Pixar uses nostalgia in latest featurette to help sell The Good Dinosaur

October 15th 2015, 4:31pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

There is no question that Pixar has done a number of remarkable things over the years, and that has given us more than our fair share of exceptional motion pictures to marvel at and share amongst ourselves. However, each of those films had to stand on their own merit. They all had to deliver in one way or another in order to live up to the high standards Pixar had ultimately created for itself in the public eye. They didn't simply get a few good ones under their belt, and they say, "Hey… We're Pixar. Trust us," for every movie from then on.

And sadly that's the feeling that is being used for the latest featurette to sell THE GOOD DINOSAUR, which only shows some flashes of the film's visuals with no story elements whatsoever to show the merits of the film. In fact, it's all built up to after showing a number of Pixar's successes to that point, once again harkening back to "We've proven we know what we're doing, so that should be good enough here." And I don't know that nostalgia for the good Pixar films is the right path to take here.

If THE GOOD DINOSAUR truly is good, show people why it's good, and hopefully they'll come out. Previous trailers have shown that the film has the capacity to do well what Pixar typically does well, and with family fare a big driver at the box office and word of mouth helping, THE GOOD DINOSAUR could be in good shape. But relying on the past to sell what's next? That seems like a cheap tactic I didn't expect to be the basis for me to see a new Pixar film, and it makes me a bit apprehensive about what they have on deck.