Animation and the Academy: The Case for Best Picture
Published October 31st, 2024 University of Iowa's Bijou Blog
“Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium for art, it’s a medium for film, and I think animation should stay in the conversation.” – Guillermo del Toro, 2023
When I was a kid, I used to throw tantrums when my older sisters or parents would choose a “real” movie for family movie night. I didn’t know the word “live-action” at the time, but it ultimately wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the inevitable whining session I was working towards. My younger brother and I would riot when faced with the offensive possibility that we would have to stare at real people for 90 minutes instead of watching the same four Pixar movies over and over again. This delineation between “animated” and “real” movies is one that I grew out of. However, over the last few years, it’s become more and more obvious that I can’t say the same for the Academy voters.
It was just a few years ago (during the height of my Oscars history obsession) that I learned that three animated films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast (1991) made history as the first in 1992 (nine years before the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature would be introduced), but it would be nineteen years before we saw another. Pixar’s Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) were nominated in the two years following the Academy’s expansion of Best Picture nomination slots (from 5 to 10). Despite the hundreds of eligible films produced, the last 14 years have seen a total shut-out of animated films in the category. Learning about this kernel of recognition didn’t feel like a triumph; it was rather shocking to realize that in 96 years of Academy Awards, the medium has only been considered for the highest film honor thrice. As frustrating as this was, I wouldn’t think too deeply about this trend again until around January of this year-–the day the 96th Academy Award nominations were released.
During awards season, those of us foolish enough to be invested tend to sort the year’s film slate into tiers. There are the movies we root against, the ones we love and cheer on in their predictable (and often deserved!) wins, the films that we feel remarkably indifferent toward, and, best of all, the ones that we know have no shot and hold out hope for anyway. Of my list of hopeful upsets for last year’s Oscars, my most unpopular and improbable hope was one that would’ve made history–a Best Picture nomination for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023). Across the Spider-Verse would have been the first non-Disney/Pixar, first BIPOC-starring, and first post-2010 animated movie nominated in the category. While the film would go on to lose the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature to Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron (2023), its omission in other categories like Visual Effects (the most egregious omission of the ceremony for me, personally) and Original Score still left me wondering with renewed passion if this trend will someday change. Can the medium of animation break free from its corner* of the Academy nomination slate?
I offer my story of misguided Spider-Verse hope not as indisputable evidence of a specific injustice, but as one that hopefully inspires a bit of meditation on the medium’s reputation. It’s a losing battle to pick fights over specific animated masterpieces (of which there are many, and the vast majority of which have been ignored). I can acknowledge that even without its loss to The Boy and the Heron, Spider-Verse’s chances were still incredibly slim– I mean, it’s a comic-book-based PG-rated superhero movie; it was going to take a miracle. What I hope this example brings to mind is that there is a trend of animated films being excluded from key categories, even when they are transformational and beloved works of art.
My problems with The Academy in this regard do not begin or end with Spider-Verse’s fate, just as they don’t rest solely on any one film’s omission. I could include case studies of animated films’ snubs (for example, no Studio Ghibli film has been nominated for any category beyond Best Animated Feature), but my point really lies in the statistics: In 96 years, animated films have received just three nominations in the Best Picture category, seven Original Screenplay nominations (each for Pixar films**), and, somehow, only three nominations for Visual Effects***. In none of these categories has an animated film ever won. 2028 will mark the 100th year of the Academy Awards–we’ll see if by then, the Academy will stop drawing a line between animation and “real” cinema that I grew out of before I could spell “movie.”
Yes, I doubt any Academy members are reading this piece. No, I don’t think I’m about to solve the problem. I suppose, if for nothing else, I hope to have inspired just one person to include an animated film in their long-shot list of Oscar nomination hopes. My pick? The Wild Robot (2024), in theaters now. I’m considering it my mission to get as many people to see this beauty on the big screen as possible. We’ll have to see what awards season brings.
*And, in fairness, Best Original Song
** For those interested: Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Inside Out (2015). Next year could mark a decade since the last nomination (and the 97th without a win)!
***The Visual Effects nominations were for two stop-motion films (Nightmare Before Christmas and Kubo and the Two Strings) and my absolute enemy, CGI “animation” nightmare The Lion King (2019).