Opinion Dim inside the studio

In the 12 years between Monsters,Inc. and its new prequel,Monsters University,a lot has happened at Pixar. The studio has produced and released eight full-length movies,seven of which took home Academy Awards. During this time,the company has remained at the vanguard of computer-generated animation,with its most noticeable strides made in the way rendered humans have evolved from dead-eyed animatrons in Monsters,Inc. to richly detailed,uncannily expressive beings in last year’s Brave. Meanwhile,two of the company’s directors have since graduated into live action filmmaking — Andrew Stanton with John Carter and Brad Bird with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol — underscoring the fact that storytelling is as vital to the Pixar brand as cutting-edge visuals. And,crucially,when Monsters Inc. was released in 2001,Walt Disney was simply its distributing partner. Now,Disney owns it outright.

Discussions over whether Pixar has lost its lustre tend to dwell on that final point,with the assumption being that art has been corrupted by commerce. But the truth isn’t that simple. Though operating underneath the Disney umbrella,Pixar has maintained its own staff. Synergies are inevitable,but they also seem to be cutting both ways: John Lasseter,who worked for Disney in the 1970s before moving to Pixar in the mid-1980s,and who directed the studio’s first three features,now serves as CCO for both Pixar and Disney Animation. Is he a Disney man come home,or a Pixar man remaking Disney? You can talk about the Disneyification of Pixar,with this sudden surfeit of sequels and merchandisable stock characters,but you’d also have to acknowledge the Pixarification of Disney,particularly with last summer’s emotionally nuanced and aesthetically innovative non-Pixar feature Wreck-It Ralph.

Yet,while the consistently brilliant Toy Story series proved that Pixar could make sequels that weren’t just creatively bankrupt money-grabs,other recent retreats have resembled just that. Monsters University may not be the cacophonous, product-shilling disaster Cars 2 was,but it is a far cry from its sweet and poignant predecessor. Whereas Monsters,Inc. flipped the standard narrative so that it was monsters who feared — and then,improbably,protected and loved — a child,Monsters University strictly sticks to the land of colourful beasts and ogres,retelling a familiar coming of age story. What’s missing is the narrative ambition and emotional heft of Up and Wall-E,the battle royale against oblivion that undergirds the Toy Story films,or even the fabulist daring of the imperfect but heartfelt Brave. We’ve come to expect more of Pixar than kooky characters on parade — or blatantly safe reanimations of bankable properties.

Looking ahead to what Pixar has in store,there’s cause for both optimism and cynicism. On one hand,you have original concepts called The Good Dinosaur and Inside Out; on the other,you have Finding Dory,the inevitable sequel to Finding Nemo. What remains to be seen is if any visionaries are set to replace the likes of Stanton and Bird,or if the next generation will merely work to maintain,rather than expand or redefine,the Pixar brand.

Hynes is a New York-based film critic