Pretty astute diagnosis of what’s wrong with current animation (Disney has stupidly believed that computer animation is the magic ingredient, though a well-written hand drawn animated film will beat a piece of CGI dreck any day).
In “Robots,” eager young Rodney Copperbottom, on arriving in Robot City, meets Fender, voiced by Robin Williams. All the wonder the audience should feel as Rodney beholds the Erector-set metropolis of his dreams is crushed under Fender’s nonstop shtick. The characters in “Hoodwinked” natter constantly, even as their unfortunate mouth movements reveal inadequacies in the design of their faces. And if the trailer is any indication, “The Wild,” coming from Disney on April 14, with voices by Kiefer Sutherland and Janeane Garofalo, among others, looks like yet another gabfest.
American animation wasn’t always like this. Some of its most memorable moments have no talking: Mickey Mouse dancing with the brooms in “Fantasia”; the Seven Dwarfs weeping at Snow White’s bier; Bugs Bunny riding in as Brunhilde on a white charger in “What’s Opera, Doc?” Animation is often funnier, more dramatic and more powerful when words aren’t distracting the viewer’s attention from the stylized expressions and movements.
What’s intriguing is that Aladdin had Robin Williams doing his deal, but still had good quiet moments, whereas shlock like Lilo and Stitch just stunk it up from minute number one.
Give me late WB era Chuck Jones / Mike Maltese any day of the week.
The whole “Duck, Rabbit, Duck” hunting season trilogy is the peak of smart comedy.
“Animation is often funnier, more dramatic and more powerful when words aren’t distracting the viewer’s attention from the stylized expressions and movements.”
Ya, I hate all these damn “talkies.” In the immortal words of Norma Desmond: “Words, words, more words! Well, you’ll make a rope of words and strangle this business! But there’ll be a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!”
there’s still some great animation. tons of anime out there, especially hayao miyazaki’s work, like Mononoke and Spirtited Away. A few of the television series, though tending towards trite, can be great entertainment and quite moving without a huge amount of dialogue, despite the stereotypical “jabbering japanese” speed racer-style parody. “Wemustwintheracespeed! Iknowfather, Iwillwin!”
A few of the Futurama series episodes were downright beautiful. The ‘lost dog” episode makes me cry every time I see it. The simpson’s, though not as visually appealing, have at times had some of the best stories on TV.
Well, I liked Lilo and Stitch — which by the way had loads of “traditional” animation…
But… I shall remain magnanimous and on this issue we shall “agree to disagree.”
…crap. Even the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has had its ruptures and schisms already.
What’s ironic is that during the early 80s at SIGGRAPH most of the cartoons we saw were complete crap. The graphics were wonderful, but they had no plot.
Finally around 85 or 86, there was a breakthrough and it was by Disney who created a cartoon with good but not stellar graphics but one that had a really good plot. (Think Lady and the Tramp made out of dog robots.)
I liked Aladdin immensely, but it was around the time of Aladdin that I began to see cartoons whose characters were really just “some actor”. I like Robin Williams, but I actually did not like Robin Williams in Aladdin.
“Finally around 85 or 86, there was a breakthrough and it was by Disney who created a cartoon with good but not stellar graphics but one that had a really good plot. (Think Lady and the Tramp made out of dog robots.)”
Cypher, for the life of me I can’t think of what cartoon you’re talking about. Help me out here?
I think this is just a pinky-out “they don’t make things like they used to” article.
I will admit that as an animation fan, I am super-ignorant of the anime stuff. I tried to watch Akira in the late ’90s and could never make it through (”Tetsuo!” “Kineda!” Repeat Ad Absurdium.). I know its supposed to be great and all but jiminy christmas I wish they would do some character design beyond the traditional “anime” look.
I don’t like having “name” actors do animated flicks just for the sake of it. Robin Williams went right up to the line in Aladdin – it worked there for me, it didn’t work in Robots (Why Ewan McGregor? Why Halle Berry? “Because”, they say). Sometimes a celebrity brings the character to life – Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were superb in the Toy Story films, but other times the actor overpowers the character.
