Animation Oscar Bite 2002: The Ogre Has Landed

Oscar bait season is now officially upon us, and to mark the occasion I thought I'd start a brand new retrospective looking back at the history of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which I have followed eagerly since its inception in 2002. This category is still a relatively recent addition to the Academy Awards; prior to 2002, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences felt that the feature animation industry was too small to make such a category worthwhile (in fact, when the category was finally added, it came with the clause that it would not be presented in years where fewer than eight eligible films were submitted for consideration, although that has yet to happen). My intention is to have this completed by the Academy Awards ceremony of 2018 (with a view to covering that year's results some time in the aftermath), although whether I'll succeed or not is another matter. Without further ado, let's take a look at that fateful night on 24th March 2002 when animation history was made...

74th Academy Awards  - 24th March 2002

 

The contenders: Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Monsters, Inc, Shrek

The winner: Shrek

The rightful winner: Monsters, Inc

The barrel-scraper: Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

(Note: "The rightful winner" refers to the film that I personally feel should have taken the honors that year. Sometimes it accords with the Academy's choice, sometimes not. "The barrel-scraper" refers to an entry whose very nomination for an award of this prestige seems somewhat dubious. Obviously such things are entirely subjective.)


Other Notes:

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature started life with arguably its most controversial move to date, ie: the honoring of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek over Pixar's Monsters, Inc. It's a decision which seems myopic with hindsight - Shrek had stirred up endless enthusiasm back in 2001, but I think it's fair to say that time has not been particularly kind to the gruesome green ogre, or to DreamWorks Animation in general (who'd have guessed that a reliance on flavour-of-the-month cultural references and celebrity voiceovers would make your films look really dated in sixteen years' time?) and that Monsters, Inc now holds up as by far the stronger picture. But in the early 00s it felt pretty earth-shattering, because Hollywood animation was undergoing a serious shake-up, and the studio that would lead the way in the dawning 21st century was not yet set in stone. The Disney Renaissance that had dominated the 1990s had now run out of steam, as evidenced by the weak box office performances of The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, while Disney's underlings at Pixar looked to be blossoming into something really quite special. The respective critical and commercial successes of A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc had proven that their early triumph with Toy Story was no fluke, and already there was speculation that Pixar might end up dethroning Disney as the kings of Hollywood animation, with 3D animation replacing 2D as the industry standard. To put it in the words of Randall Boggs, the villain of Monsters, Inc, "Hear that? It's the winds of change."

There was, however, a potential fly in the ointment for Pixar, in the form of erstwhile Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. After parting ways with the house of mouse, he had co-founded DreamWorks Animation in 1994 and now was dead set on exploiting the public's waning goodwill toward traditional Disney and their growing fascination with CG animation. DreamWorks had ostensibly stolen Pixar's thunder (and by extension Disney's) once before in 1998 when their first all-CG feature Antz had managed to reach theatres ahead of Pixar's A Bug's Life (an achievement that mattered little in the long-term). The monster-sized box office success of Shrek in 2001, coupled with its subsequent victory at the Academy Awards, meant that, for just a moment, Pixar's future as the leaders of the animation pack seemed a little in doubt. Perhaps DreamWorks was the studio destined for eminence. But no, the Academy got it wrong and I think they're only too aware of their mistake, because, sixteen years on, they've yet to honor DreamWorks Animation with the award again (unless you care to count Wallace & Gromit: Curse of The Were-Rabbit, which was very much an Aardman baby) and in subsequent years Katzenberg's crew would have a hard enough time just getting an invite to the occasion. Pixar, meanwhile, currently have eight wins under their belt.

My understanding is that DreamWorks were actually quite sour that Academy Awards season because rumour had it that Shrek was in the running for a Best Picture nomination (haha, seriously?) but that didn't happen. A good thing too - even at the time, I never understood the public's infatuation with Shrek. The animation wasn't in in the slightest bit appealing, Donkey irritated the living snot out of me, it opens with that GODAWFUL Smash Mouth song, and the film's raison d'être as Katzenberg's bitter, angry middle finger to his former colleagues at Disney was both transparent and extremely off-putting (seriously, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut had fun at the expense of Renaissance Disney without being anywhere near this savage). Whereas Monsters, Inc felt like a lovely, gentle story from the heart, Shrek was born from a place of genuine spite, and that's something I could never get past about it.

The Disney-Pixar/DreamWorks rivalry dominated the occasion so much that the third nominee, Nickelodeon Movies' Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, is typically regarded as a mere footnote, if it's remembered at all. The feature spin-off of a series of Nickelodeon shorts, it seems distinctly out of place among this line-up, which is symptomatic of a problem that dogged the category in its early years - namely, that so few animated features were released on an annual basis that you tended to get at least one or two dubious entries simply to fill out slots in the nominations list. Now, I personally have never seen Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (or the collection of shorts it was based on), so I can make no actual judgement of the film itself, but I think it was always obvious from the outset that it wasn't in the same league as the two big-hitters it was up against and stood absolutely no chance (nevertheless, this kind of "filler" nominee would reach far more ridiculous heights the following year, when that steaming pile of horse shit Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron wound up in the running). It no doubt benefited from Disney's failure to submit their own major release for that year, the traditionally-animated Atlantis: The Lost Empire, for consideration in the first place. Atlantis had gone down like a lead balloon at the box office and hadn't uniformly impressed the critics (all the same, the clout of the Disney brand might have afforded it an ounce more prestige on the awards front than a relatively low-rent production like Jimmy Neutron), prompting Disney to apparently conclude that Monsters, Inc was the only pony worth their betting on.

Back in the early 00s a lot of animation fans were confident that this 3D animation thing was just a passing fad and that traditional animation would endure and eventually make a comeback. That hasn't happened, of course (and I personally have lost all hope that it will), but it is interesting to note how dramatically fortunes have since shifted among the major Hollywood animation studios. Not only did DreamWorks Animation ultimately fail to overshadow Pixar, but they've dwindled quite massively in popularity in recent years, with many of their films struggling to turn a profit at the box office - in fact, Illumination have pretty much replaced them as Disney/Pixar's greatest competition. Lately, Pixar have also lost some of their lustre - all in all, they're still heavy-hitters, but they've had their share of weak or disappointing features, and they no longer seem quite as bullet-proof as they did once upon a time. Conversely, Disney went through some pretty rough years in the 00s and it took them a long time to find their footing in the changing animation marketplace, but they're currently enjoying the kind of success they hadn't seen since the Renaissance days (not to mention, three out of the last four wins for Best Animated Feature went to them). Ain't no happily ever afters in this business; merely The Circle of Life.