Follow-Up: ‘The Lion King’ and The Future of Animation

Back in September 2016, I wrote about how Walt Disney Pictures’ redo of The Jungle Book raised a lot of questions for animation’s future. Then I updated said article after Disney officially announced that they were going to remake The Lion King, but now that its teaser is here and there’s a plethora of other information out there… Yes, the time is here…

Hollywood has created the anti-animation animated film. Jon Favreau’s The Lion King is possibly the first all-animated movie that looks like a live-action movie, or at least CG you see in blockbusters…

This is the next step from movies like Avatar, Life of Pi, Gravity, and Favreau’s own The Jungle Book. (Whose only live-action element was Neel Sethi, the kid who played Mowgli.) More and more, it could be forcing us to drop the distinctions: Animated feature, and live-action feature.

Of course, it would be so much easier if folks dropped every weird movie bias they have and just refer to every movie as a “movie”… Not “a cartoon,” “an animated movie,” “a real movie,” etc. They’re all movies at the end of the day. Years ago, there was a clear-cut difference between an animated movie and a live-action movie. Now there is not. The blockbusters that regularly blow up the multiplexes these days are technically live-action/animation hybrids. All that VFX trickery and glitzy stuff, that’s animation. No, the creatures in something like Avengers: Infinity War aren’t done in a Roger Rabbit-esque way, but they’re still animated.

Back in 2016, I wondered about the pure animated movie – the majority of them being done in CGI – and if it would try to make a break from the tried-and-true style popularized by Pixar and DreamWorks in the late ’90s. We see some unique films, little by little, eschewing this. Films like The Book of Life, The Peanuts Movie, and Captain Underpants. Perhaps Sony Animation’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, the closest a modern, theatrical, 3D CG film has gotten to emulating hand-drawn animation, is the first climax of this movement. I wondered on here – in 2016 – if a UPA-esque movement was in store for mainstream feature animation, and a few months back, I saw people in the animation blogosphere saying that exact same thing! A UPA-like movement in feature animation could be happening!

The Jaywalker.dir. Robert Cannon. 1956.

The UPA was the outlier animation studio during the 1st Golden Age. The cartoons that they produced from the 1940s up until the early 1960s were visually striking, bold, and works that you just weren’t going to get from Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, et al. Some of the best post-Walt Disney innovators in American animation cut their teeth at UPA.

Then, those big animation studios started imitating the UPA!

The UPA style had then unfortunately been taken, and morphed into something rather harmful to animation. The minimalism of those cartoons was then misunderstood, and used as an excuse to cheap out on animation and production values. What happened? The boom of low-budget, low-quality, kiddie-centric Saturday morning cartoons and the shuttering of the American short-form theatrical cartoon. Animation and cartoons were no longer considered entertainment for all, it became known as what it’s erroneously called today: A children’s thing. The American animation industry misused what the UPA started… Other countries’ animation instead utilized what the UPA suggested, and then some. While American animation lost its innovative spark and its street cred in the 1960s, bold works were being made in Japan, France, and various Eastern European territories… Slowly, their work had an influence on what us yanks were making, but the influence on features is not strong enough…

Still, American feature animation is firmly locked into place. There are hints of a possible, underground sort-of movement that could take the tiller next decade. Maybe what’s going on with Netflix animation and smaller, independent ventures could lead to something great, or it could just prove to be short-lived. Make no mistake, Hollywood views animation – in its not-100%-realistic form – as a genre: The four-quadrant, family-friendly tentpole movie. Basically an outlet for just Minions and singing princesses and such. Toy commercials. Some films have substance and even move audiences, but in the end are still family-friendly movies that still abide by the limitations Hollywood puts on the medium. A sophisticated family movie like Inside Out or The Lego Movie or Kubo and the Two Strings won’t change anything, because sophisticated family movies have existed for decades, in both animation and live-action. That won’t change a thing. As far as I’m concerned, the gutsiest animated film of the last eight years was Isle of Dogs. Most of our output is a country kilometer from what’s been made elsewhere.

As I’ve said before, if we have to keep doing family movies, at least we can aim for stylistic – and even narrative – diversity. Into The Spider-Verse might be what its visually-similar predecessors weren’t, a smash hit. Commentary sites are promptly questioning the tracking numbers for that movie, puzzled as to why a Spider-Man movie would only open with $30-40 million. But on the other side of the coin, I can see why… It’s an “animated” Spider-Man movie. A “cartoon” Spider-Man. “Ew, gross!” or “Pass!” a lot of audiences are saying. I’ve heard some folks say they wished it was live-action, I’ve seen mostly confused reactions to it from adults. “Why is there a cartoon Spider-Man now?” I don’t think those numbers are far off…

On Miles Morales’ side is the fact that the movie was made by Sony Pictures Animation, who operate out of Vancouver and try to keep their budgets below $100m. Recent trade reports say that Into The Spider-Verse cost $90 million to make. A relief, for we don’t require it to make $600 million or up. $225 million should be the target, and I think it’ll pass that worldwide, easily. Obviously it’s not going to gross as much as the lowest-grossing live-action Spider-Man movie (2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2), but it’s a Spider-Man movie, and one that boasts its own unique qualities… It could be good-sized, and it could make enough to make Sony happy, ensure a sequel, and perhaps catch the eyes of competitors…

I never imagined, two years ago, that a superhero movie could be our ticket to a somewhat bright future in feature animation. Nor a streaming service. Since superheroes are beyond popular right now, it actually makes sense. This would be the equivalent of say, an animation studio in the 90s latching onto a genre that was faring extremely well in live-action, and eschewing what was expected of animation back then. Feature animation has tackled superheroes before, even before this recent boom. The Incredibles predates the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the DC movie-verse. Big Hero 6 arrived amidst the storm a few years back, but it was so different from its Marvel source material that it almost functioned as an original, almost decidedly different superhero movie. It was rewarded with strong box office and a healthy franchise. (With a TV show, merch, etc.)

