The good citizens of Sequelsville welcome its newest member: Pixar! The success of the Toy Story sequels, along with Cars 2 because God hates us all, has apparently made Pixar as sequel-happy as anybody else. Monsters Inc. 2, a prequel to the original hit, is slated for next year. Sure glad they’re tying up all those loose ends regarding how silly cartoon monsters learned how to become silly cartoon monsters.
And, while they haven’t been officially confirmed by Pixar yet, Finding Nemo 2 and Toy Story 4 are all but givens to be announced next. After that? Probably more, and then even more. Remember, Disney has a big stake in what Pixar does and, since Disney basically owns Sequelsville, if they want all these franchises to be never-ending sagas, then that’s exactly what will happen.
But that doesn’t mean they have to be awful and depressing to watch (looking in your direction, Mater). As I did with Saturday Night Live, it’s time to dig up ten possible Pixar sequels, and how they can successful. And, luckily for me, Pixar has unveiled EXACTLY ten franchises so far, which meant less time building a list, and more time thinking of ways to make these films awesome.
Well, my version of awesome, anyway. And isn’t that the only one that should count? Oh, and before we go on:
Lots of ‘em. So keep that mind, K?
10. Toy Story 4
The Story So Far: Andy, a budding hoarder who keeps his childhood stuff no matter what, goes to college and finally gives his old toys away, to a little girl who may or may not accidentally flush a few of them down the toilet within a week.
What’s Next: No toilets, don’t worry. And it shouldn’t just be the continuing wacky adventures of the toys in a new house. This is one of the best trilogies ever so, if there’s going to be a 4th, there needs to be a huge twist. Namely, that the toys need to be found out. Somebody walks in on them one second too early, sees them moving around, and a media sensation is created. Toys all over the world are scrutinized, poked, prodded, and ultimately outed as being alive. Government agencies and politicians step in to figure out whether these toys are citizens or property, and armies everywhere plan wargames designed around the very real possibility of a mass toy invasion.
Meanwhile, the parents want to sell Woody and the gang to some cheesy reality show, but the little girl doesn’t want them to, and some of the toys are fine with it, but others aren’t and, all throughout, the toys’ eternal friendship is tested moreso than ever. It’s like Civil War, only with cheap plastic playthings.
And where’s Andy during all this? In college. Getting laid. Talking toys? Meh.
9. The Incredibles 2
The Story So Far: A family of deactivated superheroes kill a supervillain and get to be superheroes again, just in time for a new supervillain to show up and annoy everybody. It probably would’ve been easier for this new guy to appear when the main bad guy was STILL ALIVE, but apparently team-ups are for evil weenies.
What’s Next: Clearly the new bad guy isn’t important and won’t factor in this, since he has a name, I don’t know it, I could easily go to Wikipedia to learn, it, but I don’t want to. So there.
But the baby? TONS of untapped goodness in that tiny, Big-Head-Mode-inflicted body. Unlike the rest of his family, who have one power each and that’s about it, Jack-Jack has more powers than he does uh-ohs in his diapees. He can shape-shift, float, shoot lasers, teleport, set himself on fire, pass through solid objects , fix up a delicious bowl of mashed ‘taters at will, and turn into a ferocious monster. An Incredibles sequel should be all about him, preferably as an angsty teen who rebels against his totally-uncool superhero parents the only way he knows how: by blowing up everything and sending the world into utter chaos, Joker-style. And, much like Joker, he doesn’t have a plan either, other than to make his Mom and Dad totally regret not letting him go see Cannibal Corpse with all his buddies.
8. Brave 2
The Story So Far: Merida (the ginger) battles a demon bear, who is killed by another demon bear who is actually Merida’s mother, who became a demon bear because Merida fed her a cursed cake, which had been hexed by a witch to turn whoever eats it into a demon bear, something Merida did not know about. The moral? Bears suck. And witches ain’t so hot either.
What’s Next: A ginger uprising. Absolutely, positively, a ginger uprising. In case you weren’t aware, anti-redhead attitudes were just as prevalent back then as they are today, if not more so. Not that we haven’t made progress; back then, people thought redheads were devils, faeries, Judases, or vampires, and that our various bodily fluids were made out of magic. Today, they just don’t have souls. Baby steps.
