Gee, there's some terrific films here. Animation's where it's at. Esp when you thinki of the films that didn't win. Mary and Max. Triplets of Belleview. Waltzing with Bashir etc.
People in the Academy often vote for people they know or for movies that are hyped around the time in LA, or for American movies simply because they themselves are American, and many members are too busy to see more than a few of all nominated movies. If this were a more international prize with a pickier selection of members, Pixar would probably still rule overall but Japanese cinema would be featured more strongly in the animated category.
Better movies came out those years, or at least that's what Academy voters thought at the time. There's really only one bad movie in the bunch ("Happy Feet"), and that one benefitted from going up against only 2 other nominees, both of which were just as bad ("Cars" and "Monster House"). The very good "Flushed Away" came out that year from Dreamworks, but was excluded from consideration for some reason - I think it would have won handily over the other nominees. As is very common in life, it's not always about how good you are, but about how much worse everyone else is.
Well in my opinion Monsters inc is very slightly better than shrek, flushed away or hedge should've won in 2006, wreck-it ralph in 2012, wind rises in 2013, lego movie in 2014, anomalisa in 2015, and kubo in 2016
I hate The Wind Rises. It's so pretentious. Most people don't know about Princess Kaguya by Takahata, which came out the same year but was nominated for the Oscars a year later. That one was a real gem.
I really enjoyed cars as a kid, but returning to it as an adult, it's a very basic film. Very generic story, the only thing setting it apart is the weird anthropomorphized cars, which isn't even necessarily a good thing.
Actually it's interesting you ask about The Lion King because in some ways The Lion King is responsible for there even being an Oscar for best animated picture. Before The Lion King in 1992 Disney made Beauty and the Beast, which was nominated for best picture (the first animated film in history to be nominated) and probably should have won, but even the fact that it was nominated angered some snooty Hollywood types who didn't recognize animated films as real films or voice actors as real actors. Then, in '94, The Lion King came out, was HUGELY successful making TONS of money. Toy Story came out the following year, also making boat loads of money. Of course, this inspired copy cats. Up until '94 there really was no competition for Disney in the US. Don Bluth made a movie once in a while but all the other animation studios that weren't making Saturday morning toy commercials (i.e. GI Joe or Transformers) had pretty much died in the 70s and 80s. continued...
anyway, all that changed after The Lion King. Other studios saw dollar signs and all of a sudden Dreamworks and Fox had their very own animation departments and before long they were cooking up ways to try and steal some market share from Disney and Pixar. Antz was made as a rip-off of A Bug's Life, The Prince of Egypt was known at Dreamworks as "The Zion King," and these films were followed up by The Road to El Dorado, Ice Age and Shrek. Warner Bros tried to get in on the action as well I think their first offering was Quest for Camelot. They didn't do as well as Fox or Dreamworks. Anyway, before long there were a ton of animated movies coming out every year compared to the small handful we had (in the US) before the Lion King. We also saw more foreign animated movies released in the US after the in-roads made by Ghost in the Shell and Princess Mononoke, etc. This coupled with the fact that the Academy didn't want to repeat the '92 controversy led to the creation of the animated oscar.
The only other animated films to be nominated for Best Picture were Toy Story 3 and Up, and that was only after the field of nominated films was expanded to a maximum of 10. With 10 films nominated, it was safe to nominate animated films again (and other deserving movies like Inception that normally would have not been nominated) and people wouldn't get so upset about it. But, now that they have the Best Animated Picture category it's pretty safe to say that an animated film will never win Best Picture even if it deserves it. So it's a win/loss for animated films in general.
These comments are just the best. One point I'll take some umbrage to is that Antz was a rip-off of A Bug's Life. That's really oversimplifying the ongoing "war" between Disney/Pixar and DreamWorks. They have released very-similarly-premised movies within a year of each other at least half a dozen times since Katzenburg left Disney and formed DreamWorks. DreamWorks has more-often-than-not been first to the theaters and has certainly held their own in the "which one was better" race. A Bugs Life < Antz; The Wild < Madagascar; Finding Nemo > Shark Tale; Ratataouille > Flushed Away (not by a ton, though); and Monsters Inc. vs. Shrek is pretty much a draw. There was also Emperor's New Groove vs. Road to El Dorado, but they were both pretty bad.
I liked A Bug's Life much better than Antz, but.. The Wild? what is that? Hold on...
::google, google::
hm... how did I miss that? Doesn't look even vaguely familiar. I wasn't even living overseas in 2006. Must have blocked it out. But anyway that was Disney, not Pixar. And Disney movies of that era (mid-2000s were mostly pretty horrible)
Not sure "artistic merit" is the point of those films. It's to make kids laugh and then beg their parents to keep taking them to see it and buy the DVDs. They are spectacularly successful at that. You're certainly entitled to your opinion that they "blow", but my kids love the Madagascar movies.
