Dreamworks vs Pixar?
Blogger Gonzalo Lira explains why Pixar succeeds where Dreamworks falls short.
What sets Pixar apart is the quality of its movies: They’ve all been good.
A few have transcended the medium of film altogether, and become art. I would argue (very good-naturedly) that The Incredibles (2004), Wall-E (2008), and Up (2009) all fit into the category of art.
However—maybe precisely because Pixar films are so generous in spirit—few people seem to have noticed the incredible social satire going on, in Pixar’s movies.
What these pictures are offering is not “gentle satire”—Pixar movies offer the harshest social commentary of contemporary American society of anyone working today, in any medium that I can think of. It’s satire laced with acid, and it is incredibly powerful precisely because it is packed into something so seemingly gentle and sweet: Children’s movies.
At first, you don’t notice the acid-laced satire in Pixar’s movies, because all of them are swathed in such an immersive story-telling. The satire would be far more noticeable in a chintzy, “ironic” DreamWorks Animation production, precisely because of DreamWorks’ films’ constant wink-wink at the adult audience over the heads of the kids.
Read his entire post to see why Pixar films, such as Wall-E, are cinematic works of art.