I think it's safe to say that the Oscars have never really had a lot of respect towards animation. To date, only three animated movies have been nominated for Best Feature, none of them winning, and the Best Animated Feature category always feels like an after thought. For example, in 2006, three movies were nominated for Best Animated Feature, Monster House, Cars, and the winner, Happy Feet. Granted 2006 does not seem like a... great year for animated cinema, but this was the year we got Flushed Away, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Overt the Hedge, Paprika, and A Scanner Darkly, there definitely were more movies to at least nominate. There was a lot of discourse in the 2010s about how bad the Academy treated animation, and it seemed like that was going to carry over into the 2020s.
In comes 2022, once again, 2022 was a phenomenal year for animated cinema, Turning Red, The Sea Beast, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Marcell the Shell with Shoes On, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, I did not pick those movies out at random, those were the nominees for Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, and the crazy thing is, even though there absolutely were some snubs, I am not at all upset about any of them. Sure, The Bad Guys, Apollo 10½, The Bob's Burgers Movie, Charlotte, My Father's Dragon, all of them could have, and some might argue should have, been nominated, but at the end of the day, this was an absolutely solid selection of nominees, but honestly, the winner was kind of obvious. Seriously, if anyone was expecting Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio to not walk away with the award, then I don't know what to tell you.
I think it was 2023 where the first "Real Surprise" in this category happened, as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the movie that swept the Annie Awards, lost to The Boy and the Heron, which is a pretty big surprise considering. Okay, it's not like if Robot Dreams walked away with the award, that would have been huge, but it's still pretty surprising that the Academy did not choose the super popular movie that everyone was raving about, or the Disney movie. This culminates into the 97th Academy Awards where the Robot Dreams level movie actually did win the award. While The Wild Robot was the super popular movie everyone was talking about, and Inside Out 2 was the Disney movie, Flow was the dark horse candidate that I literally did not anticipate winning the award.
I feel that a lot of it comes from two things, firstly the already established view the Academy has towards animation, but secondly, the absolute bore that the Annie Awards have kind of become lately. I haven't talked about this much, but the last two Annie Awards have been kind of boring, not the shows themselves they were as entertaining as any other award show, but the winners were boring. Across the Spider-Verse and The Wild Robot were not bad movies, but were they really good enough to sweep every category they were nominated for? I think one or two other movies deserved some of those awards personally. Regardless, it's kind of giving the feeling that they want the safe pick, like yes The Wild Robot deserved the Best Animated Feature Annie, but I don't think anyone would have been upset if Vengeance Most Fowl or even Inside Out 2 won. Winning the Annie just kind of feels unimportant now, but Flow winning the Oscar? That is huge.
So, what does this mean? Well, I don't think this is going to begin a huge shift for the Oscars, I believe at some point they are going to go back to awarding the safe and predictable option, but I do think this means something for cinema. Let's not forget, Flow is not just an animated movie, it's an independent, foreign animated movie, a foreign animated movie that isn't from the U.K. or Japan, it's Latvian, a country that has no foothold in American pop culture, and it beat The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2, that is a pretty big deal. Like, the Best Animated Feature Oscar isn't really a "Major Award", but it does matter to people, it's not like Best Documentary Feature Film category, people do care about it. I don't think it's hard to imagine a future where this win is a major catalyst for change in animation, Indie projects not only becoming more common, but also becoming more ambitious, foreign animated projects being put out there to seek an audience. I think with Flow's Oscar win, and the increasing popularity and accessibility of internet content, we're going to see a new golden age of independent content, the likes of which to surpass both video rental stores and public access television.
Of course, there is always the possibility that I am wrong, maybe nothing happens, Flow's victory was a fluke and the award goes to Illumination next time, but I think things are already changing. Dana Terrace, creator of The Owl House, is working on a project with Glitch Productions, the studio behind Murder Drones and The Amazing Digital Circus, Flow has already been added to the Criterion Collection, it seems to me that change is inevitable, maybe more independent movies will win major awards, maybe the Academy will have their own independent categories. Arguably this has already happened in video games, so it's only a matter of time before it happens to animation, and I think the real question is, are we truly prepared for that?
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