Kaiser von Wilhelm said:

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fig96 said:

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As a creative, however, I can totally understand how working on something that had a message you really believed in then having that stripped out or corporatized would be totally disheartening. People that haven't done things like this probably can't understand how much animators and other artists out of themselves into these films.

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Got a whole lot of "who gives a ****" and "grow up and join the real world, your product doesnt sell so it shouldn't exist" to this. Lots of people work hard on things no-one cares about. Forcing something to exist and to expect people to watch it because you worked hard on it is stupid logic. This is a modern concept that needs to end. Too much force-fed "I worked hard, so that makes me a winner" crap taught to people growing up who don't ever truly understand that trying doesnt mean succeeding, especially when what you are trying to create is a ****ty product to everyone other than you.

My dog works hard to take multiple ****s everyday, but you don't see me going around forcing everyone to see it in the museum of modern art. Ok, bad example...

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I can't star this comment enough.

Nothing is stopping these "creatives" from making independent films; it's easier now than it's ever been. The problem is, making an indie film is hard and requires them to actually deal with the business side of the industry. Instead, they chose to work for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world. Companies exist to make money. No one wants to pay to be preached at and the average parent would prefer to keep sexuality out of their kids' entertainment.

Therefore, the "creatives" can shut the **** up and focus on making art that sells to the public. Welcome to the real world. I don't get to tell my boss to go **** himself if he tells me our cash flow is getting low and I need to sell something. I don't get to tell him he just doesn't understand my process. I have to sell more or find a new job.

This all won't matter in a couple of years. AI movie generation will be so good, everyone will be prompting AI tools for a specific movie idea and the AI will just generate it for you. Hollywood will become a niche of entertainment and only proven, well known filmmakers will be able to attract moveigoers. Even so, watching movies made in the "old way" will become a nostalgic endeavor, like listening to vinyl.

Lathspell said:

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Kaiser von Wilhelm said:

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fig96 said:

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As a creative, however, I can totally understand how working on something that had a message you really believed in then having that stripped out or corporatized would be totally disheartening. People that haven't done things like this probably can't understand how much animators and other artists out of themselves into these films.

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Got a whole lot of "who gives a ****" and "grow up and join the real world, your product doesnt sell so it shouldn't exist" to this. Lots of people work hard on things no-one cares about. Forcing something to exist and to expect people to watch it because you worked hard on it is stupid logic. This is a modern concept that needs to end. Too much force-fed "I worked hard, so that makes me a winner" crap taught to people growing up who don't ever truly understand that trying doesnt mean succeeding, especially when what you are trying to create is a ****ty product to everyone other than you.

My dog works hard to take multiple ****s everyday, but you don't see me going around forcing everyone to see it in the museum of modern art. Ok, bad example...

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I can't star this comment enough.

Nothing is stopping these "creatives" from making independent films; it's easier now than it's ever been. The problem is, making an indie film is hard and requires them to actually deal with the business side of the industry. Instead, they chose to work for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world. Companies exist to make money. No one wants to pay to be preached at and the average parent would prefer to keep sexuality out of their kids' entertainment.

Therefore, the "creatives" can shut the **** up and focus on making art that sells to the public. Welcome to the real world. I don't get to tell my boss to go **** himself if he tells me our cash flow is getting low and I need to sell something. I don't get to tell him he just doesn't understand my process. I have to sell more or find a new job.

This all won't matter in a couple of years. AI movie generation will be so good, everyone will be prompting AI tools for a specific movie idea and the AI will just generate it for you. Hollywood will become a niche of entertainment and only proven, well known filmmakers will be able to attract moveigoers. Even so, watching movies made in the "old way" will become a nostalgic endeavor, like listening to vinyl.

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The issue is how much money, time and effort were wasted for all parties involved. If the boss doesn't like the project, that's fine, but it's something they should be aware of in the early planning stages along with plans of action on what to do if they aren't creatively aligned.

Lathspell said:

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Kaiser von Wilhelm said:

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fig96 said:

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As a creative, however, I can totally understand how working on something that had a message you really believed in then having that stripped out or corporatized would be totally disheartening. People that haven't done things like this probably can't understand how much animators and other artists out of themselves into these films.

