We’re down to the pointy end of the award season now!With the 97th Academy Awards upon us, it’s time to highlight some of the best films of the last year. Who will win?
Animation has come a long way in gaining critical recognition to match its commercial success. Even in the mainstream sequels below, the care and artistry of the form remain front and center.
Yet, despite this progress, none of these films have earned a Best Picture nomination. In fact, the last animated film to do so was Toy Story 3 in 2010, with only two others preceding it: Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Up (2009). This year, Flow follows in the footsteps of Waltz with Bashir and Flee as a nominee for Best International Feature.
As an unabashed fan and amateur historian of animation, I have no hesitation in calling this one of the strongest years for the medium in recent memory—so much so that 90% of the entries below featured in my Best Films of 2024 round-up.
So, without further ado, let’s take a deep dive into the nominees at this year’s Oscars.
Flow
At its finest, animation achieves what live action never could, conjuring limitless worlds brimming with real emotion. Flow exemplifies this power without uttering a single word. From its breathtaking opening frames, Gints Zilbalodis and his team craft an extraordinary universe—a seamless fusion of computer-generated animation and a watercolour aesthetic, where reflections of water and light dazzle alongside deeply felt characters. Real animal sounds heighten its authenticity, immersing us further. As the waters rise, so does the tension, each moment of peril and beauty revealed with jaw-dropping artistry. In a standout year for animation, Flow is a formidable contender.
Will it win? This could be a dark horse (or dark cat, as the case may be). Also nominated for Best International Feature, it’s the second most nominated animated film behind The Wild Robot. Plus, it just won the Spirit Award in the same category a week before Oscars.
Inside Out 2
It’s hard to imagine a more heartfelt or warmly told exploration of anxiety and mental health than this. Building on the excellent foundation of its predecessor, Disney/Pixar delivers one of their finest films in years, effortlessly swinging between imaginative fantasy and grounded emotional moments—who else could create a film where the central goal is the establishment of a sense of self? In less than a decade, the animation has reached staggering new heights—shifting from photorealism to outlandish style, while embracing a conscious bricolage of influences to nod to both the past and future of the medium. I’m at risk of gushing, but this is truly something special.
Will it win? As Disney’s sole entry in this year’s slate and one of my favourites of the past year, I’d like to think this film was a serious contender. After all, it’s not just one of the highest-grossing films of 2024, but the highest-grossing animated film of all time and one of the Top 10 highest-grossing films ever (at the time of writing). Despite this, it has yet to secure any major awards this season. Perhaps Sadness can find some Joy in all the money they’ve earned.
Memoir of a Snail
How can something so bleak be so uplifting? The answer, of course, is Adam Elliot, who has made this kind of tale his own. In his unmistakable, painstakingly crafted stop-motion style, he delivers another character whose hardships shape them but never define them, propelling the story with a perfect blend of humour and heartbreak. And I can’t help but feel a certain Australian pride in seeing ‘Chiko roll’ introduced to the global lexicon.
Will it win? Elliot is no stranger to the Oscars. Short film Harvie Crumpet (2003) earned Elliot his first Academy Award, but collectively his shorts and features have won over 100 awards from over 700 festivals and screenings. In fact, this won the Cristal Award winner at Annecy International Animation Film Festival, animation’s most prestigious festival.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Returning to the world of Wallace and Gromit after nearly two decades feels like wrapping yourself in a cosy, knitted sock. The film revels in its familiar, handcrafted charm, lingering in its quirky world with a leisurely first half before picking up momentum. While the story feels stretched, as if a mid-length script were padded to feature length, the warmth and gentle humour remain irresistible. Even if it leans a little too much on nostalgia, it’s a joy to revisit West Wallaby Street, and I’d happily return for more adventures. Surely Feathers McGraw was robbed of a supporting actor nomination as well?
Will it win? There’s so much love for Wallace and Gromit, particularly in its native UK, where it recently took home the BAFTA equivalent of this category. The series has already claimed two Academy Awards for its short films, and its predecessor, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, won this Best Animated Feature category two decades ago. Could this be the Godfather of animated films, securing back-to-back wins?
The Wild Robot
As we approach the remake of director Chris Sanders’ most enduring classics, Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, this Ugly Duckling narrative that Sanders so often favours serves as a reminder of what he does best. The story weaves a powerful message about nurture versus nature, chosen families, and the lasting impact they can have on one’s life. The animation is breathtaking, with a hand-painted, intentionally “unfinished” aesthetic that creates a rich, inviting world full of life. With nods to the original books, Miyazaki, and even Pixar’s earlier works, this is a world we never want to leave. It’s mind-boggling that DreamWorks is producing something like this while stepping away from their in-house model, but quality animation—especially of this calibre—doesn’t come cheap!
Will it win? Lilo & Stitch lost to Spirited Away. How to Train Your Dragon lost out to Toy Story 3. The Croods couldn’t stand up against the might of Frozen. With so much critical love out there for The Wild Robot, here’s hoping the fourth time is the charm for Chris Sanders.
In the thirty years since the animated classic The Lion King, the story has become an industry unto itself. Spawning direct-to-home spin-offs, a goliath Broadway musical adaptation, several animated series and a photorealistic remake, it’s hard to imagine what new ground there’s left to cover in the Pride Lands.
MUFASA: THE LION KING serves as both a sequel and a prequel to the 2019 remake. Through a framing device, shaman Rafiki (voiced by John Kani) – along with Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Set Rogen) – recounts to Simba and Nala’s daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter) the tale of two young lion cubs. One is Mufasa (Aaron Pierre), destined to become the King of the Pride Lands. The other is his adopted brother Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who will eventually be known as Scar.
Disney sequels have become a cornerstone of modern event cinema, but there are two reasons to pay particular attention to this one. The first is the new music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, beloved for his Disney soundtracks to Moana and Encanto. The second is the director: Barry Jenkins, the award-winning filmmaker behind Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk.
While the familiar strains of Lebo M’s choir invite us back to Pride Rock, Jenkins sets MUFASA apart as an adventure film first and a musical second. The core narrative is more traditional Disney fare, focusing on “childhood trauma” (as Timon cheekily puts it), parental loss, and finding one’s place in the world. In many ways, Mufasa’s story echoes Simba’s journey, reimagining him as the outcast who finds a family among a ragtag group before embracing his destiny in the Circle of Life. A pride of white lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen) steps in for the hyenas, while Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) takes on a role reminiscent of Nala.
