... is what we need to go on. Especially when somebody gets paid actual money for writing something like this:
... It may have taken 15 years and 11 Pixar features, but we’ve finally reached the point where adult moviegoers appreciate animated features — particularly those from Pixar — just as much as their live-action counterparts. Gone are the days when one would have been ridiculed for attending an animated movie without a child in tow. ...
Earth to John Young. Allow us to point out a few things about animation.
1) The highest grossing film of all time in the year and a half after its release (and currently #10 per Box Office Mojo*) was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ($8 million circa 1938.) This couldn't have happened if it was just taking in child admissions.
2) The Lion King was among the highest grossing features in the year of its release. Think only the kiddies were gawking at it?
3) The Ice Age franchise has made Fox a fervent believer in animation, the last one having grossed over $886 million around the world.
You don't get these kinds of numbers slotting your films into toddlers' matinees. Yet despite all the evidence, professional pundits continue to headline dim-bulb stories with:
'Toy Story 3': Have adult moviegoers finally embranced animation?
(And yes, I'm having a churlish kind of weekend ...)
* "Snow" has probably slipped a notch in the overall standings since "Avatar" came and went ...
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15 comments:
But Snow White is still a FAR superior picture to avatar.
Plus, most of Avatar was animated too.
Also, even for EW trying to cash in on "Pixar-mania", that's already seven years late to the party:
Most of "Finding Nemo"'s mega-grosses in '03 were the public coming forward to admit they'd rather see that one than most of the failed action blockbusters that summer, and there were plenty of live-action failures that summer to prove the point.
(Back in '01, the public's issue with Monsters Inc. had been "Okay, so maybe all CGI films aren't created equal, and maybe it is better than Shrek".
But it wasn't until other studio execs were "amazed" that Nemo was outgrossing the competition that the public took the issue up a notch and started flying their Pixar-vs.-Real-Movies banner.)
"Plus, most of Avatar was animated too."
Not by my standards. Animation to me means "bringing to life." That film was as dull as old dish water.
How hypocritical of a Hollywood pundit to grudgingly and patronizingly allow that quality entertainment might actually supersede the stigma of animation being a "children's" medium when it was Hollywood's fixation on celebrity that created the stigma in the first place.
In markets where this preoccupation is minimalized or non-existent, there are only two kinds of movies; good or bad.
Avatar is an excellent example of how dumbed down the audiences are of today. Just give us eye candy and we will open our wallets. Almost extinct is the art of story telling which pixar is rightfully rewarded profits for.
"EYE CANDY?"
Where was the CANDY? It was a badly designed, UGLY film, that looked like Thomas Kinkade got drunk and painted.
Back in '01, the public's issue with Monsters Inc. had been "Okay, so maybe all CGI films aren't created equal, and maybe it is better than Shrek".
And then came 2004 and Shrek 2, and the general public showed they indeed preferred Shrek to anything in live action, and anything ever made by Pixar.
"Where was the CANDY? It was a badly designed, UGLY film, that looked like Thomas Kinkade got drunk and painted."
Despite your pretention to good taste and higher standards than everyone else, Avatar made 2.7 BILLION bucks. That was the point anonymous 7:05 was trying to make, which you (anonymous 7:58) totally missed.
It seems you can never have your cake and eat it, too. Peter Jackson, who did a lot of things right in the Lord of the Rings" trilogy, never managed to make New Zealand look like anything other than New Zealand. Rather than being transported to a mythical environment, you felt like you were on a contemporary day hike and took a wrong turn. Jackson could have used a little bit of Cameron's visual ingenuity. (Fortunately, they are trying to correct that with The Hobbit).
I understand what the writer is getting at.
In "real" America you still can't get an adult to say they went to an animated film without quickly adding they took a child.
Most adults are cowards about that.
That's getting pretty old (except in the minds of clueless media columnists)--
And yet some studios (which shall remain nameless) still labor under the media-analyst delusion that a sitcom-gagged CGI became a hit, or at least "legitimized", because it had "Humor Adults Can Enjoy Along With Their Kids[TM]", unquote.
In other words, the adults like the stale sitcom jokes and cynical gags, while the kiddies like the bright colors and critters....Yyyyeah. No condescension there.
So Avatar wasn't worth a darn, and Pixar is??? I'm not sure about some of you, but Pixar movies are just as overloaded with fluff and eye candy. Good as they may be, some of them have seemed a bit story-lite. (Finding Nemo and Wall-E, for example, seemed to be composed mostly of antics and chase scenes.)
Americans are so far behind...
In Japan, adults have been attracted to animation for DECADES.
In America, Americans have been paying Big Money for animated features since December, 1937.
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