Well, that's fine. Just don't expect them to win an Oscar. I was responding to a comment asking where Ice Age and Madagascar were on a quiz about animated films that have won Oscars.
Agreed that they are not oscar-worthy movies. But even with lots more animated films being made, anything by Dreamworks or Disney or Pixar will get a nomination.
If you look up the requirements for getting an animated film into the Academy competition you'll see why some of the best films aren't nominated. It's much more complicated than non-animated films, including a requirement to have a theatrical release in Los Angeles County within the year. Some don't want to take the time to jump through all the hoops to qualify, and then fill out the required paperwork.
It's interesting Brave won the Oscar for best picture when it was the least well-reviewed film of the five that were nominated this year. I made a quiz for the 100-best-reviewed animated films of all time and Brave isn't even on that list, though the four films it was competing against this year are. I'm not saying Brave didn't deserve to win, it's just odd. Look at my quiz and you'll see.
I think a lot of Oscar winners have to be taken with a pinch of salt, maybe I'm being cynical but it often seems to me like winners win by reputation rather than overall quality. For example, I often find that historical Dramas have an advantage for some reason, maybe it makes people feel more intellectual if they are perceived to like "Highbrow"?
Oh, yes, one has to be very "high-brow" to appreciate the historical dramas of Crash, Birdman, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, Chicago, Lord of the Rings...I will agree on one point, however. They do not reward comedies.
I agree with ander217. However, the Academy is heavily criticised, more than it should. In my opinion, they do reward, more often than not, the best in each category. Comedies are less universal than dramas and animated pictures. The culture differences play hugely on how these (comedies) movies are accepted.
Seems like the last 10-15 years have seen a huge swing from awarding blockbusters (understood as movies that lots and lots of people actually want to see) to more recently awarding films that are seen as more dramatic or artistic. I look at many of the films from my youth that won best picture and they were almost all hugely popular box office films. The last winner of best picture that I have actually seen is Argo, 10 years ago. Of course that's anecdotal, but it bears out when you look at the top grossing pictures from year to year. Today's nominees are rarely big hits.
I've seen all of these, and in my opinion it's a dead heat between Rango and Happy Feet as to the worst one. My sister-in-law convinced me to take the family to Rango and the ads for it made it look OK. Definitely NOT a kids movie, whereas you can take small kids to any of the others.
Could not disagree more. Rango was a masterpiece. I'll give you that it is not terrifically well-suited to being a kid's movie, but out of this list it's top three for me. Great characters, great writing, and an important story to tell especially now as the American west parches, the Colorado River no longer runs to the sea, and developers and suburbanites continue to bury their heads in the sand (or, excuse me, their imported Scottish turf grass that they laid on top of the sand).
As an adult having to watch most of these with young relations I thought Rango was great . I'm a big fan of Eastwood's westerns so that drew me in but Rango also had a strong storyline great characters , action and laughs and the actors did great . It was something different .
Have any of you guys heard of The Pixar Theory? If not, Google it. It's a Theory that attempts to prove all Pixar movies are in the same universe and puts them into chrinological order. It's quite a stretch in places but it'd be amazing if it were true.
Like I said, it's a bit of a stretch in places, but the explaination for how animals, toys and other machines can think and talk is based around the magic found Brave, and exploited/developed by a corporation called Buy N Large, that pops up in many Pixar movies, and gets out of control. Like I said, a stretch, but it's just a bit of fun, and an interesting read if nothing else.
but Cars isn't like Toy Story or A Bug's Life or Finding Nemo- films where human beings exist in parallel. In the world of Cars every lifeform is some kind of car and there are no humans at all.
If I remember, the theory says Cars takes place after humans have fled the earth (as depicted in Wall-E), at a point at which the evolution of machines (first referenced with Syndrome's A.I. machine in the Incredibles) is in a stage in which everything is a car. Following the end of Wall-E, the plants and bugs regenerate, but there a very few humans left, which is the time during which the events of A Bug's Life take place. As Simsy said, it's a stretch, and almost certainly not something Pixar actually designed, but it's a fun little idea to play with.
It's a cartoon made for kids, for Pete's sake. Remember those days when nothing had to make sense and you could believe anything you wanted in the Land of Make-Believe? My grandkids loved Cars, and basically any other animated movie which flits across the screen that has characters with big eyes and a plot where the good guy wins in the end. They didn't care what the critics thought of it. I remember when I was a kid watching Pow-wow the Indian Boy on TV and thinking it was the greatest thing ever made. It was only after I grew up that I was able to see the flaws.
