With the upcoming premiere of Cars 2, the saying "Everyone has their price" appears to have been justified again. For Pixar, that price apparently is $5 Billion in movie merchandising alone for the original Cars.

Now, I wonder if Pixar realizes the bigger price they are paying now; Cars 2 currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 45%, the lowest critical rating for the company of all time. Before this artistic debacle (for them), Pixar had a largely unblemished reputation for artistic excellence unmatched by any major film production house in North American in recent decades with their films typically hovering in the high 90%s. Cars was the major exception with only 74% and it was beaten out by Happy Feet for the 2006 Best Animated Feature Oscar. I know Monsters Inc. lost against Shrek in 2001, but that was more for DreamWorks Animation surpassing all expectations that year with their film putting them in the animation big leagues at last.

Now if the Pixar company head, John Lasseter, really went by his motto, "Quality is the Best Business Plan," he would have conceded that Cars was below his company's standards and take the experience as a lesson to see how they can avoid such relative failures in the future. However, for the sole believable reason that this film made a killing in merchandising that they decided to throw away their hard won artistic integrity to the wolves for the craven cash-in this film is seemingly proving itself to be.

I will just love to see if Lasseter will make the mealy mouth excuse that this film is necessary to fund more artistically daring projects, like the upcoming film, Brave. Namely, that would be a bald faced lie considering their previous films like Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up surpassed all the dismissals to become smash hits and classics of American animation. This is a studio with nothing to prove and a shining example of the best of what Western animation could strive for. Now they have thrown away this cherish reputation for the sake of mere money when they have shot for higher ideals and made blockbuster profits.

At Walt Disney himself had the excuse in the 1940s when he had to make his cheapie animated anthology
films like Melody Time and Make Mine Music because his company was hanging by a financial thread above bankruptcy after his best films like Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi bombed earlier in the decade. Pixar has no such excuse with it being one of the all time most successful film companies in the world and that makes the very existence of Cars 2 all the more unacceptable.

What I do that is that Jeffery Katzenberg is likely savoring this moment. He walked away from Disney to help create DreamWorks out of spite and through hook or by crook made the first major animation house to rival Walt Disney Pictures by producing a sustain line of animated feature films and ushered in a golden age for the art. Now, his film have artistically been largely relegated in the shadows of Pixar's kudos outside of his Shrek series. Now, with his studio really hitting its stride with more mature talents really creating masterworks like the Kung Fu Panda series and How To Train Your Dragon, he has now proven his company can match them at their best. Now that Pixar has artistically stumbled with this newest film, the face of American feature animation be in for a profound change, at least for a year.

Well, it's the opening day of Kung Fu Panda, and the Rotten Tomatoes suspense I mentioned earlier did not disappoint.

The film's tally started with one bad review (0%), to include 2 good ones (80%) to (91%) with more praise until 4 bad reviews knocked it down to 69%.  Now, the general rating is wavering around the mid 70s while the Top Critic section gives it 83%.  The frustrating thing is that for major film releases, RT usually would have amassed sufficient reviews for a consensus statement by now and it seems that it is updating KFP2's page in a maddening trickle.  I know that might be because of the film opening on a Thursday and there might be publications that have a schedule so rigid that we'll have to wait until tomorrow, but it hardly makes the wait any more tolerable.

This kind of anticipation for a number may seem anal and pointless, but to me it gives the filmgoing experience a fuller feel of involvement that goes beyond simply seeing the film.  I read my favourite film history book, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Films and the Birth of the New Hollywood and I can only envy the rich film culture that sophisticates by Robert Benton and David Newman of Esquire Magazine had in early 1960s France and New York City got to enjoy with parties where debates about films and their meaning had such zest, atmosphere and immediacy that participating on an online forum cannot match. So, what I do here is the closest thing I can seem to do for an introvert as myself to.  Maybe the introduction of home video made the experience more insular since you beforehand had to see films either by waiting a TV station to deign to present it, or go to film societies where seeing their screenings was an event.  That's a subject I'll go into later, but I will have my post viewing experience to describe later.

Anyways, it's under two hours before KFP2 screens at my downtown cinema and it's a experience that I am dearly looking forward to.  I just wish I had the option of seeing without the 3D, but at least I know DreamWorks Animation is one of the few productions companies who make it worthwhile at least to some degree.

Either way, I've waited for this and I hope to enjoy it.