I have to confess to being only partially qualified to address your post. Of the twenty Pixar films you list, I have seen sixteen. The four I missed are: The Good Dinosaur (almost never heard of it), Coco (no time, really), Cars 3 (Cars 2 soured me on the series), and The Incredibles 2 (too recent). Also I never focused before on two parallel processes producing animated films from one basic source. Your post stretched me out a little and I appreciate it.
Of course I won’t express an opinion on material I haven’t seen, but I do have to say that The Incredibles offers so much: it’s a little mushrooming of popular culture, with stunning visuals, appealing characters (especially E, the costume designer), and some deeper issues thrown in, like our rampant disgust with our current over-litigious culture, and the psychology of obsessive envy.
The Incredibles places itself so specifically in time and place - clearly the early 1960s, complete with James Bond-type infrastructure and gadgetry, automobile styles, and media coverage techniques. And a world separated into “Supers” and the rest of us is all too familiar to anyone who has read even one Superman comic. It’s the kind of opus made specifically for this kind of outlandish storytelling. I watch it a couple of times a year.
Toy Story 3 remains maybe the best thing Pixar ever did. Winks and nudges in the direction of pop culture - “No, Buzz. I AM your father!” Seriously? - and of course all the toys are pop culture references in themselves. The main thrust for this picture is the hair’s breadth escape by our intrepid heroes from the embittered and possibly schizophrenic stuffed bear, Lots-o’. The emotional themes are as weighty and fraught as in any live action drama, and we forget we’re actually dealing with toys’ lives. How deep can you go? It broadens the definition of animation, and the sophistication and effectiveness with which it deals with adult issues of family, rejection, and betrayal stake out new ground for the genre.
Finding Nemo didn’t have the luxury of too many pop culture references, but the jokes abound anyway. Mount Wannahockaloogie? The Shining-inspired “Heeeeere’s Brucey!” as the shark chases Marlon and Dory; fart jokes between seagulls. But for me the epic quest of the movie, while having its thrills and memorable moments, especially surfer-dude sea turtles riding an ocean current, is too static and borders on the frustrating, Dory’s shtick notwithstanding. It’s excellent work, but I think a little short of Toy Story 3.
I know movies in general depend on us viewers suspending our disbelief, and especially animation. And I love the Paris that’s portrayed in Ratatouille, but try as I might, I couldn’t quite buy in to the rat-sous chef interface that supports the whole film. The movie’s lovely, and slyly pokes fun at French cuisine snobbery with a rat-infested restaurant winning over the jaded critic, but while I liked it, for me it rests on a flimsy foundation.
The preceding paragraph probably makes me a Philistine.
Wall-E is a very interesting entry. Its issues are both current and timeless: the progress of artificial intelligence combines with humanity’s inability to deal with itself or its planet. Its visuals are excellent, its dramatic pace unflagging, and the changes wrought in the principals are profound. It does belong high on any list.
If I were, say, to compare Wall-E with Zootopia, I would say that Wall-E is superior because of its ambition and how well it executes its concept. But Zootopia is a gratifying product in my opinion. It combines cartoon cuteness with a noir hard-boiled mystery - ever notice how all the action with the hench-wolves and trapping the crooked bureaucrat happen at nighttime? There is the friendship forming, then falling-out, and then reforming-stronger-than-ever, a whole series of delightful visuals (love the commuter train), and of course, a rotten-to-the-core public servant as the bad guy. That theme never gets old.
Seems to me Moana and Brave are both products of the current zeitgeist of female heroes, and extremely young female heroes. I enjoyed both of them; their difference is that Moana is a civic-centered story, and Brave centers on family. Moana can be predicted pretty easily, but Brave has multiple show-focusing suspenseful moments where Moana spends more time enlightening us about Pacific Island culture and history.
Let me finish on Frozen. It’s exceptional graphically, and its comic relief portions are super top-notch. It’s one of the few animated features that’s actually a musical, in that its chief characters sing songs that carry the plot forward and establish the mood of the scene and act. The family drama at its center is deep and real enough to carry the movie. However: they made SO much off it, and the marketing of merchandise and the production of a live action stage show (fun, epically staged, a little gimmicky and needing one musical number excised - I saw the Broadway preview in Denver), that it has become a kind of instant institution. Little sister princesses were seen everywhere on their long gowns and gloves, you couldn’t escape the logo if you left the house - enough! I understand being torn about Frozen, completely. It seems churlish to denigrate something so successful, but it was just too ubiquitous. It’s not possible for them to forgo a sequel, is it?
