When you actually look at it, the lack of diversity in mainstream family animated movies is pretty terrible. If you look down the list of the 50 highest grossing animated films (and take out the ones that star minions or kung-fu pandas or other non-human characters), only last year’s Big Hero 6 had a non-white protagonist.
Which is why Pixar’s new short Sanjay’s Super Team looks so interesting. It’s only a short, which will show before next month’s The Good Dinosaur, but it’s important. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale by director Sanjay Patel, about a Hindu kid who’s obsessed with superheroes. They’ve just released the first clip of it, and with (nearly) everything Pixar does, it looks pretty great. And hopefully it will touch some Asian kids who don’t normally see themselves represented on screen.
