Are we entering a new age of animation?

Well, even if I'm not certain on the cause, I do believe we are in another Dark Age.

I would really like to talk more about movies, since I already made my thoughts on TV clear.

I've never heard that before. Do you know of the source?

I can't really say much about animated films except that they've been decent enough, but usually not interesting enough to get me to actually go to the theater. Certainly doesn't feel like a new age if we focus on just film.

edited 21st Aug '15 10:22:39 AM by Mio

I can't recall where I heard it; I think one of the staff admitted it.

People have been saying that Disney's in a new Renaissance. If that's so, I'm waiting for the new Pocahontas to make the whole thing come down...

There doesn't seem to be any stupidly ambitious and/or overhyped projects on the horizon for Disney just yet. I'm not surprised that people are declaring a new renaissance though.

Just you wait. It'll happen.

Well, I will certainly agree, Disney's been doing well. I considered Tangled pretty bad, Pooh's kinda atypical, Wreck It Ralph didn't use its video game elements well and was kinda cliched, Frozen was great, so was Big Hero 6.

On the other hand, the last major success for Pixar was Toy Story 3, which is mostly a retread of Toy Story 2. After that, Pixar was disappointing three times in a row. I really hoped Inside Out would be their improvement, but, alas, it wasn't. The whole story just felt like a mess of cliches, so I declared Pixar dead. Dream Works is in dire financial straits, not helped by a bunch of unremarkable movies, to the point where Home had to use uncited quotes on their DVD box. And all the other studios are just copying Dream Works.

Really, it all depends on Zoolander. Although, I doubt that's honestly gonna be any good going by the trailers. I've given up hope already for The Good Dinosaur. It's probably just gonna be a Misunderstood Character movie about a T-Rex out to prove he's a Good Dinosaur. Probably will have a caveman companion with him. Bonus points if he doesn't talk like all those other Goofy Animal Sidekicks That Can't Talk.

Green Lantern getting screwed over was because the film failed, so the broader franchise became stillborn.

The Legend of Korra still got 52 episodes despite getting screwed, a completed story and became better over time in terms of writing quality.

Young Justice, to me, seems to be the only proper tragedy among them.

So the show was screwed over despite having 52 episodes made?

There were Nicktoons that had maybe 20 episodes that nobody will say were screwed over.

It only got screwed over in the sense that from the third season on it was knocked of the channel in favor of a purely digital release, and I'm fairly certain the last season got it's budget slashed.

Admittedly, that probably has more to do with the mixed to negative reception of the first two seasons. That and the show always seemed rather out of place on Nick, even when it was just At LA.

Also, Gendy Tartakovsky was just losing all interest in Sym-Bionic Titan. I read somewhere that he was already creating ideas for Hotel Transylvania by the middle of production.

Also, blame Greg Weisman having some curse on him for Young Justice getting screwed over. It's like the guy can't make one damn show without it lasting more than two seasons (not counting Gargoyles).

Now, as for Beware the Batman...eh, I have no clue. Never watched it, never cared for it.

I do think that this is a new age of cartoons, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "golden age" just yet. It certainly isn't a dark age like the doomsayer with the black triangle has been ranting about on three different threads, but it's much better than the interregnum period (which I place around the time that Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and Codename: Kids Next Door aired).

Gargoyles is a bit iffy. Granted, it got over 70 episodes, but the first 65 technically count as two seasons. The first 13 were the first season, and then the next 52 were part of the second season. (Syndication was a funny thing back then.) It did manage to make a third season, but without Weisman's involvement, and it got the show cancelled in short order while also being hailed as as both Fanon Discontinuity and Canon Discontinuity.

edited 21st Aug '15 11:55:22 AM by kkhohoho

Fair point. Other than that, however, Weisman's two comic book based series (Young Justice and The Spectacular Spider-Man) lasted two seasons, the latter due to lawyers and such, and the former because of the toy line and viewership.

You, and others like you keep talking about television. I'm branching into film. If you look at the majority of animated films today, you'll notice a lot of them use the same storytelling devices.

