The New Pixar Theory

I hadn't planned on writing this as a post because it seemed like the sort of strange thought experiment better left in my own head. But then Jon Negroni's Pixar Theory exploded over the internet. It kept popping up everywhere, and by the time the mainstream news sites had grabbed it the theory was being moulded in response to the thousands who read it in order to iron out all the plot holes. It was a lot of fun seeing that there are other people who think like me out there because the fact is that I've been thinking Pixar's films belong in the same universe for a while.

But since I never wrote it down, Jon Negroni got there first. Also, since I saw Toy Story when I was 6, there is a good chance that he thought of it first. I'm not writing this to lay claim to his success. But I am writing this in response to his theory because I think it is a very clever, very convoluted theory.

My Pixar theory is much closer to the Unified Tarantino Theory, which suggests that all of Tarantino's films are connected. Unlike Pixar, Tarantino has confirmed parts of this theory, which posits that all of the films are in the same violence and pop-culture-obsessed universe except for Kill Bill, which is a movie within that universe. That is what Negroni's theory is missing.

Let's start with Toy Story, as Pixar did. The Toy Story trilogy can be the baseline. They are essentially set in the real world, but the real world seen from the magical side that is hidden to the rest of us. I find it is successful in the same way as Harry Potter because of this "it could be real" factor that makes it easier to believe in the unbelievable.

Most of the films can be related directly to this "real" world. There is nothing that suggests A Bug's Life is set anywhere but reality, and could be contemporaneous with Toy Story's modern North America. The same can be said of Finding Nemo (only it happens in the south Pacific), Ratatouille (in Paris), Up (possibly very close to Toy Story), and Pixar's upcoming films Inside Out (which is partially set inside the head of a child), and Finding Dory.

Still set in the "real" world established by Toy Story are WALL-E (just set in the distant future), and Brave (set in the medieval past).

WALL-E's BnL corporate logo seen in Toy Story 3

Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University were a problem for Negroni's theory because it required a full cycle of evolution on Earth to establish a new world of Monsters who travel back in time via closet doors to collect screams of children in the present. But the movie establishes the connection from the very beginning, which is that the monster world is just that: another world.

Randall ended up near to the events of A Bug's Life,
and at the home of the terrible driver of the Pizza Planet truck

The Incredibles was a major style shift for Pixar. It presented a retro future, and a whole world and alternate history touched by the existence of superheroes. But, in Finding Nemo, the little boy in the waiting room is reading an Incredibles comic book. With Warner Brothers announcing a Batman/Superman film, and Marvel planning two pictures a year til the end of time, this is hardly the time to be surprised by the existence of a film adaptation of a comic book.

And this leads to the final connection, the one that made Negroni twist his theory into knots to explain, which is the presence of Cars. Partially because they are more for kids than any other Pixar films, Cars and Cars 2 are generally not counted amongst people's favorites. It might sound like a copout, but I would argue that the feature-length toy advertisements that are Cars and Cars 2 might just be feature-length toy advertisements in the Pixar world as well. If The Incredibles is a film, why not Cars?

There is also an interesting pattern in the logo designs. The Incredibles and both Cars films are the only Pixar features (so far) that have red backgrounds in their theatrical releases. All of the "real world" films have blue, green, brown, or black. It will be interesting to see what happens when we learn more about The Good Dinosaur.

The one thing that will poke a hole in my theory is the blooper reel from Cars. If it is a movie within the universe of the other movies, how is Mac watching Cars versions of Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Monsters, Inc.? The only excuse I have for this is to say, "Don't count the bloopers." Toy Story had bloopers, which would suggest that they are just real characters in a movie that has been secretly made in our world. Same with all the early films and their blooper reels. But if this collapses my theory, it collapses any unification theory, and then we're just film geeks talking about meaningless easter eggs. And what's the fun in that?