 Pixar, the beating heart of animation, 18 Oscars, four toy stories, three car stories, two fish stories, and the other stories we all know and love. Being born in 2002 means I got to be at both pivotal moments of Pixar's legacy right beside them. The 2008 financial crisis that put Kihei Kwan-Wuri is and the COVID pandemic in 2020. And in the middle of both of them I had Pixar. The difference is that while my family was struggling, I was watching Wali, but when my graduation was robbed from me alongside the conclusion of my teenage high school life that put me in a weird place of limbo, I got to watch Onward with Chris Pratt. Pixar is one of the greatest animation studios of all time, revolutionizing 3D animation and also having some of the best animated movies ever. And recently, Pixar stinks, everything is on fire, they're losing millions of dollars, I heard a rumor that the staff is going to hell. The origin of Pixar is kind of funny and because I have a funny little brain, I talked about it in a video about the last of us for some reason. So yeah, Jamie, I'm gonna need you to replay that. So Pixar was a part of Lucasfilm, which revolutionized the world of animation, but when his wife divorced him, he lost everything. So he sold Pixar to Steve Jobs, who made Toy Story, then sold it to Disney, and then he died. I wasn't lying, it was short, but to the point, so yeah, that's the origin of Pixar. To talk about Pixar in a digestible way, we're gonna spread this topic into three eras. First, there's the innovation era, then the big money baller era, get that bag, and wake the hell up, what are you doing now? The innovation era of Pixar is why this video is being made to begin with. Without this era, the company wouldn't have any legacy, and would just be a stupid little lamp that jumps up and down with a funny little short where the birds are mean. The innovation era of Pixar has never been accomplished by any other studio. This era is so revolutionary, but what's more impressive was how consistent they were. They were pumping out these little gremlins constantly. And at first, you would think it's like a quantity over quality thing, but no, they're all really good. Toy Story changed the world of animation and had a drunk Buzz Lightyear. Bugs Life, animation about colonialism and standing up to your oppressors, but there's a fat little worm that wants to fly. Toy Story 2 predicted annoying man-child YouTubers, Monster's Inc, best Pixar intro of all time, that was a big ass meme for a couple of months. Finding Nemo, not only females have daddy issues folks, try not to cry at the ending challenge. The Incredibles, the only Pixar movie where a guy tries to end it all. I understand now. Cars. Yes, yes, I have 100k on YouTube, please, no photos. And yes, I love my small little town with my small little town friends. And I also have a wise doc Hudson. Ratatouille, rat cooks. Ali, a robot loves. Up, old people can be mean. And yes, we should all have an Asian best friend. Toy Story 3, The Holocaust. I'm not even trying to be edgy, people think this, and I kinda see it. To all the 2000s kids watching this video, we grew up with quality animated films that contained deep themes, imagery, and imagination year after year at extreme pace, and they kept striking gold every time. But the amazing thing about Pixar is that it wasn't just us getting these feelings. Us nasty, sticky little children got to experience a dad lose his entire fucking family in a world full of monsters in a financial crisis because of an energy crisis, and it has the business struggling to survive while the price of energy sky- oh my god, at least you have Harry Housens. But the adults also get to enjoy these movies just as much as the little kids. While you were mesmerized by all the colors of the ocean, mom and dad were bawling their eyes out to the amazing soundtrack. Also, oh my god, how the hell did they manage to make the music just as good as the animation in these films? They were making like a new one almost every year! The fucking music is almost just as hard as like the animation! It's crazy! The main point is that if you ask anyone what their favorite Pixar movie is, it's most likely going to be from this innovation era. Every project in this era is unique and full of passion and creativity, which gave them a massive reputation overshadowing every animation studio. The only other studio that can compare is Dreamworks. Dreamworks has some really good movies, but a lot of the films don't have amazing messages and emotional impact that the Pixar films had in their peak era. A whole bunch of turbulence! For every kung fu panda 2 and how to train your dragon 2, you get a shark tail, you said you're gonna take care of that fucking finnoi. B-movie, boss baby, and while Over the Hedge and Madagascar are really fun and like really