Lucasfilm Animation

Lucasfilm Animation is an offshoot of Lucasfilm and was created in 2003 and is based in Singapore. The studio started out by creating the TV show Star Wars: Clone Wars and created all subsequent Star Wars TV shows. Lucasfilm decided to create a movie to lead into their second TV series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Yes, they are different shows, I know they basically have the same name. Just stick The in front of anything and it’s different! The Clone Wars was released in 2008 and was meant to be both a stand alone story and a lead in to the main series. The action, like the TV show before it, is set between Episode II and Episode III.The movie had a very small budget, thanks to the fact that they just took the first couple episodes and made it into a movie. It was Lucas’s decision to make it a feature instead and it threw the crew off. The finished film was trashed critically, currently the lowest scored of all the Star Wars movies. The movie was a mild success financially due to the small budget of $8.5 million and the final gross of $68.3 million. Many critics didn’t like the animation style and were confused as to why this was being shown theatrically when it was clearly “Saturday Morning Cartoon” variety. Despite the terrible beginning to the series, the TV show proved to be popular, and ran from 2008-2014. It was replaced by Star Wars: Rebels.

Strange Magic is the studio’s second and so far only other movie. As Disney now owns Lucasfilm, the movie was distributed under Disney, though, like Gnomeo and Juliet, was under the Touchstone banner. The idea for this movie had been flopping around in Lucas’s mind for 15 years, but he was too busy with Star Wars to ever give it a go. He wanted a film that his three daughters could go and see. He wanted a Star Wars that was for girls. Lucas originally pitched it as a Beauty and the Beast story with the beast not changing back. It was about finding beauty in strange places. Production had gone on and off for years, and when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they were pretty far into production. Disney apparently didn’t have much faith in the movie, seeing as they released it under Touchstone and didn’t promote it at all. I think I saw one ad for it, and then it was already on video a short while later. The film has the unfortunate distinction of having the lowest ticket sales of any movie released in more than 3,000 theaters. The film was a huge bomb, only grossing $13 million. Reviews were even worse, with many focusing on the hollow story, but praising the animation. It is doubtful that Lucasfilm Animation will release another movie seeing as they are now owned by Disney. Disney has had a weird relationship with Lucasfilm, as they basically shut down their video game wing, LucasArts. I imagine that Disney will have them make the TV shows and nothing more.

Pixar

 Getting it’s start in 1974 as members of Alexander Schure’s Computer Graphics Lab, the team that would found Pixar then worked under George Lucas at LucasFilm, creating CG effects, with the eventual ambition to create the first CG movie. In 1986 they left LucasFilm after it became apparent that he would liquidate the section they worked in and created their own company. They decided that they still needed time to create a full length movie and instead became a computer hardware company. Their main product would be their Pixar Image Computer, a system primarily sold to government facilities and hospitals. Looking for someone to back them financially, Steve Jobs, who had just been fired from Apple, was interested. George Lucas still owned the group’s technology rights, so Steve Jobs had to wager with him. While Lucas initially found Job’s offer to be too low, no one else was interested, so he sold. Though they had sold products to Disney, no one else was buying and it caused Jobs to continue investing money into the company until he gained control of it. John Lasseter headed up the company’s animation department, initially starting as just four people, and in 1989 started making commercials for companies. In 1990, Pixar sold their hardware division to Viacom and focused solely on animation. Though they had started 1991 by laying off 30 employees, Pixar regained its footing by signing a three picture deal with Disney, the first being Toy Story. Despite this good news, the company was still not making money and Jobs considered selling it several times leading up into 1994. What changed was learning that Disney would be distributing Toy Story and buzz around the movie was generally good. Jobs decided to take a more hands-on approach with the company and named himself CEO. Toy Story became a certifiable hit and shares for Pixar climbed from $22 all the way to $49 before falling to $39 by end of day. Pixar creating a “Braintrust” shortly after, where directors, writers and lead storyboard artists would look at each other’s ideas and offer notes. This style of product development would later be adapted by Warner Animation Group.

