How Pixar made us forget our biases
The company that made us relate to the stereotypically un-relatable
Movies are both art and magic. They transport us to a whole new world. They make us root. They make us relate. They make us feel.
In the past couple decades, Pixar has become the forefront of cinematic innovation. They trail-blazed the field of computer graphics and animation. They created adorably relatable characters.
They created stereotypically un-relatable characters. And made us relate to them.
They added creativity to the biases we have and the assumptions we make, to create a story and billions of dollars.
They turned movies that should’ve been busts into blockbusters
Should’ve-been Bust #1:
Rodents… in the kitchen… touching our food
No one wants an animal in their kitchen. Even fewer people want a rat there. Even the most popular of restaurants will get shut down in a heartbeat at the sign of a rat infestation.
Many of us get the creepy-crawlies just imagining a tail scurrying behind a cabinet. It’s ingrained in our minds that any non-human presence is immediately unsanitary.
Yet Pixar made Ratatouille — a movie based entirely upon a rat in the kitchen. Better yet, a rat cooking in a high-calibre french restaurant kitchen.
They bet millions of dollars on a movie, that for all extents and purposes, had no target audience. Beady-eyes, skinny tails, and little gross bodies hold little appeal to anyone. And in the context of a cute movie with gourmet food, forget it.
But Pixar didn’t forget it. They did it. And miraculously, they made us care about the rat.
They made us root for Remy, the hopeful rat chef. And they made us feel like Anton Ego, the food critic who was appalled by the rats in the kitchen, was the bad guy.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of us — critic or casual restaurant-goer, food snob or fast-food junkie, clean-freak or slob — would freak out if a rat was cooking our food. And we would murderously swing our mops at any swarm of rats residing in our kitchens.
But when the food critic goes ballistic because a rat was cooking, or when the restaurant owner chases the colony of rats in his kitchen in attempt to kill them, they are the evil enemy.
Kinda crazy how Pixar made a whole world wholly terrified of rats in their kitchen, root for the rat in the kitchen.
“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” — Anton Ego, Food Critic, Ratatouille
It’s astonishing how our quickly good and bad flip when we are given a new perspective. And it’s even more astonishing how effectively Pixar managed to achieve that.
Should’ve-been Bust #2:
No words for 30 minutes. In a kids movie.
Could you imagine bringing a child — a restless, young child — to a movie where no one talks? In fact, could you imagine voluntarily paying to see such a movie?
While silent movies have been around for an eternity, they have never held much popularity. As a genre mostly targeted to lovers of fine art, the target audience is very niche.
And then there is WALL-E. A movie that plays for 30 minutes before a single word is uttered. The protagonist WALL-E never speaks more than two words. The female protagonist Eve never speaks more than three.
On the surface, it really should’ve failed. But it didn’t.
The global box office grossed over half a billion dollars. WALL-E won the Academy Award for Best Animated Movie, along with 5 other nominations. It also picked up a Golden Globe award.
“You pop?” — WALL-E, in his longest sentence of the movie, WALL-E
Pixar took an unspoken rule of cinema — use noise to capture an audience — and turned it upside down. They used a lack of noise to capture an audience. And they used it on a bunch of kids.
Should’ve-been Bust #3:
Bugs. A lot of bugs. All over the place.
Let’s be honest: We don’t care for bugs. In fact, most of the time we barely notice them.
We step on ants without a second thought. We kill fruit flies without blinking. We throw snails across the yard because they are in the way. Half the time, we barely think of bugs as living things.
Yet Pixar’s second movie was A Bug’s Life — story whose success relied on a bunch of children sympathizing with ants and bugs and crickets.
The company was in millions of dollars of debt and getting paid straight out of Steve Jobs’ pocket. Yet they ignored the already popular, the already cute and the already adored by children. They chose to hedge all their bets on the marketability of… an ant.
“You piece of dirt! No, I’m wrong. You’re lower than dirt. You’re an Ant!” — Hopper, Evil Grasshopper, A Bug’s Life
Instead of stepping on a bug, they put us in the shoes of one. Pixar risked themselves on the belief that they could make us forget that we don’t actually care about bugs. And they were 300 million dollars richer for it.
Movies are about perspective and perception. A good storyteller takes advantage of our assumptions to build their story.
But a great storyteller gives bias the finger by making us so engrossed in the story that we forget what we think we know.
They make us forget that we don’t like rats in a kitchen. That ants don’t matter to us. That we need dialogue to tell a story.
They just let us enjoy the cinematic ride.
