Hoppers (2026)

[Sotiris]

The female lead looks like a guy. That's a failure of character design. Is feminism the reason behind this peculiar creative choice? You can design a modern female lead, even one who's a tomboy, and still make her recognizably female.

And at Disney making yet another POC- and/or female-led film with a white male as the villain. Not on the nose at all.

[PatchofBlue]

I personally think the heroine's look lines up with the real-life "tomboys" I knew growing up. They do a better job here making an unconventional leading heroine than they did with Cabbage Patch Merida.

[The Disneynerd]

Glad they said James Cameron’s Avatar was an inspiration for this movie.

I think at this point it IS Avatar but Pixar style (which was already only a knock off of Pocahontas kinda). I can already see the entire storyline infront of me

Her design is ok, but nothing Memorable. Looks like a Mix of Hiro and Gogo

Why is thie kinda the Worst upcoming Pixar announcement thing since either Lightyear or Elio. Seriously those movies dont have that personal Touch that 90% of their catalogue has. Elio dealt with having to show ur differences in a society that fears it, Soul about the meaning of life, Coco about life after death, Inside Out being about how all our emotions including negative ones are vital...

And then theres this... a girl who has to show the World that beavers have Feelings too lol. This doesnt feel pixary at all. I rather have Toy Story 12 than this

[Farerb]

Neither this nor Elio excite me.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Neither this nor Elio excite me.

I disagree on Elio being exciting since the new trailer I saw at D23 highlighted an epic space adventure.

Besides, even if Hoppers has a storyline that is weird and unusual for Pixar, I’ll take that over whatever Brave or Good Dinosaur were.

You can dread them all you want, but you had better root for them to be hits and support them, otherwise you’ll just end up contributing to Pixar becoming nothing more than a sequel factory.

[UmbrellaFish]

Pixar’s in a better state than WDAS, which makes me more optimistic about the final quality of this film. I thought Elemental would be a disaster, and it wasn’t.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Pixar’s in a better state than WDAS, which makes me more optimistic about the final quality of this film. I thought Elemental would be a disaster, and it wasn’t.

Agreed on everything you said, though WDAS has had one great film this decade in Encanto.

[Pokenonbinary]

I hate that she will be a beaver most of the movie because her design is probably the best I've seen in years

[Sotiris]

I guess it's Pixar's turn to be called racist for having protagonists of color turn into animals for much of their respective films' runtime. Joe got turned into a cat in Soul, Meilin into a red panda in Turning Red, and now Mabel into a beaver in Hoppers.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

I guess it's Pixar's turn to be called racist for having protagonists of color turn into animals for much of their respective films' runtime. Joe got turned into a cat in Soul, Meilin into a red panda in Turning Red, and now Mabel into a beaver in Hoppers.

No, no, no, no. That second part is not a fair comparison because she was given the power to turn into a panda but she knows how to control it, and for the most part she stays in her human form for most of the movie.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't see PIXAR as being in a better state right now, they just have a better roster of films from the past to choose to make sequels to because they jumped into the CGI game long before WDAS did. That, and the type of films WDAS are best at (fairy tales and musicals) generally don't lend themselves as well to sequels. But I could be wrong if Moana ends up also making a billion like IO2. Frozen II did, and I expect Zootopia 2 and Frozen III will, so who knows.

I personally don't mind the lead's design, but the animal being a beaver here is just, eh... I'm sort of at a bottom level of interest for all of Moana 2, Elio, and Hoppers, tbh. I will see them, just not excited from what we've been shown. Sad to say, but the announced sequels for Frozen and Zootopia (and to a degree Incredibles 3 and TS5) are the ones I'm looking forward to the most right now until they announce something original that's interesting again.

[Pokenonbinary]

I guess it's Pixar's turn to be called racist for having protagonists of color turn into animals for much of their respective films' runtime. Joe got turned into a cat in Soul, Meilin into a red panda in Turning Red, and now Mabel into a beaver in Hoppers.

No, no, no, no. That second part is not a fair comparison because she was given the power to turn into a panda but she knows how to control it, and for the most part she stays in her human form for most of the movie.

It doesn't matter, the point is that studios decide to turn their leads of color into animals so this way they can market the movie to racist audiences

"Oh you don't like black people, well she's a frog for most of the movie, so come and see it"

And I love all those movies, but it's a very obvious trope, not just a coincidence

[DisneyFan09]

He looks somewhat similar to Bob Parr from The Incredibles

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

He looks somewhat similar to Bob Parr from The Incredibles

Mmm, not exactly. Jerry’s head is much smaller than Mr. Incredible’s head size.

[DisneyFan09]

He looks somewhat similar to Bob Parr from The Incredibles

Mmm, not exactly. Jerry’s head is much smaller than Mr. Incredible’s head size.

Okay, we can agree to disagree Just because I wrote that he looked similar, doesn`t mean that he looked exactly identical.

[PatchofBlue]

No, no, no, no. That second part is not a fair comparison because she was given the power to turn into a panda but she knows how to control it, and for the most part she stays in her human form for most of the movie.

It doesn't matter, the point is that studios decide to turn their leads of color into animals so this way they can market the movie to racist audiences

"Oh you don't like black people, well she's a frog for most of the movie, so come and see it"

And I love all those movies, but it's a very obvious trope, not just a coincidence

Well, at least in the case of Turning Red, she is transformed into the most Asian-coded animal on the planet, so the connection is still there.

Anyways, Pixar never gets in trouble for these things the way Disney does. At least, never to the same extent. I can kind of understand the logic behind people being upset that Disney's first black princess was green for most of her movie, but the body-swapping/animal transforming trope was at least as prominent in SOUL, and that didn't receive nearly as much pushback.

[Pokenonbinary]

It doesn't matter, the point is that studios decide to turn their leads of color into animals so this way they can market the movie to racist audiences

"Oh you don't like black people, well she's a frog for most of the movie, so come and see it"

And I love all those movies, but it's a very obvious trope, not just a coincidence

Well, at least in the case of Turning Red, she is transformed into the most Asian-coded animal on the planet, so the connection is still there.

Anyways, Pixar never gets in trouble for these things the way Disney does. At least, never to the same extent. I can kind of understand the logic behind people being upset that Disney's first black princess was green for most of her movie, but the body-swapping/animal transforming trope was at least as prominent in SOUL, and that didn't receive nearly as much pushback.

Soul received hate for the black lead transformed into non-human

But as you said audiences are more accepting of anything Pixar does

And I understand it, Soul is much more explicit in the blackness of the characters even if he spends 50% of the movie as a non-human, the other 50% is very black centric, so I guess that's why they didn't received so much hate.

And I love Turning Red, I think they did well in that movie because her being a panda is very well balanced, but also she's whitepassing (in the movie you don't differentiate her from a white girl) so it's not the same as black explicit character turned into animal

In Hoppers the main character has explicit East Asian features, Mei looked generic pixar (I remember saying in this forum that she maybe was Uyghur chinese, a white ethnic group from China)