So, one of the interesting things from the Covid-19 pandemic is that we’re seeing some movies that wouldn’t have hit streaming nearly as quickly get a streaming release, and one of these films, Onward, was one that I had been planning on seeing, not in theaters, but checking out later because of the subject matter being so nerdy. It’s a magical world mixed with technology and D&D, kind of up my alley. So was it a good film now that I got a chance to sit down and watch it on Disney+?

Onward is a story that focuses around two Elven brothers, Ian and Barley. Their life is pretty normal for their world, a world in which magic has existed but when technology became easier than magic, the magic users and magic in the world kind of faded away until everyone forgot about them and just saw it more as a legend. However, when a magical mishap happens, Barley convinces Ian that the only way to fix it is through magic and that they need to go on a grand quest, somewhat based around Barley’s favorite role playing game, so that can fix what went wrong.

Now, it’s hard not to go more into the story as that really drives some of the themes of the movie, which Pixar, like normal, does a good job of creating meaningful and real moments. I’ll just say that the biggest one is loss and kind of overcoming emotions and baggage around that loss, not by pushing it down but by exploring and questing through that loss to see what came come out of it, what new things can be found and explored. I think that it handles it really well and handles it in a way that I don’t see many other movies handle it, some of that is because delving into grief and loss can be hard for movies and doesn’t really drive a plot, though they made it work well in this one. I think it’s actually important to have a movie that does this right now though, because a lot of people, whether they fully realize it or not are going through the grieving process of their normal routine and life as we knew it. And really, there’ll be many moments outside of Covid-19 that this is true for people as well, it just stands out as a world we’re going through it together.

As for the other parts of it, the story is not complex, however, I think that is to it’s benefit. There are some decent jokes, but mainly it’s about that feeling of adventure and exploring on this grand quest and how that pairs with the theme of loss and grief and dealing with that. The jokes in this film are fine, I don’t think that they are amazingly funny, but they are generally pretty good callbacks to previous references. Also, just the concept of the world is really interesting, that idea of there being magic in the world is something that I think is meant for more than just the story as written but about finding the magic in our actual world versus just having technology for everything. But that is a much lighter and subtle theme on everything wrapped up in Onward’s versions of D&D.

The acting in the film is good as well. The main two characters, Ian and Barley are played by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt respectively. They both do a good job with the voice acting and portray emotions very well. It is a little bit funny as Ian just has that same feel and almost a bit of a look as Tom Holland does in real life. Those are the main two characters, but the others in it are good as well, there aren’t really any humdrum performances, but everyone else generally steps aside to let those two characters really drive the story. Laurel, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, has her moments to shine as well, so it isn’t just only the two of them, Ian and Barley, all of the time.

Finally, how does this compare to other Pixar films? There are a lot of Pixar films out there at this point with the Incredibles, Cars, Up, Brave, Wall-E, Toy Story 1-4, so on and so forth. I actually put Onward pretty high up on the list. I think it does a better job than some at telling a story with a complex theme without the theme being as blatantly laid out. Now, there are still moments that make it obvious what the theme is, but I don’t feel like it’s quite as forceful as it could have been portrayed if they hadn’t been careful with the story. I also like it a lot because it is nerdy, it has that interesting fantasy twist to it and the nods to Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know that I’d say it’s the best, but the ones that I for sure like better, Up, Wall-E, and The Incredibles, I think that I’d want to watch Onward more than some of them just because it has a higher fun factor to it.

Have you had a chance to checkout Onward? What are your thoughts on it, where does it fall in your Pixar rankings?

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