Pixar's Hoppers knows it's like Avatar.

Its protagonist, 19-year-old animal lover Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), draws the comparison as soon as she learns about the movie's "hopping" technology, which transfers human consciousnesses into ultra-realistic robot animal bodies. That way, humans can infiltrate the animal world and study it up close.

Basically, swap Avatar's Na'vi for beavers, and you've got a decent idea of what Hoppers looks like.

But does this similarity rob Pixar's latest original film of any of its, well, originality? Absolutely not. Hoppers takes its fish-out-of-water (or human-out-of-human-body) story in delightfully unexpected directions, resulting in Pixar's most bonkers film yet.

Hoppers kicks off in classic Pixar fashion.

Credit: Disney / Pixar

Before that adventure begins, Hoppers checks off something huge on Pixar's usual to-do list: making me cry within the first ten minutes.

In these opening minutes, we meet a young Mabel, full of rage after a failed attempt to break her classroom pets out of school. To soothe her, her grandma (voiced by Karen Huie) brings her to a glade behind her house. They sit together in silence and observe nature: Leaves blow in the wind, tadpoles flit through the water, beavers and ducks swim with their babies. It's pure serenity, the kind, Grandma Tanaka says, that can only come from acknowledging that you're part of a larger whole.

That sense of peace persists in a montage of Mabel and her grandma caring for the glade over the years. And yes, if you hear the words "Pixar" and "montage" and immediately think of Up's iconic "Married Life" sequence, then you already have an idea of what's coming. My eyes? Welling up just thinking about it.

Hoppers is an emotional rollercoaster.

Credit: Disney / Pixar

It's hard to believe that just an hour from this serene, tear-jerking sequence, you'll be watching a group of animals trying to take out a hit on a human mayor (voiced by Jon Hamm).

Of course, a lot has to happen between these two points. Beaverton Mayor Jerry Generazzo has to plan to pave over the Tanakas' glade for a beltway. Mabel has to learn about hopping, hop into a robot beaver body, and, in an attempt to save the glade, become an ally to the local wildlife. That includes beaver George (voiced by Bobby Moynihan), king of the mammals and leader of a large pond community where the displaced glade animals have fled.

Each step on this journey is zanier than the last. Beaver Jazzercise? Sure! Meryl Streep voicing the terrifying Insect Queen? Absolutely! Yet through it all, director Daniel Chong and writer Jesse Andrews keep Hoppers rooted in Mabel's grief over losing the space that meant so much to her and her grandmother. When we first see the glade, it's pristine: all clear water and lush forest. By the time Mayor Jerry fences off the land and drains the pond, it's a muddy, dead wasteland. The contrast is a gut punch.

It's no wonder, then, that Mabel is so angry and so fired up in her environmentalist fight. Thankfully, Hoppers doesn't dim her rage at all. It allows her to be as prickly and pushy as can be, acknowledging her flaws without sanding them down.

Mabel finds the perfect foil in George, who's as warm and trusting of everyone as Mabel is cynical. Their friendship forms Hoppers' sweet, furry heart, and it also ground the film as it hits its most outlandish beats.

Hoppers' third act is the stuff fever dreams are made of.

Credit: Disney / Pixar

Look, robot beaver Avatar is already a bizarro concept. But Chong and Andrews take it to wild new heights in the film's third act, which is chaos incarnate. No spoilers, but a sweet-spoken shark named Diane (voiced by Vanessa Bayer) and the Insect Queen's tyrannical spawn Titus (voiced by Dave Franco) get involved, each in ways that are equal parts hilarious and unsettling. I could not stop thinking, "I'm obsessed that I'm seeing this in a Pixar movie."

So much of the joy of these final sequences comes down to Hoppers' animation, which brings each of its characters to breathtaking life, hair by hair, scale by scale, and feather by feather. A particularly funny touch? Animals' appearances change based on perspective. When we're seeing them from a human's point of view, they seem almost toy-like, with black beady eyes and neatly kept fur. From an animal's perspective, their eyes are more expressive, and their other physical characteristics are more detailed and disheveled. When Mabel is in the beaver body, its fur takes on the same spiky swoops of her hair. The switches between these points of view turn Hoppers' third act into more of a riot than it already was. Truly, I wish I could experience it for the first time all over again.

