Boss Baby: An Oscar study [PART THREE – Best Animated Feature Award]
In week three of The Boss Baby Oscar Study, we’re talking all about how this particular movie could have even been nominated for Best Animated Feature, and the history of the Best Animated Feature Award.
Let’s start with the history of the Best Animated Feature Award:
Animated movies win the best animated feature award when it is “the best animated film with a running time of more than 40 minutes, a significant number of the major characters animated, and at least 75 percent of the picture’s running time including animation”.
The award was created for the 74th Annual Academy Awards hosted in 2002. Before this time, most animated films did not win or get nominated to many sections besides Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast was the only animated movie to receive a Best Picture nomination before the animated awards was created. However, it lost to The Silence of the Lambs.
The first ever nominees for the Best Animated Feature were:
- Shrek
- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
- Monsters, Inc.
You can watch the whole award for animation ceremony here, but I’d like to talk a little about it too. (And notice the Weinstein joke that was made right before the award reveal)
They animated the characters from each movie in seats, and also had to animate their reactions to winning, if they were Shrek, and the sad/awkward applause if they were Mike and Sully or Jimmy Neutron. The internet today has essentially made Shrek a joke today, so looking back on it, it amazes me how it won to something like Monsters, Inc. did not win, and how there were only three nominations to this award the first time.
Shrek was produced by DreamWorks Animation Studio. The studio has only won two awards: Shrek in 2002, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005. DreamWorks Animation has received 12 nominations total.
Combined, Disney and Pixar has received 21 nominations, and has won 11 awards, their first being Finding Nemo in 2003, and their most recent being Zootopia in 2017. Moana was also nominated this last award season next to Zootopia.
Studio Ghibli has received 6 nominations, and has only won one award for Spirited Away, awarded in 2002.
What does this mean exactly? It means that Disney and Pixar are a powerhouse for animated films. They have won Best Animated Feature for the last five years, since 2012. It will probably still happen. Boss Baby received a 52% on RottenTomatoes, and Disney/Pixar’s film, Coco received a 97%. DreamWorks Animation has not even received a nomination for Best Animated Feature since 2014, four years before The Boss Baby.
Coco will probably win Best Animated Feature this year.
I say this because it’s just what happens now. Disney/Pixar have been making so many animated films, and everyone else is just struggling to catch up.
The way animated film nominations work is like this: It is open to everyone in the academy, and anyone can vote for the movies they want. Usually with other awards it doesn’t work like this; only directors can nominate for best director, actor/actress for best of their category, and so on. Best Animated Feature is different; anyone can vote, and anyone can nominate because there is less of a voting/nominating pool if it’s done like normal.
I don’t actually believe that everyone who nominates all these films actually goes and sees it. Most Academy members probably just ask their kids what movies to put down because they have seen it and they liked it. The Boss Baby was not actually nominated because Academy members thought it was a good film, but rather because their kids watched it, and there was a lot of fart jokes in the movie to make them laugh.
I honestly don’t think that The Boss Baby, The Breadwinner, Ferdinand, or Loving Vincent will win this year. They just won’t. Disney has won for the last 5 years, and they will continue to do so unless another studio makes more of an impact on animated films, or if they advertise their movie more like Coco and The Boss Baby.
I have not seen many, if any, advertisements for the movies nominated besides Coco and The Boss Baby. Most of these nominations and winners rely on advertisements. Most awards in the Oscars rely on advertisements, that’s how they get people to see them. I have not seen or even heard of many of the movies nominated for Best Animated Feature, and that is why they will not win this year, because they are just not well known.
It’s a popularity contest all over again, and for years it’s been Disney.
Next week we’re concluding our talk over The Boss Baby and the Academy Awards, and be sure to check out my YouTube channel next week for a Boss Baby Watch Party!
Kristopher K. Online 