WEEKLY RECAP #60: "Inside Out 2" Debut, Sony Buys Alamo Drafthouse & MORE!
6/9/24 -- 6/15/24
“Inside Out 2: Outside In” — Out Now, Inside Theaters Only
Hey there! Are you a grown adult who never shuts up about how the opening ten minutes of Up makes you cry? If you are, you’re probably a fan of Pixar Animation Studios, and I have good news for you: their newest movie, Inside Out 2, is emoting its way into theaters (I should delete my Substack account for that joke, holy shit that was bad) this weekend! The sequel to Disney’s 2015 critical and financial smash hit is expected to make between $80 and $90 million this weekend, which means it has a fair shot at beating Dune: Part Two for the biggest box office opening of the year. (A real “hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby” situation if ever there was one.) This is a pretty big deal, because if you’ve been reading these weekly recaps for the past few months, you already know that 2024 has been pretty weak for box office success. After so many surefire hits this summer have debuted to numbers well below estimates, Inside Out 2 might be exactly what the film industry needs right now. And — God knows — it’s what the capitalist rodents at Walt Disney Studios need right now.
See, if you haven’t really noticed, Pixar isn’t what it used to be. Their run in the 2000s — Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E & Up, in that order— was unbelievably good… so good that a lot of people let their blind faith in the animation powerhouse carry their optimism through a very dicey following decade. Out of the eleven movies released by Pixar in the 2010s, seven of them were sequels. SEVEN. Only four of them were original stories, and out of those four, only two of them were actually good. (Sorry, Brave, but I don’t know how many more “IF YE HAD THE CHANCE TO CHANGE YER FATE”s I have left in me.) It’s clear to anyone unbiased by brand loyalty that Pixar was coasting on a lot of goodwill, and unfortunately, that goodwill was been broken by the pandemic. Even if you love Turning Red and Luca (I haven’t seem either of them yet, so I shan’t comment), these movies were dumped onto Disney+, training families to wait for a streaming release instead of rushing out into theaters like they usually do for Pixar movies. Oh, and how could I forget — they also released Lightyear, a Toy Story spinoff that literally no one liked. Yeah, that’s right: we’re back to Cars 2-era Pixar.
As it turns out, Inside Out 2 comes to us right on the tail of some pretty controversial statements from the execs at Pixar, who are hoping to course-correct after four years of diminishing returns at the post-COVID box office. What’s their plan, you might ask? According to President Jim Morris, “mass appeal.” To be more specific, it seems the heads of Pixar want to move towards green-lighting movies that are less personal and more universal. As Inside Out-director Pete Docter puts it, they’ll be focusing on “mentoring Pixar's upcoming directors to focus less on autobiographical tales,” implying that the reason Turning Red and Luca failed were because the lives and experiences of the main characters in the films were too un-relatable for general audiences.
If I could chime in for a minute: this is fucking stupid. People like to reduce the Pixar formula for plots down to “what if ___ had feelings”, and that is what their formula feels like… when they’re cynical and bad. When they’re not, they actually feel like they have a direct, personal vision guiding them, and guess what? If a specific personal experience is translated into a good screenplay, anyone will be able to enjoy the movie. Some of Pixar’s biggest hits were personal and cathartic tales — The Incredibles, for example, was inspired by Brad Bird’s struggles with balancing his personal and professional life. Placing the blame of financial loss on the director of Turning Red for making a movie about coming of age as an Asian girl in Toronto (instead of forgivable-but-undeniably-poor business strategy, which is the real culprit) is not only misleading, but outright nonsensical. Helloooo — Coco didn’t flop! I guarantee you that not everyone who saw that movie was Mexican! What this new company strategy translates to in no-bullshit terminology is “we want more money, so we’re going to go back to making sequels to the movies everyone already likes”. If you were hoping that Pixar would hop back into the world of theatrical releases with more movies like Ratatouille and The Incredibles, and less movies like Monsters University or Toy Story 4, sorry — greed won, and it’ll be a lot more of the latter from here on out.
