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Where Did All The Animated Films Go?
In 1989 my Grandfather took me to the (now long gone) Gosford cinemas to see my very first big screen movie. I still have the memories of staring in awe at the motion that unfolded on screen. I bopped along to the songs and hated that damn octopus lady for taking the pretty fish girl’s voice. Obviously, I’m talking about The Little Mermaid here.
As a four year old, I doubt I really cared too much about the story. It was the overall experience of watching magic take place on a gigantic screen and sharing this experience with a group of other people I’d never met. There was probably also some popcorn involved, and your god knows I loves me some popped kernels.
From the moment I left that movie theater I was in love with animated films. If you had asked me as a kid what my favourite movies were, I’m fairly certain that Disney movies would have formed a large portion of my list. It’s possible that if I had never seen The Little Mermaid that day all those years ago then maybe I wouldn’t be as fascinated with animation, like I still am to this day, but I’m thankful to my Grandfather for taking me to that Cinema, because I feel privileged to have lived at a time when animation was at it’s peak.
“But Aaron” I hear you say, “There are more animated films now then there were back then, how could that have been animations peak?” My answer is this – Quantity does not make a peak, it’s quality that forms it. There may be more animated films these days, but if you have any small portion of a brain inside your head you’ll realise that most animated films these days are fucking terrible. The films I watched as a kid had a heart and soul and you could tell that everyone involved in those films had a passion and drive to make something exceptional and memorable, something that would last for decades to come. They had characters you loved and the artistry was brilliant, and it’s not just Disney I’m talking about here, it was Don Bluth and Hayao Miyazaki helping to push the craft along as well.
Even though it was made seven years before The Little Mermaid, it wasn’t until I hit Primary School that I watched Don Bluth’s adaptation of the book ‘Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH’, simply titled ‘The Secret of NIMH’. We had been reading the book at school and one day we got to watch this animated version on some old timey contraption called a “VHS Machine” or “VCR”. I remember being scared out of my wits by portions of this movie, and it was the first time I had really been terrified by an animated movie. Sure, there was that whole thing with Ursula growing huge and getting stabbed by a boat in The Little Mermaid — spoiler alert — but The Secret of NIMH was scary on a different level due to the characters of the film being in constant danger. It was tense and exciting and I loved the sense of peril and wondering what would happen next.
The latest animated films — from companies who aren’t Pixar — don’t have any of the things that made these hand drawn animated films great. Those older films never pandered to kids, they were called “Family Films” for a reason, there was something for every member of the family. When you look at the films coming from Dreamworks, for example, all you find are pop-culture references that are outdated the week after the movie releases and two dimensional characters that no one cares about. That’s right I said it, the 3D computer generated characters in current animated movies are flatter than the hand drawn characters of older films.
What’s the reasoning for this? Well, it’s obviously all about the money. Studios these days are just trying to pump out as many CG kids movies as possible and they don’t care what it’s about, because they know parents will take their kids to see anything with pretty colours and loud noises just to shut them up for an hour or two. Up until the announcement of Cars 2 I would have said Pixar and Studio Ghibli were the only companies putting any effort into their animated films, but unless Pixar pulls off a 180 with Brave next year, it may just be Ghibli that’s left making animated movies for the love of the craft instead of billions of dollars in toy revenue. I love Pixar, but the fact that they’ve started making sequels to their older movies that didn’t need a sequel in the first place — Monsters University Coming 2013 — has me worried for their artistic future.
There was a sense of magic and wonder in animated films before the advent of CG. Most Pixar films retain it, but other studios can’t pull it off. Kung Fu Panda was an enjoyable romp, but I didn’t care about anything that was happening beyond the well-made fight scenes. Po has a dream to become a Kung Fu master, but there’s no one in the film that holds him back or even attempts to help him, he just becomes a Kung Fu master — spoiler alert — at the end because he ate a shit load of food to get there without any surprises along the way. There should have been a greater journey for the character that made the ending of the film truly feel like he earned his place among the other Kung Fu animals.
Let’s compare and contrast to the classic animated films like The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, shall we? Where the characters all learn something over the course of their respective films, not just about themselves, but about the other characters and about the world around them and where they fit in. In The Lion King Simba learns that you can’t run away from your problems, you need to face your fears and fight for the ones you love. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle discovers there’s more to a person than what’s on the outside and the Beast learns that there’s more to life than just being an ignorant biggot who doesn’t trust anyone but himself. In Cars 2… Mater finds out that everyone thinks he’s dumb… but he’s ok with it. In Shrek The Third… Shrek doesn’t want to be king and his wife has babies, he’s kind of angry about it all… by the end he’s alright, he’ll cope.
Now, I’m not saying that every movie needs to be filled with over-the-top spectacle and awesome songs, but why is everyone in these latest crops of films content with just being content. No one dreams of bigger things, they just want everyone to either a) like them or b) leave them alone. Today’s animated characters are either selfish or attention starved and they never have any conflicting emotions, they just want what they want and they never change by the end, they just go through a series of vignettes that lead to some credits where you’ll discover the assholes responsible for the boredom you just endured. Why isn’t anyone learning anything anymore?!
I really need to finish this article, I feel like I could go on and on about why animated films piss me off so much these days, but I’m sure I’d reach a point where you’d just stop caring and move on to something else… Which you’ve probably already done, but I really miss the days when animated films were more than just pretty pixels and there was actual art involved. That’s not to say that there aren’t any newer animated films worth seeing, Ghibli keeps pumping out a new one every once in a while and Disney released Winnie The Pooh this year, which is worth checking out if you’re feeling at all nostalgic about the good ol’ days, and Dreamworks got lucky last year with How To Train Your Dragon. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want that artistic merit back for animated films, when there was a purpose and a drive from a team of people who believed in what they were creating. I want the heart back. Bring back her heart.
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