Pixar’s going to try their hand at bringing an animated film about the Day of the Dead to mainstream moviegoers with their new film, Coco.
Later this year, Pixar will roll out their next animated film, Coco. Coco tells the story of a young boy named Miguel who magically finds himself in the Land of the Dead, where he goes in search of a famed guitarist named Ernesto de la Cruz. It takes place during Day of the Dead, obviously, and will see him meet up with a trickster named Hector.
Now Day of the Dead (or “Dia de Muertos,” if you’re making an effort to say it correctly) is a Mexican holiday in observance of the dead. It focuses less on mourning, and more on honoring lost loved ones. In fact, despite the otherwise heavy topic of death, Dia de Muertos is often a celebration. Of course, it’s become par for the course that many Americans seize the day as an opportunity to drink and bring out all the sugar skull decorum they’ve been hanging onto.
Watch the first teaser trailer for Coco below:
It’s so cute, right? I love the little boy playing guitar and I love Pixar shining the spotlight on Mexican culture. I wish more movies would … do … that. Wait a second.
Hold on, what do we have here? Oh, look, a trailer for The Book of Life. How did that get here?
Honestly, I’m not here to throw Pixar under the bus or anything, but there’s more instruments in the world besides a guitar (harmonica, anyone?) and there are more “Spanish-sounding” names that don’t start with M. It’s extremely weird to have a little boy named Miguel who plays guitar in a movie about Dia de Muertos when there’s another movie that came out only a few years ago about a boy named Manolo who also loves guitar and travels to the Land of the Dead.
Of course, studios make competing films, but come on.
The Book of Life (20th Century Fox) made just about $50 million domestically at the box office. So if Pixar makes more than that this year with Coco, that means American audiences will drink anything the studio makes, which is kind of sad, because The Book of Life was a great movie. But if Coco makes about the same, it proves that American audiences don’t receive an animated movie about death that well. Which is just as sad.
But I think the biggest difference between Coco and The Book of Life is that Coco‘s Miguel is a child. So the way he interacts and understands the Land of the Dead is going to be totally different than how an adult would. That immediately makes the concept a lot more weighted, you know, just to hang out with a bunch of skeletons. Plus, death is final. That’s an intense concept.
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It’s perfectly fine if you’re interested in this movie. I think the animation looks gorgeous, it’s awesome. But go watch The Book of Life, too. It’s also great. And super similar.
Coco opens in theaters on Nov. 22.