The Decline of Animation and the Birth of Live-Action for Disney [Week One – 11/24-11/28 (first posting)]

a. Title of Article:
Pixar’s Sad Decline- in 1 Chart

b.  APA Citation:
Orr, C. (2013, June 24). Pixar's Sad Decline—in 1 Chart. Retrieved November 27, 2014.

c. Summary of Article:
This sources provides compelling information for Pixar’s movie rating decline, the article is written by The Atlantic’s principle film critic. The author writes from the position of concerned and “heart-broken” viewer.

d. Important Quotes:
1. “A Pixar film used to be the surest bet in American cinema. Now it's a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best proposition.”,
2.“Pixar used to make films that utterly transcended any kids-movie/grownup-movie distinction”

e. Reflection on Article:
Over the past years, Pixar’s movie ratings on various websites (i.e. MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes) has dramatically fallen from it’s 1995 hit of Toy Story. Recent movies such as Cars 2, Brave, and Monsters University have been a sore disappointment in ratings compared to Finding Nemo or even Toy Story 3. Animation has always been considered childish in a way but Disney is moving in the right direction. Improved animation comes hand in hand with the advancement of technology, however, if the story line is unappealing, then the animation will be ignored. Animation within Disney is dying, a shift from animation to live-action is necessary and is becoming apparent.

  In some aspects, Frozen (2013), was a sort of redemption for Pixar in the sense that the story line was up-to-date and easily appreciated. Frozen somehow managed to attract older teenage audiences as well as the young generation of girls, but this is a small step compared to the somewhat-animated movie Ted (2012). Disney finally figured it out, Animation is close to dead, this may have sparked their move to live action movies of which there is an expected 7-12 coming out in the next 5 years. Maleficent (2014)  was a much needed change in Disney’ s reputation, but it came with risk and a price. The movie was split in the film critic world but got an acceptable rating from general audiences (but in the end, the general audience is larger and will be the main consumer group). The outcome of big budget movies like the Avengers is teetering on the edge, and will be a tipping point for Disney’s future in 2015.