Sunday night's 92nd Academy Awards saw wins and losses, some more surprising than others. One win that was not a shock in the least was Pixar's in the Best Animated Feature Film category for Toy Story 4. The fourth installment in the saga was up against a number of worthy competitors, including Dreamworks' own final installment, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, but the Disney-Pixar film emerged victoriously... the first sequel ever to do so.
This win is unsurprising for a couple of reasons. First, Toy Story is a beloved series and one that has seen constant success, in spite of the old dogma that sequels are never as good as their predecessors. Toy Story 4 received a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, one that even some original films can only dream about.
The reason these toys haven't gotten old after all these years is also another reason that this win comes as no surprise: Pixar has an excellent track record of making beautiful movies that both critics and audiences love, and they've got the trophy case to back it up.
Since the inception of the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars in 2002, the award has been given out nineteen times. Of those nineteen, Pixar has won ten, which is over half and way more than any other studio. The next closest is Disney, with only three wins.
Also worth noting: that number is out of thirteen nominations. Almost every time Pixar has been put up for this award, they've won. This statistic begs the question: What is it about Pixar films that make audiences love them so much?
A Look Back Shows Why Pixar Films Keep Winning
If you were to watch all of Pixar's films in a row, your gut would probably tell you that they have something in common. It can be hard to pin down at first: They're all about vastly different topics, from a robot learning to love to a princess who turns her mom into a bear, it's not immediately clear what holds all these films together. You have to dive deeper to get to that.
In the spirit of diving deep, let's look at Pixar's first Oscar winner, Finding Nemo.
Finding Nemo is the story of clownfish Marlin and his son Nemo. Having lost his wife (and his thousands of other children) before Nemo was born, Marlin is incredibly overprotective of his son. This overprotectiveness eventually causes Nemo to rebel, and that rebellion lands him in a heap of trouble... more specifically, in a dentist's aquarium, awaiting near-certain death at the hands of said dentist's serial fish-killing niece.
Marlin confronts his fears on his journey to rescue his son, while Nemo learns that some of his father's fears are actually well-founded. In the end, Marlin has to trust that Nemo has the agency to escape one last dangerous situation himself, and Nemo has to be brave enough to do so, effectively switching their roles and showing each what the other had been going through. They come out in the end with a stronger, more understanding relationship.
In a 2016 interview with the Washington Post, director Andrew Stanton revealed the core of the movie's emotional resonance as coming from his own experience:
“I was a parent at the time of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old... and I was at this rare place where my dad was still alive and kind of sprightly, and I was very aware of what it was like to be both the son and the father at the same time... I could see it from both angles really strongly.”
Stanton put his human experience into the film, and what came out was something universal that, on some level, everyone could understand. The parents watching the movie knew what it was to be the protective Marlin, and were reminded of what it was like to be the eager-to-explore Nemo. The children watching the movie, too, could see the truth of their experience in Nemo, and, through the lens of Marlin's experience, come to understand how their parents felt about them.
The movie may be about fish, but Finding Nemo is really about the most fundamental bonds we have as humans: the ever-changing relationship between parent and child.
That's the real secret sauce behind Pixar's films. Not the parent-child relationship (though many of Pixar's other Oscar winners have touched on those family themes), but the universality of the human experience; themes of love, loss, fear and triumph that cut to the core of what it is to be truly alive.
These films take something simple that everybody goes through, and dig into it until it feels like the viewer is reliving it themselves, learning more about it through the lens of someone else's story.
Another film that serves as a perfect example of this human core is the 2015 winner Inside Out, which tells the story of eleven-year-old Riley dealing with a cross-country move. But rather than tell the story directly from her perspective, Pixar tells it through the perspective of her emotions.
Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust control Riley's mind as she navigates the murky waters of a new school, new city, and parental expectations. When Joy tries to stifle Sadness and prevent her from tainting any past memories, both emotions are sent on a journey through the rest of Riley's mind, and the other three are left trying to keep Riley afloat... and they don't do a great job of it.
Inside Out deals with the human mind and emotions, including dark themes like depression, in a way that makes them easy to understand. The main question that the story asks is, "What purpose does sadness serve in our lives?" In the end, the answer is, "to let others know that we need support."
Inside Out was an emotional revelation for many viewers, parents, and kids alike. In 2015, director Pete Docter told Tech Insider:
"I've had a lot of people say, 'My son had a lot of problems talking about how he feels, but watching your film kind of unlocked something."
If essential human experiences are the secret sauce of Pixar, then that's the secret spice: Their ability to break down those complex, sometimes dark human experiences so that they're easier for kids to understand, and for adults, too.
In short, the reason Pixar keeps winning Academy Awards is that they have mastered the art of storytelling. Since the beginning of time, humans have told stories as a way to better understand ourselves, and the world around us. A storyteller's goal is to teach some human truth and to do so in a way that makes that truth easier to understand in the story than it is in real life.
Pixar has been doing that since the beginning, and as long as they keep doing it, they'll keep winning those Oscars.
