Animation as an art form has existed since the birth of cinema. The first full-length animated feature (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) was released in 1938, less than ten years after the first Oscar ceremony (1929). From 1929 to 2002, Oscar categories were added, removed, renamed, and replaced many times; still, the Oscars never added a Best Animated Feature category. There was even a category named “Best Short Subject, Cartoon” (a category most of Walt Disney’s 22 wins and 59 nominations came from), but nothing that awarded the feature-length animated films themselves.
It’s not as if people weren’t nominating animated movies as numerous song, score, and sound nominations and wins went to animated films, Toy Story came away with an original screenplay nomination, and Beauty and the Beast was one of FIVE films nominated for best picture in 1992. So, I ask again: WHY was there never a category for animated feature films until 2002? It’s a question with very few answers; however, since 2002, this category has been home to some of the most innovative pieces of cinema in history. As I will be covering this category this year for Insession, here are a few of my favorite recent and memorable wins.
2019: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
From 2008 with Ratatouille to 2022 with Encanto, Disney/Pixar only lost the best animated feature twice, winning thirteen times over fifteen years. Over the 23 years of the category, Disney/Pixar has won fifteen times and been nominated a staggering 31 times. In 2018, with the release of Incredibles 2, it looked like the family superhero film would waltz through the season and earn Disney/Pixar its seventh animated feature Oscar in a row. That was until a different superhero came in at the last second to steal the glory. Into the Spider-Verse was released in late 2018, around Christmas, and took the world by storm. It is a multi-versal story about yet another Spider-Man character in yet another iteration in, yet again, another origin story that happened to beat the Goliath of this category, and it was never really close. Not only did Into the Spider-Verse bring humor, emotion, and a level of self-awareness rarely seen in superhero movies still, but it also elevated the art of animated storytelling to places the medium has never been before. This win is one of my favorite wins in this category and one of my favorites of all time because it won simply by being the best. From my memory, Sony did not campaign this film hard enough to win based on a campaign (and I think with a real campaign, this film could’ve done way more), yet it simply could not be stopped. Into the Spider-Verse swept the Annie Awards and won BAFTA, PGA, and Golden Globes in the two months between its December 2018 release and its Oscar win in late February 2019. It was a meteoric rise that isn’t seen too often anymore in the age of the lengthy awards season.
2023: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
The title of auteur has been mentioned maybe a little too much ever since it was first coined in the 1950s; however, it’s hard to argue this fact when the director of a film’s name is as attached to it as Guillermo del Toro’s is to his version of Pinocchio. For years, animation has been tossed back into the shadows as a “genre” for “kids.” This sentiment has been argued and pushed back by filmmakers such as Phil Lord and Chris Miller for years, but it took a name like del Toro to bring light to this situation, which he did throughout his entire awards season run – and still does today. Speech after speech, Guillermo del Toro championed animation as an artistic medium that is not only for kids and is as important to cinema as any live-action film. Del Toro displayed with his version of Pinocchio exactly how a film and idea that has been done countless times can still find a way to be fresh, exciting, heartbreaking, and authentic. The emotional speech began with the late Mark Gustafson speaking after winning his first and only Oscar as he talked about the beauty of stop-motion; however, it was del Toro’s moment, which began with the phrase, “Animation is cinema; animation is not a genre; animation is ready to be taken to the next step,” that will always stick with me as a lover of one of the best art forms there is.
