The Credibility of Pixar

I want to take a second to discuss something important to me:
Yep, that's right; Cars 2.

First off, I want to say that I did not despise cars 2. Do I think it was the best animated film ever? No. Do I think it was a great animated film? No. Do I think it was a good animated film? Yes. It was certainly Pixar's weakest effort, and clearly lacked the quality of other Pixar films, however, I believe it was just as good as anything the other major studios (i.e. Dreamworks) are putting out. Furthermore, I'd like to say that the only reason it received such poor ratings on sites like rotten tomatoes is because there was such a high expectation from Pixar. If this had been a dream works film, I can almost guarantee it would have been rated higher. How do I know this? Well, simply because several of the critics admitted right in their reviews that they had only rated it so low because it was a Pixar film. Do I think this is fair? Well, the answer to that question isn't so simple. While I understand that going into a movie with the expectation of "pixar" can have a severe impact on your judgment about the film, I also think people should be able to distance themselves enough to realize that Cars 2 doesn't deserve a poor rating just because it was a less-than-perfect Pixar film. Cars 2 certainly deserves to be the lowest ranking of the all the Pixar film, but it definitely does not deserve a "rotten" rating on rotten tomatoes.

Now, while the unfairly harsh criticism of Cars 2 does bug me, that's not really why I wrote this blog. I wrote it because there are those who seem to have begun to discredit Pixar simply because of this minor blotch on it's otherwise nearly flawless record. I find this to be completely unfair. To have 11 commercially and critically acclaimed films in a row, from a single company is pretty much unheard of. I can't think of any other company that's had such success, so to somehow pretend that having one bad film discredits all of that is, quite simply, ridiculous. All Cars 2 has taught us, is something we already knew; that Pixar is human and capable of making mistakes. So what? Who cares? One bad films doesn't mean Pixar is doomed to destruction; It doesn't mean the company has finally fallen from it's lofty tower. And, to be completely honest, even if it does mean that, I will still always respect Pixar for the 11 incredible contributions they have made. Even if each of their films from now on is a failure (which I seriously doubt), Pixar has earned our respect; they invented modern animation, for goodness sake. What more can you ask of them?