Everybody can stop the “Tortured Poets” jokes online: Pixar’s version wins.
Ever since Taylor Swift announced that her album would be called “The Tortured Poets Department,” the internet has been right there with the jokes. Once the record itself dropped, pop culture embraced the dramatic sound of the title, doing parodies usually tagged with the brand’s “version.” Pixar, though, has taken it to a whole new level, creating a “playlist” of images based on song titles and lyrics from Swift’s new record. Using characters and iconography from famous Pixar movies, run through a Taylor Swift filter, they’ve created some fun, funny little pieces of art.
The “Pixar’s Version” slideshow features Sid from Toy Story, (“My boy only breaks his favorite toys”); Ember and Wade from Elemental (“But Daddy, I Love Him”); Boo from Monsters Inc. (“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”); Carl from Up (“I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”); and more. And, yeah, we get some less blockbuster-y entries along the way.
You can see the images below.
The record has been totally immersed in pop culture, not just blowing up in an almost unprecedented way on Spotify. One of Swift’s music videos featured a Dead Poets Society reunion bringing actors Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles together onscreen. And that video itself features Post Malone and some big Universal Monsters vibes.
The release of The Tortured Poets Department (and, y’know — having a massive hit concert in theaters last year) has also reminded everyone that, once upon a time, there was a plan to cast Swift as Dazzler in an X-Men movie. It’s hard to imagine Ryan Reynolds and company don’t want to take advantage of that well-publicized near-miss for comedy’s sake in Deadpool and Wolverine, and the fans who spent so much time searching for non-existent clues Swift wrote Argylle have now set their sights on lyrics from her new song “Clara Bow,” which repeatedly includes a lyric about being “dazzling.” Obviously fans are really excited for that one — although it’s hard to imagine that, at the top of her game and coming off a massively successful tour and concert video, Swift would let a track get hijacked by the needs of a coy little breadcrumb trail. But who knows! The film’s director, Free Guy‘s Shawn Levy, has said fans won’t know for sure until the film comes out in July.