So Merida and her family are run out of Scotland (which, even on its best day, has a relatively small percentage of redheads within its borders), due to some of them having red hair. So it’s time to wander the countryside, find other gingers who are being ostracized due to their budding vampirism, and build a redheaded army that will overthrow the new regime and usher in a new, much paler, era of Scottish rule. Well, technically it’d be an old era, since these guys were royalty already. But the rangas were outnumbered in the castle before; after this movie, however? Welcome to Gingerlandia!
7. Wall-E 2
The Story So Far: The spaceship containing all the remaining obese humans lands on Earth, which is habitable again. The ending credits show that, over the centuries, humans not only rebuild Earth, but gradually lose weight and regain all their old mobility. In other words: alright, a challenge for me!
What’s Next: Any movie where the epilogue shows generations of peaceful progress is going to be hard to improve upon (or ruin, depending on how you look at these things). Luckily, we’re dealing with humans here, and there are few things we can’t utterly screw up if we really want to. In this case, Earth is restored, civilization rises…and we proceed to quickly trash it again. Hey, it couldn’t possibly get that bad again, right? We’ll know when it gets out of hand; then we’ll clean up.
And what’s poor Wall-E and Eve to do about this? Simple: turn into hostile, angry robot rogues. Remember, they’re robots, so they’re basically immortal as long as their batteries stays charged and their parts keep getting replaced. So they see the same race they helped save destroy their home once again, and this time they’re NOT HELPING. If anything, they’re going to hurt humanity by not only refusing to pick up trash and detect fresh, green locales to squat in, but by recruiting a whole army of Wall-Es and Eves to crush, main, shoot, and destroy the worst offenders.
It’d have the pissed-off edge that Captain Planet never possessed. It’s even got a built-in tagline: “Clean Up Your Mess, Or BECOME The Mess.”
6. Finding Nemo 2
The Story So Far: Nemo is found. The title kinda gave it away from the start, huh?
What’s Next: For starters, Nemo should not get lost AGAIN. That kind of crap murdered the Home Alone franchise, as any parents who loses their child twice should have DSS called on them immediately. And then shot. In Marlin’s case, he could be turned into a tiny fillet for tiny appetites.
More than likely, the sequel will involve finding Dory’s family, who she quickly mentions as having lost early in the film. And that’s fine, provided you do it right. And “right” involves Dory constantly deciding that every living thing she meets is part of her family, which would include various fish, turtles, dolphins, a coral reef, and a Colossal Squid. It won’t matter if she ran into turtles and sharks in the first film, since she has no memory. She can remember Marlin-related things, but that’s only because she totally wants his gonopodium. A pivotal scene about that, by the way, absolutely should be included in the unrated DVD release.
Now, usually when kid’s movies do this “find my family” thing, the main character decides that their best friends are their true family, because of the True Value Of Friendship and blah blah blah other stuff that Disney has all but trademarked at this point. My version, however, would involve Dory totally finding her real, actual family: a group of filthy-rich sea slugs who may or may not be involved in the underwater drug cartel. Because family and friends are great and all, but fat bank accounts are far better. Even though fish don’t have banks, since they’re fish. They probably store their money inside of a long-dead giant starfish or something.
5. A Bug’s Life 2
The Story So Far: The evil leader of the grasshoppers is eaten by a bird, and peace is restored to the ant kingdom at last, at least until a little kid runs after an errant ball and squishes everybody. Being teeny’s a hard-knock life, man.
What’s Next: Simple: go power-mad. The two main characters reign as King and Queen of the ants, but life as monarchs of a peaceful kingdom can get so drab. Why not seek out new worlds and conquer them? Flick, the King Ant, is a technological wizard who now has access to royal fortunes that they clearly possess because I said so, and could create weapons of mass destruction the likes of which would fell any army.
There was a city in the first movie, full of tough bugs. Prove you’re tougher! Track down any place where your circus bug friends are performing, you can easily invade while everybody is busy staring at the sideshow. An ant world only takes up about 20 square feet of space. Find the next-closest ant world (even if you have to travel a whole 40 feet to do so), and make it yours. The possibilities are endless!
So how are they stopped? I already told you: little kid runs after an errant ball and squishes everybody. What, you thought I was fooling?