The songs, though fewer in number, are all hits. Miranda weaves his trademark lyrical flair into Lebo M’s powerful soundscape, especially in the upbeat “I Always Wanted a Brother,” a playful counterpart to “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.” The heartfelt duet “Tell Me It’s You,” performed by Aaron Pierre and Tiffany Boone, may finally earn Miranda the Oscar that “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” secured for Elton John and Tim Rice.
Jenkins’ influence is most apparent in the nuanced vocal performances. Pierre, who previously collaborated with Jenkins on The Underground Railroad, shines as a charismatic lead—a challenging feat given the shadow of James Earl Jones, whose iconic portrayal receives a heartfelt tribute before the opening credits.
However, the emotional depth of the characters struggles to come through without the expressiveness of traditional animation. On a technical level, Disney’s photorealistic animation continues to set new standards, capturing every strand of fur and background detail. It’s a visual marvel, directly linked to Walt Disney’s enduring pursuit of realism. Yet there’s a reason animation embraced stylised designs and anthropomorphism, as those choices allow for greater emotional connection and storytelling flexibility.
MUFASA: THE LION KING proves to be a stronger prequel than anticipated, blending elements of the original Lion King and Simba’s Pride with vibrant new songs. The rousing finale undeniably sticks the landing, but the film remains constrained by too much retread and not enough heart.
2024 | USA | DIRECTOR: Barry Jenkins | WRITERS: Jeff Nathanson | CAST: Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Tiffany Boone, Donald Glover, Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Anika Noni Rose, Blue Ivy Carter, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 18 December 2024 (Australia), 20 December 2024 (USA)
If mainstream Japanese animation is anything to go by, every school-aged child seems destined to experience their seminal coming-of-age moments through a magical being during an extended summer stay with relatives. This is familiar ground for directors Nobuhiro Yamashita and Yoko Kuno, who revisit themes explored in their 2020 collaborative short film, Lucky Owl with Shimako.
Based on Takashi Imashiro’s serialised manga, the film is set in the coastal inlet of Iketeru, winkingly dubbed the “town of eternal summer.” Eleven-year-old Karin (voiced by Noa Gotō) arrives there with her father, Tetsuya (Munetaka Aoki), at Sousei-Ji temple, home to her grandfather (Keiichi Suzuki). When Tetsuya is kicked out after asking for money to pay off a loan shark, he leaves Karin behind, promising to return on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Soon after, Karin encounters Anzu (Mirai Moriyama), the titular ghost cat: an anthropomorphic feline riding a scooter, larger than an adult human, and perpetually wearing a flip phone around his neck. Befriending two local boys and a host of animal gods, Karin and Anzu embark on a series of minor adventures that span both this world and the hereafter.
The web is already brimming with comparisons between this film and Spirited Away—and if you’ve read this far, you’ll see I’ve now contributed to that discourse. The back half certainly invites the comparison, with Karin and Anzu embarking on a strange journey through the Kingdom of the Dead. Yet the rest of the film is a bizarre, jarring mix of tones and styles, swinging from crude comedy to philosophical ponderings, often making it unclear who the intended audience might be.
Take, for instance, a subplot involving the God of Poverty. Depicted as a grubby, toothless man in a loincloth, his attempts to fulfil his ‘job’ are frequently foiled by Anzu but just as often elicit unsettling suggestions of self-harm from his targets. Similarly, Anzu oscillates between threatening violent murder with a makeshift spear and farting on his friends for laughs. This randomness dominates much of the runtime, with side characters rarely contributing meaningfully until the chaotic final act.
This tonal inconsistency is mirrored in the animation. The backgrounds are often stunning, with lush, detailed depictions of summer landscapes. By contrast, the characters range from realistically drawn figures like Karin and Tetsuya to exaggerated caricatures or minimalist, rounded designs. This embrace of both grotesquerie and comedy is characteristic of Shin-Ei Animation (collaborating here with France’s Miyu Productions), the studio behind recent film versions of Shin Chan and Doraemon.
Where GHOST CAT ANZU shines brightest is in its unrestrained, rollercoaster finale. As hell quite literally breaks loose, a modest commentary on grief is consumed by a wild chase across Tokyo in a minibus full of demons. It’s as illogical as anything else in the film—a delightfully anarchic adventure perfectly tailored to kids navigating their own existential crises.
2024 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Yōko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita | WRITERS: Shinji Imaoka(Based on a manga by Takashi Imashiro) | CAST (Japanese): Mirai Moriyama, Noa Gotō, Munetaka Aoki, Miwako Ichikawa, Keiichi Suzuki, Shingo Mizusawa, Wataru Sawabe | CAST (English): Jason Simon, Evie Hsu, Andrew Kishino, Erica Schroeder, David Goldstein, Jon Allen | DISTRIBUTOR: Toho Next (Japan), Kismet (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 3 December 2024 (Australia)
By the 1950s, the Western had swaggered its way to the top of American cinema, riding high since the dawn of the silver screen. Disney, never one to miss a trailblazing opportunity, saddled up and delivered nearly 30 productions across film and TV, carving its own niche into the genre’s storied landscape.
Disney wasn’t just jumping on the Western wagon train either. From their animated shorts to live-action features and first forays into television, the Western was baked into the DNA of their output.
By 1954, when Disney introduced the idea of his eponymous theme park to audiences, the Western-themed Frontierland became a cornerstone of both the Disneyland TV show and the park itself, which opened the following year. Disney didn’t just dabble in the genre—they made it their own.
Animated beginnings: rabbits on the range
Disney’s earliest animated offerings were often groundbreaking experiments with the form, yet they weren’t created in a bubble. They reflected popular culture as much as they created it and Westerns had been part of film culture from the beginning. From early animated antics to more genre-specific works, Disney gradually embraced the Western, blending folklore, humour, and frontier ideals along the way.
Disney’s earliest animated offerings were groundbreaking experiments with form, yet they reflected popular culture as much as they shaped it. Westerns had been part of film since the beginning, and Disney gradually embraced the genre, blending folklore, humour, and frontier ideals.
Early Western motifs appeared in the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts—like Alice’s Wild West Show (1924) and Sagebrush Sadie (1928)—where the frontier served as a playground for slapstick. Mickey Mouse followed suit with The Cactus Kid (1930) and Two-Gun Mickey (1934), laying the groundwork for Disney’s later embrace of Western folklore.