Also, just to show I'm an equal-opportunity offender, I did not like the direction animated films were taking in the 90s. Too many Guy Wants A Better Life Than He Has Now movies. There's a reason The Emperors New Groove and the first Shrek were made.

edited 21st Aug '15 12:07:46 PM by Darkton

if we're talking about recent films i don't think frozen was that great. i kinda liked it but recognized its flaws when i first saw it, but given enough time i just felt it was more and more flawed.

doesn't help that the movie was fucking everywhere for a while.

wreck it ralph and big hero 6 were great though.

The one thing that I do agree with darktron about is that I'm pretty sure that the recession did play a hand in killing cartoonstitute, though it was also because the network was balancing so many new upcoming shows at the time as well

Wreck It Ralph? Great? Ahahah no.

It's a movie about video games! ...for the first fourth. After that it just goes in its own direction. It uses video game cameos to as shiny objects that nerds will inevitably go "ZOMG HE PULLED A METAL GEAR ! WHICH IS FROM AN ADULT GAME THEY CAREEEEEE!!!11" when all those cameos go away after that third, and only show up at the end. Just like the narration, which only shows up at the beginning and end, like every other damn movie made since 2010, which is right when the Second Dark Age started.

How about the story? Well... cliched. Abandoned Hero complete with Obligatory Piano, Villain Who's Actually An Okay Guy, not to mention he has a square face and a lantern jaw and is strong, just like Mr. Incredible, Metro Man, and every other damn strong guy in animated movies. And don't forget the Triangle-Faced Love Interest Whose Relationship Starts Rocky despite the other guy being Love at First Sight. And of course, Ralph looks like he's gonna sacrifice himself, but Vanelope saves him complete with Bombastic He's Alive Music because no one can seem to die in an animated movie anymore. Throw in a complete failure by all characters to communicate problems and a portrayal of female on male abuse as funny, and you have a stinker.

In short, it's a video game movie that forgets its a video game movie, with a screenplay written by someone with, as I said before, no experience. The cameos in Roger Rabbit lasted longer than this kusoge.

frozen isn't really that great either.

the trolls are pretty worthless as characters and their song sucked, hans being a villain was shoehorned late into production and doesn't feel right, the way elsa and anna's parents decided to treat their daughter's "problem" was completely wrong, etc. at best it was a somewhat enjoyable but flawed movie with some neat ideas, at worst it's just mediocre. hardly indicative that disney is somehow making quality movies again or whatever else people say about it.

i'm not going to say that your opinion is wrong or anything since people can dislike things for whatever reason, but to me it just sounds like you're overly nitpicking.

also

the dinosaur is an apatosaurus. hard to play off that misunderstood character angle when an apatosaur isn't really thought off as a dangerous animal.

edited 21st Aug '15 12:32:07 PM by wehrmacht

Seems to me the only one nitpicking here is you. The trolls were stupid and filler, but they had two scenes, one from a very dynamic way of introducing the world and characters, which Wreck It Ralph could have done, but defaults to "blah blah blah, this is me, blah blah blah, this is my life, words words words words words!"

Hans being a villain shoehorned? Maybe, but at least the first love wasn't the winner. Wreck It Ralph loves love at first sight for Felix.

And by the way, the way Elsa's parents handled her badly? That was the point. It was to show that trying to hide it only made her life worse. She was told to hide behind walls, even with the castle she made, but she ultimately just wants to be accepted. The difference, unlike Ralph's typical "Villain is Hated By Everyone But Becomes Good Guy and Instantly Loved" drivel which is stolen from Megamind and Despicable Me (is it too much to have a villain be a villain in an animated movie?) is that she is trying honestly to reconcile her powers, which were originally quite acceptable, with her upbringing telling her to hide them. Her conflict comes from an inner debate. Ralph is just people hating him for who he is, like Hiccup, Megamind, the protagonist of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and so many other people it is, like Wreck It Ralph itself, cliched.

