Pixar’s Hoppers fuses Avatar and Up, then undermines them both

From the beginning, Pixar’s Hoppers signals that director Daniel Chong isn’t trying to tell an original story. When 19-year-old nature-lover Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) discovers her biology professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has invented Hoppers, a way to transfer a person’s mind into a robotic animal, Mabel immediately compares the technology to the neural link used in James Cameron’s Avatar films. Chong and writer Jesse Andrews go back to a brighter era of Pixar films by imitating the heartbreaking intro of Up while parodying Game of Thrones in a bid to make parents laugh. But the biggest problem with this remix is that Chong and his team have recombined those hits into a clumsy film that seems to be advocating for apathy.

Mabel has anger-management issues, and her kind grandmother (Karen Huie) taught her the calming power of spending time outdoors. Chong conveys the strength of that relationship and the relentless passage of time in the same tear-jerking fashion as Pete Docter chronicling Carl’s life in Up. Mabel’s grandma tasks the teen with protecting the glade where they spent so much time together, so when mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) announces plans to bulldoze it to make room for a highway, Mabel pledges to stop him.

Decades of family-friendly films pit plucky young people against callous, greedy developers, but Andrews and Chong make the baffling choice to undermine the value of Mabel’s advocacy at every turn. Her work protesting the highway project and trying to gather community support to stop it is depicted as annoying and pointless. Her more radical decision to steal one of Dr. Sam’s Hoppers and enlist the help of the local animal population might be the most disastrous choice a Pixar protagonist has made since Princess Merida turned her mom into a bear in 2012’s Brave.

In the guise of a robot beaver, Mabel meets George (Bobby Moynihan), King of the Beavers and the leader of an enormous settlement of animals who have been displaced by humans. While Disney’s Zootopia turned the relationship between predators and prey into a commentary on stereotyping, and DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot used it to explore the power of family and community in a harsh world, here it’s a reflection of King George’s stoic attitude: Sometimes a cute animal just gets devoured, and it should accept its fate. His mottos are “When you have to eat, eat” and “We’re all in this together,” even though, as Mabel points out, the animals are pushed into too-tight quarters because the humans are taking more than their fair share of the land. In spite of their philosophical differences, George names Mabel “paw of the king.”

When Mabel finally persuades the animals to fight back, she immediately regrets it. Hoppers is like Avatar if Jake Sully decided the Na’vi’s stance on protecting their planet was too radical, and got some of them to fight against their kin to defend the humans exploiting Pandora. Almost everything Mabel does throughout the movie just makes things worse. The one bright spot of the story is Dave Franco’s portrayal of the psychotic monarch butterfly Titus, who makes the film’s climax surprisingly scary.

Image: Pixar

At least Pixar’s animation continues to be top-notch. The other animal monarchs answering George’s call are introduced with ridiculous, showy fanfare reminiscent of the opening of The Lion King or King Triton’s court in The Little Mermaid. The chase scenes offer some goofy fun, even if they don’t have the rich background details found in Zootopia 2. An encroaching forest fire is both beautiful and terrifying. But that artistry isn’t enough to rescue an incoherent plot.

Pixar has been alternating between playing things safe with sequels to its hits and taking bigger swings with emotional human stories. Hoppers sits awkwardly between these impulses, recycling emotional moments and plots from other films while eschewing any clear moral or big moments of character growth. Everything works out in the end, but the outcome doesn’t feel earned, because Andrews and Chong actively punish Mabel for trying to make a difference. It’s hard to feel any passion for a film whose biggest message seems to be that you shouldn’t care too much about anything.

Hoppers premieres in theaters on March 6.