The Good Dinosaur | Peter Sohn | BR/DVD release 2-23-2016 | Pixar's first BO flop

[AniNate]

The movie has a ton of replay value. It's as much a movie to "discover" the same way Wall-E was to me. I don't get a lot of Blu Rays but I definitely want to get this the moment it's out.

Anyway, I don't think I gave my thoughts on Sanjay's Super Team yet. It's a cool short, their best since La Luna, but I definitely don't think there is enough material there for a feature as the popular opinion appears to be. And normally it wouldn't bother me but with all the hate TGD's character designs are getting, SST's aren't exactly shining examples. My fears that it would be the highlight of my experience faded away about five minutes into TGD

[Spidey Freak]

3 hours ago, tribefan695 said:

...but I definitely don't think there is enough material there for a feature as the popular opinion appears to be. 

 

I actually think it suffered because there was too much depth and richness that had to be squeezed into one single short. They were forced to pick just three gods from millions in the Hindu pantheon, and had them do one stunt each (with no other show of individual characteristic), and also tie them to a whole other plot of generational and cultural gap between father and son. And they had to do all of it with almost zero dialogue! It is like trying to stuff a comic geek version of Bend It Like Beckham! meets Percy Jackson into a blender to produce a near silent short and keeping fingers crossed that it has the same impact.

 

Folks are still going gaga over it tho. I guess Lava really reduced expectations.

[AniNate]

Hmm, still not sure you could do a feature out of that premise and have it remain engaging (not to mention inoffensive) throughout. If Pixar were to get into religious allegories I'm not sure a feature length superhero riff is the way to go. The idea works as a cute insight into how children take in religion but I think that's all it needs to be for people to relate to it

[Spidey Freak]

16 minutes ago, tribefan695 said:

Hmm, still not sure you could do a feature out of that premise and have it remain engaging (not to mention inoffensive) throughout. If Pixar were to get into religious allegories I'm not sure a feature length superhero riff is the way to go. The idea works as a cute insight into how children take in religion but I think that's all it needs to be for people to relate to it

 

We have already had Arthurian and Greek Gods related full-length features directed at children before. If Prince of Egypt could be made into an animated feature, then the more fantastical and epic scope of Hindu mythology easily translates to the medium (it has been done before many times before BTW, including this marriage of Hindu mythology with superheroism).

 

And things usually get offensive when you don't have someone from the culture playing a major role in production. Pixar had/has the benefit of Sanjay Patel's services, so as SST proved, they are less likely to be culturally insensitive. A near silent short doesn't really come close to doing all the moving parts of such a complex story justice IMO. 

Edited December 14, 2015 by Spidey Freak

[AniNate]

I guess I was thinking more in terms of the father son story. I suppose they could work as a framing device for a dramatization of Hindu mythology.

[Melvin Frohike]

On 12/11/2015, 10:46:02, tribefan695 said:

 

If you want a more Disney centric example, Don Hall worked on the dump job that was Winnie the Pooh but then was almost immediately given the Big Hero 6 green light, arguably an even bigger risk on paper. His co director's previous film wasn't exactly a big hit either

Sohn's the youngest current Pixar director and is still a major asset to them outside of that. Seems to me there'd be plenty of opportunity for him to "redeem" himself. Maybe they put him in a sort of Dan Scanlon role and have him do a franchise sequel.

It just seems way too premature to assume his filmmaking career is over because of one movie that didn't make a profit, especially since it does have its defenders outside of yours truly

 

Well, Winnie the Pooh was a low-budget project that was done expressly to promote merchandise sales.  Normally DisneyToon Studios handle these things, but at the time Walt Disney Animation Studios needed to keep their cel animation staff busy while that medium was still in limbo, so they took on the project.  It was never expected to be much of a hit in and of itself, and that's OK because only about $30M (less than the Tinker Bell movies) was spent on producing it.  Big Hero 6 was indeed a much bigger risk, if for no other reason than the fact that it had such a huge budget and was intended to be Disney's tent pole blockbuster for that season--a totally different situation.

 

That said, I think your general point still stands, regardless.  Chris Williams, who directed Big Hero 6 with Hall, had previously directed Bolt, which badly underperformed at the box office.  John Lasseter really liked their movies, however, which I'm sure was a factor in giving them another shot.  Movies can succeed or fail for reasons that are often beyond anyone's ability to fully understand, much less predict, but good animation directors are hard to find, and if you keep making good movies (in Lasseter's subjective opinion, I suppose), then in the long run you'll be successful.  The only other caveat is that every WDAS movie had been failing back then until that trend suddenly came to an end, while every previous Pixar movie had succeeded.  This is a real difference, but I can't say whether or how much of a difference this would make with respect to the philosophy that I just described--hopefully it would make no difference, but in any case, much depends on how impressed Lasseter really is with Sohn's work.

