Hoppers (2026)

It feels like a long time now since we had a truly brilliant Pixar film. There are huge swathes of people who would disagree, and they'd more than likely point to Inside Out (2015) as an obvious masterpiece. But as much as I admire Inside Out, I don't think it's in the same ballpark as my favourite Pixar films; those being Toy Story (1995) and Monsters, Inc (2001), with a few more that I'd put ahead of Inside Out. In terms of their last masterpiece, I'd say it was Toy Story 3 (2010). I visited the cinema at the weekend to asses their latest offering, Hoppers. And before the film began, we were reminded of Pixar's best work with the recently released full trailer for Toy Story 5 entertaining us and getting us in the mood for what was coming. The set up for Hoppers sounds very similar to James Cameron's Avatar films, to the point where there's a joke about the fact in the film. A young girl, Mabel (Lila Lui as a child, Piper Curda as the older Mabel), is an animal lover, with her love for nature instilled in her by her Grandmother at an early age, and we see the pair of them spending time together in a forest glade surrounded by nature at the beginning of the film. We then fast forward to the present day, where Mabel is a college student; although she barely attends classes, preferring instead to spend her time protesting whatever the town mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) is planning. As we join proceedings, Jerry has almost completed his 'Beavertown Beltway', a stretch of elevated motorway that circles the town of Beavertown- with the last part of it set to destroy the glade that Mabel and Grandmother loved so much. I've heard some critics suggest that the set up to Hoppers is too complex for its own good, and there is some truth in this, but never enough to derail it. Mabel soon unfurls the work of her college professor, Samantha Fairfax, who has been experimenting with transferring her consciousness to a 3D printed robot beaver, a ploy to better understand the animal. So there's the obvious Avatar photocopy, and it's of no surprise when Mabel grabs the opportunity to put her on consciousness into the robot beaver, and persuade the animals (who have been forced away from the glade by some foul play by Jerry) to return to their home, thus preventing the beltway from being completed. It's all a bit of a stretch, one that Hoppers never quite fully grasps. However, after an opening stretch that doesn't do a huge amount apart from set down the idea that nature is good and humans are bad, once Mabel- for all intents and purposes- becomes a beaver, Hoppers really clicks into gear. Mabel is a more sympathetic presence in her beaver costume, slowly becoming one with the animals and refusing to re-join her professor and her fellow colleges (who can speak and instruct her through an in built earpiece), and although the danger of staying in the suit too long is briefly mentioned, it's never something that comes to fruition. There's no true sense of danger or loss here, although we do find a greater appreciation of Mabel's actions once we realise her Gran has recently passed away. We're introduced to 'Pond Rules', a set of commandments put in place by George, the King of the mammals who befriends Mabel and introduces her to not just the beavers, but all the animals- and explains that anyone is welcome into their small world, now that they've all had to flee the glade. As you'd expect, she slowly begins to understand just exactly how everything works in the animal kingdom, and the film unsurprisingly pushes the message of "We're all in this together." It's not the first time this sort of offering is offered in a Pixar film and it won't be the last. However, the plot of Hoppers might well have folded under its own weight in terms of being a film that preaches climate change at the detriment to itself, but thankfully Daniel Chong's feature manages to put the animals front and centre, and weaves a narrative that actually works well for kids and adults alike, just like the best Pixar films do. It's impossible not to watch Hoppers and think of The Wild Robot, the 2024 DreamWorks adaptation of the 2016 novel by Peter Brown which also delves into nature and the importance of its survival. Hoppers doesn't scale the heights of The Wild Robot, which came from nowhere to be one of 2024's best animated films, but it does offer a solid buffer before the might of the Toy Story franchise hits our screens shortly. Meryl Streep and Dave Franco also offer their voices to a very decent cast list, and although their time in the film is limited, they offer more than enough to make you chuckle. Ultimately Hoppers is about grief, hope, and working together, and although all three of these things don't hit in the way that some of Pixar's best work has done, this is yet another solid entry into what is becoming one of the most reliable studios in cinema history. 7.3/10