Onward film review: Pixar rolls a 20, nails homage to D&D-styled adventure:
Now that Pixar's latest film is officially in US theaters, we are resurfacing our review, which was originally published on February 21st.
Pixar's latest feature-length film, Onward, doesn't reach US theaters until March 6, and it's rare for us at Ars Technica to review a film so far in advance of its launch. When we do, it's usually for good reason.
In Onward's case, that's because we haven't seen a film so easy to recommend to Ars Technica readers in years. We know our average demographic: parents and older readers who are deeply fluent in decades of nerd culture and who appreciate films that offer genuine laughs, likable characters, and tightly sewn logic in family-friendly fashion without compromising the dialogue, plot, or heart—or beating an original, previously beloved franchise into the ground. Pixar has come out screaming with a film that feels focus-tested for that exact audience, and I'm already eager to attend the film again in two weeks.
We've seen our fair share of fantasy genre satires and comedies, but Onward delivers the most fully fledged, top-to-bottom homage to the fantasy genre since Monty Python and the Holy Grail sent up all things King Arthur. To be clear, Pixar's newest universe of characters draws more from the Dungeons & Dragons well of magical, class-based adventuring with its own twist.
[...] Onward's focus on the brothers' relationship means the film does something impressively subtle: it avoids tokenizing anybody in order to advance the protagonists' story. Barley and Ian's quest doesn't hinge upon saving helpless damsels, and everybody who gets significant screen time—even a few potential villains—is humanized or made three-dimensional in ways that you probably won't notice at first. I left this film really liking every significant character and wanting to see more of them—and as much as I like most Pixar films, their only feature-length production that left me feeling the same was the first Toy Story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @05:52PM (4 children)
The first animated film with meaningful character conflict? The first animated film to not use a "contrived fairy tale aesthetic"? You really believe that? Toy Story was released Nov. 19, 1995. Animated films have about 100 years of history.
We don't even have to go back that far. The 1995 Ghost in the Shell film is an animated feature released Nov. 18, 1995, so it is objectively older than Toy Story by about a day. I think it's hard to argue that this film uses "fairy tale aesthetics" or lacks meaningful character conflict.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday March 09 2020, @06:17PM (1 child)
That's a lot of "well technically" I wanted to dodge talking about when I said "major animated film"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:07AM
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:36AM (1 child)
I think you missed the "designed for small children" part of the GP's post. Ghost in the Shell is a great movie, but not "designed for small children".
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:59AM
Watership Down...?
Traumatising kiddies since 1978...