ONWARD: The Pixar Formula Loses A Little Magic

After nearing the end of post production on Toy Story, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft, and Pete Docter went for the most famous lunch in Hollywood history, where they mapped out plans for four future films (A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and Wall-E) on a napkin. The story resurfaces whenever we need to be reminded of the innate storytelling talent at the studio, and it’s certainly a mythology they’ve leaned into – the teaser trailer for Wall-E even recapped the famous meeting to drum up hype for what remains their least commercial offering. 

An authentic heart trapped within forgettable fantasy beats

But it’s been a long time since the Pixar team exhausted all their initial ideas, which likely attributes to why their output has remained so wildly hit and miss in recent years. For every Inside Out or Coco that reminds you of how great they are at crafting moving stories from simple premises, there are disposable efforts like Brave, The Good Dinosaur, or any number of Cars sequels to remind you we’re not living in their golden period any more, and the bursts of inspiration are more often the exception, not the rule.

Onward, the second Pixar film from director Dan Scanlon (who made 2013’s enjoyable but forgettable Monster’s University), sounds like it can recapture some of that imagination when distilled to its initial inspiration: Scanlon hearing an audio tape of his late father, who passed away when he was young, and how this affected his bond with his older brother. And it’s undeniable that Onward does have a genuinely moving message about family relationships – the only problem is that it’s baked into a half hearted and little explored “what if” concept in the same vein as The Good Dinosaur. 

That film pondered what earth would be like if an asteroid never wiped out the entire dinosaur population, while Scanlon’s film imagines a world where the mythical creatures of folklore abandoned their magical ways to form a recognisably human society after the invention of electricity. But the failures of both are the same; the stories themselves appear as an afterthought next to the emotional glue holding them together, leading to a lack of curiosity in the fantastical world that surrounds the characters, and making their stories harder to invest in as a result. Reverse engineering an elaborate, mystical narrative comes at the expense of what could have been one of Pixar’s most human films to date.

Onward follows elf brothers Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt), who wind up on a mythical quest after Ian is given a birthday present by his mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) she had been asked to hold on to until both boys were over 16. The present is a magical wizard’s staff, with a spell that will bring their father back to life for 24 hours, so he could see who his sons have grown up to become. However, after reading the spell, Ian only brings back the bottom half of his father’s body, leading the boys on a mission to find a special gem to bring the rest of their dad back before the day is done and the spell wears off.

Pixar does Weekend at Bernie’s

Even without knowing the real life inspiration behind this story, Onward shows worrying signs of the Pixar formula growing stale. It’s always apparent that the mission to share a moment with their father is a mere McGuffin for a story about the relationship between two brothers, in the same way many Pixar films (such as Coco, to name the most recent example), often overshadow the real emotional destination with a race against time narrative. And when these plot machinations make themselves known early on, it becomes harder to invest in a story that prioritises the emotional destination over the journey that will make it all the more worthwhile. Every one of the expected beats is hit in this story, to the extent it occasionally feels like a Pixar film written by an algorithm, despite being a project close to its director’s heart.

And as for the mysticism, this is a film built without any curiosity in the possibilities of a contemporary fantasy kingdom – an ingenious, “how has nobody ever made this?” premise that remains unexplored when not relevant to the plot, or cannot be used for a slapstick sight gag. Although to be fair, when Ian and Barley’s father comes back in the form of the bottom half of his body, the film gets its best comic mileage from their attempts to fashion a top half to his body, so nobody will suspect he is just a pair of rogue legs. But this just leads to a different problem – that the most memorable jokes in the film are lifted wholesale from Weekend at Bernie’s II (where Bernie’s corpse is inexplicably revived by a voodoo curse), a film that was a redundant force for slapstick comedy to begin with. 

Onward: Conclusion

If you’re still won over by the Pixar formula, chances are you will still be moved by Onward. But for me, it was the first sign that even their deeply personal stories are showing signs of fatigue due to how familiar they all now feel.

Onward is released on March 6 in the UK and USA, and all international release dates are here.