Variation of Animation

“Wit’s all been done before.

Yeah, we do something to death,

Then we dig it up just to do it some more.”

Relient K, ‘Wit’s All Been Done Before’, The Bird and the Bee Sides (2008)

 

This conveys some vague sense of animating something, right? Thanks to digitalart at freedigitalphotos.net.

I have a challenge for you. Next time you watch an animated film produced this century, see how many of the following boxes it ticks. A majority, and it officially passes the Anne Burberry Test for Really Predictable Narratives in Animated Films.

Male protagonist

is something of a misfit in the society he inhabits,

and particularly struggles to impress his father,

who essentially epitomises the qualities valued by that society,

especially since his mother isn’t around any more.

He does, however, have a unique talent,

on account of which he is catapulted into sudden success.

Said success proves short lived;

he is rejected by his society

and his situation reaches a nadir even worse than where he started,

until he eventually saves the day,

thereby winning the affections of the girl he’s interested in

as well as his father’s approval,

and proving to the society he inhabits that his way of doing things has its advantages,

resulting in his reconciliation to that society.

The test probably needs some tweaking, but if you’ve seen half as many animated films as I have in recent years, I expect you recognise the plotline. It forms the major theme, for instance, in How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Happy Feet; if we’re prepared to split the plot points between two protagonists, we can add Shark Tale and Ratatouille to the list; significant elements, I would argue, are present in Megamind, The Tale of Despereaux, Hop (admittedly only semi-animated) and Brave; the plotline has even been shoehorned as a secondary one into film adaptations of books like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Horton Hears a Who.¹

Now, that’s not to say these are all bad films. How to Train Your Dragon is a quintessential example of the plotline, but executes the story so engagingly, so funnily, and with such a beautiful soundtrack that it is absolutely one of my favourite films. Brave is to be commended for bringing a mother-daughter relationship to a table at which father-son ones are the norm. The elements of the plotline manifest in Megamind, meanwhile, are a result more of its delightful playing on the conventions of the superhero genre than of anything else. Still, it does seem a little disheartening that animation as a genre seems often to re-use the same ideas over and over again. Animation, after all, provides space for even the wildest imagination to be brought to cinematic realisation; indeed, this is the main advantage it holds over live action. It’s saddening, therefore, to see that opportunity be squandered on a sheer lack of originality.

On which note, I offer a small selection of 21^st-century animated films which I love and which do not employ the Really Predictable Narrative.

1)     Song of the Sea

If you take only one recommendation today, let it be this one. Breathtaking, storybook-esque, hand-drawn animation, gorgeous paralleling between the ‘real world’ and folklore, and a tear-inducing portrayal of a sibling relationship that puts Frozen to shame.

2)     The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Worth watching for the detail in the animation alone, but also a masterclass in the art of the adventure story.

3)     From Up on Poppy Hill

I agonised over which offering of the legendary animation house that is Studio Ghibli to include in my list,² but I think this one is probably my favourite. I suppose I’d have to concede that it’s technically a teenage love story, but equally, there aren’t a lot of teenage love stories that can make the notion of renovating a school building in 1960s Japan hold such potent charm.

4)     Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Aardman is the indisputable king of stop-motion and this surely has to be the studio’s most brilliantly hilarious offering. “I never saw such cauliflower carnage!”³

5)     Monsters vs. Aliens

Our hero: Susan Murphy, a perfectly ordinary bride-to-be from a small town in California whose life-plans get flipped upside down when she is hit by a meteorite that turns her into a giant. Enormous fun, and some very well-executed parodical elements.

Only five films, but the diversity of style even within this list is surely proof that animation, even relatively mainstream animation, doesn’t have to be unoriginal.

Footnotes

¹ Arguably, How to Train Your Dragon is another example of a film adaptation of a book into which the Really Predictable Plotline has been shoved, but the film bears so little resemblance to the book that the shoehorning is, in this case, less unpleasant.

² Studio Ghibli season kicks off at the end of this month, with a different film showing in certain cinemas every week until July: http://www.studioghibliforever.com/. 

³ Wallace and Gromit are, of course, a product of Bristol, which has celebrated the fact in various fashions, including through the animation room at @Bristol, which is a science centre of the type clearly aimed at kids but actually just as much fun for adults: https://www.at-bristol.org.uk/.