Why do adults go to Pixar movies?

Source: https://www.pinterest.com

Pixar is known for it’s ability to appeal to younger audiences. However, you will be surprised with the alternative reasons for parents bringing their children to Pixar movies. In the blog post I will be analyzing two different sources to try to explore possible alternative reasons why parents are so willing to go to Pixar movies with their children. I think Pixar provides a movie with extensive complexity and clever humor. These things are incentives for adults to watch their movies.

A possible incentive for an adult or parent to go to a Pixar movie is that it’s captivating. Pixar has made a huge effort to try to make their movies not just for Kids. They do this to keep parents in mind by trying to make it entertaining for them as well. Pixar captivates adult audiences with complex characters and storylines, as well as references to movies when they were in their youth. Pixar is known for their unique characters from anything to an emotion to a talking dog, to an old man. These characters and their stories aren’t just for making kids laugh or grab their attention. It’s also for the adult. I look to a website devoted to Pixar. This source is credible because it is tied to Pixar and has in-depth analyzation of multiple movies, and how they are perceived by audiences of all ages. This source claims that “Pixar's films are full of complex thematic concerns and ideas which appeal to the older audiences”. I agree with this evidence because I have watched a handful of Pixar movies when I was a child a well as recently and while the characters in the movie remind me of my childhood, I was then engaged with the plot much more and realized how complex they really are. Knowing Pixar, they don’t stop with keeping the complexity to just one film at a time. Another aspect of their films that captivates and provides an incentive for older audiences is that they are able to tie all of their movies together by throwing in tiny little references to older movies or future movies. As seen in the picture below, they tie all of their movies together and reference older movies usually once or twice per movie. These references are small enough to where young viewers wouldn’t notice them, but adults would, adding to their ability to captivate older audiences. Pixar doesn’t stop with complex, more engaging plot lines or characters. They also don’t stop with referencing older movies in their newer movies. They include some adult humor that only adults would understand.

Source: http://pixar.wikia.com

Humor is a powerful tool. It makes people very happy. When a movie can incorporate humor it increases the overall quality of the film an well as provides a whole new set of incentives. Pixar is able to do this not just on a child’s level but also on an adult level without children picking up on the jokes. This is an incentive for older audiences to go to movies because it makes them laugh at the cleverness of the placement of these adult jokes. An article, published in 2013, written by  Hannah Loewentheil, analyzed different Pixar movies and why adults are going to see them. The website says that the humor is so successful because “While the jokes never fail to enrapture children in laughter, there is also a layer of more discreet, mature humor that you only understand once you watch the film as an older viewer”. This shows that it’s an incentive because it gives adults something to laugh at and it makes them feel like Pixar understands their situation. If I had to bring my kid to some children’s movie I would want it to be at least entertaining. Pixar’s use of their more mature humor provides an incentive for older people to come to their movies.

Pixar understands that they have a much wider audience than just children. Pixar makes very evident efforts to engage and entertain audiences of all ages. Pixar provides a set of incentives for adults that is able to bring in audiences movie after movie. These incentives for adults are the complexity of their movies, and the cleverness of the humor.

In my future blog post I will be discussing the incentives that Pixar provides that other children’s movie companies fail to.