[Melvin Frohike]

On 12/12/2015, 5:19:57, goldenstate5 said:

Hall was a co-director for both. Sohn could see a co-directing job, but he won't be fully handed a feature film anytime soon. That's all I'm saying.

 

WDAS do not have a Pixar-style "co-director" role, and still do not, as far as I'm aware.  At Pixar, for each movie generally there is only a single credited director and frequently one or more subordinate co-directors who take on some of the workload--this is somewhat similar to the old WDAS system of a supervising director leading a group of sequence directors (and everyone ultimately answered to Walt), although the work may be distributed differently.  During the Disney/Animation Renaissance, WDAS switched to using either a single director (and that's it) or dual-director teams--the latter ended up being the more common case, and whether a project started this way or a second director was added later, both are considered full directors with equal clout and must collaborate closely as a team themselves, whether they sharply divide the work between them or work on everything together (usually it ended up being a combination of both, as we might expect--whatever works best for them and the project overall).  The latter is more like how live-action director teams (e.g. The Matrix, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) generally work, I believe, while Pixar's system is possibly more like the common individual directors having one or more assistant directors, I guess (with their co-directors maybe having more authority than ADs, I don't know).

 

This is why you'll never catch me saying things like "Chris Williams co-directed Big Hero 6" or "Jennifer Lee co-directed Frozen"--nope, these movies and many of WDAS' other movies of the past 30 years have two directors each (working equally as a team), and no "co-directors" in the Pixar sense.  Not that this would be incorrect English, it's just to avoid confusion with Pixar's confusing terminology (they probably should be called assistant directors like they are in live action).

 

 

On 12/12/2015, 5:28:35, Spidey Freak said:

The situation with Winnie the Pooh was different. It wasn't a dump job by any means (and it has a 90% RT to prove it). Someone thought it would greatly thrive as counterprogramming to DH2... and was proven wrong. That and it was the last breath for a major Western studio produced hand drawn film.

 

WDAS tried their best to make a good movie (as they and Pixar always do) that in this case was aimed more at children than the general audience that they normally target, and most critics think that they succeeded, but Winnie the Pooh was still a minor, low-budget, low-expectations (in terms of box office) movie nonetheless.  Perhaps they expected a bit more than it got, but it still can't be compared directly with WDAS' other animated features.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Melvin Frohike

[AniNate]

Yeah, I mean, I can't be objective on this because what I see is a great film that gets greater the more I think about it (I don't think my first impression did it justice, tbh), but I have to think at least someone high up sees his potential. Hopefully next time he won't be burdened by public production troubles and an already inflated budget and will be given a fairer shake.

[Mojoguy]

So did Star Wars' release help TGD at all?

I was expecting Disney to do double features with SW for TGD to boost the later's boxoffice, but I guess not.

[AniNate]

Haha, no. It totally killed it.

Have to have a sense of humor about its run at this point

Sent from my Z667T using Tapatalk

[The Futurist]

This thing is dead.

 

First Pixar real flop.

[AniNate]

It's Pixar's Treasure Planet, pretty much

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[MovieMan89]

4 hours ago, tribefan695 said:

Yeah, I mean, I can't be objective on this because what I see is a great film that gets greater the more I think about it (I don't think my first impression did it justice, tbh), but I have to think at least someone high up sees his potential. Hopefully next time he won't be burdened by public production troubles and an already inflated budget and will be given a fairer shake.

I don't know. This is turning into a pretty massive bomb at this point. I know it's not "fair" so to speak that it gets taken out on him, but it likely will. I don't see him anywhere near the directors chair for awhile at least. 

[AniNate]

We're just going in circles now. Even if this was a hit Pixar still has a very long line of other projects in development so it was going to be awhile regardless (they still haven't officially announced what Mark Andrews is doing next). All I can say for sure is I really hope to see more from him at some point with the same kind of immersive atmosphere this film had, even if it doesn't end up being with Pixar.

Edited December 20, 2015 by tribefan695

[kayumanggi]

Disney just doesn't care about this anymore. I was kinda expecting some help like what POP's got when TOY STORY III opened in June 2010. lol

[Melvin Frohike]

11 hours ago, tribefan695 said:

I have to think at least someone high up sees his potential. Hopefully next time he won't be burdened by public production troubles and an already inflated budget and will be given a fairer shake.

