Pixar fandom

The Pixar fandom consists of all the fans of one or more Pixar Animation Studios productions, including feature films, shorts and other types of productions. However, feature film fans are by far the largest group, and can even be further grouped into fans of certain Pixar franchises such as Toy Story and The Incredibles. Despite this, all such fans are most often seen as a cohesive group, for example, in Inside Out parodies denying the existence of a separate Inside Out fandom (let alone Inside Out parody community) altogether.

As each Pixar movie is a critical success that earned hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, with four movies (Toy Story 3 and 4, Finding Dory and Incredibles 2) earning in excess of $1 billion, the Pixar fandom is large and disparate, with no single community hub holding a majority of Pixar fans. Likewise, there is no clear "patron saint" of the Pixar fandom, like Hitler Rants Parodies for the Unterganger community. Nevertheless, Pixar's presences on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, could be considered the closest thing to "official" Pixar fan community hubs.

Generations
Each Pixar fandom generation is defined by a movie's release and lasts until the day before the next movie's release, including a period before Pixar produced any movies. Similarly, the members of a generation are primarily defined by what movie first attracted them to follow the studio, rather than the date at which they became a Pixar fan (though, the two often place them in the same generation).

0th gen: Shorts, commercials and software (February 3, 1986 - November 21, 1995)
It is unknown if a Pixar fandom, in its current form, would have existed back then, as this era predates the modern Internet or the fandom culture on it, and at the time, Pixar was primarily focusing on non-creative content such as the Renderman software and advertisements, owing to it being known as Lucasfilm's Graphics Group prior to becoming an independent company.

The core creative leadership of Pixar, including John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton, was all hired during this period, and the three were the main creators of Toy Story. They continued to be the main creative force behind Pixar throughout the decades, and fans see this as a hindrance, especially as these "cores" may have the necessity to leave Pixar, as Lasseter did in 2018.

1st gen: Toy Story (November 22, 1995 - November 24, 1998)
Toy Story, unique in that the relationship between Disney and Pixar hadn't settled yet, has had two premieres: one by Disney, to which actors were invited, and one by Steve Jobs, to which tech figures were invited.

One of the earliest Pixar fans, and likely the only verifiable 1st gens, are the developers of the Linux distribution Debian, as its versions, ever since the first version released in 1996, are named after Toy Story characters.

2nd gen: A Bug's Life (November 25, 1998 - November 23, 1999)
At this point, DreamWorks Animation emerged as a competitor of Pixar, with their own take on the same concept, Antz. However, A Bug's Life performed a lot better critically, and Pixar movies continue to out-perform DreamWorks movies critically; despite this, meme-wise, DreamWorks movies have proven to be a lot more successful, with Shrek and Bee Movie spreading memes with a lot more traction than Monsters, Inc., Pixar's best contender.

3rd gen: Toy Story 2 (November 24, 1999 - November 1, 2001)
In November 2000, the construction of Pixar's new and current offices in Emeryville was completed, and the studio moved there. They had produced an employee-exclusive DVD, Made in Point Richmond, containing all non-movie content they had produced up to then, which was considered to be the "holy grail" of Pixar fans and was unavailable to the general public until June 5, 2018.

4th gen: Monsters, Inc. (November 2, 2001 - May 29, 2003)
Monsters, Inc. is Pete Docter's directorial debut, and indeed first Pixar movie to be directed by anyone but John Lasseter. It is also the last movie that, in Pixar's belief, was included in the original contract between Pixar and Disney to produce three feature movies (with Toy Story 2 only being produced because of the first one's success merchandise-wise).

5th gen: Finding Nemo (May 30, 2003 - November 4, 2004)
Finding Nemo is the first Pixar movie to be directed by Andrew Stanton. However, while a critical success like its predecessors, both it and its sequel have come with environmental concerns, as clownfish and blue tangs (Nemo and Dory's species respectively) are, in some respects, unsuitable as aquarium fish.

6th gen: The Incredibles (November 5, 2004 - June 8, 2006)
The Incredibles brought both the director Brad Bird and the composer Michael Giacchino into the limelight, and the two would become long-time partners of Pixar while continuing to produce content for all of Hollywood.