Two Gun Goofy (1952)
By the mid-1940s, Disney leaned more heavily into the genre with Goofy’s Californy ’Er Bust and Pluto’s The Legend of Coyote Rock. The Pecos Bill sequence in Melody Time (1948) completed the ’40s formula for capturing the fun, mythical side of the Old West.
Later shorts, like Pests of the West (1950) and Two Gun Goofy (1952), took cues from Warner Bros., ramping up the cartoonish chaos. The final act of Two Gun Goofy feels like Bugs Bunny might be lurking just offscreen, orchestrating the chaos. One of my favourites is The Lone Chipmunks (1954), where Chip and Dale face off against outlaw Pete. It’s wonderfully silly: at one point, Pete accidentally uses Dale as a gun, who lets out an appropriately squeaky ‘bang’.
With layout styling by Xavier Atencio, later famed for Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion rides, the UPA-style A Cowboy Needs a Horse (1956) is visually striking, featuring mid-century modern designs and vivid, impressionistic backgrounds by Ralph Hulett and Al Dempster. Paired with cowboy docudrama Cow Dog (1956) and Secrets of Life on release, the film revolves around a catchy song that still sticks days later. However, the stereotypical depiction of First Nations peoples, though featuring dynamic visuals, detracts from the otherwise charming and beautifully crafted animation.
Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
Kings of the wild frontier: Davy Crockett and the small screen
Disney’s Davy Crockett (played by newcomer Fess Parker) was a legitimate cultural phenomenon. Between the coonskin caps and other merchandise—not to mention the wildly popular theme song—the Crockett Craze generated over $300 million in sales during its first year. (That’s about $3.5 billion in today’s money—from just three TV episodes.) Even Back to the Future couldn’t resist: when Marty McFly heads back to 1955, both the song and the cap turn up on screen. The success completely caught Disney by surprise.
In many ways, the studio spent the rest of the decade trying to recapture this lightning in a bottle. Crockett himself starred in five episodes of the Disneyland anthology show, and two compilation features followed. The six-part Saga of Andy Burnett was very much made in the Crockett mould, with Jeff York (who played Mike Fink in the Crockett episodes) returning. While Zorro was not strictly a “Western,” its frontier setting of Spanish California and swashbuckling hero (played by Guy Williams) became iconic.
Combined with the The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca serial, starring Robert Loggia as the true-life gunslinger turned lawyer and politician, we can now acknowledge that Disney created two iconic Hispanic screen action heroes in the late 1950s. A similar approach was taken with the more expansive Texas John Slaughter chronicles, based on the real-life Texas Ranger. It may not be Disney’s most memorable western, but it’s a solid entry with standout moments, especially in the Sandoval two-parter featuring Beverly Garland’s Amanda Barko.
Even the daily episodes of the more kid-centric Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959) reflected the popularity of the Western trend. Talent Round-up Day on Fridays saw the Mouseketeers dressed in cowboy outfits, with a cartoon Mickey in Western garb a prominent part of the logos. Serials story Corky and White Shadow put a young girl in the centre of a Western tale, while the more successful Spin and Marty gave audiences a modern take as the title characters spend their summers at the Triple R Ranch.
The success of Disney’s Westerns on television cemented their role in helping shape mid-century American ideas about the West, particularly through serialised storytelling that kept audiences hooked week to week.
Cowboys and cultural clashes on the big screen
Disney’s 1950s big-screen Westerns often featured plenty of horse-bound action. From Stormy, The Thoroughbred (1954) to the small-scale The Littlest Outlaw (1955), Disney used documentary techniques to shape these narrative stories—what we might call slice-of-life docudramas today.
Disney didn’t just entertain; their Westerns offered a family-friendly, packaged version of frontier life, often highlighting historical figures whose stories reflected themes of exploration, heroism, and morality. The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) captures this with an almost aggressively centrist retelling of Andrews’ Raiders and Hunter’s Confederate conductor—likely a reason it remains less heralded among Disney’s 1950s output (though Walt’s own love of trains is evident throughout).
These adventures didn’t ignore First Nations perspectives, although portrayals often leaned on cultural stereotypes of the time. Peter Pan (1953) remains one of Disney’s beloved films of the era, yet its song “What Makes the Red Man Red” and Ward Kimball’s caricatured Chief have aged poorly. Westward Ho, The Wagons! (1956) similarly attempts authenticity, with the Disneyland behind-the-scenes episode Along the Oregon Trail detailing Sioux consultations for language accuracy. Still, the film ends anticlimactically, caught in a last-minute crisis and a literal white saviour narrative.
More considered attempts came with Tonka and The Light in the Forest (both 1958). Tonka follows White Bull, a young Teton Sioux played by Italian-American Sal Mineo, highlighting era-specific casting biases. The film acknowledges traditional practices and even portrays General Custer as a villain, though it ultimately leaves conflicts unresolved. The Light in the Forest delves into Disney’s 1950s fascination with Americana and identity through True Son (James MacArthur), a young man torn between his Indigenous roots and colonial assimilation. While it nods to racism, its simplistic portrayal of assimilation undermines a fuller respect for First Nations cultures.
The evolving frontier
As the Western genre waned in popularity, Disney adapted, reinventing it with humour and lighthearted charm to keep its appeal for family audiences.
In 1959, a very serious Leslie Nielsen took on Revolutionary War figure The Swamp Fox in multi-part Walt Disney Presents stories on TV, demonstrating Disney’s knack for creating Western-adjacent tales rooted in American folklore and history. You could even argue that Old Yeller (1957), with its post-Civil War setting, forms part of this continuum.
Westernland Shootin’ Gallery in Tokyo Disneyland
Perhaps the most tangible legacy of Disney’s Western era is found in the Frontierlands of Disney Parks around the world. The original in California, along with its sibling in Orlando, stands as a tribute to this cinematic era. In Paris, Thunder Mesa offers a unique backstory, created by the fictional Henry Ravenswood to support the mining town surrounding Big Thunder Mountain. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Grizzly Gulch takes inspiration from a Northern California mining town.
However, Tokyo Disneyland—almost 6,000 miles from the American frontier—might showcase the clearest tribute to this era. Their version, simply called Westernland, is a near mirror of the Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, tipping its hat to Disney’s lasting vision of the Old West.
The past, present and future of the human experience is explored in the race for the best animated short film at the 96th Academy Awards.
The Best Animated Short category has a proud tradition, even if it isn’t always considered one of the “big” prizes on the night. After all, good things often come in short packages.
