Four of the top box office earners in 2008 were animated films, we are reminded
by Robert Butler at the Kansas City Star:
"WALL-E," "Kung Fu Panda," "Madagascar: Escape 2
Africa" and "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" Their combined
earnings, $778 million. And the Oscar nominated “Waltz with Bashir,” about war,
guilt and memory as filtered through the experiences of former Israeli
soldiers, is violent and deeply disturbing. "Serious" cartoons,
mutters Butler —
feels like a trend. "It's a lot more than a trend," said Joe Beck,
author of The Animated Movie Guide and
Outlaw Animation. "It's absolutely here. And it's growing." Said
Leonard Maltin, a noted film historian: "The idea that animation can be
serious isn't new. You could go back to Walt Disney's ‘Fantasia,' which is
hardly a children's film. Or ‘Animal Farm' in the '50s, which was about as
serious a film as you could get. But as good as they were, both movies were
commercial disappointments."
The last
big push toward animation for adults was in the '70s with the sci-fi themed
"Heavy Metal" and the movies of Ralph Bakshi," Maltin said,
adding: "Bakshi asked why we couldn't do ‘War and Peace' in animation. In
his `Fritz the Cat,' there's a death scene. With blood. Bakshi thought anything
was possible. But audiences weren't ready yet. At least the mass audience
wasn't. And while Bakshi's initial success got other people thinking that they
could make animated films for adults, it was followed by 10 years of
failure."
Beck
meanwhile continues to be frustrated by the "ghettoization" of
animated films by the Academy Awards, which began honoring animated features
only in 2001 and which has nominated an animated film for Best Picture only
once: "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991.
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