Cleverly ridiculous, and boasting a sweet message about trust and building community, Hoppers is wild in all the right ways.

Hoppers hits theaters March 6.

Ryan Coogler's Sinners took home top honors at the 32nd Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA, potentially shaking up the Oscars race in the process.

The film won Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, for its ensemble of Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Buddy Guy, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Jack O'Connell, and Hailee Steinfeld. Jordan also won Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his dual role of twins Smoke and Stack.

For months, the 2026 awards season has been a showdown between Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. Sinners made Oscars history with 16 nominations, the most any film has ever received, while One Battle After Another has been winning top prizes at Oscars precursors like the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, the DGA Awards, the PGA Awards, and the BAFTAs.

All those victories made it seem like One Battle After Another was a sure lock for Oscar gold, but the Actor Awards indicate that the race could be much tighter than initially expected. What do Sinners' wins mean for its Oscar chances?

The Actor Awards (then known as the SAG Awards) introduced the cast award in 1996. Since then, the winner of that award has gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars 15 times out of 30. (Recent examples include Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All at Once.) Discrepancies come down to two very different voting bodies: As of 2026, SAG-AFTRA is comprised of 160,000 members, while the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which votes on the Oscars, has 10,136 voting members from a variety of film branches.

With this in mind, a 50 percent ensemble Actor Award success rate at the Oscars means that Sinners has a solid shot at a Best Picture win, but it's not a complete lock. Based on its other awards season wins, One Battle After Another still seems to have the edge, especially when it comes to the PGA Awards. Out of the PGA's past 36 winners, 26 have gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, a higher success rate than the Actor Awards.

However, in the 10 years when the PGA awards and Oscars didn't align, the SAG ensemble award did overlap with the Oscars four times, for Shakespeare in Love, Crash, Spotlight, and Parasite. That means there certainly is a precedent for what would be Sinners' path to a Best Picture Oscar.

However, the Actor Awards have proven to be more accurate predictors of the individual acting categories at the Academy Awards, meaning Jordan's Best Actor chances have just skyrocketed. Over the past 31 years, 24 winners of the Actor Award have gone on to win an Oscar. Jordan missed out on wins at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and BAFTAs (winner Robert Aramayo's film I Swear was not eligible for this year's Oscars due to release dates), but his win here has certainly solidified him as a new frontrunner for the Academy Award.

The 98th Oscars airs live on March 15 on ABC and Hulu. And the nominees are…

SAVE $40: As of March 2, you can pick up a pair of Apple AirPods 4 for only $89 at Walmart. That's 30% in savings and $10 cheaper than Amazon.

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Credit: Apple

Apple AirPod 4

$89
at Walmart

$129
Save $40

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It's not every day you can score a pair of Apple AirPods for under $100, let alone under $90. So if you're in the market for some new earbuds, we recommend adding the fourth-generation AirPods to your cart ASAP.

As of March 2, the Apple AirPods 4 (without ANC) are only $89 at Walmart. That's $40 cheaper than their list price and currently $10 cheaper than buying at Amazon. Although, we wouldn't be surprised if Amazon price-matched the deal as soon as we hit publish on this article.

Even at $129, their full price, the AirPods 4 are a pretty sweet deal. The basic pair doesn't offer noise cancellation (you'll have to pay an extra $30 for those), but they do offer personalized spatial audio, a snug fit that's comfy enough to wear for all five hours of battery life, a more compact charging case than their predecessor, and improved bass, mids, and highs.

We still favor the AirPods Pro 3 as the holy grail earbuds for Apple users, but if you're looking to save some money and don't need noise cancellation, the AirPods 4 are a much better deal at only $89. As Mashable's reviewer noted, they sound "like honey" and truly deliver as a daily driver.