cool, they ain't no ratatouille or Wally, like come on. Pixar was like the 1999 bowls team era, slam dunking on everything they did, getting hella rings, playing physical ball, but then they uh, but then they turn into little rats and they started to smell the cheddar and wanted a piece of it. So your picks are, you just dominated the 2000s by being original and awesome. You just went beast mode for like 10 years straight to lay down foundations, so now you want to make some cheddar cheese. Time to time you can make some cool things, but you're gonna have a bunch of icebergs as well because daddy wants a new boat. Toy Story 3 was the end of the innovation era and was the start of the big money baller era. Get that bag. This was the era where Pixar started to see the most success in the dollar signs. Because of the groundwork they put in, people were invested in wanting to see not just more of what they do, but also more of what they loved. Toy Story was the only thing from Pixar that had sequels and it got three of them before anybody else got a part two. Toy Story 3 made a lot of money because kids like Woody and Buzz, but you know what else kids like? Kids like some cars. Four wheel automated beast. The sequels of Pixar are strategic to not just box office, but also toys. Kids today don't like toys anymore. They rather be in the matrix glued to their device. But back in the day, kids like playing with some Woody. And me, I was making cars race. All the awesome kids like me were using their imaginations and it was awesome because I ended up really awesome and handsome. What do you think editing Skipper? You really are handsome. Oh my God. Stop it. No, you're just as handsome. I know, I know I am handsome. I'm so blessed. A kid rather make Buzz light your fly and have Mike Wazowski kickmater in the fucking face than play with a rat in an old man. These movies are still beautiful. I love Wally, but kids are kids, man. And Pixar is in the money baller era. So you got to do what you got to do. Cars two makes more money than cars one. Brave. I think they owed a favor to Disney. And while they were making Frozen, Pixar took the slack of making a boring princess movie that how to train your dragon did better. And in the future, they ended up making fun of this. So Monster's University makes more money than the first, but still has a baller as soundtrack. It also has cool messaging. The animation was a massive step up and it still looks really good today because it was more of art style over realism. The message terrified me about my place in the world inside out, made a lot of money and was an original piece of Pixar that's now beloved by a lot of people, but nobody slid for Bing Bong and he's not just dead but forgotten by everyone. That sucks. Good Dinosaur. This movie is a tech demo. The Pixar was getting ready for Incredibles 2, Finding Nemo 2, Cars 3 and Toy Story 4, so they wanted to step up their game in animation. Good Dinosaur is boring and doesn't have any elements of the innovation era and only stands out because of how pretty it looks and how realistic the water is. You could smell it a mile away. It released the same year as Inside Out and didn't have any intention of making money. It was the first Pixar bomb, but it did its job to show what Pixar has in store. And Inside Out carried the wait for Pixar anyway. It was destined to die, but it doesn't excuse anything. Tech Demo or not, you should make an effort for this film to have a legacy. After this, you have a rapid fire. You've got the Monster's Inc nostalgia bag. You've got the Cars nostalgia bag. Everyone loves Finding Nemo, so this is going to bang. Finding Dory made a billion dollars. It played on nostalgia and got some big ass bucks. Next year, you have another Good Dinosaur situation. Cars 3 is kind of a tech demo for the next two big money printers, but Cars is still a money printer itself to sell a bunch of toys. It didn't make a billy, but it made $383 million against a $175 million budget. It was way better than Cars 2, while also being an allegory for Le Mickey's basketball career. Cars 3 is what the Good Dinosaur should have been. A nice message with great visuals that pushed animation. Cars 3 even now looks great, but that same year, you got Coco. After making films about bugs and cars and monsters, they decided, hey, how about we give the Mexicans a shot. $800 million and is some people's favorite Pixar film. You see the formula. Money printer, something bad, something new and fun. Money printer, something bad, something new and fun. Pixar had this formula down, and since Coco was the new inside out, you got the green light to shoot down the last two Moby Dicks in your arsenal. The hype around Incredibles 2 was insane, and because of this hype and extremely polished animation due to the time gap from the first movie, everyone