Ten years ago, Walt Disney Animation’s Wreck-It-Ralph and Pixar’s Brave both became instant modern favorites and moderate commercial successes. While both films tread familiar premises and narrative territory of past animated films done in recent decades prior, these two films demonstrate how, under the control of former chief creative officer and studio head John Lasseter, Disney and Pixar began to emulate each other’s thematic and conceptual strengths and meld their respective studio norms.
How Wreck-It-Ralph Brought Out the Pixar in Disney
Much like Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and other Pixar films, Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph is a buddy comedy about the secret world of children’s imaginary constructs (in this case, video game characters) and how they treat their days in the arcade as an occupation and position of self-worth, mirroring the relatable day-to-day lives of working adults. The formula Pixar built most of its catalog on was telling a contemporary social allegory with snappy comedic dialogue centered around a pair of unlikely partners and how the nature of their existence and society shapes their characters and beliefs. Much like how the toys in Toy Story build their whole purpose around their position as toys for kids, the characters that reside in Litwak’s arcade share a community built on expectations and role-fulfillment that they feel maintains order.
Wreck-It-Ralph banks itself on the same kind of world-building and dynamics of Pixar’s proven storytelling sensibilities, but what makes it shine through as a Disney movie in Pixar’s clothing is in its character motivations. The development of most Pixar characters are driven less by what they want and how they go about achieving and more by how they need to grow to become better people by the story’s end through experiences. While the two leads indeed undergo an internal development, by wanting respect and higher social standing in each of their games, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) are both driven by their desire for a better life or to be free of what binds them to their surroundings, echoing the Disney princesses of the past.
Pixar’s Embrace and Subversion of the Princess Fairy Tale
Pixar’s Brave, like many countless Disney fairy tales before and since, is about a willfully independent princess. Merida (Kelly Macdonald) follows in the steps of Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Mulan in wanting her freedom and combating the cultural expectations placed on her to be groomed for marriage in favor of being a proactive fighter for what she believes in. In Pixar’s hands, what gives the very formulaic Disney princess mold a breath of fresh air is that it is not reliant on a preexisting legend or fairy tale and is allowed to build itself around a relationship seldom seen in a princess story: the mother/daughter relationship.
Conceptually and aesthetically, Brave is no different from the menagerie of princess films Disney was made famous for, but what makes it contextually a Pixar film is how it uses its premise to explore a unique and nuanced relationship. As seen in Finding Nemo, Up and Onward, Pixar’s thematic strength is in how their stories illuminate relationships and perspectives that are readily identifiable through the lens of whatever the film is externally pitched as. Instead of using an established myth or culture as the grounds to tell a familiar traditionalist story built around its setting, Pixar put the message and relationship of its characters at the forefront, transcending what is expected of a princess story and making it a story just as much for parents as it is for kids. With the Pixar touch, Brave grants its princess and her relationship with her family greater breathing room than those reliant on how she defies or falls into gender roles.
Disney and Pixar pulling similar styles and tones can be argued to have been residual from the reign of former head John Lasseter, who creatively oversaw both Disney and Pixar films simultaneously, resulting in an almost uniformity of the kinds of stories and characters each studio was encouraged to produce. This has continued over the past decade and even into today as Disney still often produces Pixar-esque material with films like Zootopia, Encanto, and the upcoming Strange World, while Pixar also embodies familiar Disney tropes in films like mermaid-inspired Luca and coming-of-age animal parable of The Good Dinosaur.
Apart from now both studios relying on CGI animation, the commonalities found across both studios between films like Brave and Wreck-It-Ralph show that the storytelling and marketing of Disney and Pixar films have become almost homogenized and at times indistinguishable from one another.
