Editorial: Should Special Effect Movies Just Be Fully Animated?

So with the Special Effects Movie Marathon being capped off with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I bet some of you are wondering why I chose to do this. Short answer is, I thought it would be fun and it gave me an excuse to watch King Kong. However, I also wanted to shine a light on a part of animation that really does not seem to get a lot of respect from the animation community, special effects, a huge part of animation history, a major reason we have the animation landscape we have today, and home to one of animations biggest names, Ray Harryhausen. Yes, he was a special effects guy, not someone like Nick Park or Will Vinton, who are known for their Claymation styles. His work is known by animators all over, but when we get a Special Effects movie like say… Cats 2019, you see a fair bit of people saying “it should have just been entirely animated.”

So, this begs the question. When we get a movie that is heavily reliant on Special Effects, things like Cats, Avatar or the MCU, why don't we make them fully animated?

To be honest, this is a question that has a lot of speculation and no real confirmed answers, why some movies were made the way they were is generally a case by case basis. I don't know why Avatar was made the way it was, but it's probably for a different reason than the 2019 Cats movie. It may boil down to two basic ideas, firstly is the stigma around animation. Unfortunately, as discussed on this blog before, a lot of people see animation as something only for children to enjoy, with some exceptions. Honestly, I hate to say it, but with the way children's animated movies are made today, I can kind of see where this mentality comes from. We don't really get a Secret of NIMH or a Prince of Egypt or an Iron Giant anymore. Most kids movies tend to be very similar, and their quality lies less in their plot and characters and more in their entertainment value, which is usually a subjective thing entirely. The Bad Guys is currently my favourite animated movie of the year and my blog talked about how uninspired the plot was, but it was still an entertaining movie that was fun to watch with friends. Compare that to one of my all time favourite movies, Kubo and the Two Strings, a movie with engaging characters, a thrilling plot with a good twist, and was not afraid to get darker and scarier. I don't think people will forget The Bad Guys existed, especially with the potential for it becoming DreamWorks' next franchise, but I know that anybody who has seen Kubo and the Two Strings will not forget it.

However, there could also be a second reason why these movies aren't fully animated, and this is a very simple explanation, like some of you are going to brush it off because it's so simple, but the truth of the matter is, animation is hard. Speaking as an ex-animation student, I wrote a whole blog about my college experience, I can say with absolute certainty, that animation is hard. Traditional hand-drawn animation takes so much time and effort for just a couple minutes of a movie. Film was originally done in 24 Frames Per Second, if you're animating on two drawings every frame, that is still seven hundred and twenty drawings a minute, and that is just hand drawn animation, stop motion animation can be even more nightmarish. The Nightmare Before Christmas needed 20 sound stages for filming, and over 200 puppets were made, Jack Skellington apparently having around 400 heads alone. So, I can see the appeal of making an animated movie where you don't have to animated all of it. So, on some level it does make sense to make these kinds of Special Effects movies.

But come on, that's the boring question. The more interesting question is not "Why are these movies not just completely animated?" it's "Should these movies just be completely animated?"

Now, this may come as a shock to some of you to hear, especially as someone who is trying to get more people to respect animation as an artform, but the truth of the matter is, animation can't do everything. Hear me out, because this hot take may actually be one of the reasons people don't respect animation. In my opinion, people hype up animation as being the center of limitless possibilities, and in many respects it can be. Animation can give you anything you want to see be it flying elephants, superheroes, or giant apes. The thing is, just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Cats, is the go to example I pick for a movie that probably wouldn't work in animation. Like I said in my review, Cats is not a musical you watch because of it's amazingly deep plot and characters, because it doesn't have an amazingly deep plot or characters, in fact a lot of the plot and characters for Cats is usually up to interpretation, but what isn't is the choreography and music. You watch Cats because it is a show and I feel like making it animated would take away from that. Seeing a human do the leg work needed to put the energy into a Cats performance is impressive because it is a human, and they've probably trained for so long to achieve the ability to do that. It can still be impressive in animation, but it would be less impressive because we know it's a drawing, and while it could have taken the animators a long time to perfect their skills, it still is not the same thing. A lot of impressive human talents are less impressive when they're animated, like juggling. As someone who is still trying to learn how to juggle, it takes a lot of hand-eye coordination, but in animation, you can just draw the balls where you need them to be, if you're even going to draw them at all, you ever notice how animated juggling is sometimes cheap looking?

A lot of similar movies are the same. We've seen the Transformers dozens of times transform, but in the Michael Bay movie, they looked realistic and as such, were more impressive. A lot of the action scenes in the Marvel movies are completely animated, but because they still have that realistic look, we have an easier time suspending our disbelief. The Peter Jackson King Kong movie was probably made the way it was just to show the change and advancements in Special Effects technology, after all, if you're remaking the movie that pioneered special effects, that just seems like the right way to do it. On top of that, what a lot of people forget is that these Special Effects movies are not just limited to ones with heavy CG coatings. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is technically a Special Effects film, but it works because the setting of the world wouldn't be believable if the humans were also animated. It's also honestly kind of the same with Blue's Clues, as Steve, Joe and Josh are meant to be the human characters that the audience connects with and it would be harder to do that if any of them were animated, especially in a show that is as stylized as Blue's Clues.

