The fantastic movie blog The House Next Door has a particularly noteworthy set of posts this week as they dig deep into Pixar. Of special note:

“Grandpa’s Flying House: Up and Howls’ Moving Castle“:

If you read interviews or Wikipedia pages regarding director Pete Docter’s inspirations for Up, you’ll find an emphasis on lovable, grumpy actors, childhood fantasies, and real-life grandfather figures. I have no doubt that these all helped shape Docter’s vision for Pixar’s latest film, but I feel a particularly strong influence has been relegated to a footnote or an afterthought. Pixar garners comparisons to director Hayao Miyazaki with every new film, and I notice that the Japanese filmmaker’s influence on Pixar’s staff is perceived in the same way as Martin Scorsese’s influence on an entire generation of directors: “How could he not have influenced them?” Yet, Up presents a special case, as the entire film can be seen as an homage not only to Miyazaki’s work, but specifically to Howl’s Moving Castle, the 2004 film for which Pete Docter directed the English voice talent.

“Pushing at Boundaries: The Two-Faced Ideology of Pixar”:

In Pixar’s first two feature length films, Toy Story (1995) and A Bug’s Life (1998), after a violent confrontation, two of the main characters are face to face. One of them berates the other in defense of an age-old system of master and servant, a system that the other character actively denounces because this system gets in the way of his lofty ambitions. In both films, the plot centers on this conflict of those who wish to uphold boundaries and those who wish to break through them.

However, there’s one main difference. In the film’s ideologies, Buzz Lightyear is wrong, and Flik is right.

The fact that the films were made so close together and were both directed by John Lasseter makes the comparison even more jarring. It’s the perfect example of what appears to be an internal ideological struggle throughout Pixar’s filmography, a ten-film ping-pong battle between boundaries and boundary-breakers, with neither side having the clear advantage.

“Meeting Mid-Life With Maturity: American Beauty, Fight Club, and The Incredibles“:

Between the ages of 17 and 18, still with so much growing up to do, I saw a slew of films that would redefine what the medium was capable of and completely change my world perspective. Some people read books about inspirational, anti-authoritarian figures that became a rallying cry for a generation; I saw The Big Lebowski. Shortly after, a simple laid-back attitude wasn’t enough, for I had witnessed Fight Club and American Beauty. Suddenly, I came to understand that getting good grades never really made me any happier – a temporary ego boost, perhaps, but never anything lasting. Further, I realized that getting Cs had never bothered me for more than a few weeks; by the end of a semester, I’d forgotten it ever happened. In fact, it seemed all of a sudden as though everything my Catholic college-prep high school was teaching me about life, outside of the spiritual realm, didn’t really fit into the kind of person I saw myself as, and more importantly, the kind of person I wanted to be.

In the fall of 2004, I was 18, having digested a number of such films, and I sat down to watch Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, which I rightly expected to be a rousing piece of superhero entertainment with a few “I’m too old for this shit” jokes. What I didn’t expect was just how much the film had to say about family, how keenly Bob Parr’s story related to the journeys of characters like Fight Club’s unnamed Narrator (we’ll go with the popular opinion and call him Jack) and American Beauty’s Lester Burnham. All three of them reached a breaking point. Unfulfilled with the life they suddenly found themselves living and after a sudden moment of inspiration, they took drastic measures to change that.

Agree or disagree, these posts are thoroughly engaging. And as someone who is fascinated with Pixar’s success and their commitment to good storytelling, this week of analysis on The House Next Door has been some great reading.