Coco

[Katniss]

So here's a trailer for Pixar's next film, coming this November. It looks beautiful and I'm interested to see more about the land of the dead. Can't totally form an opinion though until there's more info about this.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Katniss

[WhoBibbles]

Kind of reminds me of The Book of Life. It still looks so amazing. I'm gonna check it out.

[Burgerpants]

hahaha i'm getting some real deja vu here

I'm sorry, but I literally couldn't stop thinking "this looks almost exactly like The Book of Life" throughout that trailer. I'll reserve actual judgement for a while but I really gotta say I'm confused that Newt got canceled (at least partially, I'm aware of the other reasons) because it looked too similar to Rio (which, going through the details of what the plot would've been, isn't actually that similar honestly) but they're going through with this.

Spoiler

On a side note, when that guitar showed up I thought they'd go the extra mile and rip off Kubo but thankfully I was wrong

 

[BenPaz]

It looks like the Book of Life and will probably be a bit better (because let's be honest here the weakest part of the book of life was the story)

[WhoBibbles]

22 hours ago, GullahOfficial said:

It looks like the Book of Life and will probably be a bit better (because let's be honest here the weakest part of the book of life was the story)

But i loved story of that movie

[terminoob]

Right. Long post incoming.

As a huge huge fan of The Book of Life, this... uh... well, it doesn't remind me of that at all.

Spoiler

 

So, in The Book of Life, we've got this love story triangle between Manolo, Joaquin, and Maria, and they're all adults for the majority of the movie, and Manolo is straight-up killed and sent to the Land of the Remembered, because this is all actually a huge game to La Muerta and Xibalba. Manolo is also an aspiring musician and there's an internal struggle there between the expectation of becoming this strong hero-type and wanting to be a more sensitive loving-type, and Joaquin is there as a foil for that. It also flip flops between present day and the... let's call it "storybook-style" story that's being relayed to the kids at the museum.

And, in Coco, we have a kid, who appears to be an aspiring musician, for as-of-yet unknown reasons, and who is, as-of-yet, not being told to do anything else with his life. It looks like he finds an old family photo, possibly of his grandparents or great-grandparents, and decides to look for the guitar in the picture. He finds the guitar, strums, and is sent to the... Land of the Remembered? Land of the Dead? Hard to say. No mention of a love triangle, any internal struggle, any opposition to achieve his goals, no deceit, no La Meurta or Xibalba, no flip-flopping of storytelling styles, no death. Just a kid and his dog.

Yeah, there's a musician, and there's the Land of the Remembered/Dead, but, like, you can draw parallels between basically any movie and call it a ripoff. This isn't something like Toy Story/Secret Life of Pets, where the entire plot structure for Toy Story was basically repackaged as a pet movie (as in, Max is a pet happy with his home and his current position as his owner's best friend [like Woody], and then Duke comes along and starts hogging the spotlight [like Buzz] so then Max [Woody] tries to nix Duke [Buzz] while inadvertently getting both of them lost and stranded and struggling to find their way home - and also the pets [toys] have secret lives while their owners are away and can talk and do things [like how the toys come to life when humans aren't looking at them]).

Two different animation studios can independently decide on a Day of the Dead-themed movie, and if they do that, then, what - do you expect them to not show the Land of the Remembered/Dead, or any kind of spirit world? Do you expect that kind of movie to not feature music? There are certain beats that need to be hit in order for a story to be successful, and one of those beats is a "Belly of the Whale" moment when the main character gets "swallowed" and is placed in some kind of weird unfamiliar setting where the actual conflict of the story and character development happens - and if you're gonna do an animated Day of the Dead film, why would you decide to opt out of showcasing some kind of beautifully fantastic and other-worldly setting (as well as the characters that will inhabit that setting) by having your main character not go to a spirit world? Live-action is a whole different thing, and if this was live-action then maybe they'd opt out of that and instead try to focus on a different sort of thing, but it's animation and in animation you can do anything you want so you want to actually showcase that ability.

