USA animators moving away from woke content

The Washington Stand wrote about a hopeful improvement for Hollywood and its family fare, starting with how animators are jettisoning woke content that did more harm than good for financial receipts as much as morale:

Family-friendly films may be making a comeback in Hollywood as younger parents get involved in the filmmaking process and as woke films fail at the box office. One example is the latest film from Pixar, “Hoppers,” which grossed $87 million at the worldwide box office as of March 8, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year so far. Last year’s Pixar offering, “Elio,” was a box office failure, suffering the lowest opening weekend earnings of any Pixar in the famed animation studio’s 40-year history.

Originally, “Elio” was slated to include a prominent LGBT storyline, despite growing concerns that Pixar and its parent company, Disney, have increasingly injected LGBT ideology into children’s media. Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter explained this year that the studio’s decision to axe the same-sex-relationship storyline had to do with concerns raised by parents. “We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” Docter said, noting that most parents don’t want to have to explain same-sex relationships to their children after a family trip to the theater. “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”

Animator Adrian Molina was initially chosen to direct “Elio” and played a large role in developing the film’s story, which he based in part on his own experiences of alienation growing up on a military base before finding his place at the California Institute of the Arts. Molina, who identifies as gay and is in a same-sex marriage, planned to portray the Pixar film’s title character as gay. Docter hosted a meeting with Pixar employees and advised filmmakers to make less autobiographical films and focus more on broadly relatable, commercially successful concepts. Molina left the project, citing creative differences, and the LGBT content was scrapped, with Docter’s approval.

A 2022 Pixar venture, “Lightyear,” based on the exploits of space ranger Buzz Lightyear from the 1995 classic “Toy Story,” also featured LGBT content and was also a box office failure, with Deadline Hollywood calculating that the film lost Pixar over $100 million. The 2020 Pixar film “Onward” featured references to same-sex relationships and achieved the third-lowest opening weekend box office haul of any Pixar release, before plunging to the lowest-ever second weekend for a Pixar release, although the film’s failure was linked to COVID-19 lockdowns as opposed to problematic content. A Pixar series, “Win or Lose,” made for streaming service Disney+ and launched in early 2025 also included an LGBT-centered episode, which was axed prior to release. A Disney spokesman said at the time, “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

It's good to see some common sense might be reached by the end of the decade again. And if all this LGBT pandering is really that big a deal to the filmmakers, then seriously, why won't they market it as part of an adult-themed cartoon? This precisely why it's insulting in the extreme that so many left-wing animators won't take the challenge of crafting adult animation, and seeing how well it sells in that category and context? Many of these so-called animators really are that cheap and lacking confidence in their ability to build up a market for adult animation, even long after the Simpsons seemingly changed the perspective. And they're unlikely to change even now, nor will they address whether they think moviegoers for adult fare should consider whether it's worth it to take a look. Especially if they already watch adult anime from Japan.

It remains to be seen if the coming decade will see an improvement in how family fare is portrayed. And come to think of it, what are the chances heterosexual romance will receive more of an emphasis in animation of any suitability level, and whether filmmakers are willing to say it's something children should be taught to appreciate? Or even drama? That's another something anime from Japan may have had better success in producing, but in the USA, it's unclear if anybody in animation's willing to take up the challenge of producing cartoons of the drama genre in the future. But they should. Children also have to be taught that drama is something to appreciate as well. If it worked for Shakespeare, then it can work for today's audiences too, even in cartoons.