Disney and Pixar’s sunny relationship didn’t last very long. Toy Story 2, originally meant to be a straight-to-video, was later changed to a theatrical release. Pixar was under the impression that since it started out as a straight-to-video, it didn’t count toward its three picture deal with Disney, but Disney said it did. Though the movie ended up being profitable for both companies, Pixar didn’t find the arrangement very equitable. They were making the films and Disney was just advertising and distributing them. Profits and production costs were split 50-50, but Disney owned the rights to the stories and sequel rights, plus collected a 10-15 percent distribution fee. Pixar demanded a new deal be put in place where they only paid Disney distribution fees and would pay for the movies themselves, thus gaining all the profit. Disney, of course, disagreed and things weren’t looking good. Steve Jobs and then-Chairman and CEO of Disney Michael Eisner’s contentious relationship didn’t help matters. Jobs declared that Pixar was actively looking for a new partner outside of Disney, with Disney creating Circle 7 animation, a CG film department that would create sequels for the Pixar movies they owned. Despite all the contention, the contract between the two kept being extended until they could come up with a permanent solution. Talks began again between the companies in 2005 when Eisner was out of Disney and Disney ultimately bought Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal. Jobs, owning 50.1% of Pixar’s stock, became the largest individual shareholder in Disney with 7%. For comparison, Eisner, who had once been the largest shareholder, now only held 1.7% and Roy Disney owned just 1%. As part of the deal, John Lasseter, who by then was Executive Vice President at Pixar, became Chief Creative Officer for both Pixar and Disney Animation, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Disney Imagineering (they develop everything at the Disney Parks). Jobs was not retained as Pixar’s chairman and CEO, instead he took a seat at Disney’s Board of Directors. The deal had gone through thanks to current Disney CEO, Bob Iger, realizing that Disney Animation had not created any iconic characters in the last ten years, and that they’d all been Pixar’s. Disney Animation did hit its stride again once Lasseter took over, as from Bolt on they have come out with hit after hit. The closest Disney came to a hit before that in the last ten years was Lilo and Stitch. Part of the deal was that Pixar would still be a separate entity. This let them keep their HR procedures and made sure that Disney couldn’t scrap the Pixar name later on. Though Lasseter headed creativity for both animation studios, he kept them separate. If one studio had a problem with a production, they couldn’t ask the other for help. While he brought the Pixar Braintrust mentality to Disney Animation, Disney has kept in line with their own culture. Pixar has since expanded to a campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. That studio mainly works on Pixar shorts.

I would like to cover all of Pixar’s films in the future, so I’m not going to go super in depth for each film. Everyone reading this knows Pixar and knows that it stands head and shoulders above anything else out there. Disney has recently found its footing, but Pixar has been, for the most part, consistent. Three quarters of their movies have been met with near unanimous praise, and the others, Brave, Monster’s University, The Good Dinosaur, and both Cars films, having still decent reviews. The only real stinker out of the bunch is Cars 2. While I completely understand why Pixar released it theatrically, they really should have made it straight-to-DVD. Pixar and Disney are both going the routes of sequels right now, something both tried not to do very often. It remains to be seen if this is a good idea, as Pixar’s track record for sequels beyond Toy Story and Finding Nemo is not great (I still like Monster’s University).

The Land Before Time

An American Tail was a hit, and it allowed Bluth a period of time where he didn't have to worry about one of his companies going bankrupt. The next film being planned with Steven Spielberg (George Lucas jumped on board too) was described as a story like Bambi, but with dinosaurs. The early title was The Land Before Time Began, and it was originally planned to have no dialogue, similar to the Rites of Spring segment of Fantasia. Spielberg and Lucas decided that this would alienate children, so they made it a talking dinosaur movie. A lot of research went into the movie, with many of the film's animators and production teams visiting natural history museums and especially the Smithsonian. The film featured many different types of dinosaurs, but the research team didn't do a perfect job: in the setting of the movie, five species of dinosaurs depicted would have already been extinct. Oh well, kids aren't going to nit-pick that sort of thing. Plus, people are trying to tell me that there's no such thing as a triceratops, so now Cera isn't real! Scientists, stop messing with my childhood! You took Pluto away, don't tell me certain dinosaurs didn't exist!

