Best Animated Feature 2012 and 2013

So the Oscar buzz just reminded me how upset I still am about the winners of Best Animated Feature for the past two years.

You guys remember 2012, when Brave won over Wreck-It Ralph, Frankenweenie, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, and ParaNorman? You think that was fair? Because I don't.

I friggin' love Brave. I spent a good deal of money to import its official merchandise and I've watched the movie far more times than I'd like to admit. And yes, I cry at the end EVERY TIME. But do I think it deserves an Oscar? Not exactly. They switched out directors practically midway and had to do a serious patchwork job to get the plot at least somewhat serviceable. It's one of the reasons I highly admire the filmmakers and the movie itself. They took what could have been a disaster and managed to create a borderline decent flick. It's a treat to see. Love it!

But Wreck-It Ralph had a tight plot and pitch-perfect pacing. Pirates! had a mediocre story, but it was a laugh a minute (if that silly humour is your kind of thing). Frankenweenie had the typical Burton visual style, a colourless and grim environment juxtaposed against the heartfelt and sometimes tongue-in-cheek story. And ParaNorman, like Coraline before it, challenged the boundaries of the established, accepted content in major animated releases (in other words, it was pretty scary in bits).

The point I'm trying to make is that Brave would be my last choice from the 2012 nominees. Dead last. I hate to say it because I'm a huge fan of Brave, but if I had to put on my Oscar hat and have a gun pointed at my head, I'd have given the award to ParaNorman. It was overall the most unique piece in terms of art direction and story content. Brave was a Disney princess movie with an accent.

We need more recognition for traditional animation, stop-motion included, and we absolutely need more recognition for smaller studios. This will encourage diversity, not only in the type of animation utilized, but the content of the films themselves. Where's Bluth at? At least he made kids' movies scary. And we know DreamWorks is capable of telling epic, sweeping narratives, Prince of Egypt style, so it's unfair to say that only the smaller studios can shake things up a bit.

And don't get me started on 2013. (This is the part where you guys are going to hate my bones.) Frozen did NOT deserve the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Are you kidding me? It was a masterpiece... as an advert. Earworm-inducing jingles and all. But as a movie? It ignored almost every basic rule of storytelling—and not in a cool, Tarantino kind of way. It had a similar history to Brave, where major plot points were changed late in production and the story team had to scramble to put Humpty back together again. What resulted was a story with more cracks than a Link-in-a-room-full-of-pots joke.

No, I don't hate Frozen. It wasn't particularly challenging to me either intellectually or morally, but yeah, if I had kids, I'd let them watch it any time. It's benign, harmless fun and the songs are super cute. Which says a lot, because I wouldn't let my kids watch Coraline, ParaNorman, or, if I had to dig into Disney territory, Hunchback—all fantastic films.

Ugh. They should've given that Oscar to Miyazaki, plain and simple.

The beauty of all this? It's just my opinion. I'm a dirty, biased human being. I've been through this before, so please, I kindly request that nobody try to convince me that Frozen is amazing. I promise you, there is nothing you can say to change my mind. Last time I said Frozen is mediocre, it happened that, on top of the hordes of multi-paragraphed argumentative comments, my real-life acquaintances even jumped on their phones to text me about how wrong I was. Chill out. Frozen ain't no religion. Y'all don't need to convert me.

Bottom line: I'm rather sour about tonight's Oscars. The only nominee I've watched is How to Train Your Dragon 2 and for that reason, I'm going to withhold my opinion on this year's contenders. But what's rubbing me the wrong way right now is that I just know the Best Animated Feature Oscar will go to one of the major studios by default because, "Hey, they always make good movies, right?"

Sure they do.