Hollywood, and Disney, are stupid because Pixar has done well not because their movies are computer drawn but because THEY’RE REALLY GOOD MOVIES. Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story, A Bugs Life would be good claymation or flipbooks because the stories are really good. Not even the best looking cgi can polish a turd of a movie like Shark Tale.
My biggest problem with Lilo and Stitch was that the characters are not attractive and not likeable. It was also too “modern”. I believe the best Disney films have a timeless quality to them, which goes against the modern grain of inserting every pop culture reference they can into the film (thank you, Shrek). My all time favorite is still The Lion King.
“Simba. Remember who you are. You must take your place, in the Circle of Life.”
Hakuna-freaking-matata.
(The Emperor’s New Groove is also very underrated)
I quite agree, Oliver. You know, one of the things I’ve seen that pissed me off more than anything I’ve read recently (well, anything outside the right-wing blogosphere, that is) was a particularly crapulent sidebar in the Feb. 20 issue of TIME magazine by Richard Corliss, “Tumult in Toon Town“. Corliss argued that traditional animators have been displaced by the wild popularity of CGI animation, with the Hollywood suits deciding that Americans don’t want to see non-CGI films. (Witness Disney’s dissolution of its animation unit.) He concluded that the nominees for best animated feature Oscar this year (”Howl’s Moving Castle“, “Corpse Bride“, and “Curse of the Were-Rabbit“), which did not include any of the higher-grossing CGI films such as “Chicken Little” and “Robots“, were evidence that the voting members of the Academy (themselves animators) were getting political revenge by shutting out CGI films from the honors. He even included just a soupçon of racism, mentioning that Howl’s was the latest offering from “Japanimator” Hayao Miyazaki.
Of course this is utter bunk. The fact is the films nominated are simply better movies. Chicken Little is nothing more than a string of lame highly telegraphed jokes. Robots, as you observe, squanders an initially clever premise to squeeze in every possible Robin Williams schtick possible.
(As I was typing this, my mind unintentionally formed the analogy to many Bush apologists. As with Corliss’ ridiculous thesis, conserva-bots never imagine that Administration critics can be honest in their criticism, but must only be motivated by cheap political “revenge”.)
As disclaimer, I’ll admit to being a massive Miyazaki-phile, and have been since first seeing Nausicaä in 85 or 86. (Hell, my nickname here derives from the main character in the smartest science fiction anime ever made…)
Re: Pixar – right on! I also like the Lion King and New Groove, the latter much more than I would have originally thought and more than many other more highly promoted Disney offerings. Being the screwed up soul I am, my favorite Lion King scene is of course the march of the Nuremberg Hyenas.
Re: anime: I also found AKIRA confusing and pretentious. Sure it was amazing visually, but after a while I got a sense that there wasn’t much more to do with AKIRA than simply look at it, you know? And maybe listen to it — I still think its a capella vocal soundrack by Yamashirogumi is one of the most original and compelling movie scores I’ve heard.
But before you decide you don’t like anime, I urge you to give any of the Miyazaki oeuvre a look. The man can’t not produce masterpieces. And since you mention Pixar, Miyazaki has no greater fans in the US than the Pixar animation staff. John Lasseter, director of Toy Story, is on record as saying that when they have a problem figuring out how to animate something at Pixar, they’ll pull out Miyazaki’s movies on laserdisc and see how he did it. Lasseter even directed the English adaptation of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, which won the Animation Oscar last year. Check that out, and if you’re not jumping up and down jonesin’ for more at the end, then you can give up on anime.
Oh, and as a bonus, the next Miyazaki project is going to be an adaptation of Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books, which looks far more promising than the somewhat wretched SciFi channel version a year or so ago. And this is one of the few works of intelligent fantasy with a black man as the main protagonist, whom unfortunately the SciFi version chose to portray as white. Needless to say, Le Guin detests the SciFi version and is very supportive of Miyazaki’s.
Hell ya Emporer’s New Groove is underrated! I love animation and that’s one of my favorite films.
I will say though that this concept can swing too far the other way. There are movies, both live and animated, where silence is supposed to equal “deep”. Terrence Malick’s stuff for instance. I don’t like constant noise, but I prefer it to nothing at all.
“Why does she even have that lever?”
