Flow won the Oscar... What does this mean?

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?

The BEST Animated Movies of 2024

So... I'm gonna be honest, 2024 sucked for animated movies. I have made my opinions clear on the matter, but let me state, now that the year is over, Two-Thousand-Twenty-Four Common Era absolutely SUCKED for animated movies, that isn't to say this was a totally bad year for animation entirely though, animation critics who, y'know actually do this for a living, or are just better than me, might be able to point you in directions I couldn't for things like TV animation, Anime, Indie Animation, Hell they might even be able to point you into directions to movies I haven't, couldn't, or wouldn't see. Basically what I'm saying is just because one area of the year wasn't great, doesn't mean the whole year was bad, and also please support other animation reviewers, we're a small community we need attention.

That all being said, this year wasn't a completely barren wasteland for movies either, it's just that... well, you're less likely to see them in theatres, I think. Most of the movies I heard of this year, were not theatrically released, The Tiger's Apprentice, the Megamind sequel, at least half of my worst list, all went directly to streaming in one form or another. This is a problem because it means accessibility to thee movies is very limited, so while really big movies might get a theatrical release, others that are still fairly notable might not. I'm not entirely convinced their isn't some other motive to putting movies directly on a streaming service, like other than a studio having full control over something, but it is kind of concerning.

Anyway, here are the movies that didn't completely suck.

5. Kung Fu Panda 4

I know not everybody has positive feelings for this movie, but I gotta be honest, I had a good time with it. I am always in awe about how well each Kung Fu Panda sequels feels like a natural step in the story being told, going from Po learning to become the Dragon Warrior and ending with Po having to pass on the title. Sure, it isn't as good as Kung Fu Panda 2 or 3, but those are immensely tough acts to follow, so the fact that it is good in general is good enough.

A lot of people also criticize the villain's backstory, saying that it makes no sense, I have wanted to talk about this for a while, but it does make a lot of sense that Po, a person who faced discrimination and prejudice in the Kung Fu circle due to his body, is facing a villain who also faced discrimination and prejudice in the Kung Fu circle against them due to their body, again, it's these links that make the Kung Fu Panda villains great.

No, the movie isn't perfect, I do miss the Furious Five as much as everyone else, the Mr. Beast cameo was kind of dumb, then again most YouTuber cameos in movies tend to age poorly, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Awkwafina as an actress, but over all, I had more positives with the movie than not, and James Hong and Bryan Cranston were easily the highlights of this movie, so that has to be worth something.

4. Piece By Piece

It might seem crazy what I'm about to say, but I never really got into Pharrell's music. It isn't all bad, but when you tend to gravitate more towards Alt. Rock and Metal, you do tend to miss out on some good stuff. That all being said, the idea of doing this documentary in Lego style intrigued me, not that animated documentaries haven't been done before, but doing it in Lego, why not?

I was ultimately more interested in how the story was told instead of what story was being told, but that isn't to say I don't think Pharrell is an interesting person, I'm just stating my biases as someone who isn't really into this kind of music. Still, the way a lot of the things were visualized, like the different beats that were produced and how they're stored, a lot of it really is complimented by the Lego visuals, and I don't think you could really do scenes like that in a traditional style. I think this is one of movies that does still make me hold onto hope that there are still unique animated movies out there, and I won't say this is one of the most unique or risky movies, but this was an idea, and not a bad one at that. I can't really say more about it, this was just a good movie.

3. The Wild Robot

I can hear it now, "The Wild Robot at Number Three? It should be Number One!" and yeah, I see why, this was a really beautifully done movie, easily one of DreamWorks' best in recent years. It's these kinds of movies that really do show how different DreamWorks is from studios like Disney or Illumination, and why they are my favourite of the big three.

