It’s Time to Give Animation the Respect It Deserves

About two years ago I went to the movies by myself for the very first time. I was home for the holidays and my parents wanted to go to see the newest Jennifer Lopez movie, Second Act. Nothing against J. Lo, but I wasn’t particularly interested and had my heart set on seeing a movie I had been hearing rave reviews about: Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse. My dad scoffed at my decision, confused as to why I would want to go see an animated movie “for kids”. I’ve always loved animated movies, so I brushed this off and went on my merry way. And I’m so glad I did.

Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse is an incredible film. I walked out of the theater totally blown away. I am not a huge fan of superhero movies in general, and had seen maybe one Spiderman movie prior to this one, so I was interested to see what an animated superhero movie would look like. The animation is spectacular, the plot is fun, and the voice acting is spot on. The story is new and different, centering on Miles Morales, the first Afro-Latino superhero to be featured in a Marvel movie. The incorporation of the original soundtrack featuring artists like Juice WRLD and Post Malone is totally in tune with the story and Miles’ character. The whole movie felt like a breath of fresh air and quickly became one of my favorites.

While I had no regrets over my solitary viewing experience, my dad’s initial reaction got me thinking about how many people overlook animated movies as a genre simply because they are seen as juvenile or designated as something that only kids watch. For comparison, Into the Spider-Verse made $375.5 million at the box office, while Spiderman: Homecoming and Spiderman: Far From Home, the most recent live action iterations, made $880.2 million and $1.13 billion respectively. While there are undoubtedly several different factors that play into this discrepancy, I have a suspicion that Into the Spider-Verse being animated had something to do with it. Even the release dates suggest Marvel’s prioritization of the live action movies, with Spiderman: Homecoming and Spiderman: Far From Home being released as big summer blockbusters, while Into the Spider-Verse was given a December release date.

Animation is an art form that many of us grew up with and therefore may associate with childhood, but to disregard animated films and shows once you reach adulthood is to do yourself a great disservice. I would venture to say a majority of animated films are made for children, but there is plenty of animation out there with more mature content, and just because a film is made for kids doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate it as an adult.

I think this association of animation with juvenility leads to it often not being taken seriously by audiences and virtually ignored by award shows. I specifically have a bone to pick with the Oscars and their treatment of animated films. The Academy Awards has had a category for best animated short film since the 1930s, but the Best Animated Feature category has only existed since 2001. An animated film has never won Best Picture, and only three animated films have ever been nominated in that category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010). They rarely get nominated in anything other than music categories, which, in my view, completely undervalues animation as an art form and the complex stories it is used to tell. I was overjoyed when Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse won Best Animated Feature in 2018, but I feel it could have easily also been nominated for Best Picture as well.

Directors Charlie Kauffman and Duke Johnson expressed similar complaints about the Academy’s treatment of animated films when their film Anomalisa was nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2015. Anomalisa is a stop motion animated film that follows a lonely middle aged man who perceives everyone around him as identical until one day he meets a unique woman. It is most definitely not a kids movie, and Kauffman and Johnson both expressed their frustration with the infantilization of animation in an interview with The Oklahoman in 2016. As Johnson puts it, “We see it [Anomalisa] as a movie — a movie that's for adults that happens to be done in animation, and animation is the medium with which we chose to tell the story. But animation is not a genre and therefore can be used to tell any kind of story.”

To his point, considering some of the past more serious or adult animated films that have been nominated alongside whatever the biggest animated Disney movie was that year, it seems especially unfair that the Academy doesn’t often consider animated movies for other awards. Loving Vincent, the first ever fully painted feature film, and The Breadwinner, which tells the story of an 11 year old girl living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, were both nominated for Best Animated Feature alongside The Boss Baby and ended up losing to Disney’s Coco that year. While I don’t intend to discredit The Boss Baby or Coco (a film that I’m a big fan of), I really wish beautiful, original films like Loving Vincent and The Breadwinner would be taken more seriously and nominated in other categories instead of being defined solely by its status as an animated movie.

Speaking of Disney, I have recently built up resentment towards their proclivity for making “live action remakes” of some of their popular animated movies of the past. This trend really began around 2015 with the release of a live action version of Cinderella. Since then we’ve seen live action adaptations of classics like Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Aladdin, and Mulan. While tthese remakes almost always do well financially, this guaranteed success discourages Disney from investing in new and original stories, since it is so easy to bank on the nostalgia factor that comes with remaking classics. These remakes are never as good as the originals and sometimes their existence seems completely unwarranted. The ‘live action’ adaptations of The Jungle Book and The Lion King are obviously not actually live action, but CGI animated, which somehow makes the animals seem less expressive and lifelike than the animals in the actual original animations.

This trend is not limited to Disney, and the insistence of studios in making live action or CGI animated remakes of movies and series shows the lack of appreciation for more traditional animation as an art form. And while most of Disney’s remakes are half decent at least, I have to mention one of the worst offenders when it comes to live action adaptations: the disaster that is M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. The original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series aired on Nickelodeon in the mid 2000s, and is often considered one of the best animated shows of all time. But its 2010 live action adaptation is borderline unwatchable. Asian characters are replaced by an almost all white cast, the special effects are lackluster at best, and the plot is nonsensical and unfaithful to the source material. Critics hated it and Avatar fans would rather pretend it doesn’t exist. Even so, there is another upcoming live action Avatar series being produced by Netflix.

Animation is an important yet underrated art form that requires so much time, care, and artistry and that deserves to be watched and appreciated beyond childhood. It can be such a creative and inventive way to tell a story and I am a firm believer that there are some films and series that only truly work in animated form, and it is a shame that a lot of people don’t take it seriously. If you let go of the idea that animation is just for kids, you will be opened up to a world of beautiful and compelling content.

And if you’re looking for a place to start, for movies I’d recommend Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Spirited Away (or pretty much anything Studio Ghibli), Coraline, Ratatouille, and The Iron Giant along with all the films I’ve mentioned in this article. And for series, in addition to Avatar: The Last Airbender, I’d also recommend Bojack Horseman, Aggretsuko, Midnight Gospel, Invader Zim, Total Drama Island, and The Legend of Korra.