Robinsons, Ratatouille,WALL-E news
John Lasseter on Disney, Pixar's upcoming flicks
Mar 2, 2007 Dominic von Riedemann
(Writer's note: A major muchas gracias to Jim Hill for pointing me towards Disney's website, which is where I got this information)
At a February 8th investor conference, Disney CEO Robert Iger got WDFA head honchos John Lasseter and Ed Catmull to talk about Disney and Pixar's upcoming animated flicks, including Meet the Robinsons, Ratatouille and WALL-E. Not only that, there's some information about Toy Story 3 as well.
Disney is covering its collective behind by calling these "forward-looking statements" so that people won't sue their asses if these flicks don't go off according to plan.
Also keep in mind that Iger and Company want to keep the money coming in from their investors, so they're deliberately being upbeat about what's going on so that said investors will continue to dig into their pockets. That said, I have to admit that there's a lot to be upbeat about in this presentation. I'm pretty buzzed about what John Lasseter is doing over at Disney and Pixar.
All quotes are from the transcription at Disney.com which you can find in its complete form over here.
Meet the Robinsons: This, according to Lasseter, was a project that predated Disney's purchase of Pixar.
"The day after the announcement (that Disney and Pixar were merging)," Lasseter said, "Ed (Catmull) and I walked into the Disney Animation Studios . . . and each of the directors took us through all the films, and the one director . . . Steve Anderson was directing . . . Meet the Robinsons, which is the next motion picture that's coming out from Disney Animation Studios. And he talked about this story, which is about a boy who is given up for adoption and he always wondered why . . . did his mom give him up?
"And, as he told this story, Steve mentioned, 'I'm adopted.' And his personal story touched me so deeply that when I finally saw the film, which . . . didn't have in it what Steve's personal story had."
Lasseter continues by saying, "His personal story brought me to tears, right, and I thought, ah, this feels like it's had too many cooks trying to stir this soup. So we gave him a lot of notes . . . We were very honest with him about the movie, but then I gave it back to him. I said, 'Steve, make the movie you want to make. Tell your story.'
"And he came back with changes to this film, minor changes, but it made all the difference in the world, and this story about Lewis, the main character Lewis, who is focusing on the past and he's wondering, why did his mom give me up? And he wants to focus on his past, but this focus actually takes him to the future, where he meets this amazing, crazy, wonderful, appealing group of characters that actually turns out to be his future family. And he learns through this experience to look forward in life, not to look back. And this story, it's Steve's story.
"We're really excited about (Meet the Robinsons). I'm very, very proud of the film and what Steve and his crew have done. The film is really beautiful, too. They have a stylization in this film that is really striking."
Danny Elfman (The Simpsons) is doing the soundtrack, which features songs by Rufus Wainwright and Rob Thomas.
Ratatouille: This flick was originally going to be directed by Jan Pinkava, but was handed over to Brad Bird (The Incredibles). Lasseter doesn't mention the Pinkava connection but instead treats this as a wholly Brad Bird project.
"(T)his movie is about a rat," Lasseter says, ". . . who loves food, loves good food, not garbage, but good food. And, in fact, he is so interested in food he becomes quite enamored with cooking. . . . he has an exceptional talent at it, but his dream is to cook in the finest restaurant in Paris, France. A rat cooking in a restaurant in Paris, France. Now, you have to understand this, because a rat to a kitchen is death to the kitchen. They'll close it up in a second. A kitchen to a rat is death to the rat. They'd kill it instantly, right? The story is about following one's passion against all odds."
Lasseter praises Bird and his group for reproducing in CGI one of the most treasured aspects of cel animation: squash and stretch. Remember Wile E. Coyote stretching as he falls off the cliff and hitting the ground? That's what I'm talking about.
"It's one of the principles of animation that the great Disney animators kind of developed at the Disney studios," Lasseter says. "But computer animation likes to make things that are basically rigid. We set out, after studying rats and mice, the way that they move and can curl up into a little ball and stretch out, I realized we have got to master true squash and stretch in the film. It was a lot of work, but we did it."
WALL-E: Just in case you're wondering, WALL-E is the long-awaited follow-up from Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton.
"WALL-E is the story about the last little robot on Earth," Lasseter continues. "Through . . . rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots . . . to . . . make Earth habitable again. Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he's left on Earth doing his duty all alone.