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Got a whole lot of "who gives a ****" and "grow up and join the real world, your product doesnt sell so it shouldn't exist" to this. Lots of people work hard on things no-one cares about. Forcing something to exist and to expect people to watch it because you worked hard on it is stupid logic. This is a modern concept that needs to end. Too much force-fed "I worked hard, so that makes me a winner" crap taught to people growing up who don't ever truly understand that trying doesnt mean succeeding, especially when what you are trying to create is a ****ty product to everyone other than you.

My dog works hard to take multiple ****s everyday, but you don't see me going around forcing everyone to see it in the museum of modern art. Ok, bad example...

---

I can't star this comment enough.

Nothing is stopping these "creatives" from making independent films; it's easier now than it's ever been. The problem is, making an indie film is hard and requires them to actually deal with the business side of the industry. Instead, they chose to work for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world. Companies exist to make money. No one wants to pay to be preached at and the average parent would prefer to keep sexuality out of their kids' entertainment.

Therefore, the "creatives" can shut the **** up and focus on making art that sells to the public. Welcome to the real world. I don't get to tell my boss to go **** himself if he tells me our cash flow is getting low and I need to sell something. I don't get to tell him he just doesn't understand my process. I have to sell more or find a new job.

This all won't matter in a couple of years. AI movie generation will be so good, everyone will be prompting AI tools for a specific movie idea and the AI will just generate it for you. Hollywood will become a niche of entertainment and only proven, well known filmmakers will be able to attract moveigoers. Even so, watching movies made in the "old way" will become a nostalgic endeavor, like listening to vinyl.

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This is depressing

Also not going to happen like that. Someone will make an AI film sooner than later, but movies as we know them will still be happening for a long time.

fig96 said:

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Didn't ask you to have any sympathy for them nor does that really have much to do with what I said, but thanks for illustrating my point I guess.

Surgery sucks. It's hard and tedious and you have to legitimately love it to do it at anywhere near the level that other doctors and other medical centers do. Every surgeon puts something of themself into their work, and if the thing you were working on that you loved becomes something else that you don't love, it sucks. That's all.

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fify

Medicine and (formerly surgery) is my career. I put everything into it and it is my version of creation. If I decided that my "creativity" involved making incisions in skin so that when it scars over, it leaves a picture of my dog in the skin, is that something someone wants...? Even if it is my creativity...? I mean, I love my dog more than the patients, so why would anyone be mad about that? It's my passion project, so they have to like it. And I'm pretty damn good at it, so why would this not be universally embraced? Or even accepted by more than 0 people...?

Yeah, passion is a stupid reason to force it upon someone, especially when almost 100% at this point don't want to see a picture of my dog on their foreheads.


And as was just pointed out, it apparently is up to people overseeing things to make sure that you aren't a complete imbecile when you're supposed to be qualified to do a job in a way that will make money, or at the very least not be hated by a majority of people who are impacted by your work...ahem...passion. So if the bosses trust that you won't be an idiot and lose them money, but then tell you to stop being ****ty at your job after they see the final product, then you're not allowed to be upset. Hell, you should be kicked out of the industry, not patted on the back and defended by other "creatives."

Pay attention to me! I am important!

Quote:

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As a creative, however, I can totally understand how working on something that had a message you really believed in then having that stripped out or corporatized would be totally disheartening. People that haven't done things like this probably can't understand how much animators and other artists out of themselves into these films.

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It hurts animators & artists ego. As a fellow person who does creative work, you have to learn to let go of that or be prepared for a life of disappointment.

You're not creating anything as a surgeon or doctor. Surgery isn't a creative act. It's a restorative or ameliorative one, but not creative. A much more accurate analogy would be you going through an 18 hour surgery to save a patient's life only for an admin to come in and shoot them in the head because their insurance was declined.

These people were hired to create something, and they did. The fact they what they created wasn't liked by executives or the market has no bearing on the fact that they did what they were hired to do and then watched their work torn apart because someone else didn't have the foresight to consider the marketability of what they were commissioning. If the executives wanted something different, they should have set better guidelines and had a much better idea of what to make. Instead, they told these people to create what they wanted and to create a reflection of themselves, and then they **** all over it because they, unsurprisingly, found out it wouldn't sell very well.

This failure is on a lack of vision and product management from the executives, not the product of the creatives.

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This failure is on a lack of vision and product management from the executives, not the product of the creatives.

