Those last two elements tell you all you need to know about a film where Pixar once again proved they didn't talk down to their audience or shy away from truly emotional, powerful material.
Look, this movie proves its power within the first ten minutes! With just a few lines of dialogue, an opening montage introduces us to the main character, Carl, and shows us the story of his life and love with Ellie – from their meeting as children, to their marriage, to their inability to have children and to her death. On the more basic surface level, the film is just a delight - the voice acting of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen and the rest, the amazing animation, the songs by Randy Newman - Toy Story is quite simply the best kind of Hollywood movie. Perhaps this is part of what makes the movie so accessible. This is an essentially tragic slant, when one thinks about it (we all know what happened to our childhood toys eventually, don't we?), and it's personified by Buzz himself as he grapples with the notion that he is, in fact, just a toy. Or rather, toys and their little boy, as the film is of course more about Woody and Buzz than it is their owner/center-or-their-universe, Andy - they're like a faithful dog whose devotion to its master never sways. Belying its soulless origins in the zeroes and ones of a machine, the film is as human as they come with its universally recognizable tale of a little boy and his toys. The Pixar - and by association computer-animated - revolution truly kicked in with the success of the studio's Toy Story in 1995. Pixar created an underwater world so beautiful and vast that we actually couldn't imagine how Marlin would ever find Nemo, but the film's message, which could be found somewhere between "remaining cautious" and "embracing ambition," was a strong enough current to carry us through. As we've seen in tons of other animated tales about the animal kingdom, it's a jungle out there! Or in this case, an ocean. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres become our ultimate road trip duo in Nemo and managed to make us laugh all the way through what is ultimately a dark tale. But there are a few occasions when the celebrity voices they get actually help shape the film itself and turn it into something dazzling and great. Celebrities showing up in animated films, just doing their own voices and putting regular, more-talented, voice-actors out of work is cringe-worthy. Look, most of the time there are a hundred or so reasons to utterly reject stunt voice casting. Combining tried and true concepts with new and interesting angles - call it the Disney Circle of Life.įish are friends, not food. And yet, it works amazingly well, perhaps because of the unique vibe given the proceedings by the artists' African landscapes and the percussive beats of composers Elton John and Tim Rice.
Today, in the year 2010, Simba and Scar and Mufasa are household names thanks to the enormous popularity of the sequels and soundtracks and Broadway plays and all the rest of it that have been based on the film, but back in 1994 who could have predicted that these characters would enter the lexicon of Disney's most popular creations? Simba's journey to adulthood, retribution, and his rightful place as the Lion King isn't an especially new or groundbreaking tale - on the contrary, it's full of Disney cliches (tragic origin, comic animal sidekicks, life lessons learned, etc.).
But Phantasm did it first.Ĭoming at the height of the Disney animation renaissance of the early 1990s, The Lion King was a huge hit - in fact, it remains the highest-grossing, traditionally-animated film ever released.
With his films, Nolan nailed who the Dark Knight is. The movie doesn't shy away from exploiting the consequences of that event, especially the toll it takes on Bruce. Each character, good or bad, is connected by an event their pasts could not have avoided. The climax, set at an abandoned Gotham World Fair ground, is truly epic and, moreover, violent as hell, thanks to Joker challenging Batman to the fight of his life. The Phantasm is a great nemesis, and the reveal of who is behind the mask is both surprising and justified. Tragedy and Batman are meant to be together, and when you throw Mark Hamill's Joker into the mix, you have one of the most heartfelt and dramatically satisfying stories DC has ever told. The crimes and the perpetrator are connected to Bruce's first – and last – shot at true love, a relationship he was willing to give up the cowl for if it meant he could be happy. YES NO Bruce Wayne's past takes center stage as Batman must stop a new rogue on the block, Phantasm, from killing Gotham's local mob population.