Just Keep On Swimming And Give The First Finding Dory Trailer A Watch!

A common criticism for PIXAR in recent years has been their over-reliance on sequels, a critique that feels simultaneously too harsh and very much appropriate. Now, perhaps we should all pause our negative judgement of these impending follow-ups considering the track record PIXAR has not just with their overall filmography, but with their sequels. The two Toy Story sequels, especially the third one, are top-notch masterpieces and Monsters University is a fun adventure with a surprisingly insightful climax.


It's that fourth sequel that gets everyone's feathers ruffled about the future of PIXAR being so sequel driven....Cars 2. Here's a movie that manages to stuff major flaws like a borderline incomprehensible plot, terrible pacing and wasting Bruce Campbell into one major motion picture. True, future sequels could be more on the lines of Toy Story 3 in terms of quality, but taken as basic concepts, the likes of Cars 3 (sigh) and Toy Story 4 (oh God, just shoot me now) just seem like Cars 2-esque cashgrabs. Next summer brings one particular project from PIXAR that feels like the very defenition of a cashgrab sequel, Finding Dory, a sequel that, like Cars 2, shifts the focus onto a scene-stealing side character from the first movie.

Finding Dory just debuted its first trailer, which you can watch below.

Here's what I find weird about this trailer; it doesn't look "bad" or anything (it still looks miles better than the trailer for fellow 2016 computer animated family comedy Norm Of The North for instance), but there's also very little oomph in its presentation. Where's the pizzazz, the build-up in this trailer? It's shockingly light when it comes to delivering laughs or even some nostalgic feelings (what? They couldn't squeeze in an appearance by Crush the turtle?), and I should be the prime demo for the latter entity considering I grew up with the original film. Finding Dory's basic plot structure from this also reminds me less of past PIXAR masterpieces like WALL-E, Ratatouille or Up and more like those direct-to-video sequels DisneyToon Studios churned out like there was no tomorrow back in the late nineties and early 2000's.

Who knows, maybe Finding Dory will surpass all of my skepticism and become something special. It's at least cool that Andrew Stanton (Director of Finding Nemo, WALL-E and the criminally underrated John Carter) is coming back to helm this movie. Right now though, this teaser seems extremely pedestrian both in the production qualities of the trailer itself and the footage from the movie that we see here. Right now, I'm certainly not optimistic for the sequel heavy future of PIXAR.