Traditional Animation Film Downfall
What do I mean traditional animation? Traditional animation means hand drawn 2D animation. Try asking yourself, are there any 2D animated film lately that really caught your eye, or have you wonder that how come there aren’t any 2D animated film lately? Well, for me I can say there is none, not a single one that gives me the “once upon a time” feeling like those classics, “An American Tail”, “Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin”, “Lion King”, “Anastasia” and “Pocahontas”. The “once upon a time” quality is just not there in later hand drawn animated films any more.
The “Once upon a time” quality that draws you in… (Beauty and the Beast)
And for your information, things are going really bad for 2D animation on year 2000 onwards. Disney’s Treasure Planet was a major flop and suffered great loss, almost destroying the Disney’s Animation Studio. Fox Animation Studios, which realeased animated film Anastasia (often misunderstood as a Disney’s animated film), shuted down after great losses on it’s sci-fi animated film Titan A.E. Other company like Square also having hard time with it’s Final Fantasy (Although not 2D animation, but it’s a animated film as well). It was a dark age for animated films at that time period.
Why hard drawn animated films failed? Well, in my point of view, it certainly because the animated pictures definately do not have the quality like the classics does. What I mean by quality is the plot, musics, and story-telling and unforgetable moments/scene.
Unforgetable scenes, Beauty and the Beast ballroom dance, Lion King’s opening ceremony.
Plot - most hand drawn animations later in the new millennium seems to have weaker plots compared to previous animated films. The reason that I can think of, is maybe Disney’s animation team has run out of ideas, you see most of the fairy tales has already been animated. So, they probably don’t have any story more to tell already?
Songs - songs is a key element in traditional 2D animated films. Later work of Disney’s animated pictures seems to have dropped the songs, no characters singing anymore. Take Atlantis and Treasure Planet as example, no songs except a ton of explosions. Songs is a vital component of these animated films because it can do story telling and structure the story. Nothing is like those old classics anymore where the songs are memorable, and you can’t get off the songs out of your head.
“A Whole New World” and “Colours of the Wind” - songs that are indeed memorable.
Treasure Planet and Atlantis, no more songs, only Explosions~!
An American Tail’s “Somewhere Out There”, Little Mermaid with it’s “Under the Sea” and “Part of Your World”, Beauty and the Beast with it’s “Beauty and the Beast”, “Belle” and “Be My Guest”, Aladdin’s “Friend Like Me”, “Prince Ali”, “A Whole New World”, Pocahontas’s “Just Around The River Bend” and “Colours of the Wind”. These are some songs that are indeed unforgetable and growed up with me.
Treasure Planet, that target mostly teenagers audience.
Target audience? - The later animated films like Treasure Planet have a bad target of audience. Somehow the film targeted more on teenager. So, what about the the children and the adults? For generations, 2D animated films suppose to be a family film where all the family members can enjoy, no matter young or old, that way you have a wider scope of audience. Funny characters for the children, moral values for the adults. So I think most probably the failure of these films to communicate is weak target audience.
What I really hope right now is that these traditional animation can go on. I’ve always admired these form of art, and wouldn’t like it to go extinct just like that. I sure hope Disney’s animation team will come up something that will amaze me again.
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