Proven by the success of Incredibles 2, pioneered by those calling it "the Pixar sequel people actually want", the 6th gens are possibly the largest Pixar fan generation.

Disney's acquisition of Pixar was finalized on May 5, 2006, therefore placing it as another event that could separate the 6th and 7th gens.

7th gen: Cars (June 9, 2006 - June 28, 2007)
Based on Google Trends, including data from 2004 to the present day, the amount of interest in Pixar was at its all-time high with the release of Cars. In addition, Cars proved to be a profitable source of merchandise, leading to the relatively fast development of Cars 2 and Cars 3; though, the Cars series, as a whole, is yet to surpass Toy Story in the amount of total money grossed as a franchise.

Pixar's YouTube channel was created on September 19, 2006.

8th gen: Ratatouille (June 29, 2007 - June 26, 2008)
Ratatouille is the first Pixar movie to be primarily set in a non-English-speaking human culture, and, much like Coco ten years later, has been praised for portraying it particularly well.

9th gen: WALL-E (June 27, 2008 - May 28, 2009)
WALL-E is the last movie to have resulted from the 1994 brainstorming lunch between Stanton, Lasseter, Docter and Joe Ranft, and therefore, some Pixar fans feel like this is their last "good" movie and that the studio has been on a decline ever since then.

While the founding date of the forums Pixar Planet is not clear, it appears to be around here.

10th gen: Up (May 29, 2009 - June 17, 2010)
The subreddit /r/Pixar was founded on July 21, 2009.

11th gen: Toy Story 3 (June 18, 2010 - June 23, 2011)
As noted above, Toy Story 3 is the first Pixar movie to have grossed over $1 billion.

12th gen: Cars 2 (June 24, 2011 - June 21, 2012)
So far, Cars 2 is the only Pixar movie to be received as anything less than an outstanding success critically.

13th gen: Brave (June 22, 2012 - June 20, 2013)
Brave is unique in the Pixar filmography in that it is a princess movie, and Merida has even been inducted into the Disney Princess toy line. Therefore, some believe in a fringe theory that Walt Disney Animation Studios, another studio owned by the Walt Disney Company, and Pixar exchanged Brave and Wreck-it Ralph, likely to undermine Pixar's quality while increasing that of Disney's.

"Live Action Toy Story", perhaps the most ambitious Pixar fandom project and the only feature-length Pixar fan production known to predate Andersen's Mind, was released on January 2013. However, as the project started in 2010, its creators are most likely 11th gens.

14th gen: Monsters University (June 21, 2013 - June 18, 2015)
Rather than Monsters University, the 14th gen is primarily defined by Jon Negroni's blog post positing that all Pixar movies up to this point take place in the same shared Pixar universe, first posted on July 11, 2013 and since then re-published by mainstream media. It was also picked up on by the theorists SuperCarlinBrothers and Seamus Gorman, who, altogether, have possibly inspired a subset of 14th gens.

15th gen: Inside Out (June 19 - November 24, 2015)
Inside Out is the first Pixar movie to be created mostly without the involvement of Steve Jobs, the founder of Pixar, who died in 2011.

CreativityTheEmotion first saw Inside Out in theaters on September 5, 2015 and went on to both create Inside Out parodies (starting November 7 of the same year) and seek out other Pixar content, making her a firm 15th gen.

16th gen: The Good Dinosaur (November 25, 2015 - June 16, 2016)
While The Good Dinosaur was not a failure critically, it was a failure commercially, being the first Pixar movie to result in a net loss of money for Disney. In addition, The Good Dinosaur is a movie that has failed to become recognized by even the most hardcore of Pixar fans, and therefore, a 16th gen might not really exist.

17th gen: Finding Dory (June 17, 2016 - June 15, 2017)
Finding Dory continues the trend, first established by Inside Out and further continuing with Coco, of films themed around memory.

The "disneypixar" Amino, the most popular out of any existing Pixar Amino, was founded around this time, on June 2016.

