Re:Environment. (Score 4, Insightful)

I think the topic you're really getting at here makes actually perfect sense. As we hear so often, Story is always the number one emphasis of Pixar - and they have developed an amazing sense for pushing the tech behind their movies selectively, in a way that technological shortcomings never distract or detract in any way from the story.

Note how Toy Story timed in nicely with the arrival of solid Phong shading techniques in the CG world - plastic toys. This is a trend in Pixar movies, straight through Sulley's fur in Monsters Inc, hair and fur having become a significant area of advancement in the industry over the past few years.

In an obvious contrast, Square's Final Fantasy, pushed photorealism on every front at once, and the result was characters that were technologially impressive but awkward to watch as actors - distracting to what little story laid underneath as there was obviously something wrong, constantly stealing the viewer's attention... You don't see Pixar making realistic humans, because they understand that sense of interference.

As much as shaders and other CG fronts have advanced in recent years, all we have now is a steadily growing library of realistic effects, which, when used selectively, can greatly assist in conveying emotion, story and character. Pixar has made very good stylistic decisions on pushing visuals in the right places at the right times.

Would realistic fish be fun to watch anyway? Actually, will fish be fun to watch for an hour and a half? A sense of weight is usually key to sucessful acting, so this is in fact a very ambitious movie in terms of animation, to compliment the rendering advancements...