2. Target The Adults, Not Just The Children
People who don't know all that much about movies will try to tell you that Pixar makes kids films, because apparently all animated movies are kids films? But this is not the case, at least it never used to be. Sure, kids love Pixar movies, but Pixar films used to appeal to adults just as much as they used to appeal to children. In fact, arguably Pixar films appealed to the adults in much greater and more profound ways than they ever did for children. Pixar used to make films trying to think from the imagination of a child... "what if children's toys where real?", "what if monsters lived in children's closets?" so obviously in this respect appealing to children were always one of Pixar's key priorities. However let's not forgot who makes Pixar films... adults... so these ideas always came across in their movies like they were created by adults reminiscing and remembering when they themselves were children. Because of this perspective, Pixar films are much greater when they allow adults to relive their childhood memories and fantasies. Let's be honest, children pretty much love any film with pretty pictures... what sets a Pixar film apart is the maturity and heart that the other animated studios simply don't have. In all fairness to Pixar here, in the last 6 years, although they have been inconsistent with appealing to adults and children equally, some of the movies made since 2006 have had a hell of a lot of heart and strongly appealed to the adults as well as the children.... Up and Toy Story 3 in particularly were almost uncharacteristically deep for Pixar, although Finding Nemo will always be in my opinion the most heartbreaking and successful Disney movie to appeal in profound ways to both the adults and children in the audience. This point was included on this list mainly because in the last 6 years Pixar has made Brave and Cars 2, films which really only appeal to children. John Lasseter, the director of Cars 2 didn't even seem all that defensive of the fact that this movie was pretty much "just for children" and in reality we all know why a Cars sequel was made... so Pixar could sell "Cars" toys and merchandise, which is never a good reason to make a movie and has in turn made Pixar a far less respectable film company than it otherwise would have been without this movie.