Now, sure, if there's a love triangle, and a rival punk kid vying for the affection of the girl, and this is really just a game between two Gods that want to have fun, then yeah, sure, it's a copy of The Book of Life. But right now... not so much.

 

 

[Katniss]

I've never seen The Book of Life but it doesn't seem fair to me to say Pixar is ripping off that movie just because they both involve The Day of the Dead and music. We still don't know that much about this movie yet anyways.

[WhoBibbles]

27 minutes ago, terminoob said:

Right. Long post incoming.

As a huge huge fan of The Book of Life, this... uh... well, it doesn't remind me of that at all.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So, in The Book of Life, we've got this love story triangle between Manolo, Joaquin, and Maria, and they're all adults for the majority of the movie, and Manolo is straight-up killed and sent to the Land of the Remembered, because this is all actually a huge game to La Muerta and Xibalba. Manolo is also an aspiring musician and there's an internal struggle there between the expectation of becoming this strong hero-type and wanting to be a more sensitive loving-type, and Joaquin is there as a foil for that. It also flip flops between present day and the... let's call it "storybook-style" story that's being relayed to the kids at the museum.

And, in Coco, we have a kid, who appears to be an aspiring musician, for as-of-yet unknown reasons, and who is, as-of-yet, not being told to do anything else with his life. It looks like he finds an old family photo, possibly of his grandparents or great-grandparents, and decides to look for the guitar in the picture. He finds the guitar, strums, and is sent to the... Land of the Remembered? Land of the Dead? Hard to say. No mention of a love triangle, any internal struggle, any opposition to achieve his goals, no deceit, no La Meurta or Xibalba, no flip-flopping of storytelling styles, no death. Just a kid and his dog.

Yeah, there's a musician, and there's the Land of the Remembered/Dead, but, like, you can draw parallels between basically any movie and call it a ripoff. This isn't something like Toy Story/Secret Life of Pets, where the entire plot structure for Toy Story was basically repackaged as a pet movie (as in, Max is a pet happy with his home and his current position as his owner's best friend [like Woody], and then Duke comes along and starts hogging the spotlight [like Buzz] so then Max [Woody] tries to nix Duke [Buzz] while inadvertently getting both of them lost and stranded and struggling to find their way home - and also the pets [toys] have secret lives while their owners are away and can talk and do things [like how the toys come to life when humans aren't looking at them]).

Two different animation studios can independently decide on a Day of the Dead-themed movie, and if they do that, then, what - do you expect them to not show the Land of the Remembered/Dead, or any kind of spirit world? Do you expect that kind of movie to not feature music? There are certain beats that need to be hit in order for a story to be successful, and one of those beats is a "Belly of the Whale" moment when the main character gets "swallowed" and is placed in some kind of weird unfamiliar setting where the actual conflict of the story and character development happens - and if you're gonna do an animated Day of the Dead film, why would you decide to opt out of showcasing some kind of beautifully fantastic and other-worldly setting (as well as the characters that will inhabit that setting) by having your main character not go to a spirit world? Live-action is a whole different thing, and if this was live-action then maybe they'd opt out of that and instead try to focus on a different sort of thing, but it's animation and in animation you can do anything you want so you want to actually showcase that ability.

Now, sure, if there's a love triangle, and a rival punk kid vying for the affection of the girl, and this is really just a game between two Gods that want to have fun, then yeah, sure, it's a copy of The Book of Life. But right now... not so much.

 

 

hmm that's actually a good point. I just thought it looked familiar to that movie because of the guitar and land of the dead. but yeah premises are really different.

[terminoob]

14 minutes ago, Samurai Jack said:

hmm that's actually a good point. I just thought it looked familiar to that movie because of the guitar and land of the dead. but yeah premises are really different.