If one is talking about "new age of animation" as in "new age of feature animation", I think that since Shrek came out in 2001 and definitely since 2008, animated films have entered a golden age in that every major studio in Hollywood has an animation division that does successful (at least financially) cartoon movies, along with studios like Laika, DreamWorks Animation and Reel FX Studios. However, some movies released today tend to be crap, like Free Birds and The Nut Job.

As for TV, I think that cartoon quality has gone up since 2010, although there is crap today. The bad thing about today is that there isn't much variety, both in genre and in artstyle.

edited 21st Aug '15 12:43:49 PM by Buzzinator

you're literally complaining about every single aspect of the movie, even when it's not really that much of a problem as far as i see it.

is having a misunderstood character too common these days? honestly yes, but i don't really feel like it's much of a slight against the movie.

it's fine if you don't like the current trends in animated films, i have a lot of complaints about trends in other mediums myself, i just don't really find them to be as much of a problem as you do.

edited 21st Aug '15 12:57:02 PM by wehrmacht

I probably wouldn't be complaining about every aspect of the movie if every aspect of the movie wasn't flawed. The story is cliched, the characters generic, the setting underutilized, the potential squandered, and the whole thing feels like a way to cash in on video game popularity instead of truly respecting them.

Imagine if it were... movies instead. A 30s cartoon, a sci-fi movie, and a cutesy kids cartoon. What would the difference be? Sadly, the only difference would be we'd be seeing Betty Boop for five seconds instead of Sonic The Hedgehog. Video games mean nothing to the story. It's just an excuse to tell a Misunderstood Character movie.

If it were one or two movies, I'd write them off, but it's all of them. There is no difference between Megamind and Despicable Me, no difference between Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and How To Train Your Dragon. They're all the same. Every movie is someone's first, but at some point, there has to be a second.

So, I think you've made it pretty clear by this point that you consider most animation from the 90's to now to not be very good. With that in mind, (and with no offense intended,) what would you consider to be the last the time when animation was, as a whole, good?

trends come and go though. at some point, somebody is going to make that second movie.

you mentioned shrek earlier in this thread, and that was copied ad nauseaum by everyone else to the point where they got sick of it. people may still be making misunderstood character movies but the whole fractured fairy tales and pop-culture reference overdose thing doesn't really show up that much anymore does it?

part of the problem is that "misunderstood character" is kind of a broad concept. like the hero's journey it's been around for a while and most likely isn't just going to up and vanish.

Complex question. Here's a few answers.

I'd say the movies made from 1998 to 2003 were the longest non-Golden Age streak. Antz was basically A Bugs Life if it were an adult movie, Prince of Egypt was an excellent counter to Disney's features, Tarzan was well-told, Emperor's New Groove was hilarious, Shrek was the perfect strike against Disney, Lilo and Stitch was good at what it did, so was Treasure Planet. And Pixar always delivered hits. We dip for 2004-2007, but we come back in 2008 with Kung Fu Panda, Wall E, and Bolt, which were all great. With Princess and the Frog looking to revive 2D animation and Up winning Best Picture, it looked like things were looking up.

...then the aforementioned recession and Writers Strike took affect, and we've been in a film Dark Age ever since.

As for TV, well, up to 2004, everything was turning up good for CN. When CN lost power, Nick took over as champion. Some shows, especially longer ones, however, were starting to run out of steam. And, again, major declines happened in 2008, around the time of the Gruesome Twosome. But in 2010, Cartoon Network began to try and redeem itself, and Nick debuted Ninja Turtles and Korra later, so that was good. Incidentally, Disney has been consistently good from this period onward. Their shows, like Gravity Falls, Phineas And Ferb, and Star Wars Rebels, along with the localized dub of Doraemon really do a good job picking up where the other two networks fell. And of course, there's MLP.

So I guess if anyone still knows quality in animation, it's Disney. Everything else is just boring.

Toy Story 3 isn't a rehash of 2. And it's very over the top to claim a film company is dead ONLY because THREE films didn't reach your stratification.

And given the success of Inside Out I doubt Pixar is dead.