Better Animated Feature: 2014

Did the Academy know The Lego Movie was released this year or...?

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Leah: As I’ve gone through this project, I’ve realized that some years are just stacked. Luckily for us, 2014 is one of those years.

We’ve got a new Disney film, a sequel to one of DreamWorks’ most critically acclaimed films, Cartoon Saloon’s second film, a new entry in Ghibli legend Isao Takahata’s filmography, and yet another film from 100% BAF nominee producer LAIKA. This also might be the year with the most notable snub, as The Lego Movie did not get a nomination despite its critical and commercial success.

In a year with so many good films, is Big Hero 6 really the movie with the most to offer? Let’s take a closer look!

The Nominees

Big Hero 6 (won Best Animated Feature)
The Boxtrolls (nominated)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (nominated)
Song of the Sea (nominated)
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (nominated)
The Lego Movie (snubbed)

The “Best” Animated Feature: Big Hero 6

Eli: In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel and immediately began brainstorming properties to transform into a Disney movie. Reportedly, the creative team wanted to adapt something the general public wasn’t familiar with so that they could take more liberties in making the movie they wanted to make.

That search led them to a comic called Big Hero 6, a title so obscure that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the fifth sequel in some long-forgotten series of box office flops. It actually refers to the titular “big hero”—a robot named Baymax—and his five human superhero companions.

The movie is pretty standard superhero fare. You get the origin story, the journey to defeat a big bad villain, the shock and awe when that big bad villain turns out to be a twist villain that wasn’t foreshadowed and comes out of nowhere, and the emotional death scene that isn’t really a death scene. It’s incredibly formulaic, sometimes even going out of its way to discard anything too interesting (like the robot fighting ring at the very beginning of the movie that never gets brought up again).

But you can see why Big Hero 6 was deemed worthy of at least a nomination for this award. The city of San Fransokyo really comes to life throughout the runtime, and you can tell how much effort the creative team put into making it feel authentic. They bought the parcel data for the entire city of San Francisco and inserted it into their model, and it shows; you can tell you’re experiencing a real, human-made city at every turn. Additionally, for how little sense certain aspects of the story make, it never lacks in the fun factor. Baymax radiates a very off-the-wall energy from beginning to end, and though many of the human superheroes are one-note, inelastic characters, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the overall dynamic fun too.

That said, Big Hero 6 didn’t just get a nomination for Best Animated Feature. It won the award. A lot of other highly touted movies came out in 2014. Was Big Hero 6 really the best of them all?

The Other Animated Features

The Boxtrolls — Eli

Nominated

This broke me. This comparison stopped me in my tracks and killed my motivation to work on Better Animated Feature for weeks. For the first time, I was left unwilling to definitively declare either movie better—or, equally importantly, to declare either movie worse. You’ll understand why in a few paragraphs.

The Boxtrolls is stop-motion studio LAIKA’s third feature film, following in the footsteps of Coraline and ParaNorman. It’s considered the studio’s worst film by every review aggregator I could find, which is admittedly a high bar given that every feature film the studio has ever released has been nominated for Best Animated Feature, but if we compared LAIKA to early Pixar, everyone seems to agree this would be their A Bug’s Life.

The story follows a young human boy who grows up in an underground society of tiny, resourceful creatures called Boxtrolls. This boy, named Eggs because all Boxtrolls are named after the original contents of the box they wear as clothing, discovers that his Boxtroll friends are being slowly kidnapped by a group of exterminators. Once they nab his father figure Fish, Eggs decides to take matters into his own hands and go after them. Above ground, he meets Winnie, the daughter of the mayor of the city the humans live in and the Boxtrolls live under. A short series of hijinks later, they discover that the head exterminator, Archibald Snatcher, covertly hooked the entire city on inflammatory anti-Boxtroll propaganda despite no evidence to support his accusations, then made a deal with the mayor to eliminate all of the Boxtrolls in exchange for a coveted position of power. Winnie learns through Eggs firsthand that the Boxtrolls aren’t bad creatures and attempts to convince her father to cut Snatcher off, but her father ignores her, leaving her, Eggs, and the Boxtrolls to defeat Snatcher themselves.

