Animated Films Deserve Oscar Respect
By Patrick Bernard
What is your favorite animated film of all time? Tough question, probably because there are so many that we remember. Better question: what is your favorite animated film of the past five years? Also a tough question. There are so many good ones.
So why does the Motion Picture Academy -- the people who give the big awards that help us remember the film industry’s history -- hold onto its stubborn misconception that anything animated is meant for children.?
There are plenty of animated movies that can be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences – children, adults and teenagers. The list includes All Dogs Go To Heaven, Akira, Fantasia, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, The Secret of Nimh, Persepolis, When Marnie Was There, Perfect Blue, and many others. There is a plethora of animated movies that never ever received proper recognition from the Oscars crowd.
Animated films are not just about really funny animals talking and acting like humans. But as a culture we may be holding onto the outdated concept that animated films are just cartoons on a big screen for little kids.
The first animated movie to win any Oscar was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It won Best Original Song, Best Original Score, and Best Supporting Actress. In 2002 the Academy introduced a brand new category for nomination --Best Animated Feature, created to honor the heights and achievements of Walt Disney, Don Bluth, Hayao Miyazaki, and many more. The first movie to win Oscar for Best Animated Feature was Dreamworks’ Shrek. Other movies nominated for Best Animated Feature were Monsters Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
The second and third movies to win the Oscars were Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and Pixar’s Finding Nemo, each of them masterpieces in their own way. But the short history of this award is uneven. Best Animated Feature has gone to lThe Incredibles in 2004, Wall-E in 2008, and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse in 2018. There were also years like 2002, 2015, and 2009 that had a variety of brilliant movies for the category. Other nominations were terrible.
In the year of 2013, Disney’s Frozen won best animated feature over Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rise; some critics considered that a snub. Another snub would be the Academy awarding Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit over Howl’s Moving Castle. There is a long list of outstanding animated films that were shut out at the Oscars: Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Ponyo, A Silent Voice, Your Name, Millennium Actress, and so many others that I could be forgetting.
There is a common trend here. The majority of nominations for Best Animated Feature are for films targeted towards children. They rarely test the boundaries of animation in terms story-telling or visuals. The Motion Picture Academy does not demonstrate a desire to explore or study animated movies. Its members simply don’t take this art seriously. They only view them whenever their children or grandchildren drag them to the movie.
By Patrick Bernard
What is your favorite animated film of all time? Tough question, probably because there are so many that we remember. Better question: what is your favorite animated film of the past five years? Also a tough question. There are so many good ones.
So why does the Motion Picture Academy -- the people who give the big awards that help us remember the film industry’s history -- hold onto its stubborn misconception that anything animated is meant for children.?
There are plenty of animated movies that can be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences – children, adults and teenagers. The list includes All Dogs Go To Heaven, Akira, Fantasia, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, The Secret of Nimh, Persepolis, When Marnie Was There, Perfect Blue, and many others. There is a plethora of animated movies that never ever received proper recognition from the Oscars crowd.
Animated films are not just about really funny animals talking and acting like humans. But as a culture we may be holding onto the outdated concept that animated films are just cartoons on a big screen for little kids.
The first animated movie to win any Oscar was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It won Best Original Song, Best Original Score, and Best Supporting Actress. In 2002 the Academy introduced a brand new category for nomination --Best Animated Feature, created to honor the heights and achievements of Walt Disney, Don Bluth, Hayao Miyazaki, and many more. The first movie to win Oscar for Best Animated Feature was Dreamworks’ Shrek. Other movies nominated for Best Animated Feature were Monsters Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
The second and third movies to win the Oscars were Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and Pixar’s Finding Nemo, each of them masterpieces in their own way. But the short history of this award is uneven. Best Animated Feature has gone to lThe Incredibles in 2004, Wall-E in 2008, and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse in 2018. There were also years like 2002, 2015, and 2009 that had a variety of brilliant movies for the category. Other nominations were terrible.
In the year of 2013, Disney’s Frozen won best animated feature over Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rise; some critics considered that a snub. Another snub would be the Academy awarding Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit over Howl’s Moving Castle. There is a long list of outstanding animated films that were shut out at the Oscars: Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Ponyo, A Silent Voice, Your Name, Millennium Actress, and so many others that I could be forgetting.
There is a common trend here. The majority of nominations for Best Animated Feature are for films targeted towards children. They rarely test the boundaries of animation in terms story-telling or visuals. The Motion Picture Academy does not demonstrate a desire to explore or study animated movies. Its members simply don’t take this art seriously. They only view them whenever their children or grandchildren drag them to the movie.
