thedriveintheatre

It’s official: Pixar has done the impossible. Cars 2 is its first film to have a Rotten rating on the film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. This event is unprecedented; no other Pixar film in the history of the studio’s fifteen years of existence has dipped into Rotten territory, not even for a second.

Pixar fans on forums such as Pixar Planet and Wall-E Forum (of which this blogger is a member of) are quick to jump to the film’s defense. Some say that the reviewers are biased because they didn’t like Mater for being the main protagonist, that they had too high expectations, that they shouldn’t compare it to the first movie. Others point out that a few critics like Pete Harmmond and Roger Ebert have praised the film. Yet a few say that the critics are ‘haters’ and that we shouldn’t listen to what they have to say. This is all very interesting, because no other studio on the planet has such a loyal fanbase that is willing to defend it tooth-and-nail against unwanted critcisms.

If you ask me personally, I feel that some critics might indeed be harsh against Cars 2, if only because they come loaded with preconceptions about the film and are shaped by their experience of the first. It won’t help if they didn’t like the idea of a world populated by inanimate characters devoid of human life in the first place, or if they didn’t appreciate the over-the-top caricatures of sports celebrity endorsements. If they brought the same judgemental mindset to a sequel which now expands the concept to include other cultures, coupled with an eccentric spy theme, chances are they won’t be too pleased with this installment either.

Having said that though, let’s examine this objectively. We are already 80 reviews in. The Tomatometer has dropped from 50% since I last checked to 40%, and then 39% in the last hour (maybe one or two new negative reviews came in).

We have 49 Reviews which RT has classified as being Rotten. Now, I don’t know what is the exact criteria for judging a review as being ‘Rotten’, but I can imagine it’s some algorithm counting the number of negative adjective keywords. Or maybe we have a human screener who reads the verdict or final paragraph and assigns it a ‘Fresh’ or ‘Rotten’ Rating accordingly.

But when all is said and done, the fact remains: Pixar has obtained a Rotten rating for Cars 2 on its opening day. That might change in the future (many fans are hoping for a ‘rebound’), but as of right now, this is what it is.

Here are a few more arguments that the supporters throw up that I want to debunk:

1) The critics are biased.

While this might be true with a few of them, it is not a case of having one Armond White or Cole Smithey troll here. We have 49 professional critics who are paid to view the film objectively and without bias, and all of them are saying that Pixar has made a dud. What are the chances that almost half a hundred critics are contrarians just for the sake of it?

At the time of writing, the rating on IMDB (a populist website that reflects the average moviegoers’ opinion) is 6.9/10. So it is not just professional critics who are not impressed.

Besides, the term ‘biased’ is a loaded word. Don’t forget that if you are a fan of the studio, you also bring your own biases to the table. It is very difficult to be objective, because we are all influenced by our interests and beliefs to an extent.

2) The critics are ‘Pixar haters’.

The term ‘hater’ is on often abused pejorative that we ascribe to contrarians who do not share the same opinion as us. If someone doesn’t like chocolate ice-cream and I happen to like it, I call ‘em a ‘chocolate ice-cream hater’. See what I did there? I just made someone else the ‘Other’ (Academics who study ‘orientalism’ and cultural studies would know what I’m talking about).

These are the same critics who have lavished praise on past Pixar productions. Why would they suddenly do an about-turn and sabotage the studio they once admired? The more likely reason is that they simply didn’t find this film as enjoyable as the last few. The jury is still out if this is because Pixar was too dramatically-driven for its previous films, and thereby shot itself in the foot when it wanted to cut loose and do something ‘fun’ for a change.

3) We should give Pixar a chance and just enjoy the movie.

The thing is, Pixar has always stood up to its harshest critics before. People doubted that it could make a second good sequel when Toy Story 3 was announced, but they (or most of them) were silenced when it opened to rave reviews. Pixar is remarkable simply because it’s just so damn good at what it does that it turns the hardest cynics into adoring believers.

I personally experienced this with Finding Nemo and the first Cars, as I have described in previous posts. For 11 films, Pixar has told meaningful stories with universally-resonant themes. Now I don’t know whether Cars 2 has something important to say or if there was really any point to making this movie, until I see it. But I certainly don’t want to watch a ‘Michael Bay’-style movie with lots of brawn and no heart. The moment that we start cutting Pixar some slack is the beginning of the studio’s decline into mediocrity.

4) Pixar can’t be perfect forever.

I can understand if Cars 2 didn’t get a 100% RT rating. That would be nearly impossible (although it still could happen, perhaps in an alternate universe populated by Pixar fans). I was expecting a 70%-80% rating, and a lot of Pixar fans shared the same optimism. Clearly, we were entirely off the mark.

So some fans say that Pixar can’t keep up its winning streak forever. That they were bound to make a bad one sooner or later. And that’s true, no one is invulnerable to failure.

But using this as a defensive argument is as flawed as taking pity on an intelligent and talented student who used to get ‘A’s suddenly scoring an ‘F’. Are we gonna give him/her a pat on the back? Say, “It’s okay, we’ll close one eye and pretend you didn’t just flunk that exam with that 39% score. Well done, kid!” We should question the student, find out what went wrong, and then suggest improvements for his/her next exam (in Pixar’s case, ‘Brave’), not deny the existence of such piss-poor peformance.

5) It’s Pixar, they can’t make a bad movie.

I have never actually seen this mentioned as a reason explicitly, but it can be implied from many of the fans’ comments.

Why is it so hard to accept that Pixar has made a less-than-favourable film? Is it because Pixar has always been making good movies that we find it so hard to fathom that they can make a bad one? And if they do make a stinker, so what? That doesn’t mean that it’s curtains for the studio. We can always wait for Brave next year for Pixar to redeem itself!

I find it very sad that many self-proclaimed Pixar fans are burying their head in the sand and dismissing the critics’ opinions, while trying to discredit what is obviously right before their eyes. The irony is that if this was made by another studio like Dreamworks or Blue Sky, people wouldn’t bat an eyelid if there were overwhelmingly negative reviews.

But because it is made by Pixar, it gets a free pass. We don’t have to seek justifications for everything that happens. Sometimes, we just gotta let go and accept it. If we are to deny the validity of the critics, then we should also ignore them when they have something nice to say about the studio and its films.

The hypocrisy of the narrow-minded is staggering.