UPDATE: Oh for Pete's sake.

UPDATE: Via Mark, The 10 Worst Top-Shelf CG Cartoon Movies Ever Made. Touché. Incidentally, I wonder whether the relative star power of Cars—and the lack thereof in Pixar's better-loved outings, including WALL•E, which only has about five actual credited (human) cast members, none of whom I'd heard of—says something too. Like, the more big-name actors you blow your budget on, particularly those not particularly known as voice actors, the worse the final product will suck. (Travolta as Bolt? Nicholas Cage as a bug? Who could even recognize them?)

UPDATE: Reading some of the comments on the article linked in the previous update (and on this Cartoon Brew post), particularly the dull cockeyed-baseball-capped dungflingers who go LOL CARTOONS R 4 KIDZ U MORONS, I found myself thinking that the very concept of a "franchise" is probably grouped along different axes for different people.

The studio execs might think someone is willing to watch "a drama", or "a comedy", or "a talking animal movie", or "a Superman movie". And to some extent they're right, of course. But I think more moviegoers think more along the lines of "a Disney 2D feature" or "a Jack Black movie" or "a Pixar movie".

Someone in a Corpse Bride review I just read said something like how "most cartoons these days are made with slick computer programs" instead of the traditional methods; and the fact that he still called 3D CG movies "cartoons" made me think: do I consider such things "cartoons"? Do I consider a CG movie to be in the same ballpark as a 2D feature? Do I have the same impetus to go see one? Is the audience the same?

I don't think so. I think my moviegoing decisions were always made along the lines of "Is it part of a franchise to which I've subscribed?" rather than "Does it have elements that tickle my fancy?" And those franchises I cared about, the ones that weren't about specific actors or directors or perceived cultural footprint, were almost exclusively centered on the top drawer of the 2D feature market. I always considered Disney's theatrical features to be a "franchise"—I'd devour one, then immediately begin looking forward to the next one, whereas I'd all but shun 2D features from many lesser studios. Whether I would go see the next one was never in question. Sure, I'd have to make a decision on things like Anastasia or Quest for Camelot or Titan A.E.; those ones I'd have to weigh carefully, and some I decided to see, some I didn't. But there was never any doubt that Hunchback or Hercules or even The Emperor's New Groove would be a milestone in my yearly calendar, a holiday to look forward to.

And so it is with Pixar. Ever since Toy Story, it's not a question of whether I would see the next Pixar movie in theaters, but only whether I'd see it on opening weekend or not. It's a franchise to my mind, no matter how different in theme, subject matter, tone, or concept they are from one outing to the next. But at the same time, other "cartoons" from other studios—I guess I don't even consider them "cartoons", let alone part of the same kind of "franchise" as Pixar plays in. I never had any desire to see Meet the Robinsons or Chicken Little or Valiant, even though they're positioned as being the spiritual successors to the "animated feature" tradition of things like Beauty and the Beast.

Looking at the human character designs for Bolt, I find myself thinking that there's a depressing sameness to modern CG movies; they've all got an odd, off-putting, Uncanny Valley-ish quality to them that's made all the more apparent by the fact that CG allegedly gets them that much closer to "reality" than 2D animation. Much though the studios might love to think that 3D is the Way of the Future for "cartoons", the fact is that I just don't enjoy looking at them as much as I do a traditionally animated 2D feature—in other words, the very thing that supposedly makes it a "cartoon" is missing, as far as my mind is concerned. I love seeing a good drawing, not a good model.

Pixar is in a different class, since it seems to be able to make just about anything it touches turn to gold, often aided by its decision to focus on subject matter that allows it to avoid animating realistic-looking humans (WALL•E even goes to the extent of using live-action footage featuring Fred Willard for the fleeting bits where they require people that look like people, because the humans in the rest of the thing are cartoonish lumps of dough after centuries in artificial gravity, fortuitously for the medium). And Pixar's singular skill at delivering the goods keeps me glued to its franchise no matter what each successive film is actually about, rather than making me decide on each one individually based on whether they got Stephen Colbert or Bill Murray to provide a voice, or whether its subject matter or genre happens to be something that particularly catches my attention. I don't know how much effort most studios waste trying to pander to specific parts of the moviegoing public that doesn't respond to the magic words "Pixar" or "Peter Jackson" or "Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly In Yet Another Satire of Earnest Beloved Social Constructs"; and I don't know how large that part of the public actually is (I know I'm probably not all that typical). But as studios squander millions upon millions trying to hit upon the magical formula that will reliably and reproducibly deliver a Lion King-sized hit, maybe this angle of thinking about it would help somewhat.

Not that there's much they could do about it if it turned out to be correct, of course. Other than "be Pixar".

UPDATE: Oh, incidentally, I love how the Captain in WALL•E got stuck in a Wikipedia singularity.