Luca & Turning Red Break A Major Pixar Trend

With Luca and Turning Red, Pixar appears to be shifting more of its focus to themes of inclusivity, breaking from its previous trends. While culture plays a major role for the characters in these movies, avoiding the detection of their fantastical abilities is Luca and Mei’s primary goal. Stories of special traits and talents are nothing new for Pixar, but the resolutions of these recent movies shift from the studio’s normal way of doing things.

Since the release of its industry-changing feature debut, Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has tended to have two recurring trends. With the first, magical or fantastical characters are part of the world of the movie, and everyone in them is aware of it because they are magical as well. Examples include Monsters Inc., Onward, and Cars. For the second trend, the story is set in the real world where secret magical things happen around or just out of reach of normal people, as with Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Inside Out. In these films, it’s up to the “magical” characters to keep their secrets and avoid detection from those in the real world. The recent Pixar movies Luca and Turning Red, however, fall outside these two classifications by subverting the second trend and having fantastical characters’ secrets exposed and then accepted by the real world.

Why Luca & Turning Red’s Endings Are A Great Step Forward

Luca and Turning Red follow a relatively new trend for Pixar. In both movies, the magical characters grow up in what is seemingly the real world. They each have a secret they try to keep about their magical traits, mainly to avoid hatred and ridicule they have been led — both of them by their mothers — to believe will come to them if they reveal who they truly are. However, by the end of the movie, their secret is revealed to everyone, they are accepted by society, and they learn to embrace their differences.

Pixar previously tended to focus on children’s fantasies and keeping secrets as a recurring theme. But with Turning Red and Luca, Pixar is showing children that their differences are what make them special and celebrated. The depictions of society including them in their community despite their abilities is a positive step forward for Pixar’s animated movies. However, it is also important to note that while these two recent movies are currently building a trend, they aren’t the first to showcase inclusivity in this way for Pixar. Ratatouille may have done it first. That film, released in 2007, follows Remy, a rat who loves to cook, who starts off in hiding only to be embraced by society and allowed to work in a restaurant by the end.

Breaking The Pixar Trend Shows They’re Becoming More Like Disney

With Pixar trending more into inclusive themes, evidenced by Luca and Turning Red, the studio is becoming more like its parent company, Disney. Although they are under the same studio brand umbrella, animated features from Pixar and Disney have always had unique differences in the way they’ve told their stories over the years. Walt Disney Animation is commonly known for its lessons of acceptance, finding what makes you special, and inclusion, and now Pixar is moving closer to bridging the gap between itself and the Disney animation studio thanks to Luca and Turning Red.