Open Forum Friday: Have Computer Animated Films Lost Their Appeal?
This week I’d thought I would put the following question to you, the readers of Film Junk: has computer animation lost its novelty and put itself in danger of dying out as far as feature films are concerned? I remember when Toy Story first came out, followed by Antz and A Bug’s Life, there was a lot of excitement around the medium and what could be done with it. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within upped the ante even further with ultra-realistic graphics and the first major attempt to do something other than a family film, but of course, it failed at the box office and scared anyone else from attempting anything other than high tech cartoons. In the past couple of years we’ve seen a number of new studios jump into the fray, all contributing cookie cutter movies with big name voice actors… I can’t even tell them apart anymore. And now Pixar, who have long been hailed as pioneers and the sole reliable CG studio, have left a lot of people unenthused about their upcoming film Cars. Has the fate of computer animation already been sealed? How long before everyone loses interest in these formulaic family films? Will we ever see anything other than movies about cute talking animals? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday!
Comments (7)
as mediocre as ‘Cars’ looks, I’ll always give Pixar a chance. to me they earned it. I’ve never put CGI animated films on their own pedestal to begin with though. The only Dreamworks animated movie I really like is Antz, but not enough to buy it for 10 bucks.
all these new ones, whether its Hoodwinked or that one with the woodland creatures thing I saw a trailer for but forgot the name of… its a big ‘meh’
we need another “Iron Giant” to let people know just how good classical animation can be. I think Disney giving up on the classical animation, when I still think they could put out another “Beauty and the Beast” quality film… thats just sad.
Posted by Goon on March 17th, 2006Animated films should not be shelved. Anime has always been popular and is still huge. Even big budget animation films would be the perfect remedy for adopting Fantasy or Sci-Fi books to the big screen.
It would be a lot cheaper than trying to go for the “blockbuster” approach and risking it all to obliveon with blown budgets and lame choice in actors.
I really, really, really would love to see a “Deathstalker” series in the form on animation, but the first book would be two films in itself.
Posted by Bassmasta-Baychuk on March 17th, 2006i think teh quality of the Clone Wars cartoons shows why animation needs to be saved from being all CGI.
some other hack would have done em all in CGI and they wouldnt have been near as good.
Posted by Goon on March 17th, 2006As long as the story they’re telling is good it doesn’t matter if its computer animation or puppets. It may not be as tendy as it once was but if the story is there people will see it.
Posted by croft on March 18th, 2006Right now there is a definite onslaught of CGI animated movies which all look horrible. The problem isn’t the actual medium of CGi but the studios that choose to use CGI to crank out shitty stories featuring celebrity voices in hopes of turning a profit. Hopefully this trend will end when the Shrek clones cease to draw big crowds.
Like Goon, I still have faith in Pixar even though I’m not that excited about Cars. Pixar’s motto has always been “story first” so time will tell whether Cars delivers or not.
Posted by Nuno on March 18th, 2006I’ve been hearing about the possibility of Pixar venturing into classical animation and the timing couldn’t be better, especially with Brad Bird and other key members of The Iron Giant’s creative team on staff.
When Genndy left Cartoon Network to direct features at The Orphanage I was excited at the prospect of him directing 2D stuff but so far it sounds like The Orphanage will be entering the overcrowded CGI market with the acception of The Dark Crystal sequel which will use puppets and CG backgrounds.
Posted by Nuno on March 18th, 2006its like every other movie coming out is a cartoon or CG, i have no interest in any of these new movies.
Posted by Chopper on March 20th, 2006Leave a Reply