T his March’s Pixar adventure Hoppers might not have been a vintage offering but it was a minor, much-needed victory for a studio whose magic touch had faded over time. It was a rare non-sequel that appealed to both critics (a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (with $164m it was Pixar’s biggest original hit domestically since Coco) and had just about enough of the head plus heart formula many of us had grown to love and, recently, miss. Its success has reminded us just how it should be done right (or at least right enough) and how many, many others have failed to get even close to that place. Smarter competitors have found their own lanes – the maximalist mania of Illumination’s Minions movies, the specific, zeitgeist-y superhero stories of Sony’s KPop: Demon Hunters and Spiderverse – but there’s been a weak yet constant flow of obvious attempts to replicate what Pixar does so well.…