My beef with Western animated movies

So with the Mario Galaxy movie out today and with...lets call it less than stellar reviews, my beef with how big western animated movies get made, reviewed, and perceived comes crawling back. I want to preface this long winded rant with the fact that I have the utmost respect for those who actually put in the work and crunch for weeks on end in the animation industry. I do not want to take anything away from that. That being said, I think the western blockbuster animation industry is absolute dogshit. 

I learned recently that there are institutional limitations on what an animated movie is allowed to be out of Pixar/Disney, DreamWorks, Illumination, and so on. At the highest, most prestigious level, the current students of animation are dissuaded from including any mature topics, swearing, or violence. Someone has an animated version of the rooftop scene in The Departed for an animation school project, well that's too violent. Parents and kids won't want to see that. On top of that, the movies that say Pixar aim to greenlight are ones that focus on "universal feelings that exist in all of us." This is evidently true when you look back at their back catalog with stuff like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Incredibles. They all have a core theme of parenting. Those are all good movies, but I absolutely fucking hate this approach. It's just a nicer, more corporate way of saying to make the lowest common denominator movie that is not allowed to be thematically challenging or complex in any way. It's broadly appealing, mass audience slop.

Now that's not to say something needs violence or swearing to be good or taken seriously. That'd be a stupid sentiment. What I am saying though, is there are inherent limitations that are mandated and taught at a core level. The incorrect sentiment of "animation is for kids" comes from this deeply rooted philosophy that is taught to every student of animation out of Pixar or DreamWorks. To take swearing as an example for storytelling, it can be used for certain characteristics. Take Joe Pesci's character in Casino and Goodfellas. He swears a lot because that shows how loose he is in social situations and how low he as a person conducts himself at any given point, intense or not. You just can't do that in an animated movie with the given limitations of the art form in place. To use the same movies again with violence, it's used to show how brutal the environment these characters are create and thrive in to an extreme degree. In these Scorsese movies, they serve a purpose. It's not violent or crass for no reason. Animated movies can't do that because that's not for everyone. That's not a universal feeling. That's not mass appealing.

What are some of my favorite animated movies? I absolutely adore Ghost in the Shell, Your Name, Perfect Blue, Akira, The Lego Movie, and The Bad Guys. Now the last two are more in line with the kinds of movies that'd typically come out of western studios, but on the other end, there's Perfect Blue and GITS. We will never see an animated movie like Perfect Blue out of a western studio. Not with their current institutional limitations they force onto the art form, at least. Perfect Blue is an absolutely incredible movie. What's amazing to me about that movie is it was originally planned to be live action. Nothing was changed when it became an animated movie. Personally, I think that movie stands out and is significantly improved by being animated. It elevates the psychological horror elements and themes of the movie with the way it's framed and stylized. There's obviously no way in knowing how I'd feel about the movie if it was live action but if I were to guess, I don't think I'd like it as much. This is the power of animated films. 

To bring it back to the Mario Galaxy movie, I think movies like that (or at least the first one as I haven't seen Galaxy yet) show why I don't judge all movies equally. Off the bat, I will not look at something like The Bad Guys with the same critical eyes as I would with something like Killers of the Flower Moon. It's got different goals, different target audiences, and I feel ignoring that does a disservice to the movie itself. 

I do not think the first movie was as bad as reviews would lead me to believe. I think it's a fun enough time and it tells an okay charming little story with a shit ton of Mario/Nintendo references. I generally agree with Cosmonaut Marcus's approach to movies like these in that they don't really act as movies. They're more like theme park rides. The Mario movie is 100% a theme park ride. I don't want to say people shouldn't enjoy these kinds of movies nor that they shouldn't exist. I had a fun time with the first. I just don't see it the same as a normal movie. It's references and a colorful fun time first, and an engaging movie second. To some that's all it needs to be and that's fine. To others, that's not enough and it fails to achieve the baseline criteria of what an animated movie can be. I don't begrudge the negative reviews for both movies because while I may have fun as a Mario fan, I'm not going to praise it as an actual movie.

This rant is long winded enough as is and I'd like to wrap it up now. My point with all of this is animation isn't just for kids and it is cinema. It's an art form. It's a medium. Guillermo Del Toro is right. The problem will always be that the western industry itself refuses to go beyond the stereotypical family friendly adventure movies and actually try something that pushes the medium forward. The sentiment that "animation is for kids" sadly doesn't come from nowhere. I want to be proven wrong. I really don't want to come off as extremely negative or gatekeep-y with this topic. I also don't want to pretend I know better than those who do this for a living nor do I want to talk down on those who love animated movies. It's just something that I find frustrating, both from the industry itself and the retaliation towards how it's perceived. 

Watch Flow. That's an amazing movie. 

I wrote up this draft before seeing the Mario Galaxy movie and now that I've seen it, I honestly stand by what I said. I would give the movie a 3/5. I liked it enough as a fun fan service romp. I do not begrudge anyone who did not vibe with this as a movie. I think it's completely fair to expect more out of Mario as a franchise. This was a very fun theme park ride though.