This film is a U, was released on March 6th 2020, and this review will contain NO SPOILERS
This film takes place in a fantasy world where magic once dominated but was quickly forgotten as electricity was created and thus sent their world down the path of our own. An elf living in this world, named Ian, is gifted a magic staff left behind by his deceased father on his 16th birthday. With it comes a spell that can bring his father back for one full day. However, while performing the spell, he only brings back the lower half. With a particular stone needed to complete the spell and only twenty-four hours to do so, Ian, with his older brother Barley, set off on a quest to find it and see their father.
If you know me, you know I'm a huge fan of Pixar. Their films never fail to amaze me, move me, and above all, entertain me. Despite this, the 2010s saw a considerable decline in quality for them. They only made two films that I love, some that I regard as "meh", and a bunch that I really like but don't love. This contrasts hugely with the 2000s, where every single film they put out was excellent, with some making it into my Top 10 films of all time. Anyway, that's the past, what about the future? 2020 sees them return to original filmmaking, as opposed to sequels, and their first of these is Onward. I didn't have high hopes for this film - the trailers made it look like a mid-tier Dreamworks offering and it just didn't ring the wonderful originality that I'm so used to from this studio. But, as a dedicated fan, I still went to see it with fingers crossed.
Thankfully, the film is actually quite good. It goes without saying that the animation is spectacular, but that's kind of inevitable for Pixar at this point so I can't really use that as praise for this film in particular. The setting was a lot of fun, and it was enjoyable to see a modern twist on the generic fantasy aesthetic that we're all so familiar with. The two leads had a nice dynamic, with one being awkward and nervous and the other naive and confident. The way they interacted on this journey really held the film together and made it an entertaining adventure - a large part of this being the charisma from the voices of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt (both of whom I love). Additionally, the story hit all the emotional beats sufficiently, and the sad moments never felt forced or hollow but very genuine. On top of all that, there were plenty of exciting set-pieces involving chases, dragons, magic and all sorts, as well as a nice score to accompany such.
So, as far as a Pixar film goes, it has all the things I look out for going for it. However, this is sort of where the big problem lies. The film executed all of its elements well enough, but it all just felt a bit too conventional by Pixar standards. The quirky setting, the emotional story, the charming characters, etc. They're all done fine, but don't feel particularly special. While there wasn't anything the film necessarily did badly, there wasn't much it did amazingly, it was all just, as I said, fairly conventional. That may be fine for other studios, but because we've seen Pixar produce phenomenal films over the last 20+ years, anything that isn't as great, even if it's good, is going to be seen as weak to some extent. The wonderful content of theirs that I grew up with is just inseparable from them. This is just kind of an inevitability that all original content Pixar goes onto make will suffer from - unless they pull off something as strong as what they did in the 2000s.
While it isn't the most memorable or ambitious film they've put out, Onward is still beautiful-looking, creatively constructed, emotional at times, and fun in places. I enjoyed it just fine, but then again, it's just another Pixar film to add to the ever-growing pile of films they've made that I like but don't love. I really want to see this company reaffirm their status as one of the greatest film studios currently in the industry, and not one that resorts to just good enough. Their next film Soul looks too reminiscent of Inside Out and not like anything particularly interesting to me, but there's a chance it'll be amazing. And as I said, I didn't have high hopes for Onward, so to say that I enjoyed it at all is still fine by me, so I think I can let this one slide.
I'm going to give Onward a 7.5/10
While I'm here, I thought I'd just take some time to address the unfortunate postponing of multiple new releases amidst the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. I wasn't looking forward to a lot of movies scheduled to release in 2020, but of the few that I was, it's irritating that I'm now going to have to wait longer to see them.
No Time To Die feels like it's constantly been pushed back further and further. First, the Sony hack, then all the creative differences with Danny Boyle, and when we finally got a trailer and a release that we were just a month away from, we now have to keep waiting until November. I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever actually get released at all.
A Quiet Place Part II is another tragic delay as that was my most anticipated film of the entire year, and we were merely a week away from it entering cinemas. What's worse about this case is that we haven't yet got a new release date at the moment, so the uncertainty about how long I have to wait is killing me.
As of right now, Black Widow is still scheduled for May 1st, and while I do think the virus will be under slightly more control by then, I wouldn't be surprised if it was pushed back to a later date, or even worse, released straight to Disney+, which would be depressing.
Obviously, I respect that it is important to not put people's health at risk, especially in an environment where they should be enjoying themselves, but it is a huge pain for someone like me who loves going to see new films in the cinema on a regular basis and was ready to see all these new films shortly. I just hope that this virus outbreak doesn't act as a catalyst for the death of cinema and convinces studios to just release all their new films straight to streaming platforms.
On the bright side, I can spend the coming weeks working my way through my extensive watchlist of already released movies I haven't seen, and I will still try to visit the cinema to show there is still a market for it during a pandemic like this. Additionally, let's all be grateful that this didn't happen a year earlier and thus forced Endgame to be delayed, as that would've just been the absolute worst thing in human history.
While I'm here, I thought I'd just take some time to address the unfortunate postponing of multiple new releases amidst the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. I wasn't looking forward to a lot of movies scheduled to release in 2020, but of the few that I was, it's irritating that I'm now going to have to wait longer to see them.
No Time To Die feels like it's constantly been pushed back further and further. First, the Sony hack, then all the creative differences with Danny Boyle, and when we finally got a trailer and a release that we were just a month away from, we now have to keep waiting until November. I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever actually get released at all.
A Quiet Place Part II is another tragic delay as that was my most anticipated film of the entire year, and we were merely a week away from it entering cinemas. What's worse about this case is that we haven't yet got a new release date at the moment, so the uncertainty about how long I have to wait is killing me.
As of right now, Black Widow is still scheduled for May 1st, and while I do think the virus will be under slightly more control by then, I wouldn't be surprised if it was pushed back to a later date, or even worse, released straight to Disney+, which would be depressing.
Obviously, I respect that it is important to not put people's health at risk, especially in an environment where they should be enjoying themselves, but it is a huge pain for someone like me who loves going to see new films in the cinema on a regular basis and was ready to see all these new films shortly. I just hope that this virus outbreak doesn't act as a catalyst for the death of cinema and convinces studios to just release all their new films straight to streaming platforms.
On the bright side, I can spend the coming weeks working my way through my extensive watchlist of already released movies I haven't seen, and I will still try to visit the cinema to show there is still a market for it during a pandemic like this. Additionally, let's all be grateful that this didn't happen a year earlier and thus forced Endgame to be delayed, as that would've just been the absolute worst thing in human history.
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