In honor of the fact that tonight is Oscar Sunday, I thought today’s blog could be about the history of one of my favorite Oscar categories: The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Feel free to let me know in the comments section of which is your favorite of these movies.
Beginning with its history, the Oscars have been around since 1929, although the Best Animated Feature category has only been a part of the show for the past 20 years. Up till that point, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were reluctant to create a category for animated films. The reason? Prior to 2001, the Academy felt that there were enough animated films produced that could honestly be considered award-worthy, other than those produced by Disney. The Academy had given a Best Picture Oscar Nomination to Beauty and the Beast in 1991, and a Special Achievement Oscar to Toy Story in 1995.
By 2001, however, due to the advancement of new animated film companies competing against Disney, the Academy decided to create the category for Best Animated Feature Film. It was presented for the first time at their 74th show, and the very first film to receive the award was DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek (2001). “Shrek” beat Paramount Pictures' Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) and Disney/Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. (2001), though “Monsters, Inc.,” did manage to win the Oscar for Best Original Song, “If I Didn’t Have You.” The following year, Spirited Away (2002) won; It was produced by the Japanese Animation Studio, Studio Ghibli (though released by the Disney label). It’s rather ironic that Disney didn’t win the first two awards in the category!
The first Disney/Pixar film to be awarded the Best Animated Feature Oscar was Finding Nemo, released in 2003. The Incredibles (2004) won the year after that, and that film also took home the award for Best Sound Editing. In 2006, the Best Animated Feature Oscar was given to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) co-directed by Steve Box and Nick Park. (Park also won Best Short Film, Animated Oscars for the Wallace & Gromit short films, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995) and Box was an additional key animator on Chicken Run (2000), also co-directed by Park.) In 2007, George Miller took home the Oscar for the direction he gave to Warner Bros.’ Happy Feet, beating Sony Pictures' Monster House (2006) and Disney/Pixar’s Cars (2006).
Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007) won the Oscar in 2008 and was written and directed by “Incredibles,” writer/director, Brad Bird. (Bird is also known for providing the voice of Edna Mode in “The Incredibles” and the Ambrister Minion in “Ratatouille.”) The next recipient was Wall-E (2008), which was written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who also wrote and directed Finding Nemo (2003) and voiced Crush the Sea Turtle in that film. When Wall-E (2008) was released some people were resentful of the fact that it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture of the Year, leading to the controversy of whether or not it was robbed of that chance.
This controversy was somewhat resolved when Up (2009) won the award the next year, and was also nominated for Best Picture. While The Hurt Locker (2009) received the Best Picture Oscar that year, “Up” also took home the award for Best Original Score written by Michael Giacchino, who has scored several different Disney films, including “Incredibles” and “Ratatouille.” “Up” was written and directed by Pete Docter who also wrote and directed “Monsters, Inc.” He received another Oscar for writing and directing Inside Out (2015) and is nominated again this year for Soul (2020).
Toy Story 3 (2010) was nominated for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture, and it won the latter along with the award for Best Original Song “We Belong Together,” written by Randy Newman. In addition to Newman’s win for the song “If I Didn’t Have You,” in “Monsters, Inc.”, Newman also received nominations for the songs “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” in “Toy Story,” “When She Loved Me,” in Toy Story 2 (1999) and “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” in Toy Story 4 (2019). In 2012, Warner Bros.’ Rango (2011) took home the Oscar, but Disney struck Oscar gold for the next six years in a row, with Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), “Inside Out,” Zootopia (2016), and Coco (2017). “Brave,” was a “big first,” since one of the film’s directors, Brenda Chapman, became the first woman director of an animated film ever to win an Oscar. “Frozen” and “Coco” both won the Best Original Song Oscars: “Let It Go,” and “Remember Me,” respectively.
The Oscar was next given to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, beating Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), Disney’s sequel to Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles 2 (2018). “Toy Story 4,” was last year’s winner, and Disney and Pixar both make history tonight, as it is the first time both have a had a film in the running simultaneously for Best Animated Feature: Onward (2020) and “Soul.” “Soul,” is also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Sound.
Disney and Pixar have been very fortunate to have won the Best Animated Feature Oscar for 14 beloved movies (Ten of which were produced by both Disney and Pixar, and four were produced by Disney.) Their competition tonight, includes Netflix’s Over the Moon (2020), Aardman Animation’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2020), and Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers (2020). How things will officially turn out will be acknowledged at 7:00 pm Central Time on ABC.
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