People are always downing Disney, but Disney proved that animation could be commercially viable. If it wasn’t for Disney, we wouldn’t have the number of animation studios or feature length animation flicks we have today, IMO.animation as family entertainment, sure, but when’s a major American animation studio gonna have the balls to approach animation the way Europe and Asia do? When’s someone gonna say, “hey, let’s make a sweeping animated sci-fi epic on par with live-action sci-fi films”? “Let’s make a pyschological thriller like Perfect Blue.”
Yes, but if even family-oriented animation had financially tanked, we’d never have this discussion.
I think we’re actually on the way there. I didn’t like Sin City, but I think it’s an important bridge film between live-action and dramatic animation. I think that film proved there was a market for animation that wasn’t family animation.
I don’t know that the problem is actually production. There are flicks out there in Europe and Asia, as you mention, even if they aren’t being made in Hollywood. I think we’re more in search of a distributor with balls rather than a studio with balls.
If someone is waiting for family-oriented animation to tank it’s not happening. After all it should have tanked years ago when the worst drek in so called family entertainment was coming out and yet somehow maniac obsessed parental types were keeping it on life-support (until now when actually decent family fare began to roll out in mass quantities).
But it shouldn’t have to have tanked.
I say we can have an adult themed animation franchise in America if somebody climbs on the back of parental groups and censormongers and slaps a shut the hell up sticker on their mouths. Whatever happened to freedom of speech and expression? Is it a bumper sticker of pointlessness or does it actually MEAN something!Yeah, we’ll never see American porn animation hit it high but at LEAST find me the American Miyazaki who is willing to make an intelligent engaging movie and isn’t making a movie just to market a ton of merchandise and appease the parental censormongers.
Is that too much to ask for?I didn’t say that it tanked or that I wanted it to tank. What I said was that if family animation had tanked, no one would take a chance on any other kind of animation and we wouldn’t therefore be having this discussion.
Regarding censorship, I think you’re laboring under a misunderstanding of the First Amendment. I invite you to reread the First Amendment. It says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It protects against unreasonable governmental interference with speech. It doesn’t ensure that you will be held unaccountable by consumers for whatever you say. That’s sort of the “Robbins and Sarandon” reinterpretation of the Constitution. Just because you want to make say, anime porn, doesn’t mean that consumers don’t have a right to boycott or protest your company because they don’t approve of your product. I also find it amusing that you’re so willing to demand that parental groups surrender their free speech rights so that other groups of which you approve can exercise theirs. It sounds like you’re not so much against censorship, just censorship you don’t like.
As for the marketing bit being too much to ask, it is. This isn’t an artists’ colony; it’s a multibillion dollar industry. Art’s great, but when you ask a studio to plunk down $50 million to make a film, they’d really like to at least break even on it. If you think these studios are just going to make that kind of investment for the sake of art, then your faith in the process is touching, if misplaced.
Speaking of tanked…
Actually the whole tanked thing had already happened.
Remember Titan A.E.? Remember anything from that particular animation studio after Titan A.E.? No? That’s because that studio which made Titan A.E. went under after the failing of Titan A.E. (an attempt at a more… well… “teen” movie and less kid movie).
Parental groups doesn’t have a speech, it’s mostly screeching and musclebound weight throwing (I have never heard any actual intellectual speech from the bullying parental groups).
And yes, I have no problem yanking their so called free speech because they have no problem taking my free speech (or mostly all my other freedoms).
As for marketing? Studios have no problem flushing $50 million down (or more) on dogs of a movies, otherwise we wouldn’t end up with the 50-70% of bleep we end up with in theaters on a yearly basis that should NEVER have been made the way they did (live action AND animated)
