Apparently a directive from the very top of the House of Mouse, now that the Mouse is getting his gloved hands into Pixar proper, is one of stupid oversight and diktat to decree what kinds of films should be produced. This kind of thing smells suspiciously like the kinds of rumblings that Nine Ent Co. made towards Fairfax after the television network acquired the newspaper outlet and several years' on, if we look from man to pig and pig to man and from man to pig again, we can no longer tell the difference.
One of the things that gave Pixar its distinguished place in the entertainment kosmos, was that as it was actually independent, it was free to pursue whatever it liked. This means that films like Toy Story were certified bangers, while other films like Cars 2 are stinkers. Freedom to fail (which sounds odd as Cars 2 made a profit anyway), is one of the reasons why Pixar is/was able to turn out interesting films. The Mouse on the other hand, is quite content to mine nostalgia for all it is worth, and keep on tapping the seam and the same formula to churn out a slightly different princess movie once every few years (which will collect a billion dollars).
The directive from The Mouse (of which there is no actual documentation) is believed to tell Pixar that it should focus on films with "clear mass appeal" with less focus on "directors' autobiographical tales" like Luca and Turning Red and that: "The studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis & instead speak to a commonality of experience".
We have a word for this. It is... WHITEWASH!
Granted that I have not seen Luca, but Turning Red is an entirely adequate film which I suppose is a kind of morality play and allegory for a teenage girl's passage through puberty. Neither of these films are likely to set the world on fire but as middle-of-the-road middling mid-rated films, they are fine. There should be a sense of adequacy in producing entirely adequate films. In principle there shouldn't be anything wrong with making functional art
The problem that the top of the House of Mouse has is that this simply isn't good enough. Rather than making a thing which is allowed to be and breathe on its own terms, The Mouse has decided that it wants to turn up the volume and only demand billion dollar blockbusters. Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you'll end up in the stars, right? No! Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you're dead. In response to the directive from the very top of the House of Mouse, it has decided that instead of nickel and diming its way with films that might have been interesting to some people, the thing that it wants is to cut any and all things that don't fit its central premise. Presumably this means that it wants to drown the market in more princess films because Frozen was absolutely massive.
It is not hard to see why The Mouse would want to do this. If it looks across the industry and sees Marvel turning out a million superhero movies which are licences to print money (for reasons that I do not understand), and it sees Illumination Pictures which appears to have created a whole niche out of building a world from gibberish spouting banana tic-tacs, and then also sees the horrendously vomitacious horrrorshow that is Velma, then the business conclusions that it comes to can only be: line go up make money; line go down do not make money. Line go down is caused by... don't say it... don't say it.. don't say it... diversity.
Oh no.
CULTURE WAR ALERT.
**** CULTURE WAR **** CULTURE WAR **** CULTURE WAR ****
**** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT ****
Although The Mouse has made films like Moana, Mulan, The Princess And The Frog, Lilo & Stitch, Luca, Turning Red, and Encanto (most of which I have not seen), which has made use of cultural reception to tell various stories, such as Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Mexican, African-America, et cetera, The Mouse likely isn't concerned about putting different faces and voices on screen if they do not spin a profit. However you diversity wash the stories you tell, a multi-billion dollar corporation is only ultimately concerned with one thing and one thing only - profit.
However it this seems like a rant somehow in favour or against DEI, BLM, Pride, just rememeber that the only reason that multi-billion dollar corporations divwash, blackwash, rainbowash, greenwash, or patriotwash, is also in service of that same one concern - profit.
The Mouse's diktat to Pixar telling them that "The studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis & instead speak to a commonality of experience" sounds scathing but is actually far less sinister than imagined. That phrase "commonality of experience" sounds like some kind of push for general inclusion but really it should be seen for what it is; which is a naked demand for cash. The only questions that The Mouse actually cares about is: "Who Has The Most Money?" and "How Do We Get It?"
What happens if an animation house actually does try and go for a deliberate mass market appeal in the overt sense? What would happen if you hired a blockbuster director and then used the available resources such as a full orchestra and a crack team of animators? This experiment has been performed and it was called "Tiny Toon Adventures". The most noticeable feature of Tiny Toon Adventures is that in trying to appeal to the biggest mass market that it possibly could, it actually appealed to nobody because it committed the most heinous crime of all - it wasn't funny.
I should mention some more examples of this, such as Animaniacs, The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show, and latter seasons of The Simpsons. In trying to the biggest mass market that they can, they end up being derivative and just space fillers. Of course all of that is at rival animation houses; it couldn't possibly happen in the House of Mouse, could it? Possibly.
Bluey which appears on Disney+ was the result of no diktat from the Mouse. Ludo Studios were free to do whatever the heck that they wanted; and produced a very big little TV show for big people that they could watch with their kids (or that kids could watch with their parents). This is absolutely the key to producing anything of quality. Management has to back off, to let the people who they have hired make things. Those things then need to be put into the market; where the market will decide whether or not the thing is good. This also implies that those things should be allowed to fail.
This means that you can reduce literally this entire post down to a few basic components; which are in fact the only questions that The Mouse actually cares about: "Who Has The Most Money?" and "How Do We Get It?" Maybe there actually is a place for a directors' autobiographical tale, if it is compelling enough but more importantly, good. Equally the Mouse should say to someone: "This is boring; we should not make a movie about this."
And this is the whole problem with trying to explicitly make a runaway blockbuster. It's hard. If the answer isn't to try and go for a deliberate mass market appeal and it isn't trying to aim for diversity and inclusiveness, then what is it? Believe it or not, the House of Mouse already kind of has the answer within its kosmos. The answer is to try and produce something which is good.
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