Finding Nemo is the touching story of a little fish, and this animated offering from Pixar has taken by storm the ocean that is the blockbuster cinema circuit. This is, however, not the only animated film in history to have shaken the world. And so, not to take anything away from Nemo of course, we felt it was right in honour of the film to build our own Animation Hall of Fame.
Based upon the criteria of commercial success, critical acclaim and longstanding "memorable-ness", Finding Nemo is the latest in a line of animated classics to have captured the world and, in many cases, the box office.
If we cast our minds to 1937 we find ourselves in the time of Walt Disney and his all-time classic - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There are few who are unfamiliar with the film, but what some may not know is that this was the first full-length animated feature to be produced in the United States. It's also credited as the first film, live action or animated, to have an official soundtrack to be released separately as a collection of songs. Snow White made such an impression on the world that it received an honorary Academy Award for being "a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field". The award took the form of an Oscar accompanied by seven miniature statuettes, and went on to win the Grand Biennale Art Trophy no less at the Venice Film Festival in 1938.
More than five decades later another Disney offering had a brush with Oscar too, but this time it was in the heavyweight and highly lauded Best Picture category. Beauty and the Beast in 1991 became the first animated film to be nominated in this regard, and that was before the recent decision for animated films to have their own Oscar category. The film didn't take home the award, but it did walk off with Oscars for Best Song and Original Score - and Golden Globe for Best Picture – Comedy or Musical. Remarkable about the film was that computer animation was only utilized for the famed ballroom sequence – the rest of the film was traditional hand-drawn animation made famous by Walt himself.
Disney scored again in 1994 with The Lion King, a film that performed overwhelmingly at the box office, and at 55 million copies became the best selling home video of all time. The success was repeated earlier this year with the release of the special edition Lion King DVD, this time breaking sales records in the DVD release circuit.
But it's not only Disney – and indeed not only America – that has enjoyed success due to its animated projects. One of the many foreign examples, perhaps the most successful too, is the 2002 hit Spirited Away. This Japanese film had grossed $200 million before it even opened in the US. Hayao Miyazaki's film broke records in its native Japan previously broken by his film Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away swept the prestigious Annie Awards in all major categories, beating out Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and Fox. The film won the Golden Bear in Berlin (tying with the gritty political drama Bloody Sunday) and went on to win an Oscar in the Academy's newly-created Best Animated Feature Film Category.
And while it's important to celebrate the successes of the animation genre, it also seems appropriate to remove our hats and pay our respects to recent animation losses – as referred to somewhat crudely in the industry as "box office bombs".
Based on the game of popular cult status, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) was in production for over four years before its ill-fated release. The film ran at a budget of $137,000,000 after fifty versions of the script had been drafted. There are many theories accounting for the huge financial losses of the film. One school of thought believes that if some of the time and money spent on the protagonist's hair were allocated to script and character development, the film might have made for more interesting viewing. Still, in visual terms it was remarkable, which made it sad that Square Pictures announced its retirement following the film's poor performance, although the company did produce the short film Final Flight of the Osiris.
Last year's Treasure Planet marked Disney's biggest financial loss to date. The Robert Louis Stevenson classic was given galactic treatment and impressive animation, but this couldn't save the $180 million film from grossing a mere $17 million in its opening. The failure of this film led to the rather shocking announcement that for the first time Disney had no hand-drawn animation films in production.
This year Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) struck a further blow for traditional animation, and its failure was speculated to be the end of hand-drawn animation as we know it. The film featured the voices of Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but still the audiences weren't buying. The film carried a price tag of $70 million and took weeks before it hit a mark of $23.3 million at the box office. Certain studio execs and animation gurus maintained, however, that a good story is a good story regardless of how it is told – meaning that there will always be a place for hand-drawn animation.
(Of course if we're to venture beyond economics, there are animated films that have failed in other ways too. Disney's Pocahontas, though a reasonable box office success, was slated upon its 1995 release for distorting, whitewashing and PC-ifying Native American history. A strong player at the box office perhaps, but perhaps another matter when it comes to representations of history and other humanitarian concerns.)
Returning to the greats of the Hall of Fame, we're pleased to welcome Finding Nemo as our most recent inductee. Having enjoyed the biggest opening weekend for any animated film, Nemo went on to gross $340 million, beating The Lion King by $12 million. The home video has already hit US stores – and already taken $400 million.
There's little doubt that Finding Nemo will continue its winning streak in South Africa when it opens this week, and we watch with baited breath as it continues swimmingly. |
