85th Academy Awards - 24th February 2013
The contenders: Brave, Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Wreck-It-Ralph
The winner: Brave
The rightful winner: ParaNorman
The barrel-scraper: Frankenweenie
Other Notes:
Oh boy, were people pissed off about this one.
I described the results of the 2002 ceremony, where Shrek triumphed over Monsters, Inc, as this category's "most controversial move to date," but in terms of the seething, lingering internet anger it generated I think this year might actually have it beat. People widely agree that Monsters, Inc holds up as a stronger film than Shrek and that the Academy were a little off in their judgement back in 2002, but you don't tend to see a whole lot of really potent bitterness on the matter. People have generally accepted what happened and moved on, content that Pixar had plenty of opportunities to shine thereafter. But the 2013 ceremony...well, that's a whole different kettle of catfish. People are still livid that Pixar's Brave beat Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, and they continue to treat every subsequent Academy Awards ceremony as another opportunity to vent their outrage. Whenever you come across someone trying make the case that this award is meaningless or that Pixar ALWAYS win even when they submit a mediocre entry (totally untrue, as Lightning McQueen can attest) it's this outcome they'll invariably point toward.
It's true of course that Brave is one of Pixar's less popular films. Not "less popular" in the A Bug's Life sense, where people have just kind of forgotten that it exists, but in the sense that there are a lot of very vocal people who actively scorn it - which, again, I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that it beat fan favourite Wreck-It Ralph to top honors (Wreck-It Ralph didn't exactly blow away the box office, but its numerous references to gaming culture ensured that it quickly picked up a robust cult following). If it hadn't won this award, I suspect that it would be regarded as "a mild disappointment" as opposed to "TEH WORZT PIXAR FLIM EVA!!!"
Personally...I was okay with Brave. It wasn't Up or Ratatouille; there were no scenes that had me gasping or crying or wanting to stand up and cheer, but it held my interest and there's not really anything I actively disliked about it. Honestly, my number one problem with Brave would have to be its moniker. I do not think that "Brave" is a very good title. In fact, I think it's one heck of a dumb title. My problem with it is that it's incredibly vague and generic, and shows no interest in conveying anything about the tone or character of the film itself. We all know that the film was originally going to be called "The Bear and The Bow" but that was booted when the weak box office returns for The Princess and The Frog gave Disney a fantastic fear of anything that sounded vaguely fairy tale-related. Instead, they sought something hard and edgy that wouldn't have male twenty-something theatre patrons blushing at the ticketing booth...and "Brave" was really the best they could come up with? I had to smirk at the film's efforts to justify it by having its protagonist close off by saying something along the lines of, "We can all achieve our destiny if we're brave enough to see it!" Nice try, but you could just have easily called the film "Destiny". Or "See". Or "Help! My Maw Is A Bear!" which would have at least been tailored to suit the film's plot. (In fairness, the title might have been conceived as a nod to the song "Scotland The Brave", but it's still ridiculously vague.)
In the end, the real issue with Brave has less to do with the film itself than with its odious backstory. It's no secret that historically Pixar have had a real problem when it comes to female representation, both within their pictures and behind the scenes. Brave was initially touted as being the project that would finally shatter Pixar's "boys club" image, it being not only their first ever film to feature a female protagonist, but their first to be helmed by a female director (Brenda Chapman, who had previously co-directed the DreamWorks Animation film The Prince of Egypt). Then came the news in late 2010 that Chapman had been forced out of the project and replaced by a male director, Mark Andrews, and this caused a lot of heartbreak among those hoping to see greater female presence in the animation industry. Chapman, of course, is not the only director to have been unceremoniously booted under Lasseter. From what little I know about Jan Pinkava's original version of Ratatouille, I think it was probably for the best that the project was handed over to Brad Bird. Chris Sanders' American Dog I'm less sure about, given how Bolt turned out. We don't know exactly what happened with Brave (all we got was the standard "creative differences" explanation) but I can take an educated guess - given those aforementioned concerns surrounding the commercial failure of The Princess and The Frog, I find it entirely plausible that Lasseter looked at this very female-orientated picture and became jumpy about it, telling Chapman that she either had to testosterone things up a notch or go. Chapman resisted, so she was out.
