dumb movie news websites have been squeezing click bait articles out of a quote from disney ceo bob iger last week during a shareholder conference call. he apparently referred to "sequels" that pixar has on the way in the next five years. the only upcoming sequel pixar has announced is finding dory in 2015, so the articles want to speculate on what the other sequel(s) could be. this is presuming that he was not referring to this june's monsters university (a monsters inc prequel) or this august's planes (a cars spinoff not even being made by pixar).
everyone has been asking me, what are the pixar sequels you would want to see? so in response, i've compiled my top 5. exempt from this wish list is the obvious answer-- a sequel to the incredibles. a sequel to the incredibles is so clearly the thing pixar needs to do that its very invocation is a redundancy. obviously every day that passes in which brad bird is not working on incredibles 2 is kind of a waste of his time and ours. but aside from that, what sequels should pixar be making? here's what i think.
5. a sequel to brave
2012's brave is perhaps pixar's biggest misstep. all the elements were there for an inventive classic-- a spunky female lead against a lush, magical backdrop. but the story is trash stew. a flavorless blend of refried clichés. the moral of the tale being inspired by a bear transformation is right out of disney's brother bear, not that it was all that original a concept even in 2003. and the lesson itself, about how you shouldn't force a princess to marry someone she doesn't love (real timely and relevant stuff, by the way) was something i seem to recall disney brushing over in 1992's aladdin. but brave wasn't a total waste. the characters themselves were cool. a badass king. a plucky princess with archery skills. a demon bear. a fucked up witch. you could take these great characters and create a much more interesting story for them. there's a moment in brave 1 where merida, feeling uneasy about the three boys from the other kingdoms who've come to compete for her hand in marriage, announces that she herself will also be competing for her own hand. that was clever! give me a sequel where merida is older, now a blossoming woman, embarking on adventures worthy of her talents. and grant her the identity that the first movie was too chicken shit to spell out-- a strong, proud lesbian.
4. a crossover teamup
with the success of the marvel superhero movies, the latest hip thing is for movie characters who share a parent company to have crossovers. you can do that with almost all the characters from the pixar movies. but you'd have to follow the rules of what i call the pixar multiverse-- only characters from pixar earth 1 (the human earth) may interact. meaning the toys from toy story, the bugs from a bug's life, the fish from finding nemo, the rats from ratatouille, the dogs from up, and the monsters from monsters inc (who inhabit a pocket monster dimension that does connect to earth 1 via wormhole portals). the characters who couldn't participate would be the incredibles of earth 2 (the superheroes earth), the cars of earth 3 (the sentient vehicles earth), wall-e of earth 4 (the weird hybrid live action but also animated humans earth) and the brave characters of earth 5 (the earth that has magic). anyway, they would all team up for an adventure and then at the end there would be a couple of credit cookies.
3. a cars reboot
i quite enjoy the first cars. i found cars 2 an unfocused mess that tried to play with genre a little bit, to mostly boring results. and they didn't even bring back my favorite character, chick hicks. but the cars brand is very strong, due to the otherworldly juggernaut sales of the little toy cars in all the toy stores. by rebooting the franchise, pixar could revitalize the saga of pixar earth 3 before they've run it completely into the ground with their current overdependence on the mater character, and they would double those toy sales overnight. ka-chow!
2. a pizza planet dude spinoff
we never got a look at the dude who drives the shit out of that pizza planet delivery truck in toy story. but we know two things about him: he drives like a psycho and he's the coolest dude in the pixar multiverse. the pizza planet truck has cameoed in almost all the pixar films. it's a mystical icon, and the tale of its driver must finally be told. i want the ultimate dude brought to life. i want to see what his nights are like. pizza. beer. video games. comic books. sex. trucks. aliens? you tell me, pixar. let's do this.
1. a sequel to newt
newt is the cancelled pixar movie that was originally supposed to come out in 2012. it was about newt and brooke, the world's two last remaining blue-footed newts, forced together by scientists to breed and save the species. only they apparently can't stand each other. i also remember hearing something about how newt didn't know how to mate because from his vantage point in the science lab, the poster showing the newt mating procedure was partially obscured. i was really excited for this movie, but pixar pulled the plug on it. they never disclosed the official reason, but john lasseter seemed to suggest that it was because of the plot's distinct similarity to fox's 2011 animated release, rio. which sucks, because that's just about the single worst possible reason for someone to not make something amazing. pixar released some newt art back around 2010 or so, and it looked fucking awesome. so if they don't want to make it, then fine. just go on and make the sequel then. what happens to newt after the thing that was too similar to a shitty parrot movie? i don't care what it is; just make it so i can see the second chapter of the newt epic. i love newt and i want to see his adventures. oh, and hurry the fuck up. lest universal or dreamworks put out another piece of shit that reminds you too much of poor newt.