Critics? Cartoons for kids are all about imagination and fantasy. Dreaming up how the different stories could connect, fits perfectly. So it is quite the opposite, people that say that the worlds cant be connected thóse are the critics and lack imagination from a kids point of view. Kids will make it work, even if it doesnt not seem to all add up, they ll invent a rule/reason why it would work. I think many kids will think of how and if some of these movies are connected. (The how is not relevant for the very young, because they can see it as totally real)
Huh, Big Hero 6 was (and still is) one of my favorite animated movies. I like it better than Toy Story 3 personally. Nothing wrong with your opinion, just wanted to share mine.
Got everything except Rango. I've never even heard of that one, so I googled it and then remembered that I did see a trailer for it before, I just didn't care for it. xD
I was thinking so hard about what that robot movie in 2015 could be. I was so sure it had to be Baymax, which is what the movie is called where I live.
I think the only people who'd rank The Lorax over Toy Story 3 are those who haven't seen the first two Toy Storys. Otherwise, I'd think differently about them.
Seems like there's some bias toward Pixar movies when Disney animated theatrical releases are soooo much better. Moana/Vaiana should have won against Zootopia/Zootropolis.
I liked Moana, and Disney has gotten a lot better since bottoming out with Chicken Little while Pixar has lost some of its edge in recent years, but, in general, have to strongly disagree that Disney movies are better so much better than Pixar movies, or ever better at all. Historically it's more often been the opposite.
Oscar is biased towards Hollywood and the US as a whole because there a tons of animated movies better than these. The only non-american is Spirited Away. I liked Your Name more than Zootopia but Zootopia got the Oscar and there are a lot of more French and Japanese animations which deserves an Oscar but .....
Settle down. Zootopia is the second best film on the list, easily. The best of course is Spirited Away, which is on a different level of quality to the rest.
Toy Story 4 was okay, but watching it the whole time I remember thinking to myself just how completely unnecessary the whole exercise felt. Part 3 would have been a much stronger finish to the series, in addition to making more sense as a conclusion to the story.
Really too bad that only 50% got Spirited Away. Lots of good films here (and a couple stinkers, looking at you Rango and Happy Feet), but SA is arguably the best of them all.
I'm not arguing against either of their inclusions because they are both incredible films, but the tonal whiplash of the first two winners being Shrek and Spirited Away is really funny to me.
I love that there's pictures now, and I'm so happy GDT's Pinocchio won. This year's nominees were all really good, but Pinocchio's craft was on another level. Hopefully we start to see more stop-motion and more adult films win here.
There were several Wallace and Gromit films. How come you don't have to name which one this is when you have to specify which Spiderman and which Toy Story?
You already posted this on a different quiz. This is explained in the caveat. We used to do it your way but people complained so we switched. We're not going to switch back only to have more people complain.
It's weird how this award started out with Shrek over Monsters Inc. and Spirited Away over Lilo and Stitch and then just defaulted to Disney/Pixar movies winning unless it happened to be a ridiculously weak year:
Is it people with kids? Or adults who watch kids' movies?
5 of these drawing styles are totally unfamiliar to me, along with the titles.
It seems odd to get such a high average over 2 decades of movies. Maybe parents have their kids binge them. I guess animated movies tend to age better.
I'd guess that people might memorize Oscar winners, or nominees, but wouldn't have thought they'd take the time for animated movies.
Almost all of these are Pixar movies. Lots of people watch Pixar movies. Ergo, they know the names. Factor in that this is a quiz site with people who grew up watching these films and you have yourself a high scoring quiz.
Also in my opinion this year the best was Wreck it Ralph. Brave was slightly above average.
1. Cars
2. Monster House
3. Flushed Away
4. Happy Feet
Cars wasn't nearly as bad as Happy Feet, though it was the worst thing Pixar had ever done (and would remain so up until Cars 2).
::google, google::
hm... how did I miss that? Doesn't look even vaguely familiar. I wasn't even living overseas in 2006. Must have blocked it out. But anyway that was Disney, not Pixar. And Disney movies of that era (mid-2000s were mostly pretty horrible)
Raya and the Last Dragon
Luca
The Boss Baby: Family Business
Encanto
Mitchells v.s the Machines or
The Loud House Movie?
Wallace and Gromit > Chicken Little
Happy Feet > Cars
Rango > Winnie the Pooh, Cars 2
Spiderman > Ralph 2, Incredibles 2
Pinocchio > Turning Red, Lightyear, Strange World.
It's crazy that Turning Red (a decent but not great Pixar movie) is the best to lose in the last 20 years.
An average score of 19/22.
Is it people with kids? Or adults who watch kids' movies?
5 of these drawing styles are totally unfamiliar to me, along with the titles.
It seems odd to get such a high average over 2 decades of movies. Maybe parents have their kids binge them. I guess animated movies tend to age better.
I'd guess that people might memorize Oscar winners, or nominees, but wouldn't have thought they'd take the time for animated movies.
Also please accept BH6 for Big Hero 6! I know it's already short but it's commonly used!