Well, this is a point I’ve been making for many, many years. Movies that rely heavily upon CG are animated movies, for all intents and purposes. My friend who works at Disney was the first to talk to me about this, back when I ran an Oscar pool. From her POV, something like Speed Racer is just as much an animated movie as The Incredibles. Same goes with Jurassic Park movies (which may use a combo of practical and CG effects) or the Star Wars prequels. Those are animated movies.
So why we separate them, and the rules that allow them to be separated, seem weird. But that’s true of the Foreign Language category as well. Increasingly it becomes silly to make these distinctions.
We can run this all the way down to separating the male and the female acting categories. Why do we do that? To maintain more categories I suppose. But how does it matter now? And as we continue to move what our understanding of gender actually is, does it make any sense?
Because without it for many decades no women would ever have won an award, and even today the balance would be way out of whack. And needless to say this would not be due to lack of female acting talent.
This is a very good point. And I understand it. But it still seems arbitrary. It’s not like separating female and male weightlifters or sprinters at the Olympics. Where inherent differences matter for the competition.
For this, there is not a difference for the competition anymore. So I simply don’t think it’s defensible from that standpoint, anymore. Especially after the movement to call “actresses” “actors” in most references. My favorite actor, as I’ve said many times, Is Meryl Streep. I make no distinction in evaluating this.
Part of this is personal. I noted as I went through university that the women had far fewer roles available for them, and to me they seemed far more skilled than us men at acting. They had more competition, so maybe that was part of it. I always thought it was very nice that it benefited me as a young actor, but I didn’t think it was fair.
So while I see your point, I think we’re getting past it for competition purposes. I think it’s just for category increasing. Since we’ve lost a host…though…I think the Oscars are pretty much on their way out.
And I used to love them.
All this is to say I’d rather have seen this movie nominated for Best Picture, than Animated. We’ve got ten slots. So why not?
I’m quite confident that if you only had a best actor category that the majority of selections from the academy would continue to be male. There would certainly be an outcry, but parity wouldn’t be achieved, any more than there would be representative proportions of winners from the various minority groups without regard to gender.
I agree with you, I’m not sure she does. But maybe I got her tone wrong. It sounded like someone overwhelmed—in a good way—by seeing cultural representation and themes in a movie that they never expected to see on screen. Something worth excitement, no doubt.
But she also seemed to have a low view of animation, and her implication didn’t seem to be “and now I realize animated films can be great too!”, more like “and what’s wrong with Hollywood that something as simple as a ‘car-DAMN-toon’ can pull this off but other movies don’t?”
Meh. You might be right about this. I just don’t see the justification for it going forward, any more than I see establishing a Best Actor/Actress category for every ethnicity. I mean why not just expand the category and see where the chips fall? Like 10 nominees for Best Actor, without regard to gender?
I am fairly confident you’re right about the bias. But it doesn’t make much sense to me from a competitive point of view. For reasons I’ve already stated.
Given that the integrity of the process is always gonna be suspect, and it’s rating something purely subjective as it is, and given that it’s mostly just a big PR stunt for Hollywood and an excuse for dress makers to really go nuts once a year…making a few concessions to representation over “pure” competition is a net good, anyway. It’s certainly not the main reason why the results aren’t objective, at least :-)
I think you’re being way too defensive about this. Whether or not you believe that animated films deserve the same amount of respect that non-animated films do, you have to understand that something like How to Train Your Dragon is going to draw different expectations than most live-action films. That’s just the reality of the movie industry, even if specific counter examples exist (like when my dad was depressed over my mom’s death, so he went to go see a Pixar movie to cheer himself up. That movie was Up).
I think she was being extraordinarily complimentary of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, while simultaneously being blindsided by the significance of representation in an animated movie and a superhero movie, two elements which don’t exactly suggest that the viewer will have an epiphany during the movie. And while in theory animated movies (or superhero movies) can still have cultural significance, those examples are much rarer.
tl;dr: People go into BlacKkKlansman expecting to hear an important message about race relations; they don’t expect that from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is precisely why it worked so well in this case.
Yeah, I wish I were joking. When he told me, “Yeah, I was really depressed, so I decided to go see a Pixar movie to cheer me up…”, my heart sank because I knew exactly what it was.
I ultimately think it was a good thing, because dealing with grief is exactly what the movie is about…but man, I can’t even imagine going on cold and not expecting that opening. It was hard enough for me.
I just watched this movie tonight. Wow. It was amazing. I need time to process just the number of things that were so freakin’ cool about this movie.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the ending, this would be one of my favorite movies of all time. The ending just lacked emotional heft. I liked the idea of it. The way Kingpin was dealt with. But the goodbyes from the characters, and then the wrap up with his dad, and the introduction of the new Miles, it all lacked something that was there in the first 3 quarters of the movie. Somewhere in that big fight and ending, the movie seemed to lose its emotional core.
I’ll definitely have to see that again though. Like I said, the first 3/4ths of this movie is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever seen.
And of course the next things YouTube suggested we’re some similar ‘outtake’ style shorts front Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Which is just as amazing a thing that exists as Wreck it Ralph, given the various rights holders involved.
Enjoyable movie. Thought some of the self aware humor, such as the every Spidey tells the family death that drives them, was well done. Using the same lines for both humor and pathos is economical writing.
