The state and future of animation

[Randall]

Then there's Toy Story. And Cars.

True, perhaps sentient sports equipment inherently has less appeal than dolls or vehicles, but ultimately audiences come or not because something looks really good/interesting, it's marketed well and often, and/or has a big studio name behind it.

Films that are less slick-looking, and have less of a marketing push, aren't generally going to do well unless they are GREAT films that get awesome word-of-mouth in order to become sleeper hits. And audiences DON'T turn out just because of big names in the cast.

[Ben]

Well I didn’t mention the "obvious" ones, since we all know toys come to life when we are not looking anyway, and Cars was…er…its own alternate universe thing where they were clearly not just sentient versions of cars as we know them.

Anthropomorphising truly inanimate objects like otherwise boring appliances has been an animation trait going back as far as the medium itself, from canes and coat racks to any number of staircases, stools and food objects, back when animation was used to animate *things*!

[EricJ]

And thanks for the reminder. I’m still trying to delete it from my head.
U-G-L-Y-!

I'm still trying to delete them trying to turn Burt Bacharach's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" into a deliberately Elsa-style Let-It-Go anthem...The heck??

(I should look up why Red Tails wasn't a success despite being made by George Lucas...)

(Everyone’s Hero is a lovely little film, though, that just didn’t find its audience. Williams did it as a favor to his friend Reeve, but as such wanted to be uncredited, which ironically might have helped his friend's film more if they’d been able to include him in the marketing.)

Putting a weekend-recorded Robin Williams in a third-party animated movie did not do wonders for Ferngully and Robots, IIRC.
"But why??" Because it had become the biggest, most desperate cliche of 90's-knockoff animateds by that point.

And the only review I remember of Everyone's Hero was the bit about the poor, underdog NY Yankees struggling not to lose the big game to mean ol' Chicago.

[GeffreyDrogon]

Why is it known that attaching a famous celebrity name to an animated film not a way to success? With examples of films in the not-so-distant past like Arctic Dogs and Playmobil signs that celebrities alone can't make an animated film succeed, then what factors let a film be successful?

Was Shrek successful because of actors like Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, or was it the good writing? Was Despicable Me successful because of Steve Carell or the story?

Why did something like Arctic Dogs bomb despite having Jeremy Renner (fresh off of Avengers: Endgame) in the lead role?

[Bill1978]

Honestly I miss the days when animated films were mostly voiced by 'unknowns' or professional voice actors with 'minor' celebrities recruited for a sidekick role.

I may be in the minority when it comes to the general public but I have never ever said 'I must see that animated movie so I can hear Celebrity X's voice'

[EricJ]

But then we lived through the hard times of '99-'03, where the entire INDUSTRY was basically echoing the same questions as Geffrey, over and over:
"But why didn't Hey Arnold: the Movie do as well as the Rugrats, if they had the same parent company and successful cable property? Doesn't Disney prove that 2-D animation is having a renaissance at the moment??"

I may be in the minority when it comes to the general public but I have never ever said 'I must see that animated movie so I can hear Celebrity X's voice'

What, not even Jerry Seinfeld's? You didn't rush to be first in line to see his talent create "Bee Movie"?

[GeffreyDrogon]

But the American movie industry likes to believe that celebrities are the reason people go see animated films.

Byron Allen thought that casting a Jeremy Renner fresh off a little MCU film called Avengers: Endgame was going to make Arctic Dogs a success, I think is a fine example of how delusional many of these studios are.

Yet, some films have done well when they cast a celebrity who recently died, like The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger, yet Alpha and Omega played in mostly empty theaters despite having the late Dennis Hopper, a far greater actor than Ledger was.

[Daniel]

Kinda surprised Arctic Dogs never spawned any sequels.

[GeffreyDrogon]

It's pretty sad that Paramount Animation hasn't been a successful studio. With financial and critical dumpster fires like Monster Trucks and Wonder Park, you'd expect that the studio would at least learn how to manage films better. However, it doesn't seem like that'll happen.

Rumble went straight to streaming, and Spongebob 3 met the same fate, albeit it did get a limited release in places like Canada, though. It doesn't seem like Blazing Samurai will have any impact either, since it was an acquisition that had a long and troubled production.

Honestly, do you think there's any hope for that company, or will Blazing Samurai sink like a stone as well?

[Ben]

Yes. It isn’t even going to cinemas in most places.

[GeffreyDrogon]

But didn't Blazing Samurai recently get picked up by Paramount Animation?

[GeffreyDrogon]

What is considered to be an "original" film? Do movies based on books counts as "original", even if they're not based on well-known ones?

[Farerb]

If anyone had any doubt, tonight animated movies were put in their rightful place when three live action Disney Princesses said that animated films are for kids and joked about how parents have to endure and suffer rewatching them all the time. Not that surprising that this is the general thought considering the movie that won tonight, easily the weakest film out of all the nominees and one of Disney's laziest films.

[Farerb]

During The Biggest Oscar Trainwreck In History, ‘Encanto’ And ‘The Windshield Wiper’ Won Oscars (Commentary)

On a disaster of an evening where Worldstar-style attacks figured into the live ceremony and the entire #MeToo movement was undermined and trivialized by abhorrent bad taste, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences also made it abundantly clear that it has zero respect for animation as an art form.

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-comme ... 14531.html

[EricJ]

Even given Disney using ABC as their own private lapdog, I thought the Oscars strictly prohibited specifically plugging upcoming movies by name? It's not the MTV Movie Awards.

While the actresses were trying to do the usual Wreck-It Ralph 2 we-hate-those-perfect-princesses-don't-we-girls jokes, the outrage over Mitchells and Flee not winning sounds more like sour grapes...Did anyone REALLY expect anything to beat Encanto-mania?