, and my four year old liked it a lot.
I didn’t care for Luca much. In general, I think Pixar does best at movies that show “the world within the world”, where there are non-human characters who are related in some way to humans and we see what the “human world” is like from their perspective. Once you notice that pattern, you realize all of Pixar’s best movies fit that pattern.
Toy Story is about toys who have to navigate the world of children playing with them. Monsters inc is about monsters who scare humans, but are deathly afraid of them. Finding Nemo is about fish having to navigate the world of commercial fishing and aquariums. Wall-E is about robots who have to clean up after lazy humans. Ratatouille is about rats navigating an human kitchen. Inside Out is about internal emotions who have to try and regulate themselves to deal with the problems of their host person. (Not actually the first time Disney developed that concept.)
The Incredibles breaks the mold, but I guess it depends on whether you consider supers human or non-human. Regardless, it participates in the same “secret world within the world” trope.
Luca, Brave, Up, Elio, and Coco are the opposite: about humans exploring the inner world. I find that inherently less interesting. Coco is by far the best out of the bunch; day of the dead has such color as a cultural festival, and the idea of an elderly grandmother with memory issues remembering her father is such a raw and poignant human experience that I’m not sure anyone left the theater with dry eyes. Up is pretty loved, but mostly because of the first 20 minutes. I liked Elio more than most people seemed to have; I’m considering an effortpost review since it came up.
Soul and Turning Red (never saw that one) I guess are like that, but less about a world and more about a transformation? Not considered Pixar’s best.
There are also the “non-humans as a human allegory,” like Cars, A Bug’s Life, Onward, Elemental. These are, at best, controversial. I think humans need to be in a Pixar movie, but not as the main characters.
I never saw Lightyear, and I think that was their worst ever concept for a film. I hated that they made a 3d Pixar movie as the in-universe buzz lightyear movie; I prefer the original 2d galactic command TV show. Toy advertisement media is far more silly and zany than a Pixar film.
Pixar is at their best when we get to imagine non-humans “inside” our world and what they might think of us. If I were an exec, I would be demanding that creatives pitch more of those ideas.
I felt like the biggest problem with Brave was that it didn't lean fully enough into being a Disney princess animated musical -- it needed more songs, and the relationship with her mother was a bit off somehow; she needed to talk with her great great grandmother, spinning the threads of fate up in the tower or something. Old Disney might have integrated some actual Scottish fairy tales, which were my absolute favorites growing up. The Golden Key is especially excellent.
Personally, I usually enjoy the Disney musicals more in general -- Encanto and Moana were quite fun (though I hear Wish fell flat, and haven't bothered watching it).
It would probably have worked to make a Pixar version of Stitch, that could be a lot of fun -- make it like Monsters inc, with more emphasis on Stitch and the aliens.
I actually forgot until I wrote the post and looked at a filmography list that Brave wasn't a princess film made by Disney Animation and not Pixar.
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I mean, it's Seven Samurai, but bugs. Well animated for the time, decent humour and voices, and also (and possibly more importantly at the time!) better than the coincidentally competing AntZ. The writing wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was solid, and I'll happily rewatch it.
Antz was a much better movie than A Bug's Life.
A Bug's Life, as you said, is fundamentally just a remake of Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, toned down for little kids. Antz is clever, original, and very much not toned down. The termite battle is basically the insect version of Saving Private Ryan's beach scene. Z and Weaver have actual sexual tension with Bala and Azteca, respectively, as opposed to the chaste romance between Flik and Atta. Antz deals with military coups and genocide; A Bug's Life deals with learning to stand up to your bullies.
Antz is a movie everyone can enjoy; A Bug's Life is a movie meant for small children.
+1 for Antz.
I think a Bug's Life is more cohesive as a movie, actually, but it's far, far less interesting and subversive. Some of it is unfortunately visuals; the character designs in Antz were just kind of less pleasant to look at than Pixar's approved and focustested shapes, and that kind of serves as a metaphor for the differences between the two movies.
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+1 for Antz superiority, and fond memories of my father helpfully pointing out to me that Gene Hackman's character was a Nazi.
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I haven’t seen either in a very, very long time but if memory serves Antz was also more interested in using actual facts about ants to set up its world. Building tunnels and fighting with termites and all that.
I do remember preferring Antz as a kid, or at least I have a stronger memory of it, probably in large part because of the action scenes.
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A Bug’s Life was good, but I think the insect-oriented concept repelled people and it didn’t do well. I don’t consider it one of their best, but I enjoyed it.
I also put Cars in that category, and I do like Cars, but I don’t think it represented the best that Pixar can offer in terms of concept. But it was well-executed, and has attained iconic status, and sells merchandise better than Toy Story! I think if Pixar makes another movie as compelling as Cars, it would be good. Like Coco, it’s a situation where Pixar expressed its creative strength outside its core conceit.
I also forgot about The Good Dinosaur — which even though I’ve seen it I don’t have any idea what it was about.
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Coco is about a living human exploring the world of the dead. I would argue that it fits the pattern. You just have to remove the requirement that the fish-out-of-water character be nonhuman.
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