4. Cars 3
The Story So Far: A talking racecar becomes a multiple-time grand champion, and then plays second-banana to a retarded tow truck with a second career as an international spy. Just like Richard Petty did.
What’s Next: Can Mater be taken apart and sold as scrap? And can his suffering, as his body is slowly ripped to pieces, be extended to 90 minutes? Cuz that would be awesome. Randy Newman could easily write a song about that.
3. Monster’s Inc. 3
The Story So Far: The monsters learn that their world can be powered by the laughter of children, and not just their screams. The monsters then spend their workday making children laugh, presumably by telling them that somebody got paid to think Cars 2 was a good idea.
What’s Next: You know those stereotypical burnt-out hippies, who go on and on about how we’re a tiny universe inside a bigger one, which is also a tiny universe inside and even BIGGER one, and it just goes on and on until a Spongebob marathon comes on and they forget about the whole thing?
Well, they’d be enamored with Monster’s Inc. 3, where the Monsters find themselves being tormented by…more monsters. Bigger, scarier monsters than they could ever hope to be. And these monsters aren’t powered by laughter; they actually DO need their victims to scream in terror. Our heroes are out of practice, since they haven’t actually had to be menacing in years, so what can they do? Not a whole lot, especially once the evil monsters discover the portal to the human world and start terrifying THEM as well. This convinces the humans that the funny monsters have reverted back to fear tactics, and so they send in the troops. This causes some of the good monsters to rise up against the humans, while others are trying to keep the peace, since they need human happiness to survive.
Y’know, after reading that back, that’s not a bad film synopsis at all. Screw it; let’s sell this one to Tarantino, and leave Disney weave some banal tale of wacky baby monsters learning how to make people giggle.
2. RataTWOille
You just know they’d title it that way, and they would be oh-so-proud of themselves for doing so.
The Story So Far: Remy becomes the best chef in France, until his restaurant is shut down since he’s, well, vermin. Luckily, the health board doesn’t seem to notice his new restaurant, La Ratatouille, which features a giant wooden rat as its logo. But hey, it’s probably nothing. It’s not like two restaurants in the same city could have a similar rat infestation, right? No movie about a sewer rat who creates gourmet cuisine from scratch would ever be that unrealistic.
What’s Next: Rats in the kitchen. Many, many rats. You can’t run a restaurant with two chefs and one waiter; eventually more workers need to be brought in. They can’t be people, lest a mass hysteria unfold. So Remy would have to hire rats. Dirty, dirty rats, who don’t always wash their hands (hell, a lot of people workers don’t do that, why would a rat automatically do so?), are now handling the food at a popular restaurant on a full-time basis. So yes, RataTWOille would document the mass sickness that would arise from eating at this restaurant, as well as the arrest of its owner for knowingly funding such a public health risk.
The film ends with Remy eking out a living in the only place a rat can safely handle food: a high school cafeteria. It’s embarrassing and degrading, but it still beats picking through garbage with the rest of his clan.
1. Up 2
The Story So Far: An old curmudgeon gets over his wife being dead, and all but adopts an overweight Boy Scout and a talking dog. Lords know where they end up living, since the old man’s house stays behind in South America, and you have to think he blew his entire pension on the ten billion helium balloons he used to get it there.
What’s Next: What’s next? How about investigation for freakin’ child abduction? It doesn’t matter if the kid’s parents are largely absent from his life; they’re still his parents, and the old man is still considered a dangerous nutball who punched out a construction team, kidnapped a child, and somehow flew away in his own house. Courts, by and large, give less than a crap how fantastical something is, only how illegal it is. And removing property from its place of origin, without permission or filling out any of the proper paperwork, is beyond breaking the law.
So the majority of the film should pretty much be Disney’s version of The Fugitive, where the old man and his “family” continually escape from various authorities, not to mention angry parents who want their baby back so they can continue to do nothing with him and ruin his childhood. And once the feds gets wind of that translating collar his dog sports, they’re gonna want to know a lot more about it, including where the Hell he got it. Kidnapping, property damage, assault, zoning violations…did we mention he killed a guy in the first film? This sequel can only end in the electric chair, honestly, which would make the original seem far less depressing in comparison.
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