Inside Out marked a proper return to form for Pixar Animation Studios. After a string of sequels (and a prequel) and one underperforming original (Brave), we were overdue for a brand new "big idea" concept in the vein of Pixar classics like Finding Nemo, WALL•E and Up. Inside Out has been a smash hit; at the time of this writing, it sits comfortably as the fourth highest-grossing film of 2015.
Now the question becomes... Is Inside Out the start of a new golden age for Pixar? Or was it a one-hit-fluke before the company returns to fluff like Cars 2? After all, there are plenty of sequels in Pixar's immediate future. Finding Dory hits next summer, followed by Toy Story 4 a year after that.
Our questions will be answered this November when Pixar releases The Good Dinosaur. (Incidentally, 2015 is the first time Pixar will have released two movies in one year.) The Good Dinosaur comes from first-time feature director Peter Sohn, who previously directed the short film Partly Cloudy.
The movie is about an apatosaurus named Arlo who becomes friends with a human child in a world where the dinosaurs never went extinct. It appears to follow this unlikely duo on a cross-country trip, where shy, cowardly Arlo is forced to overcome his fears and learn what he's capable of.
Pixar just dropped The Good Dinosaur's full-length trailer.
What do you think? The dino/human friendship looks like vintage Pixar fun, but we're not sold on the stylistic choice of embedding cartoony characters into an environment that's ultra photo-realistic — perhaps more so than anything Pixar's ever done.
We'll find out how it turns out this Thanksgiving, when The Good Dinosaur arrives in theaters on November 25, 2015.
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