Onward

It’s cus­tom­ary that before every Pixar film, a short pro­duced by the stu­dio plays, giv­ing audi­ences a lit­tle more bang for their buck. Since this tra­di­tion offi­cial­ly began in 1998 with Geri’s Game (which screened before A Bug’s Life) it’s become almost as beloved as Pixar’s fea­ture out­put, gar­ner­ing five Oscars and a fur­ther nine nom­i­na­tions for Best Ani­mat­ed Short.

It’s a sign of the times that when Coco was released in 2017, Dis­ney chose to run a Frozen-themed short enti­tled Olaf’s Frozen Adven­ture, and there was no short before last year’s Toy Sto­ry 4. Ahead of their lat­est ani­mat­ed adven­ture, Onward, a Simp­sons skit marks the grim Fox/​Disney merg­er which has all but ensured their media indus­try monopoly.

Some­thing that has always set Pixar apart from its com­peti­tors is emo­tion­al res­o­nance. Chil­dren and adults alike are delight­ed by the whole­some fun Pixar films offer, but their mas­ter­ful com­bi­na­tion of cut­ting-edge com­put­er ani­ma­tion and poignant sto­ry­telling has ele­vat­ed them to great­ness. We’re now at the stage where the kids who grew up with Woody and Buzz are tak­ing their own fam­i­lies to see the lat­est Pixar offer­ing, and there’s a rea­son peo­ple keep return­ing: humans crave familiarity.

Onward feels famil­iar. In a land not dis­sim­i­lar to our own, mys­ti­cal crea­tures walk the earth – but after cen­turies opt­ing for the con­ve­nience of tech over actu­al, hard-won mag­ic, they’ve become com­pla­cent. Teenage elf broth­ers Ian (Tom Hol­land) and Bar­ley Light­foot (Chris Pratt) live with their moth­er Lau­rel (Julie Louis-Drey­fus) in the sub­urbs, and on the occa­sion of Ian’s 16^th birth­day they are grant­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see their father again – if they can com­plete a per­ilous quest to retrieve a mag­ic crystal.

Along the way they encounter var­i­ous kooky sprites, includ­ing Corey (Octavia Spencer), a man­ti­core who has trad­ed her fear­some war­rior ways for a qui­et life as a restau­ran­teur. These nar­ra­tive touch­es are enter­tain­ing, but the over­all plot and main char­ac­ters rank low in the Pixar canon. Pratt is a bore as the shouty, goofy Bar­ley, while Holland’s timid Ian could be any bandy-legged pro­tag­o­nist from any num­ber of CGI kids’ films.

Else­where, the family’s pet drag­on is a lazy copy of Dante, the goofy hair­less dog from Coco. And with­out a colour­ful vil­lain or a cred­i­ble threat, the stakes remain sur­pris­ing­ly low through­out. Even visu­al­ly the film is less inven­tive than the studio’s ear­li­er out­put; out­side of their Spark­Shorts divi­sion, it seems they are no longer inter­est­ed in push­ing the bound­aries of the medium.

A new Pixar film used to feel like an event, some­thing worth turn­ing up for. As the Dis­ney mono­lith grows larg­er, it seems strange that they should be resist­ing the cre­ative inno­va­tion that made their name. Per­haps there’s no incen­tive to inno­vate when you’re already at the top of the food chain, but all the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights in the world can’t buy you imag­i­na­tion. The Pixar mag­ic is miss­ing. Will they ever get it back?