Put together, it’s a pretty powerful (if thinly veiled) allegory to minority/queer oppression in civilized society, with the loudest assholes imposing their will as forcefully as they can while those in power do nothing to stop it. It’s a very thoughtfully crafted and intentional movie (which is a lot more than you can say for Big Hero 6: a film in which the twist villain makes no sense).

This only makes the film’s glaring flaw that much more unnerving. Snatcher primarily spreads all of his propaganda by…crossdressing as “Madame Frou-Frou” and performing an eccentric musical act. Ugh.

In case you’re somehow unaware, the myth of the deceitful crossdresser is wildly transphobic. It plays off the assertions that trans people don’t really exist and that people who present differently from their assigned sex at birth are doing so out of willful deception for underhanded (often perverted) means.

I don’t think LAIKA meant to be transphobic here. I think they just wanted Snatcher to have a hard-to-spot fake identity to spread his lies and landed on “zany woman” because it was so far removed from his true self. But it doesn’t matter whether the reason the villain crossdresses makes sense in-universe; the plain fact of the matter is that the crossdresser is evil and uses crossdressing as a way to spread his evil. That’s unacceptable no matter how you slice it. Some bigots probably saw this movie and came away with a reinforcement of their hateful beliefs. Some trans people probably saw it and came away in disappointment or perhaps even self-loathing. I can’t believe a film so overtly about overcoming oppression managed to get this wrong.

And it’s such a shame because there’s a lot of great stuff in the rest of the movie. The writing is witty, the stop motion is top-tier, the voice acting is great, and the character designs are memorably quirky. If you can ignore this one obvious screw-up and take the rest of the movie for what it is, you’ll probably really enjoy it.

If I could do that, I’d rate this higher than Big Hero 6, which I found fun and immersive but ultimately underwhelming. I can’t.

Verdict: Not a better animated feature

How to Train Your Dragon 2 — Preston

Nominated

Where did they go wrong here?

How to Train Your Dragon 2 has the fundamentals of a good movie, on some level. There’s at least a moment where everything shines just as much as in the fantastic first film of this trilogy, if not more so. The visual spectacle of the Bewilderbeasts and the dragon sanctuary is on par with the most daunting shots of HTTYD’s Red Death; John Powell returns and delivers some gorgeous score cues at times (particularly “Toothless Lost”); the main characters generally have quite strong dialogue and are all-around pretty well written.

But…the moment you look past the trio of protagonists who define the main arc of the movie to basically anything else, it falls apart in so many ways. The thematic aim of the story is all over the place—the idea of countering the endlessly optimistic Hiccup with a villain completely resistant to redemption has merit, but there’s no actual resolution to anything but the surface-level plot. The dialogue and writing for most of the other characters is just downright bad, and plenty of characters who had strong roles in the first film are reduced to comic relief here. (Gobber is the most prominent victim of this, but it also affects all of Hiccup’s peers to varying degrees, which is a real problem given how much screen time they’re given to display zero depth or development.)

It’s difficult to go over HTTYD 2’s issues without hitting on the really big one, though. As both a consequence and a cause of that poor writing, it’s just flagrantly sexist and racist in some deeply embarrassing ways. Putting the character of—spoilers for a decade-old movie—Valka front and center deflected most criticism, and she is generally a very well-written character to DreamWorks’ credit, but even she isn’t exempt from the deeply stereotypical portrayals that make it hard to watch the film’s other two female leads, Astrid and (especially) Ruffnut. You can kinda tell they’re aware of this problem—it’s not like they don’t give these characters moments in the spotlight—but the writing fundamentally sees them first as tools for Hiccup’s development (or comic relief, in Ruffnut’s case) and only second as characters in their own right.

