Luca Tamed Spirit at the Singular Point - Renegade Animation #26
Tonight, on a very special Renegade Animation, our Captain takes the lead with the notes as we talk Luca, Spirit Untamed, and Godzilla Singular Point… as well as the discussion of animation as an artform…
What’s going on, Renegades! This is your Captain speaking, and I’ll be taking over writing the show notes this week. So, when we launched the Renegade Animation podcast in 2020, the mission statement for my co-host Cameron and I was always to explore everything it had to offer. This week’s episode in particular gave us plenty of material to work with, as we reviewed Spirit Untamed from Dreamworks Animation, the Netflix original anime Godzilla Singular Point produced by studios Bones and Orange, and Disney/Pixar’s Luca.
It was the latter that inspired me to finally put pen to paper, (digitally, of course) something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I believe it was Brad Bird who told Harvey Deneroff in a 1997 interview with the Hollywood Reporter that “...animation is not a genre. It is a method of storytelling. People are constantly analyzing it and misanalysing it as if it is a genre. It isn’t a genre. It can do horror films, it can do adult comedies if it wanted to, it could do fairy tales, it could do science fiction, it could do musicals, it could do mystery, it can do anything.”
So then, why is it that most animated films from the major studios are reduced to family fare? To answer this question, we’re going to have to revisit a concept known as the “animation age ghetto.” For those unaware, it is commonly believed that the origins of this stigma can be traced back to the rise of television in the 1950’s and 60. Due to a surplus of cheap animated programming produced for Saturday mornings and targeted primarily at children, general audiences started to believe that they were the only ones who could enjoy this method of storytelling.
Of course, as the years went by, we have seen this stigma slowly start to collapse. Over in Japan, the animation age ghetto is practically non-existent, as you can find an anime in just about every genre under the sun. Meanwhile, in the West, certain key events have helped to elevate the medium in the eyes of the general audience. One of them was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast becoming the first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards, and the other was the release of Toy Story, the first fully GC animated feature film. This was a monumental achievement from both a technical and creative perspective, and Pixar Animation Studios would go on to become a household name. Some of their biggest critical and financial successes include films such as the Toy Story franchise, Monster’s, Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Up, Coco, and Inside Out, just to name a few.
However, one of the side effects of Pixar’s success is the pressure to meet a certain standard, and anything that falls below it is deemed “lesser Pixar.” Sure, no studio is perfect, and I’ll freely admit that I don’t love everything in Pixar’s filmography. That being said, as Cameron and I discussed in the podcast, I was nonplussed by an article with the headline that read “Has Pixar Lost Its Touch,” implying that its best days were long behind them. As you can tell by my review of Luca, I fundamentally disagree with that headline. In fact, under Pete Docter’s leadership, I’m feeling rather optimistic about the direction Pixar is heading towards. When the studio launched their SparkShorts program in 2019, their goal was to find new filmmakers. I’ve always been a big supporter of bringing in fresh talent to expand the legacy of a studio, and tell new and exciting stories.
As much progress as animation has made since over the past couple decades, I’m afraid we haven’t completely eroded the animation age ghetto. Moving forward, I would like to see more studios and individual filmmakers embracing the notion that animation is limitless, bound only by one’s imagination. Like I always say, quality has no target demographic, and as long as that passion for the medium is still alive, there will always be something for everyone to enjoy.
Well folk, that’ll do it for now. I hope you all enjoyed this week’s episode of Renegade Animation. Click here if you want to read my quick thoughts on Spirited Untamed and Luca, and we will see you next time! Peace!
