There is a Pixar Theory out in the pop culture ether, courtesy of one very clever Jon Negroni (it’s a book too – you can get it here) – to be fair he was inspired by a video on Cracked but ran like crazy (“obsessed” is the word he uses) with the ideas contained within – that posits that every single Pixar film, and thus every character, is connected.
His reasoning is ingenious and goes far beyond the idea that of course they are since they were all created by the same studio.
Negroni argues, and quite convincingly too, that “The Grand Unifying Theory of Pixar Movies”, to give it its longer title, binds every single Pixar film together in an universe where all are deeply inter-related and have a direct consequential bearing on each other.
It was all just so much brilliantly well-argued speculation – to be fair I was a believer; it all makes such glorious good sense and who wanted to be part of a universe where every Pixar character matters deeply to the other? – but now Disney has added some official credibility to the idea by releasing a video that connects the visual and narrative dots between the Pixar films in a way that will leave you intrigue and breathless.
As Film School Rejects observes, it brings together connections you might not have otherwise noticed (unless you’re Jon Negroni, of course):
“Essentially a montage of Easter Eggs, the video reveals instances of overlap between all the Pixar films, including the titular Good Dinosaur showing up in Monsters University, those same monsters showing up in Brave, and the Brave characters in the background of Cars 2 (which technically came out the year before Brave).”
Watch it and be amazed, delighted and gleefully reminded that everything is connected in one big Gaia-esque Pixar world and we are all the better for it.
Is it enough to confirm the theory? That’s up to you to decide of course but colour me a firm believer.