It's at this point that we may as well address the elephant in the room regarding John Lasseter - at the time of writing, he is taking a leave of absence from Disney following allegations of sexual misconduct around the workplace. When this was announced in late November 2017, many people reacted with shock. Lasseter was supposed to be one of the good guys of Hollywood, right? To those with a keen interest in the animation industry, however, it merely seemed to confirm that some of the worst rumours we'd heard about Lasseter in the aftermath of Chapman's firing were true. I wasn't aware that the issues went as far as sexual harassment, but I had heard reports that Lasseter had quite a malodorous attitude toward his female colleagues and that his real beef with Chapman was that he simply didn't like that a girl had climbed up the ladder into his all-boys clubhouse. When the news broke about Lasseter, I was disappointed, but not really surprised.
What's sad about Brave is that the story was clearly a deeply personal one for Chapman, having been based on her relationship with her own daughter. The mother-daughter relationship still remains at the centre of the finished film, but I think it's safe to say that Andrews' heart wasn't as invested in this as Chapman's would have been; Brave is serviceable, but it doesn't emit a whole lot of passion for its setting or scenario. Ultimately, I'm inclined to rank Brave alongside such Disney not-quites as The Fox and The Hound and Brother Bear (the latter of which Brave received much comparison to - to my immense surprise, as I didn't think there were many souls out there who actually remembered Brother Bear in 2012). They're not bad films but they are each hampered by their timid, compromised tone; in all cases, you get the feeling that there was a potentially great film in here, but it wasn't allowed to be all that it could be. Brave is more of a missed opportunity than anything else.
Here's my number one problem with Wreck-It Ralph: that Vanellope von Schweetz character is really fucking dreadful. Sorry, but the instant she opened her mouth I could feel whatever emotional investment I had in the story gurgling nosily down the plughole. You can undo a heck of a lot of good work by including a sequence where one of your characters screeches the same belabored scatological joke over and over in the most teeth-clenchingly annoying tone possible, and that's something that Rich Moore and Phil Johnston might want to keep in mind if they fancy the Oscar chances of that upcoming sequel where Ralph breaks the internet.
Of the remaining nominees, the one that surprised me the most was Laika's ParaNorman. My number one nitpick with this entry was that I didn't find the character designs to be particularly appealing (there was something about them I found vaguely reminiscent of the kind of stop motion figures you'd encounter in 1990s snack food commercials) but the story and characters themselves were so fresh and engaging that I honestly didn't mind. ParaNorman is a well-crafted and intelligent meditation on the pains and the joys of being an outsider, and also on the road to Hell being paved with good intentions - the film purposely eschews traditional villainy, opting instead to have all of its conflict arise from misjudgements and miscommunication. As a horror-fantasy, it's not quite as beautifully, beguilingly twisted an experience as Coraline - this is more like The Goonies meets The Sixth Sense meets Night of The Living Dead, with a twist - but it's still a good mix and back in 2012 this was welcome proof that Laika were more than just a one movie wonder. I'll also make note of that gag at the end where one of the characters casually reveals himself to be gay, and it's done in a way where the joke doesn't seem at the expense of either the character or his sexuality. I bring this up because it's leaps and bounds ahead of Disney's recent attempt at LGBT representation in that awful live action Beauty and The Beast remake (live action LeFou is about as progressive a LGBT character as Wiggins from Pocahontas).
Meanwhile, Aardman Animations finally got to release their dream project, The Pirates! Band of Misfits (actually, it was The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! in its native Blighty but I guess it was changed due to a fear that American audiences get spooked by anything vaguely intellectual-sounding?), their first claymation feature film since Curse of The Were-Rabbit in 2005. Adapted from a series of novels by Gideon Defoe, Aardman had apparently pitched this one to DreamWorks Animation during their short-lived partnership but were told that there was no market for pirate pictures (this was before that Disney film with Johnny Depp came along and launched one of the most annoying cinematic franchises of modern times). Unfortunately (and much like Arthur Christmas before it), Aardman's pirate picture struggled to find an audience (at least outside of the UK), prompting the proposed sequel, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Cowboys!, to be scrapped. My heart bled for director Peter Lord, because I know how long he'd been wanting to make this film and how intent he was on doing a full series based on Defoe's novels. However, I would be lying if I said that I felt a great deal of personal heartbreak at the prospect of no more Pirates! I liked the original just fine, but it didn't leave me baying for more. It's one of those fun-while-it-lasts films that doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. What I mainly enjoyed were the cameos by Jane Austen and the Elephant Man.
