Will This Upcoming Pixar Movie Succeed Where Others Flopped?

Photo from Pixabay

By Gavin Boyle

Pixar released the first trailer for its upcoming movie HOPPERS which follows the story of a young girl who transfers herself into the body of a beaver to communicate with forest animals.

“We’ve done it, Mabel, after years of work this revolutionary technology gives us unprecedented access to the animal world,” the characters in the trailer say before adding, “We put this into this,” showing how they transfer a person’s brain into a beaver’s body. What follows is a fun, chaotic adventure as a young girl undergoes the transfer and experiences the animal world as an animal for the first time.

At first glance, this movie may sound all too familiar with a similar plot to AVATAR, but the movie even addresses this similarity, and director Daniel Chong is adamant the story ends up completely differently.

“It’s really fun to be able to use AVATAR as a grounding point for the audience [to] let them know that it is that, but it’s not that. It’s going to be different,” Chond told Screen Rant. “I think it’s good for the teaser to actually call it out because I’m sure a lot of people were, in their minds, going, ‘Come on, [you’re] making AVATAR again?’ But I think the joke is that it’s nothing like that.”

“The movie will go into different places,” he promises. “It becomes a bit of a spy thriller, and there are a lot of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE things in it that we were inspired by. And, there’s really a bread comedy aspect to it too. I think there’s going to be a lot of fun to be had.”

HOPPERS certainly has a lot of pressure on it now that Pixar’s most recent original movie, ELIO, has released. Despite offering a strong story rooted in family-friendly values, ELIO flopped during its debut, opening to $20.8 million domestically, making it the worst opening weekend for any Pixar movie ever. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:

Related: Is Pixar Making Any New Original Movies? Here’s What We Know

ELIO is very engaging and beautifully made, with vibrant colors and a fantastic soundtrack. It has many comedic, action-packed, emotional elements. The movie shows a strong amount of moral, redemptive themes such as kindness, family bonds, love, and sacrifice, as well as allegorical death, baptism and resurrection. However, ELIO has multiple violent scenes that may be scary to a younger audience. Also, the movies solves the question “are we alone” with aliens; whereas, Jesus Christ God and Creator solved it by his incarnation. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger and older pre-teenage children.

If HOPPERS can’t draw a major audience as well, it will signal to Pixar that original stories no longer have the pull they once did, and the only way to make money is through sequels and spinoffs. Hopefully, this is not the case, and HOPPER’s first trailer offers great promise for the future success of the movie.

Read Next: Why Original Animated Movies Fail in Theaters

Questions or comments? Please write to us here.


Watch HANNAH MONTANA THE MOVIE
Quality: - Content: +4
Watch LITTLE RED WAGON
Quality: - Content: +1