Want to hear more from the actors and creators of your favorite shows and films? Subscribe to The Cinema Spot on YouTube for all of our upcoming interviews!
Zero time Tony Award winner • Production Assistant • Serial rewatcher
What I’m about to say might get my Disney fan card revoked, but it’s something I have been hiding for too long. I’m tired of nodding my head when people go on about their favorite Pixar movie because I’m too scared to tell them that I don’t agree. As a whole, Pixar movies are not my favorite “branch from the Disney tree.” I love a few of them, I like some of them and I’m indifferent to some of them. I will not elaborate on that sentence anymore, I feel like I’m in enough trouble already.
Without hesitation, Onward is my favorite out of them. I know this for certain because it’s the first Pixar movies (since Ratatouille) that I didn’t feel satisfied after one watch. Allow me to rephrase. I wanted to watch it over and over again. For those of you that are absolutely fed up with me right now, please allow me to explain a little more why Onward is my favorite.
From 2013 to the present-day five out of eight Pixar flicks have been sequels. Finding Dory, Monster’s University, and Cars 3 just to name a few. There’s nothing wrong with making sequels but I felt that for the first time in a while I was actually excited for a Pixar movie. I bookmarked it in my calendar, and it was important to me that I went to see it in the theater. With the rest of them, I usually waited until they came out on DVD or even television. The originality to it felt fresh to me, and it felt like the light at the end of a remake tunnel that Hollywood was stuck in. Onward also didn’t set itself up for a sequel. It’s perfect as a standalone movie.
I saw this movie more than twice. There are only a handful of Pixar movies I’ve watched more than once. As soon as I came home from the theater, I gabbed about it to my parents for days, and unfortunately, the world shut down soon after that. We waited until it came out on Disney+ and I planned a movie night for all of us. When I want to watch a movie but don’t know what to watch I usually put on Onward because I know it’s always going to be a good choice.
I was constantly surprised. I never knew what sort of adventure Ian and Barley were going to embark on. No matter what crazy adventure, a Pixar character goes on, more than likely, you can guess the result of the story. I didn’t automatically know the outcome of their choices and I didn’t predict the ending.
The story moved pretty fast. Before I knew it, Ian and Barley’s journey was over and they never got caught in one place too long. I wasn’t sitting in the theater silently screaming about what they could have done differently to avoid a certain situation. (I’ve done that before, I won’t tell you which movie.) It was all very quick-paced, and I didn’t feel bored or frustrated.
It felt relatable, yet I was transported into a fantasy. Onward takes place in the modern-day so the technology, clothing, etc. make it all a very relatable movie to watch. However, it’s not our world. The unicorns that resemble our raccoons, the biker gang of sprites, and a centaur cop transport the viewer into something entirely different. For example, besides A Bug’s Life and the Cars series, Onward is the only movie where humans don’t exist.
I’m not here to tell you that all of the other Pixar movies aren’t worthy. There’s a certain charm to all of them. Onward just makes me feel different after watching it. It makes me want to believe in magic, whatever capacity that might be. Of course, I felt sad, but the entire time I held out hope for Ian and Barley. Unfortunately, Onward‘s time in the box office was short-lived. It will live on forever on Disney+ and my DVD collection.
Zero time Tony Award winner • Production Assistant • Serial rewatcher
13 Comments on “Onward Is My Favorite Pixar Movie – Here’s Why”