Skip to main content

First 'Smash and Grab' images hint that Pixar still has tricks up its sleeve

smash and grab images pixar
Image used with permission by copyright holder
It’s no secret that the movie landscape is overrun with sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings. That said, certain studios — like Pixar, for example — have made a concerted effort to continue creating unique, original stories. While the studio is certainly not above milking some of its most popular franchises for all they’re worth (see: Cars 3), it has continued to nurture the vision and creativity that turned it into one of the most respected outfits in the industry.

Case in point: The studio’s internal, experimental storytelling initiative that gave teams of animators and storytellers total creative freedom to spend six months creating short films. Per ScreenCrush, Pixar artist and producer David Lally tweeted out a pair of images on Thursday from the first short film to emerge from that initiative: Smash and Grab. Lally also tweeted out a promotional image for an upcoming talk, which describes the creative experiment and the resultant film thusly:

“In 2016, Pixar launched an internal, experimental storytelling initiative to enable new creative voices and explore alternative storytelling techniques, pipelines, and workflows in production. Within the new program, filmmakers are granted total creative freedom to develop a story, design a world, and produce a short film, within six months, and without any executive supervision. Smash and Grab is a seven-minute short film that explores the use of a comic book development process, virtual production, performance/camera capture, and procedural shading and lighting techniques.”

Other than the obvious, it is tough to make heads or tails of the images, which appear to show a cycloptic robot hoarding chunks of glowing rock, and an elevated train, speeding through a desert landscape beneath the moon, stars, and setting sun.

As you might expect, the images are beautiful and we are wondering whether “comic book development process” means the entire story will be told via paneled stills, or if it will just borrow techniques from the genre.

Color us very intrigued, as the studio’s shorts preceding its films tend to be worth the price of admission themselves.

No word yet on when we will see Smash and Grab, but Pixar’s newest feature — Coco — is set for a November 22 release.

Editors' Recommendations

Adam Poltrack
Adam is an A/V News Writer for Digital Trends, and is responsible for bringing you the latest advances in A/V…
Argylle’s first trailer teases action, sex, and Henry Cavill with a bad haircut
Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard in Argylle.

Early next year, Apple TV+ and Universal Pictures are teaming up for a spy action comedy film called Argylle, which has some real-world intrigue behind the scenes. The Argylle movie is based on a book that hasn't been released yet by first-time author Elly Conway, a woman who may not exist. There's almost no digital footprint for the "real" Elly, and the main character in the movie is also named Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard). We suspect that the real novel writer is just using Elly Conway as a pen name, but that mystery will have to wait for another time. For now, the fictional Elly is about to be thrust into a spy story that is straight out of her novels.

Argylle | Official Trailer

Read more
The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked
Captain Janeway gives a speech on the bridge of the Starship Voyager

As much as fans love to praise Star Trek as groundbreaking science fiction, it’s important to remember that, for most of the franchise’s history, Trek was weekly procedural television. Until the streaming era, each series was churning out roughly 26 episodes a year, and by the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, some of the creative crew had been in the business of making Star Trek for over a decade. The franchise was a crossover commercial success, the kind of success that the money men like to leave exactly as it is for as long as it’s doing steady numbers.
The operation was essentially on rails, and there was a lot of pressure from the studio and the network to keep it that way, which accounts for the general blandness of Voyager and the early years of its successor, Enterprise. The waning years of Trek’s golden era were plagued by creative exhaustion and, consequently, laziness. Concepts from previous series were revisited, often with diminishing returns, and potentially groundbreaking ideas were nixed from on high in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
That’s not to say that Star Trek: Voyager isn’t still a solid television show, and even many Trekkies’ favorite. The saga of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her gallant crew finding their way home from the farthest reaches of the galaxy may not be as ambitious as it could have been, but it is steadily entertaining, which is why new and nostalgic fans alike enjoy it as cozy “comfort viewing.” For our part, however, we tend to enjoy the episodes that have a certain emotional intensity or creative spark, that feel like conceptual or stylistic risks. As such, you might find that our list of the 10 best Voyager episodes differs greatly from some of the others out there. We like when Voyager dared to get heavy, or silly, or sappy, or mean. So, without further ado, let’s raise a glass to the journey ...
Like Star Trek? Then check out how do I get into Star Trek?
10. Counterpoint (season 5, episode 10)

Counterpoint drops the audience into the middle of an ongoing story,in which Voyager is boarded and inspected by agents of a fascist government, the Devore. The Devore treat all travelers through their space with suspicion, but are particularly concerned with capturing and detaining all telepaths, who they view as dangerous. Despite the risks, Captain Janeway is attempting to smuggle a group of telepathic refugees to safety, all while putting on a show of cooperation for smiling Devore Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik). Much of the plot takes place in the background, obscured from the audience in order to build suspense. The real focus is on the evolving dynamic between Janeway and Kashyk, a rivalry that simmers into one of the Voyager captain’s rare romances. Kashyk works in the service of what are, transparently, space Nazis, but when he offers to defect to Voyager, can his intentions be trusted?
Beyond its intriguing premise, Counterpoint is a particularly strong production with a lot of subtle hints of creative flair. Director Les Landau and director of photography Marvin Rush, who had been both working on Star Trek since the 1980s, shoot the hell out of this story, breaking from Voyager’s even lighting and predictable camera moves to make some very deliberate choices that build a great deal of tension around what is essentially a bottle episode. The makeup team, supervised by equally seasoned Trek veteran Michael Westmore, supplies a memorable and imaginative makeup design for an alien astrophysicist who appears in all of two scenes in this episode and is never utilized again. Most of all, Kate Mulgrew provides what may be her most subtle, human performance in the entire series, embodying Janeway’s famous conviction and strength of will while also granting a rare glimpse at her more vulnerable side without ever straying into melodrama.

Read more
The Creator’s ending, explained
John David Washington stands by a bridge in The Creator.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Creator (2023).

Early in The Creator, its hero, Joshua (John David Washington), is assigned by his military superiors to track down and kill the mysterious figure known as “Nimata,” the creator of a new AI weapon that's supposedly capable of ending the war between the anti-AI U.S. and the robotic and human civilians of New Asia. It’s during this mission that Joshua crosses paths with the weapon in question, an AI child named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who has the power to remotely shut down any technological devices in close proximity to her.

Read more