wanted to see what the fuss was about. So it became Pixar's most profitable movie, making $1.243 billion. And then the year after, they made Toy Story 4, which was uncomfortably realistic looking, and it made a billion dollars as well. Money was hot, hot, hot, but there was a big problem with this era. You see, sometimes making a lot of money can be cool, but you also suffer a lot of consequences. You could get complacent, lazy, and when all the dough is collected, you might have damaged the process of making that same dough again. The money printers made money, but a lot of them were not that good. Finding Dory was not as enjoyed as Finding Nemo, and was also not as good as Finding Nemo, making Dory the main character, and it didn't really stick with people. There was no tears, and the daddy issues were not as impactful. Monsters University was controversial, I loved that film, but some people didn't like it as much as the first one. I don't know, 50-50, I have favoritism. Amurals! Cars 2 was hated. It was a universal hate. It took a nice message about ego death and made it a spy action movie. Kids liked it, I guess. It was shaking car keys. Pistachio ice cream still makes me laugh. Cars 3 was back to form and was grounded again, but people lost faith from the second one, so it performed worse than both. Incredibles 2 was pretty awful. It lost all the edge from the first movie, and had a terrible villain, and Toy Story 4 had no reason to exist. Toy Story 3 had the perfect ending, but it continued anyway, and it's continuing again with part 5? Why the fuck does it exist? Money was the main intention for these films, playing off of nostalgia set by the innovation era. And while extremely successful, Pixar wasn't being innovative. They were just playing it safe. The only way they innovated was with realism, and realism doesn't matter in animation. Toy Story 3 looks better than Toy Story 4 because of its art style. Toy Story 4 is 3, but so hyper realistic that it just looks uncanny, whereas Toy Story 3 was such an improvement from 2 that it looks normal and not creepy, but like an animated film still. Same with Monsters University. Pixar kept trying to make the water look nice, and the hair follicles detailed, and they forgot that the main reason people like Pixar is because it made them feel something, but in Disney fashion, they will always work on how the dollar signs work, without thinking of the consequences of their actions. It's like the Jurassic Park message. Since Pixar stockpiles, they planned a bunch of shit ahead of time, hoping that a mass quantity and consistency of a new Pixar every year or two years sometimes will be enough to keep them afloat. But what Pixar lacks now is what the innovation era had, which was quality. It's ironic how every era starts with a Toy Story, but after the baller era, you had a freefall. The COVID pandemic was weird for the world of animation. Since everyone couldn't physically be with one another, real-life productions were halted, which gave a lot of time for people to come up with things and write scripts for future projects or be creative and think out the box. A lot of awesome things were made from COVID brainstorming, and a lot of animation studios saw that Disney was kind of in trouble because of a certain other animated movie. Disney dominated awards in box office. If Disney didn't win the Oscar, it was Pixar, and Pixar is owned by Disney. The Lego Movie was one of the best pieces of animation in a long time. It had hearts, a great message, and a beautiful style, something that would have came straight out of the innovation era. But this film came out during the money era for Disney, so they didn't hear any noise. It also got snubbed at the awards, not even getting nominated. But the same guys who made that movie teamed up with Sony and Marvel and made a Spider-Man animated movie, which changed everything. Into the Spider-Verse is the most important film in animation since Toy Story. It's important because it sparked a really good trend of competition to Disney's overshadowing presence of mediocrity. Sony was a laughing stock because of the emoji movie. A movie everyone loves, of course, that tried to copy the Lego Movie, which is ironic since the Lego Movie is about how corporatization kills creativity. So instead of trying to copy the homework, why not just get these guys who've done shit for us before with Cloudy of a Chance of Meatballs to do it again? What Phil Lord and Chris Miller did with $65 million to make the Lego Movie is incredible. And what they did previously with the original Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was also really good. And both the sequels to both those films were not made by them and were both bad. So the best call is to get them, since they could do some pretty cool shit. Sony wanted to have