Sony didn’t wait, they fired this movie up right as the boom was going… It may be seen as an incredibly smart move in hindsight. Imagine… Feature animation, a pigeonholed form of filmmaking, using a popular genre in live-action to give itself a boost. The Incredibles and Big Hero 6‘s successes did what they could for feature animation, and from time to time you heard about other superhero stories being considered at the big animation studios.

But superheroes shouldn’t just be the only answer, because at the end of the day, that’s animation chasing a trend. Feature animation should create trends, not clumsy imitation. Feature animation can tell whatever stories it wants to tell, it shouldn’t be limited to what Hollywood wants. Live-action, with – ironically – the aid of VFX animation, gets to have all the fun. It’s animation’s turn. It’s been animation’s turn since the 60s…

So now that we have an all-animated, photorealistic movie that’s being called “live-action” by some… What’s going to happen?

Is Jon Favreau’s The Lion King eligible for Best Animated Feature in 2019? Is it going to run for Best Picture? The Academy Awards’ rules tend to change, and sometimes they contradict their own rules.

Avatar, Life of Pi, and Gravity were up for Best Picture in their respective years. They were films that had a massive amount of animation in them, but are still considered “real” movies because of the presence of live-actors, and because the animation was VFX and photorealistic stuff. I’ll pardon Avatar because that same year, the Academy found the will to respect pure animation and nominated Up. Life of Pi and Gravity were nominated for best of 2012 and 2013 respectively, and since January 2011, no pure animated movie has been nominated for Best Picture.

Gravity‘s only live-action elements are Sandra Bullock and the face of George Clooney, not dissimilar to Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book. There was some talk of The Jungle Book being possibly eligible for Best Animated Feature of 2016, and this year we heard some talk of Ready Player One having a chance. Ready Player One probably has a greater chance than those aforementioned movies, in that VFX animation was used in that film to create a realistic but decidedly video game-esque world.

The Academy’s rules for the token Best Animated Feature category have changed a few times. At one point, motion-capture films were allowed into the race. Happy Feet was nominated and won for best of 2006, the mo-capped Monster House was nominated that same year. A little while after that, mo-capped films were shut out. The Adventures of Tintin had no chance of getting into the 2011 race, even though it was a well-reviewed Steven Spielberg movie and it more than sat nicely alongside some of that year’s best.

Perhaps the Academy still wants the category to be reserved for animated films that damn well know that they are animated and are not exact recreations of real life. Which begs the question… Could the 2019 Lion King be up for Best Picture? If so, that would completely contradict the idea of the Best Picture category (live-action movies), more so than Life of Pi and Gravity ever did. Make no mistake, the 2019 Lion King movie is an all-animated movie… If the Academy nominates that for Best Picture in January of 2020… It will certainly reinforce Hollywood’s small view of the medium, but it will – again – contradict the Academy’s rules. No actors are onscreen in that movie. That could be the ultimate dealbreaker, because at least Avatar, Life of Pi, and Gravity had onscreen actors in them…

I think it’s telling that some visual strides are being made in all-animated features right now. I think it’s telling that films like The Book of Life and Into The Spider-Verse exist and are being backed by major American animation companies. We’re slowly moving beyond close-to-real-life, plasticky, Pixar-like CG movies that only use animation’s limitlessness to create moving objects and character movements that you can’t get in real life. Animation that’s, you know, like classical animation! Moving, abstract illustrations. Hollywood, simultaneously, is trying to create animation for mass audiences who don’t like “cartoons,” and the “cartoons” are deliberately getting unrealistic and not-100%-like-real-life.

That standard style that everyone’s been using could very well make way for what Spider-Verse and its brethren are suggesting. Netflix is backing CG features like this as well (Sergio Pablos’ Klaus), and some hand-drawn (Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon) and stop-motion films (Henry Selick’s Wendell and Wild, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), too! Sony Animation may very well continue to take Spider-Verse-like risks with their features, as they do have one adult-oriented feature in the works (Genndy Tartakovsky’s Fixed), among other things. Netflix has some adult feature animation stuff brewing as well, or at least had some projects in the works. One could imagine some follow-the-leader things taking place. When something has the door shut for them, it should seek out another door.

But this little bubbling of experimentation may not turn into a movement, because you never know with film, animation, or anything really. The late William Goldman would certainly agree… I think it’s high time, however, that pure animation as we fans know it… Should walk away from the realism thing, and let Hollywood make their all-VFX pictures. A feature-length display of moving, abstract illustrations should never be just a novelty, and I feel that the CG rush that’s been going on ever since Toy Story came out has fostered this idea that animation is “better” when it’s more real, or as close to real life as possible. I’m happy to see some willingly rejecting that, box office and company dependency on huge hits be damned…

Or we could just settle for more typical, Pixar-looking CG films year after year. We’ll see where it all goes…