"But it's not a story about science fiction. It's a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with [Eve], a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth . . . And he follows her back up to her main spaceship, and you see a vision of the space and the future in this movie like you've never seen before. It is really spectacular. But with all Pixar films, one of the things we pride ourselves in, not only a great story, but the characters, memorable, appealing characters and these little robot characters that help WALL-E and Eve, these rejected, defective little robots, are the most charming group of characters we have ever created.
"And so, in the end, always about Pixar films, it's about the heart of the story . . . if you liked Finding Nemo, you're going to love this movie, because Andrew Stanton is one of the most talented filmmakers working today. It's just great."
American Dog: This is another Disney project with a troubled past. Lilo and Stitch director Chris Sanders had developed the idea but, after some stormy discssions with Lasseter, he left the project and Disney Studios. Lasseter then handed the film over to Disney veteran Chris Williams who revamped the storyline. American Dog will be the follow-up to Meet the Robinsons.
"(T)his film is about a dog named Bolt," Lasseter says. "Bolt is owned by a little girl whose father is this incredible scientist. Now, to protect the little girl, he gives the dog superpowers, but the dad is kidnapped by these bad guys . . . and the dog is protecting her by fighting off the bad guys with his superpowers, and for 10 years they search for the father and battle the bad guys.
"But all this is actually a TV show. You see, Bolt is a star of the most popular television show . . . but he thinks this is real. He lives on the soundstage and that's all he knows, so all of this is real to him. In one unfortunate incident, he falls into a box and he's shipped from his home on the soundstage to New York City and he comes out of it and he thinks it's all part of his life, where he has superpowers.
"But he is in the real world and nothing works like he thinks . . . he's trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the help of this crazy alley cat and this super fan hamster who is always in his hamster ball . . . he realizes that he is just an actor on a TV show, that his entire life, 10 years of his short life, has been spent being a fake, that he is not really what he thinks he is. It crushes him, but, really, he learns what it is to be a true dog."
"(W)e've done a lot of research and development for this film, because computer animation always likes to make things look clean and perfect. Ed and I have been working our entire careers in computer animation trying to manhandle this computer and this technology to make things look organic, to look lived in, to have a sense of history that our natural world has, so it doesn't look perfect and clean.
"But the one thing that we've never been able to do is to achieve the beauty and the softness that you see in the painted backgrounds of classic Disney animated film . . . We set out to do some research at Disney to figure out if can we take that look, that beautiful look of those hand-painted backgrounds and see if we could do it in computer animation. And we have solved it."
It's going to take a lot for American Dog to lose the controversy over the Sanders/Williams change-over. Hopefully the movie can pull it off.
Toy Story 3: This is the third flick with a troubled past. Initially, Disney was going to try and make this film without Lasseter and the Pixar crew (Pixar's original contract with Disney had run out and the Mouse House was trying to play hard-ball).
In fact, Disney had developed a script for Toy Story 3 and were starting animation work, using the same crew that made Chicken Little. When Robert Iger swallowed some crow, and merged the two companies, Lasseter immediately revamped the entire project, bringing in the same people who had worked on Toy Story 1 and 2.
"This is a movie that I have wanted to make since 1999, and I think for me personally it's the greatest thing about the merger of our two companies, that the creators of the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2, we can make Toy Story 3 with the story that we wanted. When we came up with the idea for Toy Story, the five of us, myself, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft and Leon Rich, we went off to this small house on [inaudible] Bay on the coast of northern California and we worked out the story over a weekend, created the story of Toy Story and the story of Buzz and Woody. And so to start the development of Toy Story 3, we went back to that very same house with the same group of people and we worked out the story of Toy Story 3."
Lasseter also announced that (as I've mentioned before) Tim Allen and Tom Hanks are returning as the voices of Buzz Lightyear and Woody respectively.
So there you have it. There are 3 films I'm genuinely jazzed about (Meet the Robinsons, Ratatouille and WALL-E) and two flicks I'm taking a 'wait and see' attitude on (American Dog, Toy Story 3). American Dog's current plotline looks a little too imitative of other Pixar movies (Toy Story, Cars); I'm hoping they can make it different enough. Toy Story 3 has potential (it can't hurt that the original creators are back in, or can it?) but I simply don't know enough about it to make a decision. In other words, interesting times ahead.
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