That all being said, I am a little disappointed in this movie. I never read the book this movie was based on, though I might give it a shot in the future, my disappointment comes from one thing; from the initial trailer, I thought this movie was gonna be a really powerful movie told with zero dialogue, imagine DreamWorks taking a risk like that, making a movie with zero spoken dialogue with such a grand scale that their best movies have, that would be so cool. I'm not going to say that this movie failed to live up to my expectations in terms of quality, if anything, when I learned it was going to have dialogue I grew a bit worried, so the movie exceeded my expectations. Still, I think it would have been cool if this movie had no spoken dialogue.

2. Flow

Flow is the movie I thought I was going to get out of The Wild Robot, a truly unique and risky animated feature. Flow was such an interesting movie, there is zero spoken dialogue, not even subtitles, and yet you can still infer what the characters are thinking, feeling, in some cases even saying. I love moments in movies and cartoons where the imagery tells the story more than the dialogue does, how the body language and facial expressions speak about the characters thoughts more so than can be put into words. Flow is entirely that, it's just reading the animals' body language.

On top of that, this movie got really tense at points, there were several moments I thought this poor cat was gonna drown or get eaten by something, and it always kept me on edge, it was fantastic. I also have to applaud the fact that the team used the open-source Blender to render this movie, which really does prove you can do fantastic things with available tools. Now we just have to wait for the animated movie where each and every frame was hand drawn in Microsoft Paint.

So, if this is my choice for the most unique animated movie of the year, why isn't it number one? Well... Maybe I didn't actually want The Wild Robot to have zero dialogue, because I think this movie is more fascinating than it is entertaining, and don't get me wrong, I think it's a great movie, but in the same way I think Fight Club or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are great movies, where there is just something fascinating about them, that keeps them in my mind, but very rarely do I ever think about actually watching them that often. I would love to re-watch Flow with friends, but it might not be one I watch that often. What movie would I watch more often?

1. Transformers One

If you were to tell me that a Transformers movie would top my list of best animated movies any year, I'd be open to the possibility. Even though I'm not huge into Transformers, I have a fondness for the franchise, the original Michael Bay movie completely blew my mind when I was a kid, and I'm not completely shocked that Transformers is still a popular franchise, but at the same time I was not a huge fan of the original 1980s Transformers movie, even putting it on the list of the worst animated movies I reviewed. So this is still a little bit of a shock.

It's also shocking because, is this movie unique? Not particularly. Is it groundbreaking? I don't think so. Is it a risky movie? Not in the slightest. You know what this movie is though? This movie is damn good, and in 2024, I needed a Damn Good movie, I love when a movie is unique and takes a risk, but I don't think 2024 needed that, I think 2024 needed movies that were good before they were risky or groundbreaking. 2024 needed a Transformers One, because everything else before it... No, not all of it was bad, but very few of it was better than "Okay", I know a lot of people like Ultraman Rising, and it wasn't bad, but it just felt pretty standard. Transformers One was the first movie of the year that I watched as thought, "Yeah, that was pretty good". What does that say about this year as a whole...

If I had to give a theme to the movies on this list, I would probably say... Ambitious? Each movie is taking a fairly risky step in one way or another, DreamWorks' best movies are often pretty risky in one way or another, Flow and Piece by Piece are certainly unique movies that are begging to attain a cult following, honestly, even Transformers One, the notion of making an animated Transformers movie after the Michael Bay movies, with Michael Bay as a producer, frankly I respect the gall. Was this year completely bad? I don't think so, but I also thought negative about 2022 and now I'm willingly looking back on that with rose-tinted glasses, maybe 2025 will be a different year, one with better and more interesting movies to talk about. Well, let us leave 2024 behind us, and look forward to something better... 2030! Yes, I'm talking about more than animated movies here, let's just move on to the Honourable Mentions.

1. Ultrama: Rising - I mean, it was okay, kind of predictable, but kinda cool seeing Ultraman get a fairly big push in the west.
2. Rotten: Behind the Foodfight - This doesn't count, it's a live-action documentary about an animated movie, but it is worth the mention.
3. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - This also doesn't fully count, but if it did, it would easily be number one.