Look, this isn’t the first time Disney has gone to the dark side with relying on sequels to make money, nor is it the first time they’ve hade the dumbest possible takeaway from box office disappointments. It was famously the underperformance of The Princess and the Frog that seemed to make the execs at Disney assume that the public no longer had a taste for 2D animated films, when, in reality, it was merely a distaste for unmemorable princess movies. I have not yet watched Inside Out 2, but the streets are saying it’s mid — riveting journalism, I know — and if it is, I wouldn’t be surprised. I could care less about sequels to old movies, Pixar. Give us new shit. And not just new shit — new good shit! Let a whole new roster of young filmmakers in the game! Let the past die! Stomp it out like that fuck-ass lamp in your logo, if you have to!
New Man of the (Draft)House
It really would be ironic if, after all the goofy-ass blockbusters and horrendously obvious product placements they’ve poured down our throats for years, out of all the major studios, Sony Mothafuckin’ Pictures is the one that single-handedly saves cinema. Yes, from the studio that brought you such certified hood classics as The Emoji Movie and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 now comes the purchase of Alamo Drafthouse. For those of you who don’t know, Alamo Drafthouse is a dine-in cinema with locations across the country, known for its quality selection of food & beverages and its care for the cinematic experience. In the wake of several key Alamo locations closing after filing for bankruptcy, Sony has acquired the theater chain, and what will happen remains to be seen. This purchase is significant, as studios buying out theaters was made super rare for decades due to the Paramount content decrees, which (long story-short) basically said studios aren’t allowed to own theaters and use them to manipulate the film business through shady distribution deals and shutting out movies from other studios. The Justice Department, of course, rescinded the Paramount deal in 2020, citing a controversial “fuck it we ball” methodology.
So, is Paramount going to help Alamo Drafthouse stay afloat during these rough times for theaters, or is this purchase merely a means to an end for Sony to swindle people into seeing their new 3%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes horror film? Almost certainly the latter — but that doesn’t mean the former won’t happen in the process. Both Sony and Alamo seem enthusiastic about this deal, so it seems they both need each other, and I’m choosing to take that as a good sign. 2024 is practically half over, and it’s been a major flop for the box office so far, so if the most prestigious dine-in theater chain in the United States is getting a helping hand, I suppose I (as a beggar in this scenario) can’t be a chooser about which studio does the heavy lifting. All I’m gonna say is this: if any of you visit an Alamo Drafthouse cinema near you in the future and see a pre-show ad for a Sony Vaio laptop, you will know why. They are never slick, I promise you.
“While you were partying, I rewrote the Blade.”
WHAT IN THE NAME OF SPARKLY VAMPIRE SHIT IS HAPPENING WITH THIS BLADE MOVIE? Did Kevin Feige hit a craggy old witch with his drop-top Porsche and get cursed for a thousand years or something? That’s the only conceivable explanation I can think of! The MCU’s upcoming Blade adaptation just lost Yann Demange, its second director — yes, its SECOND one — and they’re undergoing another draft of the script. I know that rewrites and director switches happen all the time in Hollywood, but this specific project feels cursed. I already broke down in November of last year how comically messy the pre-production for this film is, and now it’s only gotten worse.
There’s not much for me to add to what people are saying about this particular movie, but I want to remind you all: Marvel now has a limited number of chances to redeem itself before we witness the franchise fall-off of the century. Best case scenario: Deadpool & Wolverine makes a boatload of money off of name-brand recognition, The Fantastic Four is a refreshing rejuvenation of the series, Blade is passable enough to satisfy audiences, and nobody sees Thunderbolts (yes, even in the best case scenario) but still maintains excitement for the proceeding movies in the MCU. Worst case scenario: Deadpool & Wolverine somehow underperforms (not likely but not impossible, given this climate), The Fantastic Four and Superman: Legacy cannibalize each other’s box office, Blade is a complete creative clusterfuck that bombs on the level of The Marvels, and nobody sees Thunderbolts (you’ll just have to take that as a constant in this equation). However you break it down, the best case scenario seems to be the only scenario in which Disney will make it out unscathed. As a messy bitch who loves drama, I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.