Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot of the studio.
Pixar has produced 15 feature films, its first being Toy Story (1995) and the most recent being Inside Out (2015). Most of the films have received both critical and financial success with an exception being Cars 2 (2011), which, while commercially successful, received substantially less praise than Pixar's other productions. All 15 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating a positive reception with audiences. The studio has also produced several short films. As of October 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide, with an average worldwide gross of $627 million per film. Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and 13 of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films. Toy Story 3 is the third all-time highest, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen, which grossed $1.274 billion in its initial release, and Illumination Entertainment's Minions, which has grossed $1.151 billion as of 2015, in comparison to Toy Story 3 's $1.063 billion.
The studio has earned 15 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Since the award's inauguration in 2001, most of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Seven have won, including Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3, as well as Monsters, Inc. (2001), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Brave (2012). Monsters, Inc and Cars (2006) are the only films that were nominated for the award, but did not win it. Up and Toy Story 3 were also the second and third animated films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (the first being Disney's Beauty and the Beast). On September 6, 2009, executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the biennial Venice Film Festival. The award was presented by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.
The short starts in with Remy introducing himself and Emile to the audience and speaking on behalf of oppressed rats everywhere. Emile starts frowning about having to speak out, while Remy pulls a scroll and a two-dimensional animation starts by presenting the relation between a human and a rat in contrast with human-dog and human-cat relationships. Remy points out that humans regarded rats in former times as sacred and luck-bringing. He says that during the Roman Empire if a white rat crosses your path, it brought good luck, while if a black rat crosses your path, it brought bad luck. He moves on to discussing black rats (Rattus rattus) and their connection to the Black Death, pointing out that it was caused by fleas not rats, resulting in the death of one third of Europe's population.
Remy is an idealistic and ambitious young rat, gifted with highly developed senses of taste and smell. Inspired by his idol, the recently deceased chef Auguste Gusteau, Remy dreams of becoming a cook himself. When an old woman sees his clan, they are forced to abandon their home; Remy is separated from them as a result of the woman's gunshots. He ends up in the sewers of Paris and eventually finds himself at a skylight overlooking the kitchen of Gusteau's restaurant.
A young alien, Stu, is inside a spacecraft taking an examination in alien abduction. He must snatch a sleeping farmer named Ernie under the watchful eye of his impassive examiner, a gelatinous blob named Mr. B. Working from memory, Stu is expected to use an array of thousands of identical unlabeled toggle switches for this purpose and Mr. B gives no hints of which one(s) to use.
In a world populated by anthropomorphic vehicles, the last race of the Piston Cup championship ends in a three-way tie between retiring veteran Strip "The King" Weathers, infamous runner-up Chick Hicks, and rookie Lightning McQueen. The tiebreaker race is scheduled for one week later at the (fictional) Los Angeles International Speedway in California. Lightning is desperate to win the race, since it would allow him to leave the unglamorous sponsorship of Rust-Eze, a rust treatment for old cars, and allow him to take The King's place as the sponsored car of the lucrative Dinoco team. Eager to start practice in California as soon as possible, he pushes his big rig, Mack, to travel all night long. While McQueen is sleeping, the exhausted Mack drifts off and is startled by a gang of four reckless street racers, causing McQueen to fall out the back of the trailer and into the road. McQueen wakes in the middle of traffic and speeds off the highway to find Mack, only to end up in the run-down desert town of Radiator Springs, and inadvertently ruining the pavement of its main road.
The short film opens with Mater playing pranks on the other residents of Radiator Springs. This sequence culminates with Mater teasing Lightning as if he had seen "the Ghostlight," a Route 66 legend recounted to Pixar by Dean Walker of the Kansas Historic Route 66 Association.
The episode begins with Mr. Incredible, Frozone, and Mr. Skipperdoo discussing the previous events, that while they were gone an evil villainess named Lady Lightbug (described by Mr. Incredible as 'sinister, yet lovely') stole the bridge connecting the city, leaving cars stuck on either side of the river trapped. Resolving to amend the situation, Frozone builds a temporary bridge of ice, and the three skate away to find the nemesis.
This short film shows Rick Dicker, a government agent assigned to aid "supers" in maintaining their anonymity, interrogating Kari about what happened when she was babysitting.
Bass, a street performer, plays a routine tune in a deserted Italian village square in the afternoon, waiting for a pedestrian to tip him in his rusty iron cup. Soon, he spots Tippy, a humble peasant girl clutching a big gold coin, with the intention of dropping it in the piazza fountain to make a wish. Bass, seizing the opportunity, immediately plays an impromptu piece, capturing the young girl's attention. Just when Tippy is about to drop the coin into Bass's cup, a newcomer steps onto the scene. Treble, a suave and flamboyant street performer, plays a more attractive song, effectively stealing Tippy's attention, much to the anger of Bass. Not to be outdone, Bass ups his ante, with Treble daring to take it even further. As the two rivals unleash their arsenal of musical weapons, trying to vie for the attention (or rather, the tip) of Tippy, the girl cowers in their wild musical cacophony, and in the process, drops her sole gold coin, which falls down a drain and gets lost in the sewers of the village.