The nadir of the night was Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, an animated remake of his 1984 live action short about a pulverised terrier who gets raised from the dead. Perhaps the real reason why I honestly can't be too hard on Brave is because Frankenweenie came as a far more crushing disappointment to me. I genuinely expected this to my favourite movie of the year - it deals with a subject near and dear to my heart (pet bereavement), the titular mutt bears a striking resemblance to the four-legged lead from Family Dog, and it's loaded with horror iconography. By rights I should have been all over this thing. Sadly, it's all undone by an absolute bummer of a story, with its forlornly muddled attitude toward life and death (I'm aware that the film's cop-out happy ending is faithful to the original short, but that doesn't make it a satisfying one) and its thoughtless double standards regarding which master-pet relationships are worthy of veneration and which aren't (you don't need to be a cat person to appreciate that Weird Girl and Mr Whiskers get a seriously ugly deal). The stop motion animation is technically superb, but the visuals do have a tedious familiarity about them - not just the dog, but a significant portion of the cast look like characters from previous Burton works, in a manner that reveals the limitations of Burton's style more than anything else, eg: the protagonist from Frankenweenie looks like a recycled version of the hero from Corpse Bride (that they're both called Victor is kind of a necessary evil, given that he's based on Victor Frankenstein). Not to mention that "Pluto is not a planet?" jokes were really old hat in 2012 (what time period is this supposed to be set in anyway? If not for that one stupid line I would have said late 1940s).
The Snub Club:
Elsewhere in the animation industry, 2012 proved to be the year that DreamWorks Animation finally ran out of luck: Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted did fine (obviously I stayed well away from that one), but Rise of The Guardians was not a financial success, kick-starting a pattern where DreamWorks would consistently lose money on high-budgeted titles that didn't click with the public and were forced to lay off employees in droves. Rise of The Guardians, adapted from a series of novels by William Joyce, was one of DreamWorks' more ambitious projects - it's dark, moody and atmospheric and it takes itself a lot more seriously than most DreamWorks films before it. It's also one of DreamWorks' most arresting pieces visually, which is not to say that it's an especially pretty-looking film - it goes so out of its way to avoid anything remotely cuddly or cutesy-looking that often it embraces full-on grotesqueness - yet there is something strangely enthralling about the spectacle of it all. I want to call Rise of The Guardians one of DreamWorks' better films, although I am also inclined think of it as a failure. It's an awfully nice try that doesn't quite get it right. Perhaps the world, story and characters needed better fleshing out. Perhaps Jack Frost needed to be a slightly less obnoxious protagonist (he gets a horrifically tragic backstory, but a little too late). Perhaps Pitch needed to have more dimension as an antagonist (I actually find myself feeling a certain degree of sympathy for Pitch in the end. Is there any reason why he couldn't stick around and have Halloween? Kids like being scared on Halloween).
Blue Sky released Ice Age: Continental Drift, which made an absolute killing at the international box office despite being one of the shittiest films ever made (I'd like to think that a good chunk of that audience were just in it for the Maggie Simpson short at the start - which I did like, by the way - but maybe that's just wishful thinking). Continental Drift has no heart, no soul, no mind, no spine, no anything; it's the epitome of a cynical cash grab, and the only thing I kind-of sort-of liked about it was the badger. By this stage, the Ice Age franchise was clearly struggling with the demands of balancing an increasingly cluttered cast - Ellie's possum "brothers" are here reduced to background extras while we get some uber-hackneyed subplot where Manny and Ellie's teenage daughter learns a vital lesson in personal integrity when she ditches her best friend (a bizarre mole-hedgehog chimera) to hang out with the in-crowd (what is this, Leave It To Beaver?). Then there's Diego's female counterpart, who turns her back on her life of piracy and sides with the good guys for no other reason than the script demands it. By now I was very conscious of the fact that the humans who played a major role in the first film haven't been seen or mentioned since, and I kept wondering if humans are still even a part of this world, or if this is now set in some freaky alternate universe where humans went extinct and mammoths became the dominant species. Roshan and his solemn, quietly dignified tribe frankly don't feel as if they could fit in any more with this increasingly monstrous inanity.
Finally, in the this-happened-but-I-wasn't-paying-much-attention category, the Hotel Transylvania series got its start this year. I've heard mixed things.
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