Drago, though, is an even more glaring and much more actively ruinous problem for this film. It’s honestly shocking that DreamWorks more or less got away with such a blatantly prejudiced portrayal—he’s the first non-white character in the trilogy,¹ with a visual design that draws loosely from East Asian and African culture to create your typical murderous warlord from distant lands, which is pretty much his entire character. Believe me when I say I’m not being uncharitable here; all of this is directly confirmed in supplementary materials like the film’s art book. Drago is a deeply racist stereotype, played completely straight—the only reason I can think of as to why there wasn’t more uproar is because that ambiguity in his design makes it easy to assume he’s probably white like almost everybody else in this film.²

The flatness of Drago’s character drags down the movie as a whole for so many reasons; he has no connection to any of the protagonists, barely seems to have a coherent motivation or plan, and serves as a narrative dead end for every interesting idea the film puts out there. He’d be bad enough even if he wasn’t also such a problematic and racist archetype, and that fact overshadows all the high points this movie has to offer. Big Hero 6 is not a perfect film in its own right, but How to Train Your Dragon 2 merits no consideration to it whatsoever.

Verdict: Not a better animated feature

Song of the Sea — Leah

Nominated

Well, y’all know I love The Secret of Kells, so I’m delighted to say Cartoon Saloon’s second addition to the Irish Folklore Trilogy, Song of the Sea, is an even better film. This time, we’re getting a movie that goes deeper into Irish mythology, especially focusing on the selkie myth, while also telling a story of family conflict and grief. The selkie myth is fantastic inspiration for exploring that concept, considering its general story.³

Song of the Sea follows Ben, a ten-year-old who lives at a lighthouse in Ireland with his sister Saoirse, his father, and his dog Cú. Ben and Saoirse are made to move to the city to live with their grandmother, something Ben is very unhappy about. He also has a troubled relationship with Saoirse, as we learn their mother (clearly a selkie) had to go to sea to give birth to Saoirse and did not come back.

The movie is an adventure through the mythology of Ireland. Ben and Saoirse try to go home and uncover Saoirse’s selkie abilities along the way, later learning that her selkie song is the key to saving the magical beings of Ireland. Not only that, but Ben also learns to appreciate his relationship with Saoirse. At its heart, Song of the Sea is a touching sibling story about dealing with loss and grief, with a fantastical setting.

The visuals are one of the strongest parts of the film. It’s apparent that Cartoon Saloon has grown in their art style from The Secret of Kells. It’s clear that both of these movies were made by the same studio, and that the years between the two has given them time to further hone their craft. Song of the Sea features gorgeous depictions of Ireland, from the waters, to the landscape, to the urban, to the magical. I praised The Secret of Kells for taking inspiration from Irish culture to create a unique art style, and I’ll praise Song of the Sea for doing the same thing and pushing that style forward. Also the seals are so adorable, I want to reach through the screen and hug them.

Another strength of this movie is its soundtrack, which I listened to a ton when it originally came out and which I recognized most of immediately on this rewatch. It helps create a mystical ambience while also drawing on Ireland’s cultural heritage. Lisa Hannigan does an incredible job performing the titular “Song of the Sea”, imbuing it with emotion.

Song of the Sea is obviously a much different type of movie than Big Hero 6: a big-budget Disney movie created in the aftermath of the Marvel acquisition. Song of the Sea has a miniscule budget in comparison ($7.5 million to Big Hero 6’s $165 million) and was created by an independent studio. One movie is showing off the combined power of two media juggernauts (Disney and Marvel), while the other movie is a cultural love letter that would never have the same reach.  

Big Hero 6 has a good story, though I do think it’s an example of a poorly done Disney “twist villain.” (Foreshadowing exists for a reason.) The theme about learning to cope with grief is handled well, and I love Baymax. The visual quality is excellent, and Disney isn’t disappointing in the animation department anytime soon.

