Even after Pixar first stumbled with Cars, a derivative story with skin-deep emotions, they bounced back with some of their most profound and deeply affecting masterpieces: Up, WALL-E, Ratatouille, Inside Out. But since Disney dumped a couple of Pixar movies on its streaming platform during the pandemic, the former animation powerhouse has been stuck in a rut.
After Elio and Elemental both underperformed at the box office, and Inside Out 2 overperformed at the box office, Disney has taken a very dangerous lesson for its Pixar strategy: less originality, more sequels. We’re getting Toy Story 5 this summer, shortly followed by Incredibles 3. But Hoppers, the last gasp of Pixar’s original storytelling, proves it shouldn’t give up on original stories.
Hoppers Is Pixar’s Best Original Movie In Years
Hoppers revolves around a plucky kid named Mabel, who loves nature and will stop at nothing to preserve the animal kingdom. When the pond where she used to spend her days with her late grandmother is bulldozed by the mayor to make way for a town-wide highway, Mabel goes to extreme lengths to repopulate the pond.
With the begrudging help of her college professors, Mabel transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver body and rallies the local animals to come back to the pond and stop the construction of the mayor’s beltway. Although its premise might sound like a mix of Avatar and Furry Vengeance, Hoppers is actually Pixar’s best original movie in years.
Elemental and Turning Red were good stories, with lovable characters, but they were too specific to hit on the universal level of WALL-E or Finding Nemo. Elio was a charming little movie, but it wasn’t as memorable, or as deeply touching, as Monsters, Inc. or The Incredibles. Hoppers comes closer to reclaiming that former glory than an original Pixar film has in years.
It’s everything a crowd-pleasing animated adventure should be: it’s fun, fast-paced, dazzlingly colorful, emotionally engaging, and really, really funny (with that distinctive Pixar brand of humor that crosses the generational gap and has the whole family in stitches). It’s the best original Pixar film since the dark days of Disney+ — maybe even since Coco taught kids how to deal with death.
Hoppers is led by a fantastic voice cast. Piper Curda is hilarious and heartfelt and fully committed in the lead role of Mabel. Bobby Moynihan is funny as always as the mammal monarch King George, but he’s also responsible for some of the film’s more tearjerking moments. Jon Hamm is hysterically smug as the villainous mayor, Dave Franco is wonderfully unhinged as the villain, and Meryl Streep has a show-stopping cameo.
Hoppers Is A Blast, But It’s Also A Timely Environmentalist Parable
Hoppers is a wildly entertaining time at the movies. It has more than a few laugh-out-loud moments — including one shocking twist involving a squished bug that brought the house down at my screening — and the talking-animal antics are just as adorable as you’re expecting. But it also has a timely environmentalist message at its core.
All the best Pixar movies have a deeper message. WALL-E was way ahead of the curve in critiquing the mega-corporations escalating the threat of climate change. Ratatouille inspired audiences not to judge a book by its cover (or a chef by its species). Inside Out enlightened an entire generation to the positive role of sadness. Coco taught kids how to process grief.
Hoppers is an environmentalist parable about the pressing need to stop destroying the natural world in the name of industrial progress. A beltway will make it easier for commuters to get around the town, but it’ll also fill the atmosphere with toxic emissions — and it’ll tear down all the trees that are enriching the air instead of polluting it.
When the mayor goes too far and causes an ecological disaster that threatens the town as much as the wilderness, Hoppers hammers it home that we’re all in this together. We all share this planet — the humans (both greedy capitalists and their tree-hugging nemeses) and the animals — so we all need to take care of it, and make it a good home for each other.
Pixar Shouldn’t Give Up On Original Stories
Purely based on the numbers, it would make sense for Disney to enforce a mandate on Pixar to focus only on sequels to the franchises that work. Inside Out 2 was a humungous blockbuster smash in 2024, while Elemental barely scraped its way to the break-even point and Elio lost the Mouse House a significant chunk of change.
So, I can see why Disney’s incoming CEO Josh D’Amaro might look at those figures and determine that sequels are the way forward, and original stories are a sure-fire way to lose money. Toy Story 5 will undoubtedly be a massive box office hit when it arrives in theaters this summer, regardless of its quality, and that could open the door to Inside Out 3, Cars 4, and countless others.
But after Hoppers, I really hope Pixar doesn’t give up on original stories. You know more or less what you’re getting with Toy Story 5 or Inside Out 3, but I had no idea what to expect going into Hoppers, and it ended up being a delightful surprise. It does things no other Pixar movie has done, with characters and worlds we’ve never seen before. You don’t get that with a sequel.
Plus, it’s a good time to dust off the old ironclad argument against eradicating original movies in favor of sequels: big franchises like Toy Story and Inside Out and The Incredibles all started off as original stories. If Pixar doesn’t take a chance on original films like Hoppers, then it’ll eventually run out of franchises to milk.