Animated Feature: A Wide Open Category with One of the Best Slates in Years

The Annie Awards nominations come out tomorrow and hopefully they will help clarify which films are dominating in the Best Animated Feature category this year.

Usually there is one movie that stands out as the easiest call during Oscar season. If a Pixar film is in the mix (and original), or if one film blew out the others at the box office, that film usually sweeps its way to the Oscar. But even these things can’t always guarantee how the Academy nominating committee will go, nor how the members will ultimately vote. The Annie nominations could give some clarification on which film dominates, or which studio rather. This year, there are many choices, all of them hard, all of them great.

The first thing to notice about this year is that the animation industry has listened to the complaints about why, for generations now, have young people been raised on the idea that only boys matter? One central “special boy” is usually the main formula for a successful animated film. Pixar pretty much wrote every one of their successful films using this formula, and in so doing they have conditioned movie fans from a young age to see life that way. BUT little by little we watched that change, didn’t we. It changed with Brave, and then of course it really changed with Frozen, which rewrote the rules of what a massive animated hit / cultural phenomenon looks like. Pixar then continued that change with Inside Out. If you can tap into that, the sky’s the limit. Disney also followed through on their commitment to female-driven films in the Star Wars universe with Rey in The Force Awakens and now with Jyn Erso in the upcoming Rogue One. They aren’t animated, but they draw from the same pool of impressionable moviegoers, and thus, can be responsible for helping to shape how we see ourselves.

This year’s highest grossing film is Finding Dory at $486 million. It is now the 7th highest grossing film of all time. Rogue One will probably knock Dory off the top spot but that will mean another year where the two highest grossing films are female-driven. While it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle all that much in the adult realm, with children’s fare, a few adjustments have made all the difference.

Another strong female-driven animated film is The Little Prince, which follows a young girl around as the story of the Little Prince unfolds. Zootopia is mixed but the strongest character is female, same with Trolls too.

Disney’s Moana seems to really be rewriting the rules for what Disney princesses can do in a film. For instance, she has no love interest. It’s funny because neither does Kubo in Kubo and the Two Strings but no one would ever wonder why not. Moana is a celebration of female power, the old kind, the kind that’s long been buried, the kind that ties nature in with the feminine. Anyway, it’s an interesting shift and dynamic.

I would suspect that Pixar and Disney should do very well. I also think Kubo will do well because of its astonishing stop-motion animation. It truly is a breathtaking work of art, even if the story — while interesting — doesn’t quite live up to its animation. While that could be argued as always the case, Kubo’s animation is so beautiful you find it doesn’t even really need much of a story.

The Little Prince, The Red Turtle, Sing, and of course, the very very popular Zootopia also seem to be right up there in what will likely be a tight race.

Here is how they’re lining up, box office wise:

Finding Dory ($486 mil)
Zootopia ($341 mil)
Kung Fu Panda 2 ($143 mil)
Trolls ($135 mil)
The Angry Birds Movie ($107 mil)
Sausage Party ($97 mil)
Storks ($71 mil)
Ice Age: Collision Course ($64 mil)
Kubo and the Two Strings ($47 mil)

Just opened, non-traditional release, not opened yet:
Moana ($55 mil opening weekend and counting)
The Little Prince
Sing
The Red Turtle

Some of these are sequels, some are built on “pre-awareness,” but many are wholly original, and with the Academy that can sometimes be an advantage.

I might predict the lineup for Animated Feature like this:

Moana
Kubo and the Two Strings
Zootopia
Finding Dory
The Little Prince
Alt. Sing