A lot was changed in the movie as time went on. Littlefoot was originally going to be named Thunderfoot, though they had to change it when they found out a triceratops in a book was named that. I think Littlefoot has a better ring to it. Thunderfoot doesn't fit the character of Littlefoot, really. Maybe if Littlefoot wore cool sunglasses the whole movie. I'd pay to see that movie! Cera's character was originally going to be a male named Bambo (why so close to Bambi?), until Lucas decided that Bambo should instead be a girl and have a clever name instead of a stupid one. Also, I had no idea until a few years ago that Cera's name was spelled that way. I just assumed it was Sara, or some variation of how we spell it. My mind was blown. I mean, come on, triCERAtops?! Who does that? Spielberg and Lucas took one look at the finished project and realized that they had made one scary dinosaur movie. They had to tone it down a little or they would be stuck with a PG rating. This may be a common thing today, but back in the eighties it was pretty risky to let your animated film get a PG rating. The only two I can think of that did it around that time were Watership Down and Disney's The Black Cauldron. With Bluth complaining the whole way, Lucas and Spielberg cut about nine minutes of the film, mostly consisting of Sharptooth scenes, making the film only sixty nine minutes long. That's barely longer than Dumbo! Littlefoot's mother dying was deemed too emotionally scarring and the character of Rooter (the old clubtail dinosaur) was introduced to soften the blow. Doesn't matter, it's still probably the most tear jerking scenes in all of animation. Even the theatrical version seen in 1988 is different from the version you see on DVD. In the original, Littlefoot's mother is shown being bitten by Sharptooth on the neck and back, but apparently it was later deemed to intense. While the movie isn't the darkest of the Bluth films, it's easily the most depressing.

The cast of dinosaurs centers around an Apatosaurus (Littlefoot), a Triceratops (Cera), a Saurolophus (Ducky), a Pteranodon (Petrie), and a Stegosaurus (Spike). In the story, a tyrannosaurus named Sharptooth (I always thought it was Sharktooth as a child, I can't be the only one!) attacks a group of dinosaurs while a random earthquake happens. Littlefoot's mother fends off Sharptooth, who falls into a deep crevice, though it costs her her life. Due to the earthquake, both Littlefoot and Cera are seperated from what's left of their families and have to set out to find them. Their ulitmate destination is the Great Valley, a place that hasn't been ravaged by volcanoes and earthquakes; a place where food is plentiful and there are no sharpteeth. Along the way they are joined by Petrie, Ducky, and Spike. They run into trouble along the way involving other, more dangerous dinosaurs, though in the end they defeat Sharptooth and make it to the Great Valley. I know that was a short run-down, but there isn't much to this story in terms of plot. What I will go into however is the relationships between the dinosaurs.

Whether you knew it or not as a child, you were watching a big story about tolerance and acceptance of people different from you. At the beginning of the film we learn from Littlefoot's mother that there are four other main groups of dinosaurs that they live around, "Three-horns", "Spiketails", "Swimmers", and "Flyers." We also learn that historically these dinosaurs don't associate themselves with each other and generally mind their own business. This conversations stems from Cera's father insisting that Cera not play with a "Longneck." This is an easy reflection of race/class relations in our own culture. Two children of different backgrounds or race play with each other for a time, until one of the parents insists that they stay away from each other. The other child questions their parents, who tell them that's just how it is. Maybe you've been in that situation yourself, or have seen examples of it in your daily life, but the movie does a good job of setting up a realistic scenario of how fear of other kinds of beings will lead to chaos instead of union. Both Littlefoot and Cera are OK with playing with each other until they are told by their parents that it's not acceptable behavior. Each gets a different response; while Littlefoot's mother says that's just how it is, Cera's father makes Longnecks out to be an inferior group. Cera's attitude throughout the movie carries her parent's indoctrination, though it doesn't help that she's kind of bossy to begin with. It's only through their travels together that they realize that's there's nothing wrong with associating with other dinosaurs. In fact, they probably all would have perished had it not been for each other. I know I didn't pick up on most of those things when I was a kid, but I did know by the end that you shouldn't dislike someone just because they are different.

