Toon Tuesday — Why you shouldn’t believe all of the bad news that you’ve been hearing about Pixar’s “Good Dinosaur”

Jim Hill

11 years ago

So I'm guessing that you saw this Los Angeles Times'
headline last week …

Pixar Animation yanks director Bob Peterson off "The
Good Dinosaur"

… and or the headline that Geeks of Doom used to report on
this same story …

Director Bob Peterson Pulled Off Of Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur"

… or — better yet — the headline that I am Rogue used.

Pixar Kicks Director Bob Peterson Off "The Good Dinosaur"

Photo by Jim Hill

So between all of this yanking, pulling and kicking that's supposedly going on
up in Emeryville these days, it would appear that this venerated animation
studio has now replaced that oversized Luxo Jr. lamp & ball which they've
got out in front of the Steve Jobs Building with a steel cage. In which all
Pixar directors are now regularly forced to do battle in order to protect their
creative vision.

Yeah. Right.

Look, I know. This is an age where (thanks to the Internet) we all love to
snark about things we honestly know nothing about. But here's the hard reality:
Making a full-length animated feature is tough work. It can sometimes take 5 –
6 years to make one of these things. Hell, it took Walt Disney Animation
Studios almost a decade to get a handle on how to turn the story of Rapunzel
into "Tangled
." And sometimes — even when you've got some of the top
talents in the business working on your movie, and these people are putting in
all sorts of hours, pouring their very hearts & souls into a project — it
still doesn't jell.

And "The Good Dinosaur" … Well, while this
still-in-production Pixar film has always had a very intriguing log line (i.e.
65 million years ago, a meteor hit the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. But
what if that asteroid missed? What would the dinosaurs evolved to millions of
years later?), it's also faced some pretty daunting story challenges. With the
biggest one being that when your movie is built around two characters — Arlo,
a 70 foot-tall adolescent Apatosaurus and Spot, a 3 foot-tall human child — how
do you then find believable, emotional ways for these very differently-sized beings
to connect? Not only with each other but also with the members of your
audience?

"Composition, finding ways to bring our two lead characters together in
the exact same shots has admittedly been a challenge," said Denise Ream,
the producer of "The Good Dinosaur," when we chatted backstage last
month at the D23 EXPO. "But we've got a really great crew back at Pixar working
on this film. And they've found some fun ways to deal with this issue."

And then there's the issue of what dinosaurs have actually evolved into over
the past 65 million years. Not ninjas or space travelers, mind you. But —
rather — farmers.

Denise Ream and Peter Sohn backstage at last month's D23 EXPO. Photo by Jim Hill

"These dinosaurs are agrarian," explained Peter Sohn, co-director of
"The Good Dinosaur." "They're intelligent but staid & stoic.
Kind of set in their ways."

Those who saw the concept art and test footage that was shown at last month's
"Art and Imagination: Animation at the Walt Disney Studio"
presentation at the D23 EXPO reported back that Pixar has found some pretty fun
ways to bring this dinosaurs-as-farmers concept to life visually. By — in
essence — turning each species of dinosaurs into a different piece of farming
equipment. With the triceratops becoming bulldozer-like earth movers and
stegosauruses using their spiky tails to first mow down and then harvest the
crops.

And as for the apatosaurs … Well, after the farmland has been properly
prepared, Arlo and his family then till this soil by putting their faces down
in the dirt and then — by stretching their necks out — create all of these
perfectly straight rows.

So given the character scale issue and the tranquil setting
for the very start of "The Good Dinosaur" 's story, even as an
outsider, it's kind of easy to see how a film like this might have been tough
for even a Pixar vet like Bob Peterson (who — let's remember — has been with
this animation studio since the original "Toy Story
." More
importantly, has already had some helming experience thanks to his co-directing
gig on "Up
") to get his arms around this project. But at the same
time, you can also understand why Pixar would have put this particular film
into production (As John Lasseter enthused from the stage of the Anaheim Arena
during the "Animation at the Walt Disney Studios" presentation :
"This is spectacular! Pixar is doing dinosaurs!") while there were
still some pretty obvious story issues that had yet to be resolved.