 

If we're looking for signs here, then apparently it didn't show up in any kind of significant marketing push that featured the director and producers, for example--Disney are still trying to sell the movie in a generic way (and I'm surprised that they're still trying).  Then again, studios and filmmakers don't always get what they want when it comes to marketing and how the folks in that division do their job.  Lasseter may report directly to Iger these days, but Iger is loath to tell others how to do things--he tends to judge on long-term results rather than how well he thinks they're doing.  A couple of good examples are WDAS' Tangled and Frozen, which had really bad pre-release marketing that frankly made these movies look stupid to most who have any sense of discernment, I would think, but this did not reflect what Lasseter and other higher-ups thought of these movies, and the same is likely true for The Good Dinosaur; or at least it's not necessarily false, as I'm unsure of what they think, and it may be difficult for them to be fully objective at this point because of just how protracted their struggle with it was, along with its disappointing reception (perspective will come with time).

 

 

9 hours ago, tribefan695 said:

Haha, no. It totally killed it.

 

Yeah, the numbers for Friday are bad in comparison to those of previous animated Thanksgiving releases--very bad--whereas the movie had been keeping up in terms of drops, more or less, until now.  If it doesn't recover--and so far there is no reason to believe that it will--then The Good Dinosaur may well come in even lower than current projections.

 

 

7 hours ago, The Futurist said:

This thing is dead.

 

Not only that, at this point it looks extinct.  It still has a chance to break out in several large overseas markets it hasn't opened in yet, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

 

 

6 hours ago, tribefan695 said:

It's Pixar's Treasure Planet, pretty much

 

Well, those directors keep getting chances--they have Moana coming up next year.  Of course, they also have much more of a track record, but on the other hand that includes several flops, so I guess as long as Lasseter has faith in a director and likes their ideas, then they always have a chance.

[Spidey Freak]

32 minutes ago, Melvin Frohike said:

Well, those directors keep getting chances--they have Moana coming up next year.  Of course, they also have much more of a track record, but on the other hand that includes several flops, so I guess as long as Lasseter has faith in a director and likes their ideas, then they always have a chance.

 

Those directors gave the world Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. They should get to be Rulers of the Free World if it were up to me. 

 

 

[Spidey Freak]

5 hours ago, kayumanggi said:

Disney just doesn't care about this anymore. I was kinda expecting some help like what POP's got when TOY STORY III opened in June 2010. lol

 

When SW7 is setting records, Disney wouldn't/shouldn't want to shift $$ to miserable little TGD. Every little penny is making history!!

[Melvin Frohike]

10 hours ago, MovieMan89 said:

I don't know. This is turning into a pretty massive bomb at this point. I know it's not "fair" so to speak that it gets taken out on him, but it likely will. I don't see him anywhere near the directors chair for awhile at least. 

 

It depends on what Lasseter and Pixar's creative staff collectively blame for the movie's severe underperformance.  If they fault the movie itself because of a perceived shortcoming, whether it involves story and/or even something as basic as surface appeal, then it could potentially be blamed on the filmmakers, including the director.  WDAS' Frozen managed to overcome (before it was released--never mind the phenomenon that happened afterward) atrocious marketing because one way or another it held some appeal for many people.  Maybe even its dumb trailer and ads appealed to those who were simply looking for a fun, energetic-looking movie, and nothing more.  Young children might have simply looked at the protagonists and thought "Ooh, pretty!" or the sidekicks and thought "How cute!" but the bottom line is that they wanted to see it (the box office doesn't care why).  And the same was true of Tangled, to a lesser but sufficient degree.

 

So for The Good Dinosaur was it the marketing or an inherent lack of mass appeal in the movie itself?  I don't know, but what I do know, for one thing, is that I've rarely ever seen/heard so many complaints about character design, leading up to a movie's release.  I'm OK with the character design, and it's about what I'd expect from Pixar, but for some reason apparently a lot of people don't like it and have been vocal about this.  Then there is the clash between the characters and environment, which doesn't bother everyone, but it sure bothers some.  Personally, although I do understand the purpose behind this clash--pitting the environment and nature itself against the protagonist--purely in terms of aesthetics, admittedly I think it's a bit distracting.  If I had to change this, then I would keep the characters the same and tweak the environment to suit them more, but the vast majority of people I've talked to want the exact opposite--they almost universally want ultra-realistic-looking dinosaurs to go with this environment.  And maybe that's a more general reason some dinosaur movies gross a lot more than others, in addition to the public perhaps greatly preferring to see vicious, monstrous dinosaurs.

 

It's tough to say, but the question again is how much of this will be held against the director.  Nothing happens in a vacuum there, so are Pixar collectively responsible or was it a result of the director's approach?  Did Sohn fight to convince Lasseter to keep the movie a certain way (sort of like his predecessor)?  If so, then maybe his gambit didn't pan out, and therefore his directorial career at Pixar is screwed.  Or maybe nothing of the sort happened and he will remain on Pixar's current rotation of directors because Pixar collectively like this movie a lot despite its underperformance at the box office.  Either scenario (or something in between) could be true.  I haven't heard anything definite from the inside on this so far.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Melvin Frohike

[John Marston]

this will be the first PIXAR film to lose money