Up. How Pixar lost its Soul.

Honestly, Pixar needs to reconsider its direction. Its films started out as very funny, with an underlying sentimentality pulling at the heartstrings between laughs, but the humor has pretty much bled out of the things and they're all sentiment now. And I do mean "sentiment", because they seem to think they're doing something profound with sticky messes like "Soul" and "Inside Out", but it's just heaping piles of sentimentality.

At least movies like "Coco" have spectacular visuals and songs to relieve the stickiness, but "Soul" didn't look that great, and while the music was great... there was so little of it! Mostly it was just Joe yammering at 22, and who the hell wants to see more of 22.

What bullshit!

Pixar are BETTER for featuring humans, and the infinite possibilities that that offers.

You can only go so far with toys, bugs, monsters and (shudders) cars.

I'd say ALL of the human Pixar movies are the BEST of the LOT. Fuck off if you don't agree.

I haven't watched a lot of Pixar films lately, but they were starting to feel "samey" to me, and I think you've isolated some of the reason why. The first few films were neat, but aside from "full CGI movies" they weren't that distinguishable from other animated movies. Very good, very high quality, but not top-of-the-heap. Toy Story is funny, touching, and a good family film. But it's nowhere near the heights Pixar would achieve.

WALL-E is my favourite, followed by the Incredibles, and then probably Up.

With Up, I think Pixar found out that people talked more about the first fifteen minutes than the rest of the movie (although people still go, "SQUIRREL!"). The touching story of the couple with dreams who find out that life gets in the way was perfect in-and-of-itself, and it was moving. It was relatable for so many people, tragic, a little bittersweet, but captivating.

Moving forward, I think Pixar has been trying to be touching. They aren't just trying to make good movies, they're trying to make audiences cry. Or, perhaps more to the point, they're trying to make audiences have more Opening Sequence From Up conversations/reactions again.

The best Pixar films put story first and seemed not to worry so much about "is it funny?" or "will they cry?" They felt more creative. I think exploring human ideas and stories using monsters or bugs might help, too, because they can creatively satirize our societies, or come at humanity from an oblique "outsider's" angle.

Up was a strange film ill remember for a long time. Taken in general it was not a spectacular film nor was it plot, but the way it was delivered... The opening scenes where you see the main characters life go by in fast motion had me crying. This is one of three films that ever managed to make me do that and has lead to quite some introspection. I like Pixars new direction.