Collin Willis

After several months walking down the winding road of Disney Feature Animation, I have finally completed my watch of every Disney Animation Studios and/or Pixar film. It’s been a long and vibrant journey, filled with incredible characters, memorable songs, and many a tender moment. As I start into my Pixar block of content over the next few weeks, I’d like to zero in on the differences between a Disney film and a Pixar film, and what makes each brand something uniquely special.

Disney Set the Standard

The Walt Disney Animation Studios is the gold standard for animated movies. The first to produce a full-length feature film using animated characters, Disney wrote the animation playbook. While other animation studios have risen and fallen by the wayside, Disney alone has remained at the front of the pack. Though not without its ups and downs, Disney is a constant. Pixar would not exist without Disney and the style of its films bears the influence of the groundwork that Walt laid. The close relationship and eventual ownership between the two companies helps cement that familiar Disney feel.

Disney’s Experiments Never Took Hold

While the Walt Disney films took the world by storm, Walt’s experimental films never gripped quite like his fairy tales and children’s movies. Films like Pinocchio and Fantasia, that tackled more complex themes and styles never generated the commercial buzz that Snow White, Bambi, or Dumbo did. Even after Walt, the experimental movies like The Black Cauldron, Dinosaur, and Fantasia 2000 failed to hit their performance marks. In other words, the Disney Animated films are hardly ever rewarded critically or commercially for breaking with the norm. While many of these experimental films grew to find their fans later on, they didn’t pay off when they needed to.

Pixar is Rewarded for Experimentation

Then came Pixar. Converse to Disney, Pixar is generally rewarded for its experimentation. Largely silent films like Wall-E, films starring an old man like Up, and existential experiments like Soul are generally regarded as some of the best in the Pixar canon. Yet sequels and attempts to strike at the usual Pixar bag of tricks are generally seen as Pixar’s lesser films. Where Disney is chastised for breaking from the norm, Pixar is usually lauded for it. This expectation to be different, to be more experimental, and to be more challenging allows Pixar to pursue complexity beyond what audiences would take from Walt Disney Studios themselves.

Pulling Punches

The other key difference within this expectation to be more complex is the simple fact that Pixar doesn’t pull punches. The Disney films have a tendency to dumb the subject matter down for their audience. Since their audience is primarily children, this doesn’t detract from the movie much, but it does hold the films back from deeper commentary. Themes that aren’t as surface level are taken off the board or hampered by the film having to frame them in simple ways.

Pixar, on the other hand, wastes no time in speaking down to their audience. Pixar films don’t mince words or water down the message and it allows Pixar films to pursue deeper and more complex themes. This difference can be hard to conceptualize, so I’ll illustrate this with a comparison between Ralph Breaks the Internet and Toy Story 4.

Dealing with Insecurity

Ralph and Woody have fairly similar arcs in these two films. Both characters struggle to let go due to their own insecurities about being left behind or left alone. In the third act, each character must face their insecurities to either hold a friend back or help rescue them.

In Ralph Breaks the Internet Ralphs insecurities are addressed by having Ralph use a virus to duplicate insecurities, which ends up making a million Ralph clones that try to steal Vanellope away. In Toy Story 4, Woody gets into an argument with Buzz and Bo Peep before walking back into the antique shop and giving up his voice box. Which of these sounds more action packed? Which one sounds more resonant?

A Million Ralphs

The insecurity virus that creates a million Ralphs helps to instantly externalize Ralph’s internal struggles. He must defeat his own insecurities so that he can make things right with the best friend he’s afraid of growing apart from. This leads to a giant climactic battle where Ralph and Virus Ralph destroy much of the internet before Ralph is saved in a grand sequence by the entirety of the Disney Princesses. The point comes across very bluntly with Ralph and Vanellope each letting the audience know that Ralph must face his insecurities. It puts a deeper point quite simply.

Woody Says Goodbye

When Woody and the gang escape the antique shop, Woody’s big moment of conflict resolution doesn’t come from a fight with a thousand clones of himself, it doesn’t even come from a fight at all. Instead, Woody argues with Buzz and Bo Peep, expressing the fear he has of being a lost toy and revealing the notion that rescuing Forky is the only purpose he sees left for himself. Woody struggles with letting go, much like Ralph does, but because his big moment of change comes from a conversation, the toy characters we all know and love are able to explore the matter with many more layers. Pixar goes deeper because they don’t fret over simplifying the struggle or dumbing it down. The big conflict with the film’s antagonist ends much the same way, with Woody and Gabby Gabby having a discussion about what the voice box means to them. The depth comes from these small moments, not the big chases or fun montages.

Pixar Goes Deeper

Pixar not only embraces similar themes to Disney movies with greater depths, but it also has license to pursue deeper and more complicated themes in general. Take Soul as the greatest example of this. The film is about finding your spark for life, and its not about finding your purpose or skills, it’s about learning how to enjoy living for its own sake. This theme plays out three constant conversations between Joe Gardner, a man unsatisfied with life but unwilling to die, and 22, a soul satisfied with life but unwilling to live. Disney simply couldn’t make this movie, it is too thematically ambitious.

What truly makes Pixar a different studio and a different brand of filmmaker are these layers that they stack on top of fantastical stories and fun premises. It allows Pixar to use their superhero movie to explore marital problems and fears of inadequacy, to use a story about a balloon house to explore the fear of letting go, or to use a story about two toys to explore the nature of parent hood and what it means to lay the groundwork for journeys you’ll never see the end of.

Not Dogging on Disney

Most of this article has been tooting Pixar’s horn and, while I do usually prefer their films, I don’t mean to discredit Disney. Disney’s unique brand of storytelling allows them to make films that Pixar cannot either. Disney, in my opinion, manages a sense of wonder and pure emotion that Pixar in all its complexity doesn’t have time for within their films. The Disney Animation Studios are terrific at immediately investing you in the life and wellbeing of their protagonists while also wowing you with the fairytale and fantastical worlds that they have created. These are two great studios, but they are two very different studios with dissimilar strengths and weaknesses.

In the end, both of these are incredible studios that have not only defined 2D and 3D animation but that have opened the door for countless other studios, storytellers, and stories within these mediums. In short, Disney and Pixar are where the magic happens.