Disney vs Pixar - the Fanfic Faceoff

[tealin]

It occurred to me while visiting California Adventure (soon to be Pixarland*) that despite Pixar's modus operandi of 'creating worlds,' my imagination is never tempted to explore them outside the confines of the film, whereas I often find myself mentally wandering the possibilities of Disney worlds. The only explanation I could come up with is that Pixar movies are more self-contained ... everything in them was created for them; nothing exists that does not relate to the plot or characters; everything is explained and there are no loose ends. It's a very tidy way to make a movie but it doesn't give much room to play – it feels like the movie is shot on a sound stage rather than on location, that if you wandered past the end of the street that is visible in the establishing shot, you'd either meet a blank concrete wall or ... nothing. I don't wonder about the rest of the characters' lives, or 'what would happen if...', or how their society works or anything, because everything I need to know is spelled out for me and nothing further is hinted at, which squashes all curiosity I might have. And for all that the world is painstakingly created I never wish I could just go there to hang out – it's a closed-off room that exists for the purpose of the movie and the movie alone; it doesn't have any doors.** So I wondered: am I the only one? Is your imagination piqued by Pixar movies as much as Disney? I did a brief and extremely unscientific survey of fanfiction.net and the fic tallies for Disney and Pixar movies seem to prove that I am speaking out of my butt, but I cannot recall one Pixar character that, for example, has a squeeing fangirl following. Have you experienced Pixar fandom online? Is it as fruitful or pervasive as the Disney fandoms I followed for a while before running away screaming? What are your thoughts/observations/comments/suggestions/snarkings? Is it better to make a beautiful, clean, perfectly-wrapped up origami of a movie, or leave some loose ends and cracks that the imagination can crawl into?

ETA: I ought to set Incredibles a little bit aside from the Pixar pantheon – it's really much more of a Brad Bird movie than a Pixar movie, and he's the only one to my knowledge who can stand up to Lasseter and get away with it. He directed Ratatouille too, but it was someone else's project that he took over.

ETA2: This seems as good a time as any to point out one of my favourite Daily Show clips ever ... Forks!

*Not officially. But basically ... yeah.
**with the exception of Monsters, Inc which has a lot of doors (literally) ... but none of them open into my head (figuratively)

Comments

[jesskat.livejournal.com]

I don't dabble in fan fic, so I have as little interest in exploring the boundaries of Disney films as I do with Pixar films. I have to say though that I felt The Incredibles was the only Pixar movie (besides Toy Story, perhaps) that deserved to have a sequel, and hasn't gotten one yet while Cars 2 and Monsters Inc. 2 are already in the works, two movies that I felt would have stood perfectly well on their own without continuation. The Incredibles had interesting characters that offered possibilities for multiple stories, so that's one Pixar movie that, were I a fan fic author, might inspire me to create my own sequels. The only Disney movie besides The Lion King that inspired me to consider writing fan fic based on it was Atlantis.

I think the reason Pixar characters have less squeeing fangirls is because so far they've only made one picture with a full human cast - the aforementioned Incredibles. (Ratatouille's cast was 50% rats, 50% humans.) Also keep in mind that Pixar has, what, 10 movies behind them now against something close to 50 (animated) from Disney's side? Most of Disney's movies are adaptations of old fairytales which itself creates all sorts of conflicts, contradictions and loose ends when on the one hand you're trying to respect your source material yet keep it entertaining for the masses. Take The Little Mermaid, for example. In the original tale, the prince marries the wrong girl but is apparently happy with her, the mermaid dies and turns into sea foam - not much left to explore. Disney turns the ending into a happy one, allowing viewers to wonder what happens to Ariel and Eric now that they're married and Ariel has a whole new human existence to look forward to. On the other hand, I haven't seen much fan fic for Disney's latest original efforts, like Chicken Little (even that is very loosely based on an old story, but the title's pretty much the only thing that's left) or Home on the Range.

I don't know about the general public, but to me the most impressive thing about Disney isn't necessarily their stories, but the beautiful traditional animation. Sometimes just looking at a character is inspiring. Whereas a CG character, no matter how well animated, never quite gets me "hooked" the same way. They may make me feel the emotions the story needs to convey, but I think that's mostly a combination of all the elements: music, build-up, lighting plus animation. With hand-drawn Disney, sometimes all it takes is a crude, unfinished pencil test animation. That's the magic that gets me hooked on some of the characters they've created. If/when Pixar starts doing their own 2D animation, I wouldn't be surprised if I started fangirling their characters more.