An animated environmental campaign

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, March 6th.

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Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Pixar’s pivot.

Once upon a time, Pixar meant inventive storytelling and dependable family entertainment. But lately the studio has struggled. Aside from Inside Out 2 from 2024, Pixar has produced a string of box-office disappointments.

Now the studio is hoping its newest release, Hoppers, marks a turnaround. Let’s hear what WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has to say about that.

MABEL: This is incredible! Hello! Hi! You’re a deer! What’s up? Hey, rabbit!

COLLIN GARBARINO: In Pixar’s Hoppers, we meet a nature-loving university student named Mabel who leaps into action when her favorite glade is threatened by a highway project. Her plan? Use advanced technology to transfer her consciousness into a furry beaver robot.

DR. SAM: OK. OK. We call it… Hoppers.

MABEL: Hoppers?

DR. SAM: Mmhmm… We use a proprietary mind casting apparatus to hop or inhabit a lifelike replica of—

MABEL: I don’t know what that means.

NISHA: We put this… into this.

Once she’s “hopped” into the beaver body, she can talk to the animals displaced by the project. She attempts to rally them to save the environment from evil developers.

Doesn’t this plot sound a lot like James Cameron’s original Avatar? In that movie, a human gets his consciousness transferred into an alien body so he can rally the natives to save the environment from evil developers. The parallel must have been obvious to Hoppers’ filmmakers too because they even joke about it in the movie. The problem is… the plot of Avatar was the worst thing about that film. Taking that plot and transferring it into a kids movie with cute beavers instead of blue aliens doesn’t make it any better.

How many more movies like this is Hollywood going to cram down our throats? Hoppers is loaded with posturing and left-wing moralizing. Of course, there’s the typical idolization of nature. Also, the heroes are quirky and ethnically diverse. And naturally, the only white guy in the film is the villain.

JERRY: What are you doing? What do you want? Please don’t hurt me.

Perhaps the film’s biggest failing is that it perpetuates our society’s pernicious lie that deep down everyone is good at heart. Pixar used to be better than this. Movies from the studio’s golden era tended to subvert the cliches that our society thrives on rather than confirm them. Think about movies like The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up… movies that challenged audiences to throw off lazy thinking.

Now it seems that the once unconventional Pixar has been thoroughly tamed by Disney. Mabel is just like a typical Disney princess, minus the romance. She’s an entitled girl who ruins the lives of countless other people so she can get her own way.

GEORGE: Pond rule No. 1. Don’t be a stranger. It’s harder to be mad at someone if you know their name. Looking good, Ron.

RON: Oh, thank you, sir.

That’s not to say the movie is as bad as it could be. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Hoppers is that maybe someone could understand it as an unintentional allegory explaining why it costs so much to live in California. Also some of the dialogue is amusing and some of the animal characters are endearing. The animation style is cute enough, though hardly groundbreaking. Writer-director Daniel Chong even gets a little edgy by showing that nature can be red in tooth and claw when a few named characters get eaten and squished.

STEVE: Hello, George.

GEORGE: Hello, Steve.

[Growl]

GEORGE: That’s pond rule No. 2. When you gotta eat, eat.

But even though the movie tells the truth about how violent nature can be, it perpetuates confusion about humanity’s relationship to the natural world. God has given us the task of subduing the earth. We’re not meant to pillage and exploit. We’re to steward and care for His creation. But this movie tells kids that humans aren’t exceptional. We’re just another animal that needs to learn to share.

GEORGE: Pond rule No. 3. We’re all in this together.

It’s all very disappointing. And what’s even more disappointing is that if Hoppers fails to turn a profit, Disney and Pixar will undoubtedly learn the wrong lesson. They’ll assume audiences only want sequels and franchise films. They’ll say, “Well we tried to be original, but folks only want Toy Story 7, 8, and 9.” The ironic thing is that Hoppers is thematically one of the most unoriginal stories Pixar has ever made. It’s sad that this studio that used to speak with a prophetic voice now prostrates itself before current political fashions.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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