The studio’s early works were lauded for their “universal” storytelling. Its new approach champions personal stories—and audiences are the richer for it.
- While working on Pixar’s Bao short in 2017, director Domee Shi had just completed the film in which a young woman’s bao bun lunch comes to life and develops into an angry adolescent. It was a metaphor for motherhood, as a mother would understand. She was invited by her Pixar colleagues to come up with ideas for a feature-length picture after the success of her short film (which went on to win an Oscar). She worked on three different ideas throughout the course of the summer, all of them revolved on the adolescent experiences she had growing up in a Chinese Canadian household in Toronto.
- Meilin Lee is a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl who wakes up one day to realise that she has been magically transformed into a gigantic red panda whenever she is angry or irritated. She eventually filmed the film Turning Red. It’s a metaphor for adolescence, and one of Pixar’s most personal films.
- The method used by the company to create films is now canonical. Like the Ten Commandments, the 22 laws of narrative in the film industry are taught in serious screenwriting blogs. It was common for Pixar in its early days to spend hours refining, tweaking, and sculpting its films, in an attempt to capture universal themes like love, sorrow, and family. There was a “brain trust”—John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Brad Bird—that worked on each of Pixar’s films, resulting in several honours.
- A number of movies ended up looking rather differently based on those principles. A Bug’s Life was totally revamped nine months before its premiere as a picture about a pair of extraterrestrial princes living in a floating metropolis. In reality, Shi doesn’t do that. According to her, there was no set timeline or framework for presenting these thoughts, so everyone could move at their own speed. Since overthinking and overworking anything until it loses all of its individuality is my greatest worry, I’m always looking for ways to speed things up.
- As a result, Shi breached a few norms with Turning Red. When it comes to the film, which premieres on Disney+ on Friday, there are several sequences from the early storyboards that have been faithfully reproduced. Meilin’s mother once went to her daughter’s school to spy on her, using binoculars to peep behind a tree, much to Meilin’s horror. As a producer, Lindsey Collins explains: “You could tell some of them were coming from really personal experiences from Domee, and that is always a drug when you hear a pitch.” This is something you don’t expect to see at the start of a tournament.
- In Pixar’s latest works, this emphasis on personal experiences has become a pattern. Director Enrico Casarosa’s early memories of summers on the Italian seaside and the delight of discovery were largely reflected in the film Luca that was released last year. Director Dan Scanlon was inspired to make Onward after hearing an audio tape of his father, who died when he was a toddler and was buried in an urban fantasy world.
- It is not uncommon for the studio’s creations to include elements of the creators’ own lives. Toy Story and its successors take place in the Tri-Counties Area, a semblance of middle America with suburban streets, shopping malls, and space-themed pizza parlours. Its early movies might be set anywhere. However, if you replace Riley’s love of hockey with anything else, the tale loses much of its connection to its original setting in Minnesota (where director Pete Docter grew up) and its new setting in San Francisco.
- Despite this, 2020’s Soul, which tells the storey of a dying jazz musician who finds himself in the afterlife, has a New York flavour to it. In the same way, Shi’s life experiences are so intertwined with Turning Red that putting it somewhere would have made it a different narrative. According to her, “I feel like Toronto and Vancouver are constantly trying to be other American towns in movies,” she adds, alluding to their frequent use as filming sites for Hollywood blockbusters. To counteract Shi’s anime and manga-influenced animation technique, the film is set in a real location. This specificity extends to the film’s time period, which is 2002. In addition to Tamagotchis and 4*Town, Meilin and her pals are obsessed with the band’s catchy melodies (written for the movie by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas).
- Thanks to advancements in technology, Pixar’s animators now have more possibilities than ever before. “We don’t fear rooting it in a real location,” Collins adds. Shi recalls selecting skin swatches for characters in a range of realisms, from “plastic doll” to “you can see every pore.” In the mid-1990s, Toy Story’s creators had just the second choice at their disposal. Animation style (chunky yet charming) and colour palette (pastel & bright & fresh) were used to convey a 13-year-old girl’s thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t merely for the purpose of stylization, Collins explains. The environment we created had to be seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old Asian girl, so that was an essential consideration for us.
- One Twitter user put it this way: “After a streak of blockbusters, Pixar has the ability to migrate away from producing movies ‘by fathers for dads,’ and allow a more diverse collection of characters and creative minds take the wheel.” The newest films from the company still have a wide audience appeal; they simply find new ways to be relatable. ‘What is this universal idea that we’re communicating with this culturally particular paintbrush?'” Shi recalls from the very first proposal. It’s the feeling of suddenly waking up one day and discovering that you’ve grown two feet taller, your body is completely covered in hair, and you’re always hungry,” she says. If you’ve ever felt like you were an alien in your own body, you’re not alone.
- A 13-year-old Chinese girl was deemed too “limited” and “restricted in scope” by some critics who had seen movies featuring robots, talking automobiles, and clown fish. Cinema’s primary goal is to immerse you in the thoughts and feelings of a stranger while also teaching you something about yourself.
- But the movies that arise from Pixar’s shift toward more detailed tales may breach some of its award-winning criteria. One of the first visuals Shi created for her presentation was of a 13-year-old girl, Meilin, pleading with her ancestors for a larger cup size—something personal to a 13-year-old girl, yes, but that also speaks to greater themes of belonging and the dual lives that many of us must live. She comments, “That truly caught Mei and the film.” In the movie, it’s simply a girl who’s going through puberty and transition, and she’s also juggling her two worlds.”ds that she was born into.”