them use their most popular IP to make something with around $90 million. This was going to be a reputation save for Sony, so quality is extremely important with this one. Animation and film prices are ridiculously inflated. Pixar will have budgets of $200 million for realistic water and the ability to zoom in on Bob's balding fucking head to see the nanohairs. It doesn't make the movie great. Spider-Verse showed animation studios that art style and good writing could still have people in awe. Realism is smoke and mirrors, and Pixar ran that gimmick into the ground. Spider-Verse's art style, message, and presentation spread like wildfire. It was a breath of fresh air that hasn't been present in animation for a minute. Not just narratively, but also stylistically. Putting 2D animation over 3D animation while lowering the frame rate to look like a real comic book. And then the next year you have Klaus, which was also a great movie with a beautiful art style, and then Sony won the Oscar for Into the Spider-Verse. Conquering Disney's reign of terror and mediocrity that was dominating the academy that constantly snubbed stylistic art pieces for a year. Because Toy Story 4 won over way better movies. Disney has favoritism in the academy. They also have a lot of bullshit wins. Either someone at Disney has blackmail or they're given the best head in their goddamn life. But Spider-Verse winning with a low budget and a lot of style sent shockwaves. That ended up with a lot of studios cooking through pandemic, while Disney was blind and stubborn. Every studio around Disney has been influenced by Spider-Verse. Creating a new innovation era, with Disney being on the outside looking in with pride. Netflix had Mitchell vs. The Machines and Sea of Beast that was created by the man who made Big Hero 6 in Moana. He was with Disney for 25 years before leaving to Netflix since Disney would not give him the creative freedom to make this passion project. They also let Guillermo del Toro make his passion project with Pinocchio and stop motion that won an Oscar. It also only cost $35 million to make. Puss in Boots the Last Wish was the revival for Dreamworks, who was in a creative drought and was once in the same problem that Disney is in now, with repetitive art styles and complacency for mediocrity. Nickelodeon that hasn't took a risk since Rango, which was a bold and unique film, is now making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the same Spider-Verse art style, with all the turtles being like realistic young teenagers with young teenager voices. Illumination that has the reputation of being the annoying cash printer company made an adaptation of the Mario movie going outside their familiar comfort zone, and it's now one of the biggest animated films of all time. And Sony once again made a groundbreaking cinematic breath of fresh air that cost $100 million and employed the most animators ever on one project. So what's been happening with Disney Pixar? Pixar released Onward in the pandemic and lost $100 million, which pissed off Disney. Also at the time, Disney Plus was fairly new, so if everything was doomed to fail in box office, then hopefully they can make some money through Disney Plus. So Pixar became a guinea pig to test the Disney Plus model, which began to cripple their box office, which pissed off Disney. The streaming model can't work with Pixar because of how inflated the budgets are. Sol cost $150 million to make, and was streaming exclusively in America while around the world it made $121 million, which means the movie overall lost a shitload of money. And while Sol was a good movie with the great concept, it didn't revolutionize anything in the world of animation and was pretty bland. Its messages were the best part, but the Sol element was nothing special. As an animated project, it did not need to cost $150 million, and when you compare it to the recent Big Bang, the price to product is ridiculous. Same with Luca, this cute little film probably had a budget of around $150 million as well. Clearly this movie should not cost $150 million, and has become one of Pixar's lowest earning movies, losing over $100 million, but it gets worse with Turning Red, which lost around $168 million with only a $20 million box office, in comparison to Luca's $40 million box office. The reason they lost so much money was because Turning Red cost $178 million. Take in mind that Turning Red is a worse and shittier version of everything everywhere at once, and that movie cost $25 million. And Spider-Verse, which revolutionized the genre, cost $90 million. Why the hell does this movie cost $178 million? Watch the movie, it's not groundbreaking at all. Lightyear does not need to exist, it's an esogibate. Extremely shit-film and lost $106 million. A reason for the big loss was due to it being banned in the