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This is also true. If you're going to spend that much money creating something, you damn well keep an eye on it as it is moving along to steer the ship in the direction you want it to go. If the execs didn't have the foresight to see the product getting made would likely end up crap like much of the other recent Pixar/Disney creations that's on them.

dvldog said:

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Read this earlier today. Good summary of a previous podcast he heard related to this topic (or really the overall topic of Pixar over the past few years):

There was a great podcast done a couple of years ago about the fall of Pixar.

The central point was with the firing of John Lasseter in 2018, Pixar ceased focusing on the script/story in its decision to greenlight a movie. Lasseter never started production until there was a… https://t.co/QGYneR2eq3

— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) July 1, 2025

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This right here, if accurate, is the problem. Some people got high on their own farts and decided, "We're Pixar! People will come see our movies because they love Pixar!" when that was not the case. Pixar was Pixar because their movies were thoughtful and had universal themes and appeal. Movies weren't made unless they were fleshed out and the themes and ideas were understood and worked.

They made the mistake that plenty of executives make: an A list name will put butts in seats, even if the movie sucks. They decided to abandon the process that made the studio and start putting resources into any idea that sounded good. They ended up with big budget niche movies and lost a lot of money learning that their studio name alone is not enough to draw an audience.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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You're not creating anything as a surgeon or doctor. Surgery isn't a creative act. It's a restorative or ameliorative one, but not creative. A much more accurate analogy would be you going through an 18 hour surgery to save a patient's life only for an admin to come in and shoot them in the head because their insurance was declined.

These people were hired to create something, and they did. The fact they what they created wasn't liked by executives or the market has no bearing on the fact that they did what they were hired to do and then watched their work torn apart because someone else didn't have the foresight to consider the marketability of what they were commissioning. If the executives wanted something different, they should have set better guidelines and had a much better idea of what to make. Instead, they told these people to create what they wanted and to create a reflection of themselves, and then they **** all over it because they, unsurprisingly, found out it wouldn't sell very well.

This failure is on a lack of vision and product management from the executives, not the product of the creatives.

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While true, those who quit and complained after it happened are just a bunch of whiny liberals who don't understand how business works. I put 70% blame on their leadership, and the rest on them.

Really, with good leadership and vision most of those people would have left on their own or never been hired before this movie had even been conceived because good leadership would have told them junk like that doesn't fill seats and will never be made.

Kaiser von Wilhelm said:

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fig96 said:

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Didn't ask you to have any sympathy for them nor does that really have much to do with what I said, but thanks for illustrating my point I guess.

Surgery sucks. It's hard and tedious and you have to legitimately love it to do it at anywhere near the level that other doctors and other medical centers do. Every surgeon puts something of themself into their work, and if the thing you were working on that you loved becomes something else that you don't love, it sucks. That's all.

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fify

Medicine and (formerly surgery) is my career. I put everything into it and it is my version of creation. If I decided that my "creativity" involved making incisions in skin so that when it scars over, it leaves a picture of my dog in the skin, is that something someone wants...? Even if it is my creativity...? I mean, I love my dog more than the patients, so why would anyone be mad about that? It's my passion project, so they have to like it. And I'm pretty damn good at it, so why would this not be universally embraced? Or even accepted by more than 0 people...?

Yeah, passion is a stupid reason to force it upon someone, especially when almost 100% at this point don't want to see a picture of my dog on their foreheads.


And as was just pointed out, it apparently is up to people overseeing things to make sure that you aren't a complete imbecile when you're supposed to be qualified to do a job in a way that will make money, or at the very least not be hated by a majority of people who are impacted by your work...ahem...passion. So if the bosses trust that you won't be an idiot and lose them money, but then tell you to stop being ****ty at your job after they see the final product, then you're not allowed to be upset. Hell, you should be kicked out of the industry, not patted on the back and defended by other "creatives."

Pay attention to me! I am important!

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Your terrible analogy aside, I'm not sure why you're trying to argue with me about something I didn't say.

I didn't say anyone had to see what they made or that it should be forced on anyone. I didn't say they needed to not do their jobs, not listen to leadership, or not change what they were doing. I said I understood why they were frustrated if they'd put a lot of effort into something and then the heart of that thing changed.

And it's not like they did something on their own with no approval or oversight. If they were at the point of test screenings there had been minimum a few years of development on this project, and throughout that process there are frequent check-ins and milestones. This isn't a case of one person doing something they weren't supposed to do, this is the case of the overall direction of something not working (or at least perceived to be not working) and changed by leadership.

