There have been few years with as many Oscar-worthy animated films as 2022. Everywhere you turned, there were outstanding animated features, some for kids, others for adults, some homegrown and some from countries like Japan and Denmark (among others). The five that did make the cut include the 59th and 60th animated features from Walt Disney Animation Studios in its nearly 100-year existence, a history-making international animated documentary and a movie that speaks very much to families of the 21st century (even if they’ve never battled any killer robots).
ENCANTO
One of the aspects of Encanto that sets it apart from the 59 other Walt Disney Animation Studios features is its setting: It’s the first of their movies to be set in Colombia and the first Disney animated feature to be set in South America since the 1940s. As it turns out, much of that was driven by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the earworm-y songs currently dominating the pop charts and who contributed to the story. “Lin was very keen on doing a definitive Latin-American Disney musical,” director Byron Howard said. “As we got into it, all these signs started pointing toward Colombia, the crossroads of Latin America, where everything kind of comes together—culture, ethnicity, music, food. It just seemed the place to go, and that’s what pointed us there in the first place.”
FLEE
This international co-production is making Oscar history this year by being nominated in three separate categories: Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature Film. And rightfully so: Flee is unclassifiable, which is part of its charm. Director and co-writer Jonas Poher Rasmussen introduces us to “Amin,” the pseudonym for a refugee from Afghanistan who only told his story because he would be animated rather than on camera. “He was worried about people recognizing him if his story was made into a movie,” Rasmussen said. “Having animation really gave him the space to open up.”
LUCA
Pixar’s latest wonder involves a young sea monster who transforms into a human on land. For director Enrico Casarosa, whose short film La Luna was nominated for an Oscar, the film’s small scale was key. “The friendship is what matters, being in the world of kids,” Casarosa said. “We really felt like we needed to lean into a smaller, intimate movie (about) being in the kids’ shoes, feeling like kids and feeling those wonderful, painful ups and downs of friendships.”
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES
This comedy about a family facing down the robot apocalypse is one of the more unique features to be nominated this year, both because of its rollout (it was produced by Sony Pictures Animation and debuted on Netflix) and because of its aesthetic, which combines 3D animation and 2D flourishes (known as “Katie-Vision”), which are on display during the movie’s climax. “This is the big emotional climax of the movie,” director Mike Rianda said. “This is where you’d want to see hearts and stars because her heart is exploding. It does kind of feel like this joy explosion, which is kind of how it was meant to be.”
RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON
Walt Disney Animation Studios secured a second nomination for Raya and the Last Dragon, a martial arts epic about trust and, oh yeah, dragons. The project had gone through several iterations before the final version, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada. “We knew that there was a story about unity, a story about a land that had to come together and people that had to learn to trust each other,” López Estrada said. “I feel like finding all the layers and finding all the nuance and finding all the human elements was really not only challenging, but the most exciting to us.”
Steve’s Perspective
The Mitchells vs. the Machines has the most critics’ awards and Flee is something of a landmark, but every voter with kids is probably hearing “We Need to Talk About Bruno” and the other songs from Encanto every day. Plus, it’s a lot more common for voters in this category to go for Disney-style heart than for Lord-and-Miller frenzy, no matter how much fun the latter is. I’m not saying that Mitchells doesn’t have heart, and it was part of a Netflix sweep at the Annie Awards, but even that won’t make it the frontrunner.