Starting in 1932, a category once dominated by Disney is now a showcase for both emerging and established filmmakers experimenting with the form. This year we see hybrid blends of 2D and CG animation, storybooks and songs brought to life and animating directly onto physical fabrics.
Following last year’s category winnerThe Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse — a syrupy exploration of place and identity packaged as a childhood fable — there’s arguably a childhood lens at various stages in their narratives. This is certainly the case with Letter to a Pig, Ninety-Five Senses, Our Uniform and Pachyderm, all of which add the additional running thread of dealing with past trauma.
So, without any further ado, the nominees in focus are:
Letter to a Pig
Tal Kantor takes the incredibly weighty subject matter – an old man relating his memories of the Holocaust to a group of kids – and filters the trauma through animation. The layered piece combines beautiful brush-painted images, traditional 2D animation and live action footage combined into a unique whole. That said, I struggled to connect with the film’s construction following a midpoint turn into something more abstract, especially given that it depicts violence against the titular animal. Still, as an Oscar contender for 2023, it would also make an interesting double-feature with The Zone of Interest, both being important reminders about being complicit and complacent in the face of state-sanctioned horrors.
Will it win? The poignant subject matter is often favoured by Academy voters and its powerful message will not be one lost on any viewers. Purists may quibble over the use of live action elements, but it is done in such a seamless mixed media fashion that they are all parts of a visual whole.
Ninety-Five Senses
This one took me by surprise. One of the stronger contenders from the five Oscar nominated animated shorts, starting (as many of the others do) as a nostalgic journey and turning into something else entirely. Directed by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess, perhaps best known for Napoleon Dynamite, it follows a man who looks back on his life through the lens of his five senses. Yet, as he reflects on his life’s mistakes, we realise the truth behind his preoccupation with mortality. (I won’t spoil that for you here). Using several different animation styles, from more traditional 2D cel animation to more experimental pieces, it starts as Up and ends up a little more Shawshank Redemption.
Will it win? This is perhaps the only short in the category that has a creative team recognisable outside of the world of animation, and also one that has the most traditional narrative structure. The familiar touchpoints make it one of the leads in the group, and is certainly one of my favourites.
Our Uniform
Looking at the memories of an Iranian schoolgirl through the lens of the titular uniform, director Yegane Moghaddam uses the unique technique of literally using canvas as her canvas, animating directly onto the fabrics. While it’s ostensibly about Iranian school uniforms, there’s a universality to this when we consider the ‘uniforms’ that we all wear in our daily lives, especially (as Moghaddam put it in an interview) the “clothing convention imposed on women.” From an animation point of view, it’s a fascinating blend of real fabrics, stop motion and 2D animated layers composited on the stop-motion layer.
Will it win? Another short with an incredibly strong tie to current issues facing the Iranian women it depicts, as well as many other women around the world. It’s one of the more unique examples of animation this year as well.
Pachyderm
As I said, if there’s a loose theme in the Best Animated Short Film category this year, it’s dealing with childhood trauma. Stéphanie Clément’s gorgeously illustrated short film is arguably both the most subtle and powerful of the crop. There’s a storybook quality to the art, taking Clément’s original drawings and recrafting them in unique CG that gives depth and weight to the pieces. This is spectacularly achieved in a sequence by the lake, one where all of the techniques come together in a heartbreaking way. It’s like a Shaun Tan book with a thoroughly European animation sensibility — especially as the real weight of what the lead child is carrying slowly dawns on the viewer.
Will it win? This is everything that every storybook inspired cartoon wishes it could be: pure art. At any rate, this is probably one of my top two choices in the field.
WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko
Subtle, this is not. There’s a solid narrative at the heart of this, and given the global landscape at this point in time, it’s one that could have really made a mark. Indeed, the very song that this was “inspired” by wasn’t just a song, but the culmination of more than two years of peace activism that include the infamous bed-in, interviews and large-scale advertising. Yet presented in this package, with some admittedly striking designs, it simply comes off as cloying and laden with unfilled potential.
Will it win? A popular song, some aesthetically pleasing animation and a message against war in 2024? How can the Academy possibly resist?
Bonsai Films in association with ShortsTV will be releasing the 19th annual Oscar® Nominated Short Films from 22 Feb at 37 cinema locations nationally with sessions that will be staggered through to early March. The ceremony will take place on Sunday, March 10, 2024. (Monday March 11 Australian time).
From birds to spiders, and a whole lot of elemental shapeshifters in between, the animated race for the 96th Academy Awards.
More than 20 years after its introduction, the Best Animated Feature award remains something of a controversial category.
On the one hand, it gives animated features a much-deserved focus, one where they can be assessed against other people working in the same environment. On the other, it’s increasingly keeping these films out of contention for the top slot.
While this piece is certainly not about so-called ‘snubs,’ it’s worth noting that the five nominated films stood out against the likes of qualifiers The First Slam Dunk, box office titan The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and deceptively stylish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. For me, it just speaks to the strength of animation at the moment, with a whopping 33 qualifying titles in the longlist.
Yet it’s still mostly old favourites coming to the field this year. Studio Ghibli, Pixar and even the Spider-Verse series are no strangers to this category. So, will the heron fly high or will the friendly neighbourhood award-winner triumph again?
The nominees are:
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last film, his first feature (and Studio Ghibli’s third) since they first announced a closure back in 2014, is arguably the strongest in years. Inspired by Genzaburō Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live? — which serves as a device within the film — the magical realism mixes the coming of age narrative with a fundamental sense of loss, choosing between destruction and creation, and the notion of mortality. It’s an incredibly grounded film, still packaged, of course, in Miyazaki’s inimitable sense of the absurdly surreal. In this way, it is both the Miyazaki who made Spirted Away and The Wind Rises working simultaneously.
Will it win? Ghibli has done well since this category has been introduced. Miyazaki has the single most nominations although only a single win for Spirited Away. With this film largely being hailed as a return to form, it just might be Ghibli’s year again.
Elemental
There’s a lot of Disney/Pixar’s history here. There’s clear aesthetic influences from previous hits. Yet reminds us exactly why they are the kings of heartfelt animation. A great reminder of the power of positive messages, personal stories, and why representation is essential in cinema. Full review.
Will it win? Pixar are the kings of this category: 11 wins from 18 nominations since 2001. Yet some of the reviews have been mixed, so it’s not necessarily a favourite going in. Still, it has a lot of fans and, if you combine the Disney/Pixar wins in this category, it’s an almost 70% success rate.