Middle East and Asia, due to a gay relationship being in the film, so that lost them a lot of money, but regardless, the film cost $373 million to make. And as of writing this video in the month of June, you could watch Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, which once again has innovated animation on $100 million, while giving jobs to over a thousand animators. Or you could watch Elemental, that cost $200 million to make and is doing the same Pixar trope of basic messages with no innovative presentation. Elemental is going to lose millions of dollars, because Pixar is so incredibly predictable and uninspired. But let me talk my mindset for a minute, because I feel really torn about all this. I have a love-hate relationship with Pixar failing, because animation is such an overlooked and under-appreciated medium. And while Pixar is making boring bullshit with inflated budgets, films like Puss in Boots The Last Wish, Spider-Verse and Pinocchio are all making profit, while being appreciated as a breath of fresh air. And it's so deserved. And other aspects of animation are pretty much unnoticed, yet still put so much passion and heart into what they do. I made a whole video about online animators and how stuff like Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and Smiling Friends were made with tape and spit. So if Pixar was to strike gold every single time, it would be a spit in the face to people who do care about the shit they make. But Pixar is my childhood. The innovation era is not watered down by modern Pixar. I could throw on any of these movies right now, and remember why I am the person I am today. Without Pixar, I would not love film or animation. And while Pixar is at fault for their problems, Disney has taken advantage of them, letting them take the bullet in box office, while they selfishly try to hold their boring bullshit above water as Pixar drowns. And while I'm disappointed in Pixar and their modern catalogue, I know how companies work. There are creative people who are silenced and forced to play it safe that really do love animation in silence. But these are real people that need to provide for their families. Behind every shitty overinflated Pixar film are people behind the scenes that are working relentlessly to hit quotas and put food on the table. But because of Lightyear's failure in box office, a massive layoff happened. And in this layoff was the producer that saved Toy Story 2, Galen Sussman. A Pixar staff member ran a command that deleted 90% of the film, but due to her being pregnant, she was at home on maternity leave and had a copy. To be fair, that version ended up not getting used, but she still saved it if it was to be used. She's been a part of Pixar since the first Toy Story. People are losing their jobs and careers, but at the same time, Pixar is in a terrible place and needs new visionaries. People losing jobs sucks no matter what, and while innocent people are getting the shit out of the stick, other people are losing their jobs justifiably, and we're getting paid way too much as it is. And the sad part about this video is that there's no solution. Disney isn't a bad place overall. They buy out all creative properties and try to turn them into factories. And by doing this, you get automated, look-alike products. And whenever something out the box does well, you then develop the whole factor around that thing, and the cycle never stops. A Toy Story 5 is in development, and Inside Out 2 is being made, and since Pixar needs money desperately, they are not going to try and be creative like they used to, but instead make Monsters Inc. 3, Cars 4, Wally 2, Rata 2e 2, and Recreate the Money Era. Rather than recreate the Innovation Era, because in usual fashion, the mouse is way more fascinated by the cheese of its products than how they were even made in the first place. But while Pixar is dying, look back at what they did. Remember that other studios are still inspired by the Innovation Era, and will continue to make films just like them. Animation is not dead because Pixar lost their way. Animation is in a new big bang because the Disney mindset is failing. Not everything is about money. Animation is more than just a way to shut up your kids. It touches people, changes their lives, and is art. Animation is art. And I'll forever love animation and what they've done for me. Including Pixar. Hey swim team and all you doggy dogs out there. Thank you for watching me talk about my childhood dying for the 100th time. I'm gonna keep making cool little videos like this, instead of the big hour, one hour things for a while. So if you like this format, please let me know by subscribing and liking, and saying it for yourself since you're a big kid. Thank you guys so much. I'm now gonna go play with my dog and watch up. Answer me you black son of a bitch.