3. Stop Stealing Ideas
One thing that struck me when I was watching Pixar's latest release, "Brave", was how similar the movie was to others I had seen before. Visually the film is fairly similar to Dreamworks "How To Train Your Dragon" and unfortunately for Pixar, Dreamworks film is much greater than their's in this comparison. But what was really strange, especially seeing as Pixar films are all released under the Disney banner is that this film pretty much completely ripped off a not too distant, might I add unsuccessful Disney movie "Brother Bear". The most painful thing about all of this though is the fact that Disney's unsuccessful movie which pretty much marked the end of Disney's hand drawn animation days is that "Brother Bear", one of Disney's least successful and least entertaining films still had a much better and far more interesting plot than Pixar's "Brave" did. The fact of the matter is that Pixar really should leave the Princess stories to Disney, in fact I would argue this specific sub-genre of film should perhaps die altogether because no child should grow up believing that one day they are going to be a princess, because that only leads to disappointment. Pixar in this respect used to be much more real, and much responsible and respectful of their audience than Disney did, showing films which in their own ways reflected the realities of adult life as apposed to the fantasies. What used to set Pixar apart from Disney is their ability to be unique when all the other animation studios around it were being obvious, and by making "Brave", Pixar may as well have just come out waving a giant white flag. Pixar has always been its most successful and has always made its best films when it thinks outside of the box, but by making Brave, especially just after releasing Cars 2, Pixar appears to be so lost inside Disney's 100 year old stale box that it may never find the way out of the darkness again.