Ninoma
This startlingly original animated film moves marginalised narratives to the front and centre, questions the history of representation, and delivers one of the best hero arcs of the year. Said to be influenced by Eyvind Earle (Disney’s Sleeping Beauty) and the Modernist art of Charley Harper, the world created is a stunning combination of futuristic sci-fi, fantasy settings, and something more grounded. When production was revived at Annapurna, using the London-based DNEG, the baseline was used for a seamless final product filled with stunning backgrounds and engaging leads. Full review.
Will it win? Netflix has proven to be the quiet upstarts for animation cred, winning last year for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Stablemate The Sea Beast was also nominated. However, Netflix’s staggeringly good The Mitchells vs. the Machinescouldn’t stand up to the House of Mouse.
Robot Dreams
This was simply a delight of a film. Of the nominated films, it is perhaps the most pure example of animation as a form of the art. Which is not to say the best of the pick, but due to the lack of dialogue one does tend to look at the animation as its own discrete artform. While I’m yet to read Sara Varon’s graphic novel, director Pablo Berger manages to convey a complete world and all of its seasons in visual format. Infused with music, and armed with the knowledge that the same song can bring great joy and sadness at different times, here is a story about connection. This is animation’s Past Lives for 2023.
Will it win? It’s the long shot for sure, but that only speaks to how strong the field is this year. This has all the makings of a cult classic regardless of the outcome.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Ok, so let’s do this one more time. The cinematic Multiverse is vast, never-ending, and filled with spiders. Our favourite webslinger returned with some groundbreaking animation, a killer soundtrack, and a whole lot of heart. As a ‘Part 1’, you might even argue that it’s only half a film. Still, it’s hard to feel anything less than thrilled walking out of this one. Like the best comic books, we can’t wait for the next issue to come out. Read the full review here.
Will it win? There’s a very good case for this being the favourite. While the tide has more broadly turned against comic book movies, the first film in this series took the Best Animated Feature award at the 91st Academy Awards. This sequel has regularly appeared on ‘best of’ lists for the year (including my own).
The 96th Academy Awards are presented on 10 March 2024 in a ceremony held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Walt Disney catches a wave of nostalgia, blending live action and animation with his love of small town America — literally laying the tracks for Disneyland in the process.
Best known for being ‘the one with the black sheep,’ SO DEAR TO MY HEART (1948) follows the animated/live action hybrid model of Song of the South (1946) – along with Walt Disney’s regular child cast members Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten – but thankfully without the racist overtones.
The film’s nostalgia for small town America is borne of a post-war desire for gentle throwbacks. It’s also a movie that indicated what was dear to Walt’s past and future heart, drawing on his own childhood while planting the seeds for his obsessions over the next decade.
So dear to Walt’s heart
Based on the 1943 Sterling North book Midnight and Jeremiah, but set in Indiana in 1903, this isn’t far from the Marceline, Missouri that Walt and his brother Roy grew up in at the start of the century. If you visit a Disney theme park today, you can see the strength of these fond memories in Main Street, USA.
The film itself is about the young Jeremiah (Bobby Driscoll) who dreams of owning a champion horse, but his fate and interests are turned by the birth of a black lamb. Despite the lack of demand for black wool, and his granny’s protestations, Jeremiah becomes determined to foster the lamb to its own state fair victory.
Walt and screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer started work on SO DEAR TO MY HEART as early as 1945, with location scouting in Indiana happening around this time. After meticulously recreating what they saw a little closer to home in California’s San Joaquin Valley, production began the spring of 1946 and would continue for well over two years. Crew and cast worked in temperatures in excess of 100°F (or 37°C) — often in full period costume. Walt left the filming in the hands of director Harold Schuster following his work on My Friend Flicka (1943), but would later take a more active role in post-production.
For the most part, the end product is a straight live action film punctuated by some animated interstitials. It’s handsomely shot on those lovingly detailed sets by cinematographer Winston C. Hoch, who had previously worked as a DP on the Technicolor sequences of The Reluctant Dragon and later won back-to-back Oscars for Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948) and John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). So, we’re talking about peak Hoch here. You only need to look at some of those sunrise scenes later in the film as evidence. (Hoch also shot Darby O’Gill and the Little People for Disney as well).
Owls and Scottish spiders
If you ever get a chance to look at the Lost and Found featurette on the UK DVD from about a decade ago, you’ll discover that Disney was as meticulous about set design as he was on animation. Artist and designer Mary Blair’s exacting concept art was crafted into Grundy’s store, for example. There’s a whole-ass merry-go-round built just for background detail! We’re starting to understand why this film was in production for two-and-a-half years. (Fun fact: the train depot seen in the film wound up in animator Ward Kimball’s house and was later purchased by Pixar co-founder John Lasseter).
Still, when you think about Disney of this era, you may still think of animation. Unlike the animated sequences in Song of the South, which were complete and almost self-contained cartoons, here it’s a semi-didactic scrapbook that serves as a series of linking segments. If anything, these sequences now seem tacked on, but remain engaging pieces. Hosted by the animated Wise Old Owl — a design that seems to have set cartoon owl design in place for over 80 years — we get songs like ‘It’s Whatcha Do With Whatcha Got’ and ‘Stick-to-it-ivity.’ The latter has some of the more innovative animation in it: Christopher Columbus fights a fire-breathing sea creature while Robert the Bruce watches the struggles of an animated Scottish spider. Is it a bit weird? Yes, delightfully so.
It’s moments like this that balance out the more saccharine nostalgia of the back half, especially granny’s often contradictory lessons in theology. At one point, she convinces Jeremiah that their god is punishing him for his vanity – a harsh morality lesson for a small boy! Strangely enough, the animated sequences weren’t in the original plan for SO DEAR TO MY HEART. It was distributor RKO who felt that a film released under the ‘Disney’ banner created certain audience expectations — and so a compromise of sorts was reached and the animated segments were figments of Jeremiah’s imagination.
In his biography of Disney, Neal Gabler concludes that SO DEAR TO MY HEART was “on its face a kitschy, syrupy, unimaginative” film, adding it was “essentially a greeting card.” Yet the reviews at the time were favourable, with the New York Herald Tribune hailing it as having “a gracious and engaging formula for blending real drama with the pictorial imagination of an animated cartoon.”