However, it doesn’t quite have the individuality of Song of the Sea. The case for Song of the Sea emphasizes its visual creativity and its cultural significance. The uniqueness of this movie’s style and sound has made it stick with me in a way Big Hero 6 just hasn’t. Song of the Sea is a refreshing change from the mainstream animation of the era and demonstrates that there’s more to animated film than the big studio formula. I believe Best Animated Feature should recognize the trailblazers and the movies that push the medium in new directions, and for that I will give Song of the Sea:

Verdict: Better Animated Feature

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya — Leah

Nominated

I always try to make the best case I can when I’m writing about these nominees, trying to highlight what makes these films good enough to be nominated for the award, appreciating the art form, and recognizing achievements of films that may have gone underappreciated. Sometimes, the case isn’t strong enough to justify a Better Animated Feature verdict, or it’s a toss-up where I believe the winner was also deserving. In those cases, it can be hard to make a definitive verdict. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is not one of those films.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a Japanese narrative that is over 1000 years old. It follows the titular princess throughout her life on Earth. She’s discovered in a bamboo grove by a bamboo cutter, who takes her as a blessing from the heavens and becomes convinced it is heaven’s will to raise her as a princess.

When I watched this movie for the first time, I thought it was one of Ghibli’s best, and rewatching it for this project has only reinforced that belief. This film is beautiful in nearly every aspect of the word. The story shows how the human emotional experience is what makes life worth living, and spotlights the unhappiness that can come with pursuing status and societal expectations.

The art style of this movie is absolutely gorgeous, taking inspiration from traditional Japanese art. It also leads to some very dynamic animation. When I wrote about it in the Ghibli Gallon, I said that the scene where Kaguya runs away from the party was my favorite scene of animation from Ghibli’s entire filmography, and I stand by that. The lines that define the forms of the characters are so dynamic and well animated. Seriously, watch this movie and see it for yourself.

I also want to make sure I praise the soundtrack for this movie, as it puts in a lot of work to create the atmosphere of the film. Joe Hisaishi is an incredibly talented composer, and this adds another impressive entry to his work for Ghibli. “Spring Waltz” is so beautiful and makes the scene where Kaguya sees the cherry blossoms all the more joyous. One of the main themes of this movie is how emotions are what make life wonderful, and the music adds an important emotional dimension to this film.

When I compare this movie to Big Hero 6, there’s really no contest. Kaguya is a gorgeous, unique looking film, while Big Hero 6 doesn’t stand out from Disney’s other movies of the 2010s. The Disney art style is impressive to be sure, but it doesn’t feel as fresh or exciting. Additionally, at the risk of harping on the Big Hero 6 twist villain in back-to-back reviews, it really was not well foreshadowed and didn’t make that much sense in the context of the movie. Kaguya didn’t have any plot elements that felt so out of place. When it comes down to it, Kaguya is more unique and has a more emotionally resonant story. The gorgeous art style and story drawn from Japanese culture make this movie culturally significant as well. With all this going for it, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya deserves to be considered a:

Verdict: Better Animated Feature

The Lego Movie — Olivia

Snubbed

Uhhhhhh… what?

We’re over a decade removed from the release of The Lego Movie, and it remains, in my opinion, by far the most baffling exclusion in the history of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. If this movie was terrible in every other conceivable aspect, it would still deserve a nomination purely on the basis of essentially inventing an entirely new visual style for its animation and executing it to absolute perfection. But it’s great in a lot of other ways too. Let’s break it down.

First, we have to talk about that animation. 2014 wasn’t that long ago, and as a result I don’t think any of the nominated films have aged poorly yet in the animation department; the more stylized hand-drawn films feel almost timeless, and stop-motion always feels weirdly simultaneously dated and modern to me. But while Disney and DreamWorks had figured out how to make movies look pretty good by this point, and their respective movies are still quite visually nice, The Lego Movie has aged well in a way that I don’t think any 3D computer-animated film from the era quite has. The combination of a stop-motion feel, utilizing lower framerates at times to quite good effect, and the sharp edges of Legos with the smoothness and scope allowed by computer animation makes the animation feel incredibly clean. The creativity displayed in background and fluid elements especially is astounding; puffs of smoke, waves, explosions; they all look incredible and contribute greatly to the film’s goofy aesthetic.⁴

