The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Animated Feature
The nominees are:
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon
The Oscar for Animated Feature is in its 21st year, and a sameness is beginning to fall over the category. A couple studios – one studio, if we are being really honest – take up all the air in the room, and the rest are left to fight for scraps. The films nominated this year range from good to great and include one flat-out masterpiece, but the systemic problem remains.
Looking at the numbers, in the 20 years prior to this year, Pixar Animation Studios has garnered 15 nominations and 11 wins, more than half of all Animated Feature Oscars. One of the years it lost, it lost to itself (last year, when Soul bested Onward). DreamWorks Animation has had 13 nominations and two wins, while prior to this year, Disney has been responsible for 11 nominations and three wins. Combined, those three studios – and Disney now owns Pixar – represent 80 percent of all wins in the category. It is not a coincidence that they are three of the biggest animation brands in the world.
One could argue that makes them the class of the animation world and that they are, therefore, deserving of the accolades. In many cases, this may be true, particularly when it comes to some of the Pixar winners. However, what we are really talking about is money. These movies have big budgets, they make boatloads of money at the box office, and their studios can afford pricy awards campaigns. It is often by pure luck an independent animated film is produced at all.
Which brings us to the newest player in the animated feature game: Netflix. Three years running now, Netflix has had a nominee in the category, and I expect the streaming service to continue to compete for this award as long as it has interest in doing so. In the previous two years, Pixar has taken home the prize (Toy Story 4 and Soul), but the Pixar entry this year might be the least likely winner, while the Netflix film has a real chance. Perhaps, this is a changing of the guard, but it feels pretty lateral, as Netflix simply represents another major studio with nothing but money to throw at the problem of winning this award.
Encanto – One of two Disney nominees this year, Encanto caught fire over the holidays as soon as it dropped on Disney+, and it has not looked back. The conversation about the film stretches beyond its chart-topping soundtrack and ear-wormy No. 1 hit single. Viewers are responding to its tale of generational trauma and forgiveness. Its cultural specificity has brought it much love from the communities it depicts, and its universal themes of love and acceptance have brought audiences from around the globe to this movie.
Set in Colombia, Encanto centers around a young girl, Mirabel, who tries to keep her magical family intact as their magic runs out. They have suffered greatly in the past, and the family matriarch will do anything to prevent them from suffering again, even if her actions threaten to tear them apart. It is beautifully directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Charise Castro Smith and features amazing songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a stellar voice cast led by Stephanie Beatriz and María Cecilia Botero.
Flee – Encanto would be the best nominated film in most years, but this year, that distinction belongs to this Danish documentary about escaping a war-torn Afghanistan. Flee is the first film ever to be nominated in all three of the Animated, Documentary, and International Feature categories at the Oscars, and there could not be a more deserving film to hold that honor. From director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Flee is an absolute marvel, the flat-out masterpiece I referred to above.
The movie uses animation to bring to life the story of horrors and bravery told by its subject, Amin, whose true identity is withheld to protect him and his family. As a gay boy growing up in Afghanistan at the start of the revolution, the dangers are many for Amin and his family, and animation makes these threats visceral. We do not have to imagine Amin’s terror. We are allowed to see it, in full color, in a way that puts us right there with our true-life hero.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines – The cool-kid pick, directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe and produced by the Into the Spider-Verse team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, this is a movie by film lovers, about film lovers, and for film lovers. It is a family comedy dressed in the garb of a techno-apocalyptic action-adventure film. If that sounds like it crosses a lot of genres, it certainly does, and it does basically all of them well.
The film follows the titular Mitchell clan as they attempt to survive a Terminator-style rise of the machines. The main character, Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson of Broad City fame), is an aspiring filmmaker looking to break away from her family and become her own person. The general beats of the story will be familiar to anyone who has watched a lot of coming-of-age stories directed at kids, but the joy of the film lies in its specifics and its attention to detail. Not to mention, the animation is absolutely breathtaking.
Luca – The Pixar entry this year, directed by Enrico Casarosa, Luca is a lovely little story of boyhood and friendship and being yourself but which feels like it came out about a hundred years ago. Released in June 2021 on Disney+, Luca did what so many streaming films and shows do: It dominated the conversation for about a week after it was released, then quickly vanished as the cycle of conversation on the internet moved on.
That is no fault of or knock on the film, but rather an indication of the direction the movie industry is going, even as we transition out of the pandemic – or potentially into the next phase of it. Ten years ago, Luca would have been released wide on 3,000 screens, it would have made $200 million, and it would have been talked about and celebrated for months. We don’t live in that world anymore, and it is hard not to be a little nostalgic for a time when a good film would find an audience and generate real buzz.
Raya and the Last Dragon – This is the other Disney film in the bunch, and it came out even before Luca, released to theaters in March 2021, right as vaccines started rolling out and cinemas started to reopen. It made a little more than $130 million, and in another time, probably would have been a bigger hit. That said, directors Carlos López Estrada and Don Hall walk a fine line with the film’s story, and it does not always work.
Where Encanto succeeds in placing its story in a specifically Colombian context, Raya and the Last Dragon stumbles in attempting to be all things to all people. It is set in a fictional, vaguely East Asian land that is some parts Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and in that lack of specificity, it loses sight of the themes it truly wants to explore. The voice cast, including Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina, is fun, and the action is well executed, but one wishes the filmmakers had had a little more courage in their convictions.
The final analysis
Unless Flee can rally a lot of broad Academy support and sneak up from behind to take the prize, this really comes down to two movies: Encanto or The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Encanto is the movie of the moment, popular with everyone and very much in the zeitgeist right here and right now. The Mitchells vs. the Machines, on the other hand, taps into that part of the Academy that loves to reward artists for talking about artists.
In the past nine years, only once has the Animated Feature Oscar gone to a studio other than Disney or Pixar. That was in 2018, when Into the Spider-Verse beat out The Incredibles 2 (Pixar) and Ralph Breaks the Internet (Disney), so Lord and Miller know a little about beating the House of Mouse. Still, Encanto is everywhere, and it is catching fire at the perfect time with ballots in voters’ hands. Netflix will get this Oscar someday, but for now, Disney is king of the animated castle.
Will win: Encanto
Should win: Flee
Next time: Best International Feature
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