All aboard
If SO DEAR TO MY HEART feels like a footnote in modern Disney history, perhaps it was all about timing. Leonard Maltin (in The Disney Films) argues that its simple story was a hard sell, and it arrived at the tail end of a nostalgic wave filled with films like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and State Fair (1945). One wonders if its small town message would fit in seamlessly today with the Hallmark oeuvre, or the low-stakes drama of the Disney Channel and now Disney+ originals.
These days, the film’s minor status is also partly due to its lack of availability on physical media for the last decade or so. Nor is it on their flagship streaming platform, despite not seeming to need any of the content advisories Disney has recently created. (At the time of writing, it is available in restored HD on iTunes/Apple TV).
Yet the legacy of this film is evident in Disney’s filmography. Only two years later, the studio would have a bigger success with the wholly live action Treasure Island (1950). The elaborate sets for SO DEAR TO MY HEART reportedly began Disney’s obsession with miniatures, which in turn led to him building his own backyard train set. As Disney fans know, these were the seeds that grew into a little park called Disneyland. That is another story for another day.
References
Gabler, N. (2007). Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. Vintage.
Kothenschulte, D. (2021). The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921-1968. Taschen.
“Lost and Found” (2003). In So Dear to My Heart [DVD]. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.
War! Education! Death! Disney embraces fast and efficient animation in a fight for survival on the international and home fronts.
“When Uncle Sam joined us on the lot, he brought with him a new and necessary institution,” says The Ropes at Disney, an illustrated manual given to employees in 1943. “We refer, of course, to the identification badge.”
“The point is (and we aren’t kidding) you can’t get through the time office, morning or night, without your badge.” It was a sign of the times at Disney, n indicator that the first two decades of artistic experimentation had given way to something else. A world war, strikes, commercial disappointments, and a vastly changed roster of staff had ended the first Golden Age.
Yet there are few years in the century of Disney history that are as quietly significant as 1943. It had been 20 years since Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt and Walt and Roy founded the Disney Brothers studio. Two decades later, Disney was once again facing a financial and creative crisis.
No major animated classics were released that year, yet it produced some of Disney’s most intriguing animation. Their output at this time was prolific, and yet only two short films from 1943 are currently on Disney+. While the world was at war, the spirit of 1943 saw educational shorts, propaganda, and iconic debuts in equal measure.
Prelude to war
The 1940s had already been a tumultuous decade for Disney. Following the financial disappointments of Fantasia and even Bambi, together with the protracted animators’ strike of 1941 changing the culture of the studio, Walt probably jumped at the chance to get some guaranteed contracts.
Those chances came in the form of government work. In 1941, the United States Department of State and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) asked Disney to do a goodwill tour of South America as part of the Good Neighbor Program. At the time, the US was afraid that certain parts of Latin America leaned towards the Axis, and wished to use cultural ties to strengthen Latin American connections.
Walt and about 20 artists got a trip around South America, and any films would be guaranteed by the government. This last bit was especially good for the cash strapped studio, resulting in films like Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), and some of Disney’s first forays into educational short films.
Jorge Guinle, Carmen Miranda and Walt Disney in 1943.
Yet by the end of 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered the war. Disney was already making films to sell Canadian war bonds, such as The Thrifty Pig. By 1942, the army had literally moved into their offices to protect the nearby Lockheed base, around which time Walt made Ice Formation on Aircraft as a technical proof of concept for military training videos. That same year, Disney used Donald Duck to get people to file their taxes on time in The New Spirit, a film that the Gallup poll estimated was seen by around 60 million people.
The experiment paid off in a way. “In 1943, the studio had only slipped further into the war morass, had only become more a defense factory and less of a movie studio,” writes Neal Gabler in Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006). “Ninety-four percent of the output now went to the government, and in June 1943 alone the studio produced just 2,300 feet less film than it had produced in all of 1941.”
It kept the financial wolves off the doorstep for a time, but was it any good?
The Spirit of ‘43
The tone of 1943 was set early with Der Fuehrer’s Face, also known as the one where Donald Duck is a Nazi — albeit a highly reluctant one. Originally titled Donald in Naziland, the name was changed thanks to the runaway success of an eponymous song by Oliver Wallace, popularised by Spike Jones.
The short film lands in an America at total war and under intense rationing. So, the lampooning of life in “Nutzi Land” was twofold: it poked at the enemy as fair game, using racial caricatures of the Germans and Japanese, and broad humour to diminish their power. It was also meant to show just how much worse oppression was under the German dictatorship, characterised by Donald being punished by a pre-I Love Lucy production line.
It features a surreal dancing shell sequence that is nightmare fuel, like a dark and twisted version of Dumbo’s pink elephant scene. Culminating with Donald waking up back at home declaring “Am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America” – and a tomato to the face of Hitler – the audience are invited for one last sing-a-long. (Now try to sleep with the added image of thousands of 1940s children singing a song about Hitler).
Der Fuehrer’s Face, Education for Death and Reason and Emotion
With Education for Death, based on a book by Gregor Ziemer and subtitled ‘The Making of the Nazi’, it’s fair to say Disney has rarely delivered a more chilling cartoon. “What makes a Nazi?” asks narrator Art Smith in the opening scene, with a dramatic zoom in on a symbol of hate. From the birth of a German boy through to his service as a soldier, this is the more serious twin to the comical Der Fuehrer’s Face. While there are scenes played for comedy – specifically the scenes of Hitler in knight’s armour taking Germany for a “ride” – this is as dark a narrative as they come.
Using caricature, here Disney’s first adaptation of Sleeping Beauty is reframed as the fairytale Hitler tells the German people. The journey of the aforementioned boy traces the naming laws, the erasure of empathy from children and their parents, and the breeding of a hatred for any sign of difference.
The final moments of this film are legitimately terrifying. Following a montage of book burning and cultural replacement, we see the horrific vision of German soldiers marching in unison, their multitude of faces obscured by human-sized dog muzzles, before all being replaced by graves on a battlefield. It’s grim stuff.
By contrast, if Reason and Emotion was released outside the narrow confines of the wartime efforts, it would probably be considered one of Disney’s greats. It is unquestionably a piece of propaganda in this unedited form, but it’s also got one of the most enduring motifs in entertainment – that is, peering at the personalities inside people’s heads.
