The Pixar Theory posits that all Pixar movies take place in the same universe, and this is how the latest movie, Turning Red, fits into that.
Turning Red is the latest Pixar film to be released, and with its release comes theories and speculation on how it fits into the popular Pixar Theory. Like the Pixar films before it, Turning Red features a plethora of Easter eggs and references to both its predecessors and upcoming films which, in turn, leads to the idea of it and other movies taking place within the same continuity. Pixar's Turning Red is a coming-of-age story about Meilin “Mei” Lee, a Chinese Canadian girl on the cusp of puberty. One day, Mei discovers that she has the power to transform into a giant red panda like the other women in her family, and she has to learn how to handle this revelation along with her overbearing mother and the general perils of being a teenager. Pixar's red panda is a very unsubtle—albeit effective—metaphor for both puberty and the idea of growing up, as a whole, and it's one that works with the generally chaotic tone and themes of the film. Turning Red takes place in the early 2000s, setting it somewhere between the events of Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo, but before Ratatouille in Pixar's timeline. While there isn't a lot of connectivity between Domee Shi's Turning Red and other Pixar films, there are still connections to be found that may point towards its place in the studio's rumored shared universe.
Pixar’s Shared Universe Theory Explained
The Pixar Theory is a popular theory started by Jon Negroni that posits that, through the usage of Easter eggs and fan theories, every Pixar film takes place in the same universe. The theory starts with the idea that the dinosaurs in The Good Dinosaur not only evolved to the point of obtaining humanlike intelligence, but that based on Kevin from Up’s resemblance to some of the creatures in The Good Dinosaur and a scrapped idea of her eggs being an elixir of youth, they also developed magic, or magic-like abilities that could be passed onto others. Charles Muntz is posited to have been shunned by the academic world as a means of covering up his discovery, the government then using his work to secretly create the superpowered beings in The Incredibles.
At some point, humans used the dinosaurs to develop the magic shown in Brave which, combined with humans performing experiments on animals, is used to make animals all across the world highly intelligent, as seen in Finding Nemo and Ratatouille. While that’s happening, Syndrome’s Zero Point Energy and AI technology is used by Buy n Large to bring inanimate objects to life, including the toys in the Toy Story franchise; Buzz’s batteries in Toy Story 3 having the Buy n Large logo on them contributes to the idea. Eventually, the machines take over Buy n Large and pollute the Earth to force humans to leave and let them rule over it, which is why there aren’t any humans in the Cars franchise, but due to not having humans to provide for them and fossil fuels being more scarce due to the dinosaurs dying more gradually, all of the machines on Earth die out except for WALL-E which, naturally, leads to the events of WALL-E. From there, the Pixar Theory states that, based on art in the end credits, the plant WALL-E found grows into the tree featured in A Bug’s Life.
Centuries later, animals are believed to be mutated by Buy n Large’s leftover radiation and become the monsters in Monsters, Inc., with them then becoming the dominant species after humans and machines die out. Because of this, the doors used to travel to the human world are stated to actually use magic to bring monsters to the past to harness energy from humans. This ties into the final factor of the Pixar Theory which states that Boo grew obsessed with the idea of seeing Sully again and somehow found a way to harness the magic of the doors to travel through time to try and find him; it’s also possible that the recurring Easter eggs in the Pixar films were left behind by Boo in her travels. Eventually, Boo grows into the witch from Brave whose magic helped make animals intelligent, thus giving the Pixar Theory something of a cyclical nature.
Turning Red’s Pixar Easter Eggs & References
Turning Red has a wide variety of Pixar Easter eggs and references. Like all Pixar films, there are appearances of the Pizza Planet truck, the ball that Luxo Jr. flattens, and of course "A113", the number of the classroom many Disney and Pixar alumni studied in at CalArts. The Pizza Planet truck can be seen in the climax of the film when Mei is racing off to the 4*TOWN concert, Luxo Jr.’s ball can be seen in Tyler’s pool, and A113 is seen on a 4*TOWN ticket in the credits.
There is a sign for a restaurant at the beginning of the movie called Bao, a reference to the Pixar short film Bao, which was also made by Turning Red’s director Domee Shi. Mei also has a toy of the titular character from Purl, which Shi was also involved with, as well as a stuffed rabbit that resembles the rabbit from Burrow. A sticker of a rainbow unicorn can be spotted on a phone in Turning Red, a reference to Inside Out, the bathroom has a sticker of a clownfish, and the school's science classroom contains a skeleton of Kevin from Up. Finally, the sky during the day often resembles the iconic cloudy sky wallpaper of Andy’s room in Toy Story, and Miriam’s skateboard also has a decal of the Star Command logo.
Does Turning Red Fit Into Pixar’s Shared Universe Theory?
Nothing about Turning Red gives a strong case for it to be part of the Pixar Theory, but at the same time, nothing about it explicitly works against the idea. Since Turning Red takes place in 2002, it’s easy enough to fit it into the timeline around the same period as the first two Toy Story films, and with magic being a key component of the Pixar shared universe theory, the magic featuring in Turning Red can be an extension of that. In addition, the red panda curse is dealt with by enacting a ritual that brings someone into the astral plane, which is essentially the afterlife; that’s very similar to how characters are able to project their souls into the Great Beyond in Soul, so it’s possible that the ritual was adapted from that.
Why Pixar’s Shared Universe Theory Is Becoming Harder To Make Work
At the 2015 D23 Expo, Pixar veterans Mark Andrews and Ronnie del Carmen explicitly shot down the Pixar Theory, but even beyond that, the idea becomes harder to make work with every film. Every movie from Pixar Animation Studios is wildly different from the one that came before it, and because of that, it becomes more difficult to come up with explanations for how they can all work together. The Pixar Theory ran into this problem from its conception with how it wasn’t able to come up with a concrete explanation for how Boo could harness the power of the doors, so if the theory was facing those sorts of problems from the start, then it will only get even worse in the future.
That being said, none of that takes away from the enjoyment factor of the theory. Even if the Pixar Theory gets harder to justify in the future, the idea that the movies even could exist in the same universe is fun to think about and can even add more to the stories. Pixar's Turning Red doesn’t contribute a lot to it, and there’s no telling if future Pixar films will do any better in that regard, but either way, the Pixar Theory is still a fun concept to think about.
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