Oliver, I too would second the Hayao Miyazaki suggestions. He is a true master of animation.
a few other things:
* Rheinhard, Miyazaki isn’t directing the Earthsea adaptation. His son, Goro Miyazaki, a firsttime director is doing it. This apparent nepotism (at a Ghibli executive’s request; Goro was intially reluctant) is not sitting well with some fans, and even Hayao Miyazaki has gone on record as opposing his son directing. Maybe it’s how Goro didn’t work his way up the ladder but kinda had it handed to him. That said, I’m rooting for him to succeed.
* While Disney did sign some sort of no-cut contract with Ghibli — Ghibli’s earlier films, I believe, were ill-treated in being edited for the American market before the Disney contract — there was apparently still some freedom for them to mess it up. You’ll love this: the major changes Disney produced for its dubs of Ghibli films were adding huge chunks of dialogue and music to scenes that had previously been silent but for ambient atmospheric sound. Argh!
* I love Pixar in general, but I hated “A Bug’s Life”. I liked the Disney 90s animation renaissance, but I strongly disliked “Lion King”.
Miyazaki is an Anime God.
I strongly recommend Metropolis if you weren’t a big fan of Akira. I wasn’t either, much, but Metropolis, although in the same sort of genre (technology takes over humanity), does have a much better story behind it. And of course the visuals rock. Based on Astro boy.
Bear in mind, too, that the majority of animated films are still targeted to a younger audience. Much younger. And it is hard for the film to keep a toddler-to-preteen’s attention for very long anymore. They feel the need to cram a film full of dialogue (and witty and dated pop culture references to make it smart enough to hold the adults attention as well.
Or maybe they do it because a) they underestimate a child’s intelligence and b) they know the story is weak.
My 17 year old is currently restocking her Disney movie collection on DVD. Her favorite? Fantasia.
ArC – I knew Goro was involved, but I wasn’t sure of all the details. Thanks.
The “no cuts or changes” thing in the Ghibli/Disney contract is a direct result to the first adaptation of a Miyazaki film to hit these shores, Warriors of the Wind, an adaptation of the first Miyazaki film I ever saw, Nausicaä. The original film had won a world environmental award for its subtle themes of how Nature and Man interact. New World studios took this Japanese cartoon that had won international environmental acclaim and proceeded to cut out about 20 minutes of film detailing this part of the story! In their version, we never learn just why the Toxic Forest exists and how it got to be there in the first place. It just is a backdrop for the icky bugs and cool explosions. And having cut the real story, the fake dialog they had to make up in the introspective scenes they did leave in, makes almost no sense! Best of all, their movie poster was clearly designed to bring in the kiddies by making the movie out to look like Star Wars or something, including a laser-wielding robot and flying horse, which never appear in the movie!!
Naturally, when Miyazaki saw what had happened to his magnum opus, it was a long time before he was able to trust Americans again.
When I first met the fellow who became my housemate for a few years in Texas, he was a new anime fan who had seen Warriors on video and thought it was amazing. I offered to show him my videotape fan subtitled version of the uncut Nausicaä. It was fun watching him get more agitated as the film progressed. “Wait, that wasn’t in the video!”… “Why was that cut?!”… “Oh, that’s why that happened!” By the end of the tape, he detested Warriors and would only watch the Nausicaä fan sub.
Were-rabbit won best animation because, like the previous W&G outings (all Oscar winners), they were well scripted, had funny stories and accomplished animation. I particularly liked the little details (the fridge, the jar of “Middle Aged Spread” on the breakfast table, etc.) which were peppered liberally throughout the film without being madly ‘pop’.
Tr5aditional animation fans should definitely check out the doc at this site:
http://www.Dreamonsillydreamer.com
Great post, Oliver, and dead-on. Sorry I didn’t catch this thread earlier.
I’ve got three kids 5 and under, and so I’ve had my fill of animation. And most of the newer stuff (with the exception of Pixar) quite frankly stinks. Give me classic Disney any day. Those guys knew how to use images and visuals to tell a great story. No need for all the pointless “clever” talk. Ever wondered why Walt never asked Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, or Abbott and Costello to “star” in one of his cartoons? Here’s your answer.