But in the end, I gotta say … I just feel bad for Bob, Peter & Denise.
Especially Bob. Since "The Good Dinosaur" reportedly drew its
inspiration from a trip that young Mr. Peterson made to the 1964 – 1965 New
York World's Fair. Where the massive prehistoric beasts that were on display in
Sinclair's walk-through Dinoland exhibit at the Fair as well as the Disney-built
Audio Animatronic dinosaurs that were featured in Ford's "Magic Skyway" attraction
supposedly fired Bob's imagination as a boy and eventually inspired him to come
up with the storyline for this particular Pixar production.

Sinclair's Dinoland walk-thru exhibit at the 1964 – 65 New York Worlds Fair

Now some will tell you that removing Bob Peterson as the director of "The
Good Dinosaur" is a pretty big red flag. Especially coming on the heels of
John Lasseter replacing Brad Lewis as the director of "Cars 2
" and Mark
Andrews replacing Brenda Chapman as the director of "Brave
." There
are those within the animation community who would tell you that the
powers-that-be up in Emeryville have become a little too obsessed with
preserving Pixar's winning streak. Which — what with "Monsters
University" having just earned
$715 million at the worldwide box office — now stands at 14 hit films in a
row.

But me? All I know is that — over the past 30 years — I
must have interviewed hundreds of people who've been directly involved in the
production of various Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, Laika, Illumination
Entertainment and Sony Pictures Animation films. And what I've heard over &
over from all of these animation vets is an endless series of war stories. How
their films repeatedly crashed & burned. How they were then forced to throw
out hundreds of feet of finished animation footage because their movie suddenly
change direction or directors.

So long story short: This sort of thing happens in the animation industry all
the time. So why does the entertainment press make such a big deal about Pixar
changing directors on one of its movies when an animated feature like
"Hotel Transylvania
" can burn through five different sets of
directors before Genndy Tartakovsky finally came along and then turned that
troubled Sony Pictures Animation production into a smash hit and no one says
Boo? And the answer is … Because Pixar has had 14 hit films in a row. And the
entertainment press has been dying to write the "Pixar-finally-produces-a-flop"
story for over a decade now.

Well, I'll say this much: Pixar isn't making it all that
easy to turn "The Good Dinosaur" 's production problems into a
continuing controversy. What with Ed Catmull — the president of Walt Disney
& Pixar Animation Studios — addressed the Bob Peterson issue last week by
releasing a statement that said:

"All directors get really deep in their films. Sometimes you
just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors …
are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish
it up. I would go so far as to argue that a lot of live-action films would be
better off with that same process."

And as to whether Peterson would now possibly exit Pixar, Jim
Morris — general manager and executive vice president of production for that
animation studio — was quick to put the kibosh on that rumor. According to
Jim,

"Bob is still working at the studio, and we hope he will
stay here for the rest of his natural life."

Even Peterson himself got in on the act over this past
weekend. Using his personal Twitter account to admit that the past few months
had …

"Been a tough time, but I am good – thankful for family
and hilarious friends. On to future projects. Long live TGD. It's gonna be
great."

And being the consummate gag man that he is, Bob even managed to mine some
humor out of this obviously awkward situation. Using Friday's surprise
announcement that the director of "Paperman," this year's Academy
Award-winning animated short, was departing Disney for another yet-unnamed
animation studio as an excuse to tweet …

"And what's with John Kahrs stealing my thunder?!"

So I guess that all us animation obsessives are now going to have to find
something new to snark / gossip about. Like where exactly is John Kahrs now
headed? And does this now mean that Walt Disney Animation Studios is going to
abandon that terrific 2D / CG hybrid process that was used during the production of
"Paperman" ?

Your thoughts?