Pixar's Latest -- Onward...and Backward?

The first images from Pixar's latest film, Onward, dropped today via People:

📷: People: Tom Holland (left) and Chris Pratt's (right) characters

📷: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (left) and Tom Holland's (right) characters

Okay.

I admit, I knew nothing about this film. So I did a little digging.

The film is set to come out in March of 2020 and is written and directed by Dan Scanlon who, while working on other Pixar films, most notably wrote Monsters University. (Meh.)

Here's the plot summary from Wikipedia -- so take it for what it's worth:

"The film is set in a suburban fantasy world where humans do not exist, instead populated with elves, trolls, and sprites, where unicorns are as common as rodents. Two teenage elf brothers, Barley and Ian, embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic in the world in order to spend one day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.'

Apparently, the story is "inspired by Scanlon's father's death when Scanlon and his brother were younger, and their relationship" which kinda makes me feel bad for what I'm about to say.

But even though there's an emotional center to the story; even though Chris Pratt and Tom Holland are adorable and are sure to have good chemistry; even though.

There's that little voice in the back of my head that thought, "Really Pixar? Really?"

Because leaving aside the fact that the plot sounds an awful lot like Zootopia -- it just feels like Pixar is falling back on their typical formula. And I don't mean the "What If X Had Feelings" one (although it is hilarious):

 It's the buddy film -- two guys on an emotional journey where they each help other learn something that changes them--usually with the tough macho guy learning to be emotional and, well, less macho. A little vague but it's Buzz & Woody, it's Mike & Sully, it's Marlin & Dory (who's female, yes, but let's not unpack that rn), it's Mr. Incredible & Syndrome, it's Lightning & Mader, it's Remy & Linguini, it's Carl & Russell, it's Miguel and Hector. It's more of the same.

via GIPHY

So, yeah. Even though this story is based on Scanlon's life and we can't fault him for that -- someone at Pixar heard this pitch, read this script and thought "Yep. That's on brand." To be fair, the film was announced back in 2017, at the D23 Expo, when the now-disgraced-COO John Lasseter was in charge. So it's easy enough to lay the blame at his feet and be done with it. After all, Lasseter was at Disney since the early 1980s (ish), and he helped found Pixar and was integral in having Disney shift to computer animation. 

But that's almost too easy, isn't it? This is, I'm sure, indicative of a larger gender-based issue in Hollywood: despite fiction and storytelling being coded as female, making money is decidedly coded male, with women comprising only 8% of Hollywood directors. 

Think about it. 

Out of Pixar's 20 films, 17* have male leads. That's 85% of Pixar's films. 

Of those 17, some do have a female character of some significance -- it's debatable whether the role is large enough to be considered a co-protagonist: Princess Atta in A Bug's Life, Dory in Finding Nemo (it's really the story of Marlin and Nemo), maybe ElastiGirl in The Incredibles (again, it's really the story of Mr. Incredible and Syndrome), maybe Eve in Wall-E, and maybe ElastiGirl in The Incredibles 2 -- because even though it's about her getting to be the one to save the world, it's still about how Mr. Incredible deals with it. 

That leaves 3 -- THREE -- films that are anchored around female characters: Brave was the first (with Merida and her mother Elinor), Inside Out was next in 2015 (Joy and Sadness), and Finding Dory in 2016. 

So, yeah. I'm sure this story is deeply personal to Scanlon, and I certainly don't begrudge him that. Let him tell his story. But that doesn't mean I wasn't disappointed to see another male-buddy story from Pixar, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus mentioned as just "the mom."

Let's hear some other stories, Pixar. Disney, for all their faults, at least puts female characters at the forefront of their animated stories -- Zootopia needed both Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde to make it work (and even changed the story to make Judy the heart of the story) and Wreck-It Ralph is anchored by the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope. (On a side note, it was really weird to skim the Wikipedia page and see all the animated films Disney now owns after their merger with 20th Century Fox...like Bob's Burger's The Movie...)