Yeah, I mean, that's definitely fair, and I'm gonna assume a lot of people are on your line of thinking. It happens a lot with movies, especially animated ones from different studios, where things just look very similar on the surface because of how time consuming animation is and how it's kind of hard to think up a wholly original idea. People will go on and on about how original Inside Out is, but a student film from Ringling had the same exact concept and was completed in... I think 2013? Maybe 2012? It just depends on how the studio and the writer(s) and director(s) want to go about telling that story, because while the student film had the same concept it was done totally differently (being about a guy on a date and overthinking things, rather than a little girl struggling with change and growing up and whatnot). Like I said, it's possible Pixar could just rip off The Book of Life beat-for-beat because so far this teaser hasn't told us much at all, so if they do then the comparisons are obviously going to be apt, I just don't think at the moment Pixar is copying anything.

I do think it's kind of weird and ironic that they're moving forward with this when it's basically the same situation as Newt/Rio (similar starting concept but two completely different stories, though if I'm remembering right I think I made a post a while back in some thread talking about how the plot structure of Newt was probably going to mirror Rio because there was nowhere for that specific idea to really go) as Gullah pointed out a few posts above, so Pixar must be confident that this is either a totally different idea or that they're going to do the exact same thing as The Book of Life but better (which I don't think is possible because The Book of Life was just too good).

[WhoBibbles]

20 minutes ago, terminoob said:

Yeah, I mean, that's definitely fair, and I'm gonna assume a lot of people are on your line of thinking. It happens a lot with movies, especially animated ones from different studios, where things just look very similar on the surface because of how time consuming animation is and how it's kind of hard to think up a wholly original idea. People will go on and on about how original Inside Out is, but a student film from Ringling had the same exact concept and was completed in... I think 2013? Maybe 2012? It just depends on how the studio and the writer(s) and director(s) want to go about telling that story, because while the student film had the same concept it was done totally differently (being about a guy on a date and overthinking things, rather than a little girl struggling with change and growing up and whatnot). Like I said, it's possible Pixar could just rip off The Book of Life beat-for-beat because so far this teaser hasn't told us much at all, so if they do then the comparisons are obviously going to be apt, I just don't think at the moment Pixar is copying anything.

I do think it's kind of weird and ironic that they're moving forward with this when it's basically the same situation as Newt/Rio (similar starting concept but two completely different stories, though if I'm remembering right I think I made a post a while back in some thread talking about how the plot structure of Newt was probably going to mirror Rio because there was nowhere for that specific idea to really go) as Gullah pointed out a few posts above, so Pixar must be confident that this is either a totally different idea or that they're going to do the exact same thing as The Book of Life but better (which I don't think is possible because The Book of Life was just too good).

I totally trust in Pixar with their work for sure. Even their worst movies got their moments for me. So I really expect Coco to be pretty different and amazing. Still I thought The Book of Life was one of the best animated movies of the decade. That and The Lego Movie were so ignored at oscars and while I do love Big Hero 6, either The Lego Movie or The Book of Life deserved oscar in that year.

[Bugs Bunny]

I'm looking forward to this!!  As usual, Pixar delivers stunning visual and a clever idea to go with it.  The best part about it all is, Lee Unkrich is directing it!  He doesn't seem to have done really big directions in a while.  So I'm sure he'll deliver a tight experience for everyone, if his success with Toy Story 3 is anything to go by!  

[SG19]

bump since this movie makes its U.S. premiere in 4 days.

[SpongeOddFan]

I'm planning to see this this week hopefully.

[Young Nug]

There’s a lot I have to say on this but for now, I think I’ll just say that I don’t think there’s a movie out there with better animation than this one.

Jesus Christ.

[TJ]

Caught this recently.

Best Pixar movie of all time. And that's that on that on that.

[WhoBibbles]

7 hours ago, TJ said:

Caught this recently.

Best Pixar movie of all time. And that's that on that on that.

If anything, it's top 5 for me. It's such a wonderfully executed, emotional and joyful ride. As long as Pixar keep making more original content, I think It's safe to say it got its groove back  for sure.

[NegiSpongie]

This is my new favorite Pixar movie - which was previously Up.