Of course, there are plenty of counters to this idea, mainly three that come to my mind. Firstly, Special Effects age. King Kong was a mind blowing movie back in 1933, but now that we're so familiar with stop motion, we can tell Kong looks fake. Likewise, there are plenty of examples of CG effects that definitely show their age. However, this might not be the argument you actually think it is. Yes, Special Effects age, but so does regular animation. You're seriously going to tell me Toy Story hasn't aged? Or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? or the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials? Sure, these movies do still have some visual appeal, but when you see the dog in Toy Story you can tell this was an early CG production, or if you look at Snow White picking flowers, you can tell the character is on a different layer from the flowers. On top of that, sometimes effects age, but that actually makes them better. I still stand behind TRON having some of the best CG effects of the time, partially because they look dated today. Of course a world inside of a 1980s computer would look like a computer effect from the 1980s. Terminator 2 was so smart in their use of CG by making the T-1000 liquid metal, which already usually looks like a bad CG effect. Also, it's not like all CG effects go bad, the panning shot from the chandelier in Beauty and the Beast is still amazing. So, while Special Effects do age, it's not like that is always a bad thing.

Secondly, some people may claim that these movies are aiding the stigma against animation. In some respects I can see why. It still absolutely pisses me off that the 2019 Lion King remake was lumped in with the rest of Disney's Live Action Remakes because all of the characters were completely animated. That being said, I don't think anyone ever bought into this being a live action movie, I feel like everyone knew it was completely animated, no one is that stupid. On top of that, I have yet to really see anyone claim that these movies are the reason they disrespect animation. Most of the disrespect I see usually comes from the nostalgia blind 90s kids or the obsessive anime fans, not that film buffs don't show their disrespect a lot, but I don't really know any film buffs saying that Avatar or The Avengers would have been better if it was one-hundred percent live action. I feel like people handwave aside animated movies more because of movies like Minions or Secret Life of Pets rather than Avengers.

Which brings me to the third counter, Avatar. In my review of Avatar, I said that this movie should have been one hundred percent animated, and I still stand by that. If the world matched the style of the animated characters, it would have been so much better, but because these worlds look so realistic, the obviously fake looking characters and creatures just don't mix. I am completely confident that if Avatar was fully animated, it could have broken the stigma against animation. But then again, confidence can be the fools substitute for knowledge. Maybe it would have broken the stigma against animation, or maybe it would have reinforced it. Maybe it wouldn't even have had enough of an impact to really have any influence on the stigma. Maybe because it was animated, some people would be more likely to point out its flaws rather than be dazzled by the spectacle of it.

Now I know it's strange that someone who is a staunch defender of animation, is saying that these movies don't need to be animated, but here's the thing people forget, Special Effects are animation too. Like I said, I wanted to shine a light on a part of animation that many people overlook, not just people who ignore animation, but also animation fans. Not only that, but it's animation that has to be integrated into live action, and not in that Roger Rabbit or TRON way. So really, all that is happening is we're putting down one form of animation for another form of animation, it's like saying Wallace and Gromit sucks and should have been animated like a Laika production, you are entitled to your opinion, but when you really look at it, they're both one in the same, one is just made with clay and the other with puppets. Special Effects animation has its own challenges and limitations, just like other forms of animation, and it also has its own triumphs, like Gollum or the T-1000, and its own missteps.

So, really the answer for the question "Should Special Effect movies just be fully animated?" is a situation where the answer is "Yes, no, maybe and it varies". I don't think it would hurt movies like Avatar, but it might have hurt movies like Night at the Museum. The Hulk could probably benefit from being in a fully animated movie, but then a character like Gollum would probably not be the same. So, here's a fun question, what makes Special Effect animation a lesser form of animation? Why do we hand wave aside Special Effects when they, both practical and animated, are the backbones of so many amazing moments in movies? Special Effects were the big reason that CG animation has become so popular, was a big reason Stop Motion animation was a big thing, and I do feel that in some respects they can help people get more into animation. So, why put down this kind of animation? Because it's everywhere? Well, that is just the nature of pop culture fads, something becomes huge and dominates the medium before disappearing.

Should these kinds of movies just be fully animated? I think it varies. Should we respect special effects animation as part of the animation family? I think so. It does kind of dishearten me to think of all the special effects animators that don't get the credit they deserve, solely because their work is in a live action movie. That all this talent is being ignored by fans of animation. But I know that I'm not exactly in the majority with this one, so feel free to tell me what you think, and share this post around, I'd love to get as many respectful opinions as I can, to gage where everyone stands on this topic. New review next week on the 15th, see you then.