Squashing the Little Guy?: New Academy Rules May Affect Non-CG Animation

Oh the Academy... At it again...

Up until now, animated features were nominated by two branches: The animation branch, the majority of the branch being animators and people who are waist-deep in that world. The other is the short films branch.

A new rule now says that everyone has a say. Everyone from every other branch of the Academy. Now the actual voters who pick the movies will have more of a say on what gets into the race in the first place.

That's... Troubling, to say the least...

The animation and shorts branches were responsible for getting some little indies into the limelight for a good few minutes. In their attempts to give more mediums a chance, they made at least one controversial decision. The Lego Movie, arguably 2014's greatest animated film, was completely snubbed. Why? Those same pickers wanted traditionally animated works and stop-motion filling some of those slots. The Lego Movie snafu was so big, it was a bigger trending topic than the Oscar nominees on the morning it all went down.

Now as frustrating as that hiccup was... Without these nominating folks, would the likes of Song of the Sea, Ernest and Celestine, any Studio Ghibli film, and so on... Would the likes of those ever have a chance at getting into the race? We know very well that the voters - a whole other group - don't watch most of the films, let alone the animated choices. We also know very well that a chunk of them either have contempt for the medium and/or are tone-deaf.

Do we all remember that leaked ballot back in 2014? Do we all remember that one anonymous voter who nonchalantly called Song of the Sea (an acclaimed Irish animated film) and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (an acclaimed Japanese animated film) "obscure freakin' Chinese f*ckin' things that no one freakin' saw"? Another close-minded individual abstained from picking an animated feature, saying he was done with those things since he/she was 6, and whenever his/her kid wanted to see one... He/she would drop them off at the theater and hang outside on their phone. This past race had a real gem, a fellow who said that he doesn't like animation or even animators! And went on to talk about his "turtle fetish"...

Academy, alright.

Now they'll have more of a say...

Will this push those "obscure freakin' Chinese f*ckin' things" out of the races for good? Will future marvels that aren't from the big guns have a hard time even getting nominated for Best Animated Feature?

Eric Beckman, founder of GKIDS, doesn't seem to think so. In speaking to Cartoon Brew, he expressed hope that the Academy will still nominate a diverse range of features each year. However, the Brew's piece mentions a Wrap article that hints at the whole rule change being a conspiracy to squash "old school" forms of animation (read: traditional, 2D, and stop-motion) out for good.

The committees have been under increasing criticism in recent years for shunning films like The Lego Movie and showing a marked preference for hand-drawn or stop-motion films over CG movies…The move should substantially increase the number of voters in the category, and perhaps lessen the bias toward old-school animation.

Bias towards "old-school animation"... Give me a bloody break.

Like the industry doesn't have a CG bias, 99% of the damn time.

It might be too early to tell, but... I don't like the sound of this. The Academy has shown time and time again that they are stuck in 1987 when it comes to evaluating animation. The Academy has never given it much consideration before then, even. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs should have been nominated for Best Picture of the year it was given a general release (1938, ceremony in early 1939), several of Walt's early films should've been nominated in their respective years. No, it took the Academy until the early 1990s to do it... And then they wouldn't do it again for another 18 years, creating the token category we have now.

Ever since Toy Story 3's nomination in 2010, no animated film has been in the Best Picture race. Inexcusable, but the Academy group is like most Americans - they think animation in almost every form is inferior to films shot with flesh-and-blood people in real-life locations. Imagine an art show only nominating photographs for Best Artworks of the Year. I don't need to spell it out for you animation fans of course, but doesn't that sound so absurd? Who in their right mind thinks a painting is simply inferior because it's not a capture of a real-life subject?

C'mon... Get. With. It.

The Academy Awards are really just an overblown advertisement for Hollywood, it is not the great decider of film excellence. It's an excuse for movie companies to put sexy "Winner of 5 Oscars" blurbs on DVD/Blu-ray jackets. That being said, I felt that some indies and traditionally animated films getting nominated gave them some spotlight that they probably wouldn't get elsewhere. Now, that might be a thing of past.

Maybe.

The Brew and others warn that this rule change could mean that the 5 nominees of this year will be The Lego Batman Movie, Emoji Movie, The Boss Baby, anything mainstream and CGI regardless of quality. Those folks in the feature animation and shorts branches don't have a bias, they want to spotlight high quality works of every kind of animation. Now, leaving out Lego Movie in 2014 - I agree - was a big mistake. If I were them, I would've swapped Big Hero 6 (a very good movie, don't get me wrong) for Lego. That way, we still would've had the 2D Song of the Sea and Kaguya in the race, alongside the stop-mo Boxtrolls.

Honestly, this news and the reports of the change being due to fear of "bias towards old-school animation" is another slap in the face, in a year that I think is - so far - kind of a bummer to begin with. Yeah, I'll say it now, the first quarter of 2017 has been relatively dour and I'm not quite sure on the rest of the year's mainstream output. Couple that with all these photoreal/live-action remakes of animated classics coming out left and right, studios setting up shop only to make the same ol' same ol', things like Emoji Movie happening... Yeah... I'm bummed right now. Not going to lie.

It might've always been this way in some way or another, but I never thought it was this... Worrisome.

What say you?

Mountain Splat: Paramount Animation Launches New Nick-Heavy Slate [UPDATE]

During their presentation at CinemaCon earlier today, Paramount revealed some big changes to their animated movie slate...

