Pixar won the 2009 Oscar for Best Animated Feature with Up. All seven Pixar films released since the creation of the category have been nominated. Five have taken home the Oscar: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Three of those five Oscar winners— Up, The Incredibles and Ratatouille— are Power of Idealism films.

The protagonist in Power of Idealism film wants to stand out from the crowd, to be unique or special or to live an extraordinary life. These characters often play the role of the rebel, the romantic, the outsider, the iconoclast, the artist, or the maverick.  Power of Idealism stories are about rebellion, loss, longing and transcendent love.

The protagonist in Up is curmudgeonly Carl (Ed Asner), the last stubborn holdout in a large urban renewal scheme.  His beloved wife is dead and he seemingly has nothing to live for.  When he defends his home with his cane, actually drawing blood from a construction worker, Carl is legally ordered into a retirement home.  Instead, he makes an extraordinary and dramatic escape.  But let’s back up a little.

The film begins in the era of newsreels and the amazing derring-do of movie serials.  These 1930’s stories are filled with exotic adventures and handsome heroes who conquer far-off lands to bring back strange and exciting discoveries.

As a little boy, Carl is mesmerized by fantastic tales about the famous explorer, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer).  The newsreels show Muuntz celebrated and lionized and then humiliated.  The skeleton of Muntz’s greatest discovery, a large flightless bird from the wilds of South America, is denounced as a fake. As Carl walks home from the movies, he longs to be a legendary explorer.  He imagines a crack in the sidewalk to be a yawning canyon and leaps it in a single bound while an imaginary newsreel breathlessly narrates his “great adventure.”

Up is a delightful adventure story for kids and a powerful adult story about how regret, loss and grief are, at last, resolved.  Over the course of the movie we see Carl cling to his belief Ellie was denied her “Big Adventure.”  He feels responsible and is determined to plant the house he promised her at Paradise falls.

.

Carl and Russell slowly and painfully drag Carl’s heavy empty house behind them.   When the house is nearly in place Carl finally reads Ellies “Big Adventure” book.  In it she says her ordinary life with Carl was the very best and very biggest adventure of all.  At the end of the movie, Carl is able to sacrifice the dead house to save the living Russell.  Carl finds his next “Big Adventure” with Russell and his mom as a treasured part of a new family.

.

Pixar’s The Incredibles tackles some of the same themes about what it is to be ordinary and what it is to be extraordinary. Stripped of his status, Mr Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), is in the government equivalent of the witness protection program for decommissioned superheroes.  He is stuck in a boring, dead-end desk job.

.

Mr Incredible chafes at having to hide his superpowers and pretend to be ordinary. Finally, he is tempted out of his enforced “retirement” by the lure of one last assignment.  It is a trap.  The villain of the movie, Syndrome (Jason Lee), created himself when Mr Incredible rejected him as a sidekick years earlier.  Mr Incredible, haughtily said at the time:  “Like most heroes, I work alone.”   This rejection festered in Syndrome.  With evil in his heart, a cunning wit and brilliant technology in his hands, Syndrome grows up to turn the tables on all superheroes.  In the end, after defeating Syndrome, Mr Incredible finds that his most extraordinary adventure of all is the ordinary love and support of his family.

.

Ratatouille is about an adventurer of a different kind— a rebellious and artistic mouse gourmet.  “There’s something about humans, they taste. . . . They discover!” realizes Remy (Patton Oswalt).  Rejecting the usual diet of garbage, French country rat Remy decides that in order to eat as well as humans he needs to learn to cook.

.

Early on in the film, Remy is separated from his family.  In his imagination, he meets his hero Gusteau, a famous chef.  Gusteau teaches Remy the lesson that Carl learns in Up.

Gusteau: (appearing as illustration in a cookbook) If you are hungry, go up and look around, Remy. Why do you wait and mope?

Remy: Well, I just lost my family. All my friends. Probably forever.

Gusteau: How do you know?

Remy: Well, I…  You are an illustration. Why am I talking to you?

Gusteau: You just lost your family. All your friends. You are lonely.

Remy: (sarcastically) Yeah, well you’re dead.

Gusteau: Ah, but that is no match for wishful thinking. If you focus on what you left behind. You will never be able to see what lies ahead. Now go, get up and look around.

The lesson of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, imparted in both Up and The Incredibles, is delivered by Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) the famous food critic in Ratatouille.  Remy serves the difficult to please gourmet the simplest and most humble dish— ratatouille, a dish of mixed cooked vegetables.  The meal sends Anto Ego back to his childhood, remembering the fragrant, comforting and flavorful dish his mother used to prepare for him.  The critic concludes:

… (T)here are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, and the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: “Anyone can cook.” But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.

The themes in Power of Idealism films:  childhood heroes often are not what they seem; to resolve loss we must look beyond the surface, cherish the positive and let go of the rest; longing for what you don’t have (or what you are missing) prevents you from experiencing and enjoying what you do have in life, and the secret to happiness is to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  Power of Idealism characters must learn to find the sparkle and passion in the small details of life like family, friends and the magical but mundane moments of living and loving (and cooking).

“In Disney Pixar’s new movie, “Wall-E,” the female heroine is a shiny all-white robot with no seams or overt buttons showing. Remind you of anything? Actually, it brings to mind most of the Apple product line.  Could this be the product-placement model of the future?”  This is a quote from an interesting newsletter article from Ad Age.

What does this have to do with screenwriters?  There is a really important lesson here.

The article goes on to say:

“The idea is that your logo isn’t going to be featured or your product isn’t going to be shown … but your essence runs through the whole thing instead… ‘How many companies could do that?’ Not too many, I think.”

A strong brand is crucial for marketers.  Apple has such a strong brand it doesn’t even need to be mentioned by name in the hit film, Wall-E. The MAC start up tone and the sleek design is all you need to say “Apple.”

Essence is defined as: the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something.  Synonyms are: soul, spirit, nature; core, heart, crux, fundamental quality

Every pitch you write, every character in your story and every script you finish should have an equally strong brand.  What is the soul or spirit of what you are trying to convey?  Is there an iconic image that captures this  perfectly for your script and your character?  If not, find one.

In a few seconds the audience (or executive in a pitch session) should be able to get the essential core of your story and character. One of my favorite quotes is by Albert Einstein:  “If you can’t say it simply and briefly you probably don’t understand it well enough.”

Do your understand your story and character well enough to distill them down to their most fundamental quality?  Can you convey that briefly and simply?  Do you have an iconic image that sums everything up?  What I am asking is incredibly hard.  It requires immense effort and a bit of creative genius.  You must care enough about your script to go that extra mile, if you want it to succeed.

The Nine Character Types helps distill the essence of a character and story instantly.  It helps you understand the fundamental principles at the core of your script.