At this day and age, America is changing at an extremely rapid rate. Our lives have become faster and more hectic. We squeeze every second out of every day. We are moving so fast, in fact, that we forget how to live our own lives. This leads to an anomaly that we have never seen in our own history. We are beginning to spend large amounts of money as a nation on books and other media telling us how to live healthy, happy lives. Never before have we needed this kind of help. For better or for worse, this is the case.
You can find this sort of help in one of the most unexpected places, a Disney Pixar movie. Every one of the eleven films made by Pixar is full of fundamental lessons that we must learn in order to live happy lives. This is the magic that is Pixar. It has influenced America by teaching us important things that we forget, and simultaneously touching our hearts with lovable characters, triumphant victories, and dry, classy humor.
The beginning of Pixar is as interesting as its films. To put it in a nutshell, Steve Jobs, co-founder of computer company Apple, and George Lucas, director of numerous legendary science fiction movies, team up to create an independent computer animation company called “Pixar”. When the computer guy and the movie guy teamed up to make an animation company, it’s hard to believe that nobody predicted how bright the future would be for Pixar. The obvious cause for the creation of Pixar is idea that two people who excel in their fields can create a new field entirely.
When you take a single glance at a Pixar film, you may think that it is meant for child’s entertainment and has only that dimension. But when you begin to peel back the layers of a Pixar movie, you see that it has things meant for adults, too. In the film WALL-E, the characters face a problem that has become universal to all of us in the real world. The problem in WALL-E is that Earth has become overrun by garbage and debris and is void of any plant or animal life. Pixar painted a picture of a world we may face in the future, and has presented an on-screen problem that we can connect to. Making connections with the audiences is something that Pixar has excelled at.
Something that a good movie must always do is to create a concept that viewers can compare to themselves and their lives. One can notice that Pixar has learned to do this very well with relationships. We see a perfect example of a strong relationship in Finding Nemo. The traditional father-son bond that is displayed between Marlin and his son Nemo is a benchmark that all fathers should strive to meet. Marlin literally goes to the ends of the Earth to rescue his son from perilous danger. We also see a more general relationship standard in the Pixar’s Up. In this, they show us how a friendship can form. They teach us to keep an open mind when choosing friends when a bond is made between an unlikely match. Mr. Fredrickson, a seventy eight year old grouch, eventually befriends a hyperactive Boy Scout named Russell after a treacherous journey. We can compare our own friendships to this unconditional relationship in Up.
After watching a Pixar movie, you can take away many things. Pixar hopes that the end result of each of their films is that you make a conclusion on the lessons that you have learned and take action on what you made of it. A common lesson that we see in Pixar movies is something that all Americans can take action on. That lesson is that we should make the most of who we are, not be sorrowful of what we are not. We see this theme is the Pixar masterpiece Ratatouille. Remy the sewer rat has big dreams of becoming a French chef. Remy soon meets great adversity when he realizes how anti-rat the profession of chef is. Instead of giving up and wishing he was a human chef; he makes the most of himself and improvises a way to cook by befriending a human, and eventually reaches his dream. We also see this theme in the movie WALL-E. The main character, a robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class) is assigned the job of cleaning mountains of garbage left behind on earth. He is scuffed with dirt at all times and has no future of becoming anything more than a mobile trash compactor. But when he finds out that he holds the key to Earth’s future, he becomes a hero to all. From these two movies we can conclude that of small things, great things come to pass. This is what happens in our country’s beginning, when a group of liberty seekers and farmers defeated the most powerful military in the world.
The set of magnificent films put out by Pixar Studios could not have come at a better time. In a time of great change, Americans have sometimes not known what to think. These Pixar stories have helped us to re-learn vital lessons that help us get into the right state of mind. It has taught us how to dream for the stars even through adversity. It teaches us how a friendship can form, and how much a friend can help us through trials. We learn how strong the father and son relationship can be, from Finding Nemo. Americans have been influenced for the better by this cinematic art by Pixar, whose movies are the best of the decade hands-down. Pixar accomplished their goal of making better people with onscreen characters and themes. Pixar has changed America permanently for the better with its work.