The Fates Are Smiling

I’ll confess to having mixed feelings about the Disney/Pixar merger, mostly stemming from the belief that Disney’s bureaucratic mentality will only hinder Pixar’s independent — and successsful — style. Pixar’s model works — which no doubt means that the corporate behemoth will eventually squash it.

I sincerely hope that I’m wrong, that Iger will actually work to reverse the Eisner decline, that he won’t screw things up like Eisner did repeatedly with the all-but-defunct Miramax. But a lot of it’s just the nature of the beast — with so many stockholders to please, and no strong personality to keep the shortsighted investors at bay (Jobs will be on the Disney board, yes, but he’ll just be one voice among many), I think the stifling of creativity is inevitable.

But there is one really great piece of news to come out of all this: Toy Story 3 is dead. Remember, this wasn’t a Pixar initiative, but a Disney-only attempt to cash in on the success of the franchise. Pixar had nothing to do with it. And it would have irrevocably destroyed the positive memories of those beloved characters and stories. Anyone remember Buzz Lightyear of Star Command? And that was only a kids’s television show. Imagine what a full-blown theatrical flop would have done.

Pixar’s still got a lot to prove. The buzz on Cars (despite being a John Lasseter-directed project) is underwhelming, to say the least. But as long as they can keep bastardized spin-offs like TS3 out of production, they’ll at least be minimizing the potential damage.