Pixar’s Hoppers fuses Avatar and Up, then undermines them both

From the beginning, Pixar’s Hoppers signals that director Daniel Chong isn’t trying to tell an original story. When 19-year-old nature-lover Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) discovers her biology professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has invented Hoppers, a way to transfer a person’s mind into a robotic animal, Mabel immediately compares the technology to the neural link used in James Cameron’s Avatar films. Chong and writer Jesse Andrews go back to a brighter era of Pixar films by imitating the heartbreaking intro of Up while parodying Game of Thronesin a bid to make parents laugh. But the biggest problem with this remix is that Chong and his team have recombined those hits into a clumsy film that seems to be advocating for apathy.