Pixar: Gold Standard of Children's CGI Movies Quiz

Answer: Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm is known for producing the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movies, and "American Graffiti". In 1979, founder and then owner George Lucas started a Computer Division that would eventually turn into Pixar. The goal of the division was to develop new computerized filmmaking technologies. (George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012.)

Answer: The Adventures of André and Wally B.

"The Adventures of André and Wally B." was the first short film of the Computer Division that would grow into Pixar. About two minutes long (including the credits, which are rather long), it presented a simple comedy about a man being bothered by a bee. Pixar's website boasts that the short had "ground-breaking technology such as complex flexible characters, hand-painted textures, and motion blur."

Answer: Steve Jobs

In 1986 Steve Jobs, who had already co-founded Apple, bought Lucasfilm's Computer Division, spawning Pixar. According to Wikipedia, one reason that Lucas sold the division was that he was making less money after the Star Wars trilogy had ended and he needed money after having a divorce in 1983.

At this time Pixar only had about 44 employees. Nemo Lightyear and Peter Tempa are made up. John Lasseter, however, was a real person who directed several of Pixar's movies.

Answer: Create Pacman

The first version of Renderman, Pixar's software for creating computer graphics, was released in 1989. It was successful and Pixar still sells it. Movies that used Renderman include "Planet of the Apes," the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, the "Spider-man" trilogy, and "The Matrix". They also tried to sell an animation computer called the "Pixar Image Computer," but it never sold widely.
They made several animated shorts including, "Red's Dream", "Tin Toy" and "Knick Knack" in order to experiment with and show off their technology. They also earned money from making commercials for various products including Lifesavers and Listerine.
Pacman was developed by a company named Namco and has nothing to do with Pixar that I know of. Pixar did briefly have an interactive division that made a couple of video games, but that was after they released their first movie.

Answer: Toy Story

In 1937 Disney had released the first full-length animated movie, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Now in 1995, Pixar and Disney had collaborated to produce the first full-length computer-animation movie, "Toy Story". The movie's ingenious premise is that when their owner, Andy, isn't around, his toys come to life. Woody, a cowboy doll, is jealous when Buzz Lightyear, a toy spaceman, replaces Woody as Andy's favorite toy.

With cutting edge animation, good voice acting and an intriguing plot, it made about $29,000,000 on opening weekend and has grossed more than $191,000,000 worldwide. Since 1995 Disney and Pixar have gone on to produce more than fourteen popular movies, including two Toy Story sequels (one in 1999 and one in 2010), both of which also became classics.

"Chicken Run" was release by Dreamworks in 2000, and "The Incredibles" was released by Pixar in 2004.

Answer: He directed 'Toy Story,' 'Toy Story 2,' 'Monsters vs. Aliens,' and 'Kung Fu Panda'

John Lasseter was hired by Lucasfilm's computer division in 1984 as an "Interface Designer", although he had worked with them in 1983. He directed many of Pixar's short films, as well as "Toy Story" "Toy Story 2", "Cars", and "It's a Bug's Life". He has had at least five children with his wife, Nancy.
"Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Kung Fu Panda" were both produced by DreamWorks, not Pixar; and neither was directed by John Lasseter.

Answer: A Bug's Life

Dreamwork's "Antz" was released on October 2, 1998; with Pixar's "A Bug's Life" following on November 25 of the same year. "Antz" was about an ant named "Z" who rebels against his oppressive, totalitarian society. "A Bug's Life" was about an ant named "Flik" who has to try to rescue his colony from being bullied by a group of grasshoppers. Both of them got good critical reviews, but "A Bug's Life" made more than twice as much money.

"Monsters, Inc." (and its prequel, "Monsters University") might be seem as similar to Dreamwork's "Monsters vs Aliens" because they both have monsters, but they weren't released about two months apart from each other. "Monsters, Inc." was released in 2001, "Monsters vs Aliens" in 2009, and "Monsters University" in 2013. And Pixar's "Finding Nemo" was released more than a year *before* Dreamworks' "Shark Tale". Happily N'Ever After is not a Pixar movie.

Answer: Planes

Pixar and Disney released "Cars," their seventh movie, in 2006, and the sequel, "Cars 2", in 2011. Both of them starred anthropomorphic cars, including a race care named Lightning McQueen and his tow truck friend, Mater. While "Cars 2" wasn't as popular with the critics as Pixar's other movies, both films enjoyed good financial revenue. Planes was a 2013 Disney movie about a talking plane, Dusty, who gets to compete in the "Wings Across the World" race.

It is set in the same "world" as the "Cars" movies, but it is a Disney movie: Pixar did not work with Disney in order to create it. Wall-E was a 2008 Pixar/Disney movie about a futuristic robot named Wall-E who lives alone, collecting trash on the abandoned junk heap that has become of the Earth.

Answer: Pizza Planet

"Pizza Planet" was in "Toy Story" as a restaurant that Andy goes to with his parents. Woody and Buzz are lost but they see a "Pizza Planet" truck and they ride it because Woody hopes they can find Andy there. The truck appears in most other Pixar films, although for some reason they didn't put it in "The Incredibles".

In "Cars" it becomes an actual character named "Todd". "Brave" was set in medieval Scotland, so they couldn't have an actual truck; it appears as a wooden trinket in a witch's cottage.

In "Wall-E" it appears as a broken down truck among the rubble on planet Earth.

Answer: 2006

"Chicken Little" (2005), Disney's first computer animated movie that didn't involve Pixar, hadn't been as profitable as most or all of the films that they had done with Pixar's help (although it was profitable). So it was probably a good idea (I think) for Disney and Pixar to merge together in a $7,400,000,000 deal. Pixar's shareholders got 2.3 shares of Disney stock for every share of Pixar stock that they had held. According to Wikipedia, John Lasseter owned about one-half of Pixar when the deal happened, so of course this gave him large amounts of Disney stock.

When he passed away in 2011, $4.6 billion of Disney stock went into a trust run by his wife.