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For those of you keeping score at home, "The Good Dinosaur" is currently slated to be Pixar's 15th full-length animated feature, to use Disney-speak. (Disney doesn't count their DTV movies, so likewise, I'm not counting "Planes.") So do you think Pixar should do what Disney does and promote their movies using that system?

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Well, when Up came out, it was promoted as Pixar's 10th: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K-WRu7OXmA

Maybe in the future, they will start doing it for all of theirs. When did Disney start numbering the canon? Was it Oliver & Company?

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"If your life had a face, I would punch it." - Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

I'm sure some countries are numbering them, not sure which though

The trailer for Oliver and Company does mention the numbering (I just checked via YouTube), but as far as I'm aware, no real numbering in marketing and advertising was done prior to the Eisner-era. I believe they also didn't class the package features as part of the real canon for years, and I doubt they would have done so had they not wanted to bulk things out and make them sound like they have a bit more clout. Equally, some international divisions seem to have their own way of numbering the films. For example, Disney France seem to include every Disney film including animation (including Pixar films, DTV sequels and live-action/animated films like Mary Poppins), which rendered Tangled as the 101st film as opposed to the 50th there!

As for an official Pixar numbering, I'd say no, at least for the time being. There are so far no dubious titles that will produce different counts (aka: anthology features, live-action films with animated portions, animated films with live-action portions), but I do think that the whole idea of numbering films as a means of marketing them can come across as a bit pompous.

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-Joe

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Why? I kind of like the numbering, and it would probably do good to number them as they go, so it doesn't get confusing about what counts and what doesn't (like what's happened with Disney).

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I once owned a Disney booklet from 1978 (in observance of Mickey's 50th anniversary) that listed The Rescuers as their 23rd film.

It is reasonable to assume that the package features weren't intended to be part of the canon, since they consist largely of ideas once intended for their own stand-alone features, as well as rejected Fantasia sequences. Also because, rather than re-release the movies (with a couple exceptions), much of the segments were later repackaged into separate shorts.

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I can't quite describe it, but it just seems a bit self-indulgent to go using the numbering in official promotions, and the fact that they can tweak it for their own needs (i.e. bulking out the list with package features, suddenly declaring Dinosaur a classic so Tangled can be the 50th film) is also a bit dubious. I suppose that it's also part of the whole thing of labelling their animated films as classics like nobody's business. Of course, there's no problem doing so for films like Snow White, Pinocchio and Cinderella (to name but a few), all of which are classics in every real sense of the word. Equally, it's safe to say that more recent films like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King have earned the classic moniker, and can be considered modern classics at the very least. But to label every new film as a classic or masterpiece, even those that won't ever become so (Treasure Planet, Chicken Little, Home on the Range etc), does come across as a bit contrived, IMO.

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-Joe

Blog | Deviantart

Oh. I agree with that, but I was thinking the numbering (for Pixar anyway) could just be a case of saying, "Here's the 12th movie we've made." But if they were to add, "Our 12th classic," right out of the gate, that would be pompous.

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I think it's premature to refer to a new release as a "classic", but I like the idea of Pixar having a numbering system.

It would be a nice way of giving all the films some recognition, and, unlike with Disney, it would be easier to determine what counted and what didn't.

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