I'll be seeing Wall-E this weekend, and will no doubt have some further thoughts once I do. I'm looking forward to it, though perhaps less enthusiastic than other recent Pixar films. One of the problems with Pixar is their work is so routinely good, it's easy to take it for granted. And when they produce something astonishing--specifically Brad Bird's The Incredibles, the only film produced by Pixar that wasn't developed in-house, and which I feel is one of the few genuinely great films made so far in this century--it is, of course, disappointing when they go back to doing things that are merely good. (Also disappointing--Bird doesn't work there anymore.)
Not everyone loves Pixar's stuff, but there's no denying their track record. Sure, some of their movies are better than others, but even the least of them (that would, of course, be Cars) are still pretty good. In other words, the bottom line for the studio is not how to push the technology of CGI forward or to offer stunning visuals--though they do that every time--but to make good movies.
These days, that seems like an almost radical notion. Sure, bad movies have always been with us, but at no other point in history have so many stinkers been released, and it sometimes seems as though studios are deliberately making crap. How else can you explain this?
There's not even an authentic joke anywhere in that trailer--just a bunch of references to other movies, and even then, they have to resort to having a character point out that another character is supposed to be Hannah Montana--it neither looks nor sounds like her. A half hour of watching basic cable would have given the creators of this garbage a set of obvious, easily mocked mannerisms, but they aren't even willing to do the most minimal amount of homework, and in fact seem to almost mock the very audiences they assume will line up for this thing.
If it's a hit, things will only get worse.