Inspiring Inside Out and Herman’s Head in equal measure, there are still elements of this that very much date the film in 1943. When the Man spots a woman passing by, there’s some thoughts that may not fly in Disney’s 2023 oeuvre, suggesting that this was probably made for adults at the time. For a comparative look inside the mind of a woman, the narrator asks “May we borrow your pretty head for a moment?” While in there, we see the struggle is between hunger and reason. “Uncontrolled emotion can cause you a lot of trouble,” says the narrator, and the visuals tell us he means ‘being fat.’
The crux of the propaganda elements come with the introduction of a man stressed out by all the rumours he is hearing about the war. Personified as ghosts, these wonderful animated non sequiturs demonstrate that unchecked emotion can lead to you being easily controlled. The short then overtly uses Hitler’s Germany as a comparison, making this a companion piece to Education for Death. The German is portrayed as a reasonless leader spitting out words, suppressing reason, and leading by “fear of the concentration camp, fear of the Gestapo.” Like Chicken Little, released at the tail end of 1943 as an allegory for fear mongering, this film that was drafted a dissection of Nazi propaganda. Subtle they are not, but it is effective imagery for a wartime nation.
Familiar characters continued their adventures during the war as well. Donald signed up for service in 1942 with Donald Gets Drafted, and Disney followed that over the course of six or so shorts, including the very funny Fall Out – Fall In. Alongside Donald’s adventures in Nutziland, he returned to explain the benefit of saving for taxes to beat the Axis in The Spirit of ‘43, got plagued by Spike the Bee (and his nephews) while spotting aircraft in Home Defense, and battled rubber rationing in Donald’s Tire Troubles. It’s possible his hijinks in The Old Army Game, in which Donald holds a gun to his own head, may have got him kicked out of the armed forces.
Fading star Mickey really only appeared once in 1943 in the Uruguay-set Pluto and the Armadillo, another product of the CIAA initiative, and he’s outshone by his titular costars. Goofy did his bit for the home front by showcasing a range of ridiculous but hilarious forms of transport in Victory Vehicles — complete with the catchy tune, ‘Hop on Your Pogo Stick.’ Even Pluto signed up in Private Pluto, battling a pair of chipmunks and making 1943 significant as the debut year of Chip ‘n Dale.
Road Dahl’s The Gremlins
One of the most famous film productions from the year was ultimately one that didn’t get made. The Gremlins was penned by a recognisable name: Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl. Yes, two decades before James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this was Dahl’s very first book for children. With cover art by Mary Blair, and illustrations from an uncredited Bill Justice and Al Dempster, it tells the story of the titular critters spotted by RAF pilots drilling holes on the wings of their planes. Originally intended to be filmed as a feature, 50,000 copies were printed in the US, although a paper shortage prevented a quick reprint. Thanks in part to questions around rights, and Dahl’s insistence on script approval, the film itself never eventuated. Warner’s Bugs Bunny short Falling Hare came out the same year with a similar premise.
Victory Through Air Power
While The Gremlins film didn’t eventuate, another adaptation came about from an unlikely source.
“The most significant single fact about the war now in progress is the emergence of aviation as the paramount and decisive factor in warmaking,” said Russian-American aviation pioneer Alexander P. de Seversky in his book Victory Through Air Power. He goes on to describe the devastating impact of New York, Detroit, Chicago, and San Francisco “reduced to rubble heaps in the first twenty-four hours” of an enemy attack. His fundamental understanding was that the nature of war had changed. “There is just one target: the whole country.” In other words, the US needed a dedicated air force.
It was a very persuasive argument. So much so that the studio’s only feature film released for the war effort came about as something of a passion project by Walt Disney. Based on the Seversky’s book, Walt was so convinced by its tenets that he is said to have personally financed the animation in this film. As Leonard Maltin said in a 2004 DVD introduction, “Walt quite simply put his money where his mouth was.”
Stills from Victory Through Air Power (1943)
In the canon of war time Disney films, Victory Through Air Power is distinct not just for its length, but for trying to be both educational and entertaining. It has a point to make: it’s right there in the title. Yet this doesn’t stop Disney from bringing the drama at every turn. As the trailer for this film claims, it’s a “thrilling graphic visualisation of the book.” Walt rushed this into production to visualise the urgency of the otherwise abstract notion of aerial warfare.
Yet it’s the pure animation where the film is at its most effective. The problem with relying on shipping is shown by animating an actual giant bottleneck. Animated maps dominated by symbols of the axis show the potential of their reach with tentacles wrapped around the globe. Envisaging the war going into 1947 and 1948, the film makes a case for a “highway to victory” running through Alaska. Few audiences in the era would blink an eye at the offensive depictions of Germans and the Japanese, and they are used here with unrelenting intent.
The final moments of the film are the most powerful, lifting Seversky’s prognostications of doom right off the page and into animated reality. Bombs dropped from above drill deep into the Earth, smashing cities. Like some kind of early kaiju film, a giant eagle fights an equally large octopus before landing atop an American flag. Sure, it’s obvious propaganda, but it bears repeating: it’s 1943 and the world is at war.
The result was tangible, and both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly requested prints and were ultimately convinced by its message. Plus, American citizens were given a theatrical bit of edutainment to wrap their support around.
The Grain That Built a Hemisphere, Theory of the C-1 Autopilot and The Winged Scourge
The films that built a hemisphere
In some cases, this was merely technical diagrams and maps for army training films, like the Aerology series for Lockheed and the military. These included films like the Theory of the C-1 Autopilot, Aircraft Wood Repair and dozens of hours of dry animation that peppered training productions. In the case of Electronic Control System of the C-1 Auto Pilot Part 1: Basic Electricity, Disney developed whole animated characters like Mr. Volt and Mr. Current to explain how electricity works.
Continuing their work with the government in Latin American relationships for the CIAA, health films like The Grain That Built a Hemisphere, Water: Friend or Enemy? and The Winged Scourge (with a Seven Dwarfs cameo) provided important health information while providing some eye-catching but cost-efficient animation. Highly realistic figures and objects – often assigned to animators like Bill Tytla, Josh Meador, and Ed Aardal – gave all of these a unique look and feel.
A personal favourite from the year is Defense Against Invasion, designed to teach people about how vaccines work. If the last few years have shown us anything, it’s that this has become super topical again.
The film is a live action/animated hybrid explaining how the immune system works and the way vaccines enter the body. If you’re familiar with the modern anime Cells at Work!, this will seem retroactively familiar. There’s a little model city inside the body, where disease acts as a saboteur of the hard working factory cells. In the context of global armed conflict, vaccines act as an analogy for a well-armed defence force.
