Since before Walt Disney released Steamboat Willie, there have been people arguing that animation is a medium primarily for children, and there have been those trying to eliminate the notion that animation is only for kids. Those of us who have grown up with the work of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar not only realize that animation works for adults, but we know that what we loved about it as children, and what it means to us as adults, are very different things.
Animation isn’t only for kids, but there’s no argument that kids love animation. Pete Docter, Pixar’s CCO understands that his movies are not just for kids, but he also understands that what kids get from animation is different than what adults get from it. Speaking with THR, Docter related an adorable, and also hilarious story, about speaking to a kid who had just seen Up, and found part of the movie quite sad, but not for the reason you think. Docter explained…
I do know kids and adults respond to different elements in our films. I remember watching Up with a family audience, and after the screening a kid tells me he really liked it but there was one part that made him sad. Assuming he was talking about the part where Carl’s wife, Ellie, dies, I was surprised when he said, ‘Yeah, when the bird hurt [her] foot, that was really sad.’
A lot of people would put the “Married Life” sequence in Up, which makes up the first few minutes, among the most emotionally devastating in cinema, not simply animation. Ellie’s death is one of those moments you can just bring up without context and people will understand, and possibly begin to weep involuntarily.
And yet, this kid just felt bad when Kevin hurt her leg. Honestly, I get it. I’m a father to a six-year-old who gets emotional at movies a lot, as we both did with Pixar’s recent hit Elemental. While I’m occasionally able to properly prepare her for a sad scene if it’s a movie I’ve seen before, sometimes the thing that sets her off is something I never realized would mean so much to her.
But at some point, that kid is going to watch Up again and have a very different reaction to those first few minutes, and that’s wonderful. Some of the best things about movies are the way we can watch them again and again, and get something new from them each time. That often comes from the way each of us changes over time, whether that’s simply getting older, and allegedly wiser, or learning something new that causes us to respond differently.
I would argue that many Pixar movies really aren’t made for kids all that much. As I discussed in my Elemental review, that movie being a simple romantic character drama may not resonate with little kids the way other Pixar movies do, it’s a story that, while it’s not too mature for them, just may not interest younger viewers as much.
The key is that animation is not a genre, and it’s not just for kids. Animation can tell any story for any audience, even if those different audiences take very different messages away from it.