Onward opens with a fascinating premise: a fantasy world where magic was real but technology made it obsolete. Elves drive cars instead of riding unicorns. Centaurs work office jobs. Pixie biker gangs cause trouble at gas stations. It’s a clever inversion that the film uses as set dressing for what’s really a story about two brothers who get one chance to meet the father who died before the younger one was born. Dan Scanlon drew from his own experience losing his father as a child, and that personal connection shows in the film’s emotional core, even when the rest of the movie can’t quite keep up.
The response was sympathetic but measured. People connected with the ending, which consistently ranks among Pixar’s most emotionally devastating moments. But the journey to get there felt overly familiar, and the urban fantasy setting, while visually interesting, doesn’t develop into the fully realized world that Pixar’s best films create. Onward is a film with a tremendous final twenty minutes attached to a decent but unremarkable first eighty.
The Last Twenty Minutes Will Wreck You
The ending works because the film makes a structural choice that most stories wouldn’t dare. For the entire runtime, Ian has been the protagonist, the shy younger brother who never knew his father and wants desperately to meet him. Everything has been building toward that reunion. And then the film reveals that the reunion isn’t for Ian at all. It’s for Barley, the loud, confident older brother who did know their father and never got to say goodbye. Ian realizes that all the fatherly moments he’s been searching for, the guidance, the encouragement, the belief in him, have been coming from Barley all along. It’s a devastating reframe that earns every tear it wrings from the audience because it’s built on a truth that anyone with an older sibling will recognize.
Tom Holland voices Ian with a convincing blend of anxiety and yearning that makes the character immediately sympathetic. His quest isn’t just about meeting his father. It’s about discovering who he is, and Holland captures the specific vulnerability of a teenager who doesn’t feel like he belongs in the world yet.
Chris Pratt’s Barley is the film’s energy source. Loud, enthusiastic, obsessed with a Dungeons & Dragons-style board game, and wearing his deceased father’s love like a suit of armor, Barley is the kind of character who could easily become annoying but instead becomes essential. Pratt plays him with just enough wounded sincerity beneath the bravado to make the final revelation hit as hard as it does.
The half-a-dad concept, a pair of legs animated by an incomplete spell that can walk around but can’t see, speak, or hear, is both a brilliant visual gag and a surprisingly effective emotional device. The brothers’ attempts to communicate with half a person, dressing the legs in a sweatshirt and sunglasses to disguise them in public, provides consistent comedy while maintaining the underlying pathos of how badly they want their father back.
The Fantasy World That Stays Surface-Level
The urban fantasy premise is the film’s biggest missed opportunity. The idea that a world of magic chose convenience over wonder has enormous satirical potential, but the film uses it primarily for visual gags rather than thematic exploration. Unicorns acting like raccoons and centaurs being too lazy to gallop are funny observations, but they never build into a meaningful commentary about what’s lost when societies choose the easy path over the meaningful one.
The quest structure follows an extremely conventional road trip template. The brothers need a gem to complete the spell. They must travel to a specific location. There are obstacles along the way. A trusty vehicle gets them there. The stops along the road are entertaining individually but don’t build on each other in interesting ways, and the middle section of the film feels like it’s going through the motions of an adventure rather than earning its surprises.
The Manticore, voiced by Octavia Spencer, is introduced with an intriguing setup as a legendary warrior who sold out and now runs a family restaurant chain. The commentary about how passion and adventure get domesticated by middle age is sharp. But the film doesn’t do enough with her, relegating her to a subplot that runs parallel to the main story without enhancing it meaningfully.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus voices the boys’ mother, and while she’s warm and funny, her storyline, chasing after her sons while learning about the quest through the Manticore, feels like busy work designed to give her something to do rather than an organic part of the narrative.
The Film That Proved Brothers Are the Real Magic
Onward’s lasting impact is its portrait of sibling love as a form of parenthood. Barley stepped into a role he never asked for and may not even have been conscious of filling. He became Ian’s protector, his cheerleader, his guide through adolescence, all while carrying his own grief for a father he remembers just well enough to miss. The film argues that the people who raise you aren’t always the ones you expect, and that the love that shapes you most might be the kind you don’t recognize until you stop looking for it somewhere else.
Should You Watch Onward?
If you’ve experienced loss, particularly the loss of a parent, this film will find your weak spot and press on it hard. The final act is genuinely moving, and the brother dynamic rings true throughout. Younger children will enjoy the fantasy action and the comedy of the half-dad. If you need the entire film to justify its runtime rather than just the ending, the conventional quest structure may test your patience. The destination is worth the journey, but the journey itself is unremarkable by Pixar standards.
The Verdict on Onward
Dan Scanlon poured his own grief into a film that earns its emotional devastation through a structural twist that redefines everything that came before it. The final act is peak Pixar, the kind of emotional storytelling that only this studio can deliver with this level of craft. The rest of the film, while pleasant and often funny, doesn’t match that ambition. The urban fantasy world stays on the surface, the quest hits predictable beats, and the supporting characters are thinner than the leads deserve. But that ending stays with you, and sometimes a great ending is enough to forgive an ordinary road.