Released in 1988, The Land Before Time was a huge hit for Bluth, grossing over $84 million dollars worldwide (around the same as An American Tail, though Land Before Time did better domestically). Disney's Oliver & Company came out around the same time,  but came in about $10 million less than Land Before Time. Critics liked the film more than An American Tail and confessed that it was more like a classic Disney movie than Oliver & Company. The only common complaint against the film was that it spent more time on tragedy than it did on the sense of discovery and natural history. The film has spawned twelve direct-to-video sequels and even a television show. I've honestly probably only watched one of the sequels, but I remember it being garbage. So why isn't this film my favorite of the Bluth films? Well, honestly Cera and Littlefoot kind of bug me. I loved this film as a kid, but it's lost some of its sheen in more recent viewings. I love all the other characters, but for some reason Cera and Littlefoot just rub me the wrong way now. Still a great animated film, though, and a classic Bluth film.

MacGuffin

I'm sure there are few people that already know what I'm going to talk about just by reading the title of this post, but most won't. For the latter, a MacGuffin is a popular plot device used in movies to further the story. It can be an object, or even a goal that the characters in the movie strive to obtain or achieve. The nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, generic, or completely unimportant to the plot. MacGuffin's can also be people and abstract things like victory, power, and love. The whole point of the MacGuffin is to be a strong motivation for the main characters. MacGuffin's tend to feature prominently in the first act of a film, then go away until the climax, but sometimes never do get mentioned or featured again. Multiple MacGuffin's in a plot are derisively known as plot coupons.

MacGuffin's were popularized in the 1930's by thriller extraordinaire, Alfred Hitchcock, but were in use long before that. The earliest known use of a MacGuffin type story element was the Sampo, a mysterious item that brought its owner good luck, in the 19th century Finnish epic, The Kalevela. In movies, it was used in many silent films, though they were called "weenies." The term was used by silent film actress Pearl White to describe any physical object that made the hero and villains chase after each other in her many films. I have no idea why she decided to call them "weenies," but I'm glad it didn't stick. Anyway, Hitchcock came up with the term while shooting his 1935 film, The 39 Steps and ended up using the MacGuffin in most of his other movies. He later explained how he came up with the name in an interview in the late 60's:

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?', and the other answers, 'Oh, that's a McGuffin'. The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well', the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands'. The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands', and the other one answers, 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all."

Hitchcock had a very interesting view on MacGuffin's however, as he felt that they weren't important things in the story, and shouldn't be cared about by the audience. Directors like George Lucas have disagreed with this mindset and claim that the MacGuffin should be cared about just as much as the dueling heroes and villains. Some directors loathe using the MacGuffin at all, the most prevalent probably being Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, in response to the mixed reviews to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull commented that he felt it was because people didn't like the MacGuffin in the film (the crystal skull) and that he never really liked using the MacGuffin. 

It's hard not to see a movie that doesn't have some sort of MacGuffin, but here are a few that stand out. Probably the most famous is the meaning of "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane. The whole movie revolves around this reporter trying to find out what Charles Foster Kane meant with his dying word of "Rosebud." Turns out it was the name of his sled. If you didn't know that spoiler than you've been living under a rock, because I'm pretty sure that was the second movie spoiler I had ever learned about as a kid, right behind Darth Vader being Luke's father. Another popular example of a MacGuffin in film is the titular Maltese Falcon. Probably one of my favorite noir films of all time, it shows how an object of no real relevance can cause a whole lot of problems. Another MacGuffin that people talk a lot about is the mysterious briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Nobody knows what's inside of it, but in the end it doesn't matter. All we need to know is that whatever is inside is something that is worth killing someone over. Tarantino made it clear that the audience doesn't need to know what the MacGuffin is to make the plot work, they just need to know that there is a MacGuffin. 

Other notable MacGuffin's include the rabbit's foot in Mission Impossible III, the Genesis device in the Star Trek movies, the holy grail in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The DaVinci Code (apparently that's a popular one), the death star plans in Star Wars, the ark of the covenant in Raiders, the ring in Lord of the Rings, and unobtanium in Avatar. There are countless ones, and they aren't just used in movies. In TV there is, just to name a few, the intersect from Chuck, the Rambaldi device in Alias, and my personal favorite, the orb from The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. You may hate MacGuffin's or you may love them, but they will continue to be used as long as there are needlessly complicated stories to tell.