Pixar and the Incredibly Canny Valley

The trailer for Pixar’s new movie, The Good Dinosaur, is gorgeous.

It’s nearly photorealistic.

And the trailer spends a lot of time emphasizing it: close shots of piles of objects and textures, water. Water! Nobody’s quite nailed water, except maybe Pixar, now, in this dinosaur movie.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Cool.

Wait.

Waiiiiit.

…

What is this muppet???

????????

!!!!!

😐

🙁

Orrr… 🙂 ???

Every Pixar movie has dealt with this a little bit: Toy Story made its human characters somewhat more cartoonish than the toys themselves. The first half of Wall-E was nearly photorealistic (within its narrow visual palette):

While the second was rendered in caricature:

This visual change tracked with Wall-E’s story somewhat, and it sounds like the choice to render dinosaurs in a way that evokes cartoons while placing them in environments that attempt faithful reproduction may claim a thematic basis as well:

Sohn said they are toying with the idea of what dinosaurs represent today — something anachronistic or resistant to change.

But who cares! The result is interesting and strange — a cartoon within a cartoon. The CGI has its own CGI! It’s sort of like Who Framed Roger Rabbit except the conceit is a little less in your face. So it’s… Howard the Duck? Or like Ted… squared? And anyway, the alternative is this (SPOILER ALERT):

Big questions abound regarding this new movie for children.