First I need to be clear that I am a film student, not an animation student, so I am not by any means claiming to be an expert on the history and techniques of animation. What I am doing here is looking at five brilliant and important animated films and companies, and looking at why they are significant.
They may not be well-known, or be highly praised around the world, but Wallace and Gromit have a quaint charm that the British obviously enjoy. The films follow Wallace, a middle-aged English man, and his intelligent dog, Gromit. The joy of Wallace and Gromit lies in the little idiosyncrasies of a stereotypically English man, such as storylines involving cheese, washing windows, baking and growing vegetables. The film I’ve chosen to represent them is the first one A Grand Day Out where they build a rocket and travel to the moon to taste its cheese. This stands out because animation is usually utilised for fantasy since it can create things that are not real, and it lacks the look of reality that live-action films mostly have. Of course the other thing about Wallace and Gromit is that it is stop-motion animation. This means that small models are positioned, photographed, moved, photographed and so on, rather than being drawn, as much of animation is. Some other great stop-motion animation films are A Town Called Panic, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Mary and Max.
South Park, the series as well as the film, is the perfect example of satirical, adult animation. Bigger, Longer and Uncut is a story about America going to war with Canada because the some children saw the profane film made by the Canadian comedians Terrance and Phillip. The film mostly makes a mockery of the American government, particularly its habit of scapegoating, institutionalised racism and the army. When animation is so often belittled as being for children, films like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut prove that animation can be funny, political, and controversial.
There had to be a Disney film on the list considering it has dominated film animation since its inception. I chose Sleeping Beauty primarily because of the background animation style adopted, which to my knowledge has yet to be used by Disney again. Plus, it has many features of characteristic of Disney animated films: based on a fairy tale, about a princess, a musical, a villain and anthropomo rphised animals. Furthermore, the soundtrack is almost entirely Tchaikovsky, which gives it a more adult, serious tone than many Disney films.
Like with Sleeping Beauty, The Cat Returns is here to represent the company, in this case Studio Ghibli. Ghibli has been prolific since the 1980’s and does not show any signs of stopping. My rationale for choosing The Cat Returns is 1) Because cats, duh. 2) Because it was the first Studio Ghibli film I watched. And 3) because I think it’s underrated in comparison to films like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, for example.
Lastly is Pixar’s new film Inside Out. I chose this more for the subject matter that the actual animation style – though it is good, especially the emotions’ moving, bubbly skin. Pixar have taken toys, insects and vehicles among other things, ant transformed them into heart-warming characters in interesting situations. But these things are relatively easy to anthropomorphise and humanise with emotions. What’s much harder to do, and what Pixar has achieved in doing is to realise the abstract concepts of emotions, memory and personality, and present them as physical, tangible things. Inside Out is very impressive and their translation of the abstract to the physical is to be praised. I’m not sure how much of it is lost on children however, but I have heard parents praising the film for giving young children tools to talk about emotions they may not quite yet understand.
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