Apache said:

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Quote:

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As a creative, however, I can totally understand how working on something that had a message you really believed in then having that stripped out or corporatized would be totally disheartening. People that haven't done things like this probably can't understand how much animators and other artists out of themselves into these films.

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It hurts animators & artists ego. As a fellow person who does creative work, you have to learn to let go of that or be prepared for a life of disappointment.

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While true, at this level they're learned to take criticism and are used to it. There's changes throughout this process and work is reviewed daily.

But if you're the person (or people) behind a project that was greenlit and supported by leadership, was in production, then significantly changed to something different than what you'd put your time, energy, and heart into, I totally get how they'd be frustrated.

Without knowing the details of the situation I've got no idea whether anyone was justified in leaving over the situation or what actually occurred, I'd imagine it was a lot of internal politics that we'll never know the details of. But if you've lost trust in your leadership I totally understand why you might.

I think the argument about losing Lasseter is the key. Story needs to come first.

Speaking of which, I'd like to introduce Coco into the debate. I had to be convinced to see it because I assumed it was going to have a woke message by the end. Instead, I ended up really liking it. Good suspense, good plot twist, and all while including Hispanic culture as a central theme to the movie because it was necessary without any wokeness.

I think you can make a good movie about an underrepresented group, but it has to be the right movie. Brokeback mountain needs to have gay characters. Coco needs to have Hispanic characters. But Pixar movies do not need to have gay characters or themes when some of the prime demographic still doesn't understand where babies come from.

You thought it would be woke because it featured Hispanic people?

Don't you mean Latinx people?

maroon barchetta said:

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Queso1 said:

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The obsession with this stuff is so bizarre.

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I know. I'm not sure why people are harping on this.

Hollywood absolutely doesn't have people trying to push things like this onto society. I'm sure this is just (another) one-off example by a rogue filmmaker.

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I think you misunderstood me. I don't understand the obsession with putting these things in chikdren's movies.

The Original Houston 1836 said:

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You thought it would be woke because it featured Hispanic people?

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To be fair, this is what we have been conditioned to expect. I avoided Crazy Rich Asians like the plague because every time I heard about it through the media, it was always conversations with the cast on "representation".

I. Don't. Give. A. ***** About. Representation.

No one owes you a story about someone who looks like you or thinks like you. Thankfully, I eventually did see that movie and thought it was a cute movie with very likeable characters and I don't remember any wokeness. Did I have an issue with watching a movie that was 90% Asian? No, because that's what the movie is about.

I can see how some would expect any movie that is heralded for its "representation" would be woke.

ETA: I will say this again... I hardly ever see anyone in any movie or show that represents who I am. I'm completely okay with that.

Why are gay adults trying to "queer code" children's movies in the first place?

BadMoonRisin said:

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Why are gay adults trying to "queer code" children's movies in the first place?

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Objectively, it may not be intentional. They may be trying to put their experience in their formative years on the screen. A ton of movies are about major life events from the creator as an early teen. Is Stand By Me coded to get kids to go see dead bodies? Is Sandlot coded to force kids to love baseball? It may innocently start as trying to present their personal experience but then gains momentum into something else when more people get their hands on it.

It may not be intentional? When the entire test audience tells you to your face that no one would want to pay a dime to watch the trash that you produced and instead of fixing it you cry about it...what should that tell you?

To me, it would indicate that your target audience doesn't want to pay for gay **** to be "coded" to their children.

This isn't that hard to figure out.

The fact that people left the project when their gay bull**** was pulled from the movie tells me that "gay coding" was very much intentionally included in the movie.

Quad Dog said:

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BadMoonRisin said:

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Why are gay adults trying to "queer code" children's movies in the first place?

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Objectively, it may not be intentional. They may be trying to put their experience in their formative years on the screen. A ton of movies are about major life events from the creator as an early teen. Is Stand By Me coded to get kids to go see dead bodies? Is Sandlot coded to force kids to love baseball? It may innocently start as trying to present their personal experience but then gains momentum into something else when more people get their hands on it.

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Does not answer my question, but OK

Pixar pivoted to stupid human centric stories that adults largely don't care about. Adding toxic subversive messaging to something overwhelmingly marketed to families and normal folks will avoid this animated propaganda double quick.

That movie sounds stupid AF. I will leave the creative writing to creative people.