Animation and Music: Disney vs Pixar

Disney and Pixar are two of the world's biggest animation studio giants, and although Disney bought Pixar in 2006, they still remain a separate entity, able to produce movies as they see fit. This will go against a lot of people's opinions, but I prefer Pixar over Disney. Before you hate on this post, let me explain.

Before Disney bought Pixar, they were struggling. Like, really struggling, especially in the early 2000s. They couldn't seem to make a critically and commercially well-received movie, while that was all that Pixar seemed to produce. While Disney came out with flops like Home on the Range and sequel after sequel, Pixar had an amazing run, with films like Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., and The Incredibles. Then, after Disney bought Pixar, their movies almost instantly got better, with Meet the Robinsons and Bolt. This is especially noticeable more recently, now that they have the creators of Pixar working on projects like Tangled, Wreck-It-Ralph, Frozen, and Big Hero 6. Meanwhile, Pixar has begun a downward trend, with the exception of Inside Out. It seems that in 2010, which was the year of the last amazing Pixar movie, Toy Story 3 (again, Inside Out is an exception), and the best Disney movie we had seen in a while, Tangled, both came out, was the turning point. Coincidence? I think not.

Also, Disney will use old fairy tales, myths, and otherwise already-told stories to base their movies off of. Pixar, on the other hand, is completely original. Instead of producing a retelling of a story, they make their own stories. And, they are often better done. They avoid Disney cliches and instead focus on telling heartfelt stories. They create stories and characters that have never been seen before- and that are complex and well-developed.

Do I even need to mention the animation itself? Pixar was responsible for introducing the world to CGI animation, a technique that brought the renowned studio into the spotlight and saved other studios from collapse. They keep improving the technology, creating incredible works of art, that are life-like and still simplistic enough to be charming. For example, while I have yet to see the whole movie, the backgrounds in The Good Dinosaur (not the characters) are amazingly life-like, almost photo realistic. In the trailer, for example, the raging river looks like something that came right out of a picture of Colorado. And in Up, Paradise Falls was based on Angel Falls, a real life waterfall, and the two look strikingly similar.