Animation - IN 2D!!!! Catch It While It Lasts

There are still people such as Hayao Miyazaki who continue to make traditionally animated 2D films (and good ones too) and the occasional non-Ghibli productions comes and goes (such as Disney's Academy Award nominated Lilo & Stitch) and films the upcoming-for-you-guys Renaissance take a different twist to the 2D process. But 2D is considered the death-knell for animated films.

So it was with delight that I read this article from the Hollywood Reporter about Disney creating a film entitled The Frog Princess, which will be traditionally animated and will include the talents of John Musker and Ron Clements who seemed to get 2894 Oscar nominations a year for their song and musical work in the late '80s and early '90s for Disney films such as Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, etc. The film will obviously be the tale of the Frog Prince twisted to a female perspective.

The thing that struck me as odd though was the story that appeared at IMDb. They quoted the Hollywood Reporter as such:

"Today's Hollywood Reporter questioned the strategy behind Disney's return to hand-drawn animation, noting in its report about the planned film that "traditional animation no longer draws the crowd.""

The same could be said then that computer animation no longer draws the crowds that it once used to. Because it doesn't. A quick glance over at Box Office Mojo will show you that.

Computer animated movies that made less than $50mil: Doogal, Titan AE, Final Fantasy: The Spirit's Within, Valiant, The Wild, Sinbad and Hoodwinked though seen as a massive success when you consider it's budget was tiny, that one still only made $51mil in the relatively quiet January of this year. And even though it made $136mil, Dinosaur was considered a flop.

Yet since 1999 there have been movies such as Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch, The Prince of Egypt, Curious George, The Rugrats Movie, The Emperor's New Groove, Pokemon, Brother Bear, The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie, The Jungle Book 2, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Return to Neverland, The Tigger Movie and Spirit, which made quite a bit of cash. Not to mention how well 2D titles do internationally. It's true none of these reached the heights of animation of yore, but they did well nonetheless.

The thing is, if The Frog Princess is actually good (there's no reason to assume it won't be at the moment) then why can't it be success? The reason 2D animation died out is because all the good stories belonged to computer animated film. Nobody wants to see The Quest For Camelot! They wanna see Toy Story. It seems fairly simple - yet some people don't understand. I thank John Lasseter for having the guts to bring it back, and hopefully we will see the big Disney animated musicals becoming a staple again. We need more like it! Plus, it'll be great to see a Disney 2D films take out the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I know Spirited Away won, but this would be different.

Why don't people want this to succeed? Don't they realise they will tire of computer animation, which they - as i pointed out - already are. Movies such as Ant Bully and Monster House aren't guaranteed huge success anymore. They have to work for it just like anything else. Even Pixar's Cars (a film I adored) had it's work cut out for itself. But, it's as if people want every single movie to look the same. Who wants that?