Originally Posted By mawnck ... and dang it, they're right. >>I took some heat last month for discussing the glut of mid-summer animated features in terms of their box office under the sub-headline “too much animation”. It can be argued, and has been argued by the likes of Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille) among others that one shouldn’t discuss animated films as if they are all to be lumped together, since technically the only thing they should have in common is the fact that they are not produced via live-action. I wish that were wholly true. But when it comes to discussing mainstream animated films in America, it is unfortunately a question of genre. Artistically and especially financially speaking, films like Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 and Turbo are indeed cut from similar cloth in that they are basically targeting the same audience. We might decry this fact, but American animated films are still considered child’s play, a notion that heavily influences who they are aimed at and how they are made.<< <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/09/24/animated-film-in-america-is-still-a-genre-not-yet-a-medium/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/sc...-medium/</a> Charles Kenny on Animation Scoop piles on with this tidbit: >>If animated features are all created for, and released to, the same audience, and feature the same style of storytelling for which we can blame Pixar (no, really, we can; wise-cracking characters on a journey of self-discovery and not a song in sight? Toy Story did it first), then for all intents and purposes, the technique appears to the average Joe Public as a genre. To be clear, it isn’t a case that animation is a genre, it’s just that without the presence of animated films in specified genres, it may as well be one. And to go even further, it isn't even a feature film problem, it’s an American feature film one.<< <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/animationscoop/scott-mendelson-makes-amends-clarifies-view-that-feature-animation-technically-is-a-genre">http://blogs.indiewire.com/ani...-a-genre</a> Having just *suffered* through Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (and I LOVED the first one) as well as the rest of the major studio releases so far this year, I can confirm that, however you'd care to define the most recent Golden Age of American Animation, it is most thoroughly and absolutely expired at this point. Both links are well worth reading. I don't endorse everything Mendelson says in Forbes, but check 'em out anyway.