Their animation presentation was overall pretty short, but footage from next year's Amusement Park was shown. Reactions seemed rather mixed, some said it looked like kids-only fluff, others said it looks like it could have some substance. The release date is now August 10, 2018. It used to be July 13, 2018. The change was obviously going to happen. Hotel Transylvania 3 recently landed in the mid-July slot. Smart move, Paramount.

Paramount will team up with Nickelodeon to do more animated pictures, no shock there. Ever since they established the animation label in 2012, Paramount's plan always included lots of Nick-based features. They started on a Nick-based movie, the successful Sponge out of Water. A third SpongeBob movie has been on the slate for quite a while, it is no longer opening the same exact day as The Lego Movie Sequel. It's now set for August 2, 2019. Another smart move right there...

They have also announced a movie based on the current Nick hit, The Loud House. I'm sure that will raise the roof somewhere... That film is currently set for February 7, 2020. Will it be a traditionally animated picture? Or a CG'ed take on the show? Hopefully the former, even if its success won't mean anything for 2D's future here in America outside of TV show adaptations.

The plan is to release six animated movies between 2018 and 2020. So far, that's four...: Sherlock Gnomes (1/12/2018), Amusement Park, SpongeBob 3, and The Loud House.

The next two? They will also be Nick pics (slated for 3/22/2019 and 7/31/2020, respectively), and the sixth? Probably one of the films they announced some time ago, like Beastlies, The New Kid, Shedd, or maybe something else. Hopefully something original and/or fresh.

I'd say it's a smart strategy, because if they do the Nick films in 2D, it won't cost them too much. They can make easy profits off of those, and save the $70 million+ budgets (should they go that high) for the more "event"-type pictures. One thing is for certain, Paramount Animation is not a studio. It's a group, with various studios doing different features for them. Just like Warner Animation Group!

That all being said, what will the other two Nick movies be? My guess... One of them will be The Fairly Oddparents, as that show is still going. Like SpongeBob, it just won't stop, and it's now their second longest-running animated show. In terms of currently-airing shows, maybe Rabbids? An animated Rabbids movie was talked about before, but Sony was set to do that. I kind of doubt Pig Goat Banana Cricket is a candidate, because that show seems like it's on ice these days.

As for an older Nicktoon? Maybe, although Hey Arnold!'s long-delayed "Jungle Movie" is going to be a two-part TV movie this coming fall. Some Nick classics like Rocko's Modern Life are coming back, but will they get the theatrical movie treatment? Who knows, who knows... Maybe it'll be that rumored Nicktoons team-up movie, apparently the thing was indeed pitched, but never made it past that stage. Or maybe... It's possible that it'll be a feature-length pilot for an upcoming Nick series.

Maybe it won't even concern a TV show. Nick's name has been attached to numerous family movies released by Paramount, including the likes of Rango and The Adventures of Tintin... So one of those pictures maybe is not a Nick show-based movie. Amusement Park looks to carry the Nick name, and will get a Nick show next year, so yeah...

UPDATE (3/29/2017)

BoxOfficeMojo lists the untitled 7/31/2020 Paramount/Nick film as a "Hybrid", while the 3/22/2019 Paramount/Nick flick is labelled as "Animation"... So the 2020 film is a live-action/animation hybrid? Welp, so much for Paramount being done with those. They said they'd move on from those because of how badly Monster Trucks turned out, but hey... Maybe it'll be a live-action/unreal animation hybrid. Still boring to me, but it's what they want to do.


What say you?

Alive and Howling Elsewhere: Trailer for 'Wolfwakers' Surfaces

The American animation industry may have little to no use for traditional animation when it comes to wide-release theatrical movies, but in other countries... It's a whole different story.

Game-changing Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and founder/director Tomm Moore, the good folks behind The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, are readying a new fantasy epic called Wolfwalkers. The same studio is also working on another traditionally animated film that should be out by the end of this year, that picture is The Breadwinner. When Wolfwalkers debuts... I don't know.

We've seen things from Wolfwalkers for a little while now. A film that Moore describes as the "final panel of Cartoon Saloon's "Irish folklore triptych," it tells the story of a young apprentice hunter named Robin Goodfellowe, who is set to help her father exterminate the last pack of wolves in the area. After saving a native girl in the forest, she meets the Wolfwalkers. She becomes one of them, putting her life at risk.

Today, a sort of "concept trailer" was posted by Cartoon Brew...


Like the last two films from this studio, it looks very atmospheric. The teaser also promises an intense, beautifully-directed story that isn't afraid to go down some dark paths. The staging of the deer running through the woods is a standout moment, the kind of staging that you can indeed get in a traditionally animated picture without conspicuous CGI.

Once this film is completed, I have a feeling GKIDS will probably handle the US distribution, like they did with Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, and presumably The Breadwinner. I'd argue that right now, Cartoon Saloon is leading a sort of 2D charge on the other side of the Atlantic, while keeping innovation in animation alive. They don't blow mega-budgets on these things (Kells and Song, combined, cost less than $15 million to make), and yet they look every bit as dazzling as the hyper-real films we churn out here for roughly $80 million apiece. They're more exciting to me, because they truly take advantage of animation as a medium, instead of trying to closely recreate real life. If only context-ignoring executives here in the states got the memo...

What say you?