Starting movies with fictional films

It occurred to me a minute ago that a few of Pixar’s films begin in a similar way- with an in-unvierse film or TV clip.

The Incredibles: The interviews with the supers start the film.
Ratatouille: The bit with the TV showing Ego starts the film.
Up: Starts with the newsreel Carl watches.

and to a lesser extent Toy Story 2 for starting with the video game segment.

So, any thoughts on why this sort of opening is popular at Pixar? Am I thinking about it too much (probably)?

Toy Story 3 opens with home videos of Andy.

WALL-E also had the BnL holograms in the intro, but those are pretty short so I wouldn’t exactly count them.

That type of opening allows for a good amount of exposition without making it seem awkwardly shoehorned. It’s a good starting point for a story.

Very interesting. What I noticed is in both Up and Ratatouille, the media introduces to us the main character’s hero. In Up it was Muntz to Carl, and in Ratatouille Gusteau to Remy)

Interestingly enough, in both those cases the antagonist is introduced as well. Of course, we don’t know that Muntz is the villian at first. I wouldn’t go as far to call Anton Ego a villian, but he appears to be the antagonist in the TV program.

Hmm…I never noticed that. Good eyes!!