the critic tedg:

…the core experiment was in how to work with sex.

[...]

What’s going on here is that the third dimension allows a presence, a presentation of body that the flat screen simply cannot. Excepting the standard vocabulary of “in your eye” tricks, all the animation and modeling has gone into Susan’s body. Not just her shape, which is expected, but subtle details of that shape. Particular attention is spent on how she moves, with a sensuous grace that is designed to be seductive. Yes, I know it is not obvious, but watch the beginning half again and note how surrounding women are presented, before we enter the action, second half.

Look at how many computing cycles went into the way her clothing moves on her body. The cloth does not move as her skin does, but over her skin, emphasizing the womanly movement of the dancer that was used for the motion capture. Study how this compares to sexually-designed Japanese animation projects. See how clearly different and more human Susan’s movements are from those of the other characters, especially the humans — except for the women that surround her in the first half.

These things are highly, highly engineered. This studio is the most severe in this dimension. These releases are strategic probes into competitive progress on cinematic advantage. Its all about how to leverage the technology to capture eyeballs. Pixar cannot respond to this. Well played.