Two years ago, there was a movie called Paranorman.
It didn’t do so good at the box office, despite it being one of the most important, game changing animated movies since the Disney renaissance. It made its money back, but it wasn’t the smash hit Frozen was.
And this is a fucking tragedy.
Why?
People read into Frozen that Elsa was an allegory for many things, one of them being LGBT. That’s cute. Meanwhile, Paranorman had the first ever openly, proudly gay character in an animated movie. ever. There was no allegory, there was no “well if you squint”. HE WAS GAY. HE HAD A BOYFRIEND. And Tumblr didn’t make this movie a smash success. There wasn’t a million mash ups with this and Return of the Guardians and HTTYD and Brave or whatever. There wasn’t long posts reading into Agatha Penderghast and how they handled bullying. This movie had a smallish following and fell off the map.
Now, Laika has a new movie coming out.
People are scared for Dreamworks right now. The news that if HTTYD 2 doesn’t do well, they’re going to lay off a bunch of animators is terrible. Don’t get me wrong. But Laika is a small company doing fantastic things. Everyone loved Coraline. Great, where was your money when it counted? Coraline didn’t do fantastic either. This is a SMALL STUDIO. THEY NEED ALL THE HELP YOU CAN GIVE THEM. All the money you threw at Frozen, a far inferior film, could’ve gone to a movie that mattered.
(just putting it out there, I liked Frozen. But Paranorman was not even in the same ballpark of quality).
what i’m trying to say is, Laika needs to be protected at all costs. It isn’t wrong to love the big three of Disney/Dreamworks/Pixar, but small companies deserve a chance to grow just as big. there is room in the industry for new and beautiful things, and Laika is SO going to be the frontrunner for this. Their movies are, so far, dark and challenging, beautiful and haunting, and innovative. Give them a reason and a means to make more movies.
Go see the Boxtrolls. Good, bad, mediocre, Laika deserves it.
Not gonna knock on any of you Frozen lovers if you liked it, but also just see Boxtrolls to appreciate the fading art of stop-motion animation. Laika does it well and it’s an art that you can see has a lot of love put into it.
Please support animators and these studios, they could really use the help right now.
look, guys, it is extremely important that studios like laika, dreamworks, and blue sky exist and do well. if disney gets a monopoly on animation, we’ve just told them that we are a-okay with films that use characters with no diversity, even in their facial structure; films with stories that have big plot holes and convoluted progressions; films that capitalise on sales before the infinite possibilities of animation. disney is limited, and they do it to themselves.
so go see boxtrolls. take a chance on something a little different, or it will all start looking the same.
It’s pretty sad when you see people complaining about how Disney needs more diversity with race and body image, and how all their recent female characters all look the same. Meanwhile, there are animation studios out there doing that are doing just that, but no one is giving them the chance because they’re still waiting for Disney to do the same.
If you want to start seeing more risks in animated movies, then go see then animated movies that are actually taking these risks. The ones that do have characters of various ethnicities, and body shape. The ones that do have LGBT characters. Just because Disney hasn’t done it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done.
Can not agree enough. I think one of the worst examples is how everyone was complaining about Frozen, but I still see very little love for the Croods, which came out the same year, and had an INCREDIBLY unconventional female lead design. And she was fantastic. And also, god bless Laika. They make stop motion animation on faces look fluid. Thats a hell of a feat considering ever different movement on the face has to be a separate face entirely. Laika are wizards and they deserve more love. And their stories are creative as well. I really think they get KIDS in a way a lot of people dont. They write kids like actual kids, and they write them into stories that kids that age might like. And its awesome.
Signal boost.