Thoughts on the ending of Pixar’s Hoppers

I watched Pixar’s Hoppers. It’s pretty good. The performances are fun, the environments are stunning, and the animation is really great. If you have any interest in it, I think you should check it out. But there’s something about the writing that really bothers me. It’s not the jokes, which I thought were fine (including plenty of nice little visual gag moments.) It’s also not, to my surprise, really anything about the political leaning of the plot or the themes. After the movie came out I kept hearing chatter about the rumors of how the movie’s story was “watered down” to be less politically leftist or whatever. I assumed I was going to walk away with big thoughts about this, but I don’t. The thing stuck in my craw is the thing that Pixar and Disney usually do really well: the emotional catharsis. The Pixar Formula [Warning: Obviously, I’ll be spoiling the ending of Hoppers in this post.] Pixar movies, and a lot of modern Disney movies, tend to be written a certain way. You could…