“The death rattle of the vaccine guns are heard on all sides.” Indeed, there’s Itchy and Scratchy levels of violence on display here. A whole tiny army and air force of good cells are built to fight the invading disease, drawing a line between surface contact and airborne diseases. The wartime analogies notwithstanding, it’s all very familiar territory in this post-pandemic era, with animation that feels fresh and modern.
Legacy of ‘43
“It is not visionary or presumptuous for us to anticipate the use of our own medium in the curriculum of every schoolroom in the world,” Walt Disney said in 1943.
Any child who sat through The Story of Menstruation, the Upjohn Triangle of Health Series, or Jiminy Cricket’s life lessons can attest to this. Chances are pretty good that somewhere between the 60s and 80s you watched a film reel or video that gave your teacher a chance to have a quick nap up the back. More than anything, 1943 solidified Disney’s reputation for delivering cost effective and influential educational animation.
While it is obvious why Disney hasn’t stuck much of the year’s output up on their flagship streaming service, nor much of anything in the way of an official release since Walt Disney Treasures: On the Front Lines DVDs in 2004, there’s a goldmine of animation styles and content for those willing to go digging.
Disney would spend the better part of the decade making package features and compilation films, continuing their educational work through commercial and government fare, and branching further into live action and hybrid features. So, while ‘Disney 20’ may not be as sexy as the Disney 100 campaign, it remains an important archive of a point in time and a crucial turning point for a creative company.
If you’re of a certain age, it’s almost impossible to have escaped the phenomenon that is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. From the humble beginnings of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s 1984 comic book series, designed as a riff on elements from popular superhero comics, their creations became part of the monocultural fabric.
In their first cinematic outing since the Michael Bay produced reboot series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows (2016), TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM attempts to restart the series again with an animated feature. Before you breathe a deep sigh of resignation, know that the creative team this time around includes The Mitchells vs. the Machines co-director Jeff Rowe and a writing collective that includes Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and the Detective Pikachu team.
In this version, Techno Cosmic Research Institute (TCRI) sends a squadron in the direction of scientist Baxter Stockman (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) to obtain the secret to a mutagen he’s developed. In the ensuing scuffle, the mutagen (or “ooze”) leaks into the sewers. You probably already know that it finds its way to four baby turtles and a rat.
Fifteen years later, the four mutated turtles – Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon) and Donatello (Micah Abbey) – have been raised by their adoptive mutated rat father, Splinter (Jackie Chan) to fight for themselves and fear the human world. Yet a chance encounter with teenage would-be reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) sets them on the path of heroism, and ultimately against Stockman’s megalomaniacal mutant housefly, who now goes by the name Superfly (Ice Cube).
From the opening frames, it’s clear that the spirit of The Mitchells Vs. The Machines is infused into the ooze-filled DNA of this hyperkinetic and heartfelt piece of animation. Like Sony’s Spider-Verse series, it takes all of the pop culture it can digest and reimagines it through its own form of mutation, happily finding perfection in imperfection. Characters look hand-drawn and disproportionate, and quite deliberately so, giving the whole thing a sense of immediacy. Indeed, working with Mikros Animation, Rowe’s aim was to make it look and feel like concept art.
The film never stops moving either, with its painted designs wrapped around 3D models, squiggly lines that emanate from anything living, and a sketch-based vibe that looks as though entire objects have just been coloured in as they appear. During brief moments of pause, individual frames could have been lifted straight from the artwork of Eastman and Laird. The effect is remarkable, allowing for non sequitur humour and deeply emotional moments to populate the same scene. In other words, its DIY charm makes it feel all the more real.
Given that a sequel and two spin-off series have already been greenlit, TMNT: MUTANT MAYHEM allows these familiar characters to be reintroduced without trying to throw all the expected canon at the screen at once. Here’s a film that acknowledges the inherent outlandishness of the concept but never belittles anybody for digging on it. With obligatory credit stingers, ones that very much leave the door open for further adventures, Rowe and his crew have given us something very exciting to look forward to over the coming years.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jeff Rowe | WRITERS: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit (based on characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) | CAST: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Austin Post, Hannibal Buress | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 2 August 2023 (US), 7 September 2023 (AUS)
During the ’90, the Chicago Bulls ruled US basketball but it was Takehiko Inoue’s manga series Slam Dunk that dominated Japanese sales, with 170 million copies sold. Now the original manga creator has made his directorial debut, adapting his own work to the screen and winning the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Animation of the Year in the process.
The feature film version concentrates on Ryota Miyagi (voiced by Shugo Nakamura), the point guard of Shohoku high-school’s basketball team. Cutting back and forth between his traumatic youth and the present, we see that Ryota lost his brother some years before, but his influence remains.
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK is a remarkable achievement. On a technical level, Inoue blends 2D and 3D animation to lift his characters off the page and give them texture. The source material’s look and feel is baked into the film, with black and white sketches and still frames during titles and key transitions.
For the action sequences, we get something truly amazing. Using motion capture technology, the animation is mapped to authentic movement. As a result, the game sequences are fast, fluid, and never anything less than exciting. We aren’t just watching an animation recreation of a basketball game, but seeing ballers in action.
This all builds to the climactic final game, the very definition of a white-knuckle event. As the sound drops out, and the animation becomes a blend of styles from all along the development pipeline, you will be unable to tear your eyes from the screen. There was a moment during the film’s final game that this reviewer, the least sportsy person you’ll meet, audibly gasped in sheer exhausted joy.
It’s all the more powerful because Inoue has managed to make us care for these players within the compact format of the film’s running time. Like all the best sports films, it’s the dramatic core that makes the victories and near defeats all the more impactful. A series of flashbacks, often rendered as intentionally crude sketches, showcase the interiority of these characters. It’s the culmination of these seemingly disparate moments that morph into an emotional finale.
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK might have been previously adapted into an anime and various offshoots, but this thoroughly original piece is a standalone entity. Not simply a terrific sport movie, it’s also something new in animation – and one that’s never anything less than gripping.
2022 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Takehiko Inoue | WRITERS: Takehiko Inoue | CAST: Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichiro Kamio, Subaru Kimura, Kenta Miyake | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS, GKIDS | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 July-6 August 2023 (JAPAN CUTS), 28 July 2023 (US)
![Review: The First Slam Dunk [Japan Cuts 2023]](https://thereelbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/first-slam-dunk001f-203x150.jpg)