18th gen: Cars 3 (June 16 - November 21, 2017)
The founding of the Inside Out Discord, a Discord server that would eventually become Pizza Planet, happened during this period on September 26, 2017. However, as an Inside Out fan hub, it was and continues to be dominated by 15th gens.

19th gen: Coco (November 22, 2017 - June 14, 2018)
In addition to Coco, a defining moment of the 19th gen is the announcement by John Lasseter, on November 21, 2017, that he would be taking a leave due to allegations of misconduct. Later, this was upgraded to a departure from the company altogether, placing Pete Docter as the new chief creative officer.

During this period, on February 19, 2018, the previously mentioned Inside Out Discord decided on a rebranding to incorporate all of Pixar, feeling that there is not much to be found in the fandom for Inside Out alone.

20th gen: Incredibles 2 (June 15, 2018 - June 20, 2019)
Having released during the high of the superhero genre in general, spearheaded by Marvel (another of Disney's subsidiaries) and its Avengers series, Incredibles 2 is the single most-grossing Pixar film to date.

There is a considerable hostility between the 6th and 20th gens, with the 6th gens playing the "90s kids" card and believing they are the only ones entitled to Incredibles 2, an anticipated sequel, despite Pixar movies always attaining a younger audience as well.

Surreal Animation was founded amidst the hype for Incredibles 2 (and continued to garner members based on it during its initial phase as I N C R E D I V E R S E), and was therefore a product of the 20th gen; after the surrounding hype died down, the server was shut down and reestablished as a more generic server encompassing a wider scope of animated film. In addition, this time period, owing to instability over at the Pizza Planet Discord, saw the brief establishment of CreativityTheEmotion Inside Out / DDLC Parodies Discord, which, if it were to continue past its brief lifetime, would have established an Inside Out parody community as a separate entity from the Pixar fandom (in particular, the 15th gens).

The Surreal Animation founder has also expressed disappointment in the Pixar theory put forward by Negroni, and has begun formulating a Pixar theory of her own, in collaboration with CreativityTheEmotion and various other ephemereal contributors.

21st gen: Toy Story 4 (June 21, 2019 - March 5, 2020)
The reaction to the various teaser trailers for Toy Story 4 was mixed, as fans believed Toy Story 3 to be the perfect conclusion of a trilogy, but nevertheless were intrigued by the ideas put forward, which have been reworked from the ground up at least once. However, upon release, Toy Story 4 is seen as "the perfect epilogue", successfully continuing the series.

22nd gen: Onward (March 6 - December 24, 2020)
Given John Lasseter's departure, Onward is the first Pixar movie to be created without his involvement.

Before release, fans already somewhat panned the movie by comparing the logo design to that of Disney's Frozen, commenting that Frozen 2 was slated to release in November of 2019, just five months before Onward. In addition, following the plot summary release, both SuperCarlinBrothers and Seamus Gorman have considered the possibility of Onward breaking the Pixar theory, not being in the same shared universe.

At release, Onward was generally well-received critically; though not standing up to the classics that Pixar produced previously, it is still believed to stand on its own merits. However, due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Onward didn't perform as well during the box office, not being able to recoup its budget before release on home media and Disney+.

23rd gen: Soul (December 25, 2020 - June 17, 2021)
Soul is likely to be the last movie directed by Pete Docter, as he has fully moved on to his duties as CCO of Pixar.

The first teaser trailer of Soul has notably invoked a negative reaction with the comments comparing the movie's style and premise to those of Inside Out and expecting Soul to be little more than a rehash, despite the movie's afterlife premise being more in line with Coco than Inside Out. However, upon release, Soul was well-received and, like Inside Out before it, won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

In addition to affecting the box office performance of Onward, the COVID-19 pandemic was also the cause of a delay in the release of Soul, as well as a change in how it's distributed; originally intended for theaters, Soul was directly released to Disney+ instead.

Notable members

 * Theorists:
 * Jon Negroni
 * SuperCarlinBrothers
 * Seamus Gorman
 * Fan work creators:
 * PotterPhantomKitten (Inside Out)