And speaking of goofy, let’s talk about the writing. I praised Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s ability to write humor back in the 2009 BAF article with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and The Lego Movie feels like a natural evolution of that. This film is jam-packed with excellent humor; at times it feels like nearly every line is either a setup, a punchline, or a clever quip, and it drives the energy of the movie. There are also a metric ton of cutaway visual gags to reward those who are paying attention, as well as some good auditory jokes. It’s just overall a film that’s constantly fun and never takes itself too seriously…

…Until it does. Yeah, the final act of this movie is, while still having some great stuff, by far the weakest link. Every scene with the human characters feels just…kind of bad. Will Ferrell does a great voice acting job throughout the film as Lord Business but his human character just feels very off, and I won’t dump on child actors but the kid is not great either. But the biggest problem with the final act of the movie is how it kind of undercuts the whole story. To me, it says “Oh, the plot you’ve been watching this whole time is actually made up and doesn’t really matter at all. But we’re also not going to show you more than two minutes of the real story that’s happening to give you the proper time to get emotionally invested in it.” And I don’t think it really adds anything of much value (other than the excellent bit of Will Ferrell realizing Lord Business’s hair looks like his). Thematically, the story would work just as well if it was genuinely just Emmet and Lord Business in the final confrontation, instead of them acting as proxies for an undeveloped meta-narrative.

But I think part of the reason The Lego Movie is so good is that its strengths are in an entirely different area from this weakness, so it doesn’t really drag the film down at all. The story is never really something the movie tries to get you particularly invested in, so in the grand scheme of things the subpar elements of it don’t stand out much compared to the animation and writing, which remain consistently excellent.

So is it better than Big Hero 6? I would say so. Both films have their own story issues, but The Lego Movie’s unique visuals and tight writing make it fantastically memorable, while Big Hero 6 is a movie I always forget exists until someone mentions it and I remember that, oh yeah, it was pretty good, I guess.

P.S. — For a song intentionally meant to be a parody of pop music by intentionally being as catchy and annoying as possible, “Everything is AWESOME!!!” is honestly surprisingly good. Judged against music in general, it is…not.⁵

Verdict: Better Animated Feature

Running Tally

2001: 2 better (2 nominated; 3 snubbed)
2002: 1 better (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2003: 1 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2004: 0 better (2 nominated; 1 snubbed)
2005: 2 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2006: 3 better (2 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2007: 3 better (2 nominated; 1 snubbed)
2008: 0 better (2 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2009: 2 better (4 nominated; 2 snubbed)
2010: 3 better (2 nominated; 4 snubbed)
2011: 1 better (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2012: 4 better (4 nominated; 1 snubbed)
2013: 2 better (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)
2014: 3 better (4 nominated; 1 snubbed)
TOTAL: 27 better (40 nominated; 19 snubbed)

Join us in two weeks when Pixar returns to prominence with the world-conquering Inside Out and four other films do their best to keep pace.

Next: 2015 (4 nominated; 0 snubbed)

1. Along with his underling Eret, inspired by Sámi and Inuit cultures, who later joins the protagonists. Uh, spoilers for a decade-old movie, again.

2. Just to confirm that his design wasn’t really moved away from the foreign cultures they originally had in mind, I’ll note here that his VA in this film is Djimon Hounsou, a Beninese-born actor. Everyone else in the voice cast (including Eret’s VA, notably) is white.

3. When I was a college freshman in 2013, I did a research project on the selkie myth. As you can imagine, I was quite excited for this movie to come out.

4. As a side note, I’m writing this the same day the Minecraft movie trailer came out, and for two movies based on block-based IPs, what a hilarious contrast in animation that is.

5. Editor’s note: Tegan and Sara are one of my favorite musical acts. I can’t help but laugh every time I click on their Spotify page and “Everything is AWESOME!!!” is listed as their most popular song. It’s so far removed from everything else they’ve ever released—everything else in their entire discography—that it’s almost impossible to tell that it’s even them. I’ve seen Tegan and Sara in concert four times and they (rightfully) never perform this song or even mention it. It simply doesn’t exist. —Eli