Will Onward Be The Start of Pixar Studios Reawakening?

A new film from Pixar studios is arriving in theaters soon, will it bring with it a reawakening for the animation studio?

Having gone two years without an original Pixar film, and even longer since one that truly breaks the boundaries of what we expect, Onward has high expectations to meet. The teaser trailer dropping, along with the statement that Pixar won’t be making sequels for the foreseeable future, begs one question. Will Onward be the first film in Pixar’s true reawakening?

From 1995 all the way through 2010, Pixar studios of 3D animated film was Pixar. Many thought the next-level storytelling and animation meant the studio could do no wrong. 2011 brought us a film many Pixar fans pretend doesn’t exist. That would be Cars 2, a sequel so bad the third instalment went on to pretend it never happened. From there, we got a series of films that varied in quality, from 2012’s Brave through to 2018’s Incredibles 2. This era has included the year where Pixar released two films in the same year. One of these is commonly praised as one of the most creative, while the other is deemed forgettable.

2019 will bring us the last Pixar sequel for some time. This, along with knowledge that they have five films in the works with directors including veteran Pete Docter and storyboard artist Domee Shi, gives me hope that Onward will be giving us just a taste of Pixar’s third ‘era’, so to speak.

My hope is that we get a new universe of films by Pixar. Onward opens the potential to create a wider range of films by telling stories outside of Earth. This film could truly be the film that marks the reawakening of early, perfect Pixar!