"Supers" – humans with superpowers – are forced into civilian relocation programs after facing several lawsuits from peripheral damage caused by their crime fighting activities. Fifteen years after relocation, Bob and Helen Parr, formerly Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl respectively, and their children Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack live as a suburban family. Bob is dissatisfied with suburban life and his white-collar job and longs for the glory days. On some nights, Bob and his old friend Lucius Best, formerly Frozone, perform vigilante work. One day, Bob loses his temper when his supervisor refuses to let him stop a mugging, causing Bob to be fired. Returning home, Bob finds a message from a mysterious woman named Mirage, who convinces him to become Mr. Incredible again and gives him a mission to destroy a savage robot called the Omnidroid on the remote island of Nomanisan, promising a substantial reward. Arriving on Nomanisan Island, Bob is able to find and defeat the Omnidroid by tricking it into ripping out its own power source.
Two ocellaris clownfish, Marlin and his wife Coral, admire their new home in the Great Barrier Reef and their clutch of eggs when a barracuda attacks, knocking Marlin unconscious. He wakes up to find that Coral and all but one of the eggs have disappeared. Marlin names this last egg Nemo, a name that Coral liked.
The film features a sheep that lived in the American West whose elegant dancing is popular with the other animals. One day the sheep-shearers arrive and shear it for wool. Having lost his coat, the sheep becomes shy and loses the confidence to dance so elegantly. It is whilst in his bare state that a benevolent jackalope comes across the little lamb and teaches him the merits of "bounding" rather than dancing (that is, getting up whenever you fall down).
Cousteau is narrating about the ocean. As he starts talking about coral reefs, Dory starts bothering him by entering the frame. The scene then cuts to an anemone that Nemo and Marlin come out of and Cousteau sighs for not being able to do his documentary. The scene cuts to real Cuttlefishes, which Dory tries to speak to. When Cousteau tells Dory to stop it, the scene cuts to a live Spanish dancer. This makes Marlin think of dancing and soon all three animated fish are dancing to some music. This infuriates Cousteau so much that he yells "Stop!" and proceeds to make a quick rant about the water cycle, concluding that "Everyone, everywhere, affects the ocean!". Dory expresses amazement and at first, Cousteau is satisfied, but when it is revealed that she was listening to the Echo inside a Conch shell, Cousteau loses his temper and starts ranting in French. For a few seconds, a cartoon still image of Cousteau appears while Musak-style music plays, on a title card which reads "Please Stand By.
Mike is obsessed with his new six-wheel drive car, and insists on showing it off to his pal Sulley. Unfortunately for Mike, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Sulley plays with the ultra-adjustable seats until an annoyed Mike asks him to stop. Mike starts the engine and the seatbelt reminder tone sounds. Sully manages to get his seatbelt on easily, but Mike finds his seatbelt stuck and accidentally locks himself out of the car while trying to unstick it. Sulley, trying to be helpful but confused by the massive amount of buttons on the dashboard, pops the hood open. When Mike goes over to close it, Sulley ends up trapping Mike in the engine compartment. Mike manages to escape, re-enters the car, and is exasperated by the continuous seatbelt reminder tone. Sulley reaches for another button on the dash, as when Mike managed to put his seat-belt on, he turned the windshield wipers on by accident. Mike shouts, "Don't touch anything!" and pushes a button that launches the entire car into chaotic malfunction, including conga music playing loudly on the car's stereo system. Mike finally ends the chaos by pulling the key out of the ignition, and Sulley adds insult to injury when, in an attempt to realign the rearview mirror, he breaks it off. Mike gets angry, orders Sulley out of the car, and speeds away, wrecking the car completely. Sulley mutters, "Huh, that's weird, the airbag didn't go off." Right on cue, the airbag inflates, and its force sends Mike flying back up the street. Sulley catches Mike, who mourns for his old car before agreeing to walk to work while the credits roll.
The parallel city of Monstropolis is inhabited by monsters and powered by the screams of children in the human world. At the factory of Monsters, Inc., employees called "scarers" venture into children's bedrooms to scare them and collect their screams, using closet doors as portals. This is considered a dangerous task because the monsters believe children are toxic and that touching them would be fatal. However, production is falling as children are becoming harder to scare and the company's chairman Henry J. Waternoose III is determined to find a solution. The top scarer is James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, who lives with his friend and assistant Mike Wazowski and has a rivalry with the ever-determined chameleon-like monster Randall Boggs. During an ordinary day's work on what is known as the "Scarefloor", another scarer accidentally brings a child's sock into the factory, causing the Child Detection Agency (CDA) to arrive and cleanse him. Mike is frequently ridiculed by the company's clerk Roz for never completing his paperwork on time.