Wednesday, September 12, 2018

"Fewer Songs, More Explosions": When American Animation Got Briefly Action-Packed (Part Two)

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Turns out, audiences were indeed looking for a reprieve from animated fairy tale musicals that had dominated the 1990's. But they weren't looking for such a reprieve from the likes of Titan A.E., no, they were looking towards a farting Scottish ogre to lampoon the type of stories that had made Disney Animation famous. The massive box office success of Shrek (at the time the second biggest animated movie of all-time, only behind The Lion King) had too many ripple effects on the film industry to count, but perhaps it's most noteworthy piece of influence was in how Shrek was suddenly the movie to imitate. Though Shrek didn't invent the idea that pop culture references and bathroom humor could inhabit animated family movies, it did make them required elements in any new animated films looking to score big box office bucks.


It's also notable how Shrek was a much smaller-scale film than the other action-packed animated films crowding multiplexes in this era. With a $60 million budget, Shrek cost exactly half as much as fellow summer 2001 animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire and cost $35 million less than fellow DreamWorks Animation movie The Road to El Dorado. To boot, though there is a big chase scene with a dragon, most of Shrek is extended humorous dialogue exchanges, a sharp contrast to the likes of Titan A.E. and Atlantis which are primarily comprised of large-scale spectacle. Shrek was far from being as small as, say, Moonlight, but it was the little guy in almost every way compared to all the other animated fare coming out around it. Extravagant budgets and oodles of action couldn't save the thinly drawn characters of Atlantis, it was the surprisingly sweet story of an ogre learning to let other people into his life that managed to charm audiences worldwide.

Even something as silly as the widespread memes and (frequently disturbing) internet fixation on Shrek in modern times indicates how deeply this character impacted audiences. You sure don't see many Aladar or Milo James Thatch memes, do you? In the race to create something different from what was considered the default for animated family fare in the 1990's, animation houses had ended up making films that were more interested in being "Not your dad's animated movie!" rather than actually engaging storytelling. These films had plenty of violence but nothing in the way of entertaining characters for audiences to latch onto. No wonder Shrek soared so high in a sea of middling animated fare like Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

The importance of good characters got reinforced the following summer when Disney Animation's box office dry spell got broken with the following summer's Lilo & Stitch. Yet another hand-drawn animated science-fiction tale from Disney, this one became a sleeper hit that, exempting 1999's Tarzan, gave Disney Animation their biggest box office hit since The Lion King. It's easy to see why Lilo & Stitch resonated with audiences so deeply, not only was the film's humor (which relied on gross-out gags and pop culture references to Godzilla and Elvis Presley tunes) perfect for a post-Shrek world, but its core emotional moments touched on themes rarely explored in Disney animated fare, namely an unconventional family unit consisting of two sisters and their complicated relationship. Though it starred a little fluffy blue alien from outer space, Lilo & Stitch actually touched on realistic concepts that managed to touch peoples hearts in a way so few of the far more action-packed animated fare of the early 21st century had. Just try and watch that final Ohana scene and not get a little teary-eyed.
Disney Animation's other 2002 feature, Treasure Planet, was another entry into the action-packed science-fiction animation category and like Lilo & Stitch, it also found artistic success by tapping into a more character-driven atmosphere. But unlike those Hawaii residing aliens, Treasure Planet ended up becoming one of the biggest box office bombs in history and was seen as the primary catalyst for Disney giving up on hand-drawn animation. This trend in American animation was no stranger to box office failure, but Treasure Planet, despite being far and away the best of the action-oriented animated fare coming out in this era, was the one that signaled that the end was near and that this fixation on action was not gonna last. Shrek was the new guiding star for American animation and Treasure Planet was seen as proof of why deviating from computer-animated comedies was a bad bet. What a shame that is given what a gem Treasure Planet is in so many respects, particularly on a visual level; the films merging of 19th-century architecture with traditional science-fiction concepts gave it a unique visual aesthetic compared to the other action-packed animated films released in this same time period. To boot, this one did interesting things with merging computer-animated with hand-drawn animation, particularly with the cyborg character of Long John Silver who was brought to life with both CGI animation and some of Glen Keane's very best hand-drawn animation.
What a shame that such a wonderful movie ended up being one of the final nails in the coffin for theatrical hand-drawn animation of any kind, with another such nail arriving the following summer with the last of these hand-drawn animated action movies, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Maybe the weakest of all the movies in this odd little subgenre, Sinbad tried to merge the celebrity stunt casting of Shrek (Brad Pitt played Sinbad and Catherine Zeta-Jones his love interest, making this the Ocean's Twelve prequel nobody asked for) with seafaring adventure and ended up as the lowest-grossing DreamWorks Animation feature of all-time (it's the only one of their movies, even counting Aardman efforts, to make less than $50 million domestically). The film's $60 million budget ensured it wasn't as costly of a dud as Treasure Planet but it was still a major box office bomb and one that closed the book on action-packed hand-drawn animation.

With about 15 years of distance between the last entry in this animated filmmaking trend and the modern-day world, this brief fixation on action animation becomes quasi-tragic. There was a real desire from many of the biggest names in American animation (Don Bluth and Ron Clements & John Musker namely) to do something different with the artform they loved and that came through in the films themselves, even a weaker effort like Atlantis: The Lost Empire had an admirably different art style to it that made it stand out from the pack. But there were also a myriad of problems in these motion pictures ranging from studio interference to story problems and a frequent lack of humanity. Even an enjoyable underrated film like Titan A.E. tends to feel cold and feels like it could be improved by being more heavily informed by human emotions whereas more popular though smaller in scale films from this era of American animation like Shrek or Lilo & Stitch took heightened characters and had them grapple with relatable everyday problems.

Many of these movies made sure to bring the explosions and scope, but they didn't bring the heart or the memorable characters family audiences want in their animated movies. To boot, there's also the rising popularity of computer-generated movies to take into account (though Lilo & Stitch showed that hand-drawn films could still thrive in a post-Shrek world) and the fact that chasing the tail of decidedly PG-13 action movies like Ghost In The Shell or Akira with extremely PG-rated action fare might not have been the best idea ever. The ways in which these particular movies missed the mark are numerous, but there are plenty of accomplishments to be found here as well as just outright good movies, specifically the entertaining Titan A.E. and my personal childhood staple Treasure Planet. The latter has found itself a major cult following in the modern-day era, to the point that Disney actually references it on their websites (namely their Buzzfeed knock-off Oh My Disney) now far more frequently than other action-packed movies they made from this era like Atlantis or Dinosaur. It's managed to endure despite its box office shortcomings because of its great characters and well-realized animation style, not just because it inherently had big things going boom all the time.

Perhaps if the value of good characters had been remembered more often while making the likes of Atlantis and Sinbad, maybe this brief trend in American animation would have gone better. Then again, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, so who knows if that would have helped...

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