It’s as if Hollywood is afraid of people. Afraid that the people who go to see movies might actually be imbeciles. There are not that many stories to tell. There are love stories or unrequited love stories. There are coming of age stories or stories about people who never grow up. There are good guy or bad guy stories. And there are a few more kinds of stories. They get told over and over again but in new ways. Even though we’ve all read and watched and even ourselves lived most of these stories multiple times, still we can get all choked up when we experience the same old story again but with a new twist.
Yet makers of money are worried that spenders of money don’t want to spend money on something unfamiliar, because imbeciles prioritize comfort above all other stimuli. So Hollywood has mostly been comfortably remaking films for the past couple decades. Remaking films. Not retelling stories. The remakes have more special effects and, over the last couple of years, lots of 3D because that’s the difference between the old film and the new film: more realistic looking computer animated animals and more pieces of blown up things coming closer to the imbeciles’ heads.
While all this has been going on Pixar has been, most of the time, retelling stories. Pixar has been pushing the limits of Hollywood propriety by having the nerve to treat audiences -- even audiences of children! -- like they aren’t imbeciles.
The difference between Pixar and mainstream Hollywood is like night and day. Or, is that Day & Night? Sheesh! Who knows what message to tolerate anymore.



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