Disney's Competition Part 5: Frozen and the Future

This is the final installment of the series, and it's pretty exciting cause it involves less info about history and more creative-thinking about the future. We can use the knowledge that we have gained from the competition over the past couple of decades in order to make an accurate guess as to what future animated movies will be like.

The Success of Frozen

I know at this point everyone is still either super excited about Frozen or sick and tired of hearing about it. However, because it has been such a phenomenon these past several months, it's worth talking about because its success will have a huge impact on what kind of animated movies we'll see in the theatres in the next couple of decades.

I think that we can thank the princess formula for a large part of the success of Frozen. After all, we had a beautiful princess fall in love with a handsome prince-like figure. We had cute animal/ snowman/ rock troll sidekicks. We had orphaned princesses. We had a villainous adult that may not have had magical powers, but in a weird strange twist magic powers played a huge part in the conflict of the story.

Frozen did also manage to poke fun and critique Disney's stereotypical moments in a princess movie. Instead of having Princess Anna and Hans get married, they had Anna take time to fall in love with Kristhoff for the right reasons. Instead of having the prince/ heroic main man save everybody, the sisters helped to save each other and in turn saved everybody else. We didn't see any wedding, but we did get a tiny glimpse at a romantic relationship between Anna and Kristhoff, which shows that they didn't have to immediately get married to be romantically involved with each other.

Besides plot, Frozen was also a highly successful computer-generated animated movie and there were a lot of beautiful animated moments that may not have worked as well with hand-drawn animation (I don't think Olaf the Snowman would have worked as well as a 2-D figure). And, of course, there was the hit soundtrack. I can't recall a Disney song ever such a huge hit on pop radio. It was a combination of all of these parts that made Frozen the most financially successful animated movie to date.

The Future

Now Dreamworks and any other animated company looking to compete against Disney has their work really cut out for them.

I think one of the main things we can expect to see is the disappearance of hand-drawn, 2-D animation in theatrical releases. We saw how Dreamworks tried to make money with that style and quickly shifted to the computer-generated movie-making where they met with more success and more money. Don Bluth's animation team was unable to be successful at creating popular hand-drawn animated movies, even with a little bit of assistance from CGI in the end.

Disney's last attempt to make a smash hit with 2-D animation with The Princess and the Frog and since that film was a minimal success, we haven't seen hand-drawn animation from Disney since. The last group to be successful at hand-drawn animation has been Studio Ghibli, but since Hayao Miyazaki is retiring from movie-making, and Disney absorbed Studio Ghibli in to their company here in the United States, not only is the competition disappearing, but so is the art of hand-drawn 2-D animation. If computers make animation easier, quicker, and cheaper, then that is the route that not only Disney is going to take, but so will the rest of their competition.

I think we will also continue to see a variety of princess movies to come. Sure, we may be running out of popular fairy tales involving princesses to adapt in to movies, but between the popularity of Tangled and Frozen, Disney would be foolish to not keep making princess movies. Especially if they continue this pattern of twisting and flipping their typical princess formula. Even Pixar, as it got absorbed in to Disney, made a princess movie (Brave) which features some of the princess formula ideas, but also twists it for the modern audience's enjoyment. Dreamworks has yet to create a princess movie, but once they do, you can bet they will make a huge franchise out of it with five sequels and a TV show.

I know I give Dreamworks a hard time for milking their hit movies for all the money they're worth, but the reason why they do them is because not only are the original movies (Shrek, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon) good, but they're so good that they're guaranteed to draw in an audience again if there is another movie featuring the same characters that the audience enjoyed in the original movies. This cash cow of sequels scheme is what has been keeping Dreamworks going and has allowed them to try to experiment with creative ideas until they find the next hit franchise.

We also may get  pretty nostalgic with future animated movies. What I mean is that there will probably be more movies focused either on the types of movies we loved in the past or there will be more references to shows and things from the past. This may be especially marketed towards my generation, which was the first generation to grow up with easy access to all of the old, classic animated movies, played a huge part in supporting the Disney Renaissance (the 90s), and are suckers for reliving our childhoods (seriously, look at the stuff that's posted on Buzzfeed).

For example, Wreck-It Ralph was a strange movie that may not have seen the popularity of Frozen, but it was still big because of the video game, arcade nostalgia that a lot of guys around my age (and even some of the ladies) geeked over. Toy Story 3 was the most successful animated movie before Frozen because people my age loved the original movies so much and it was a way to not only relive our childhood, but then had to say a necessary though bitter goodbye to that big part of our childhood. Dreamworks just released a Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie, though it's hard to tell who it's for because it references a show that was popular in the generation before mine but it has been updated for kids in this current generation.

Pixar and Disney are going to have an interesting relationship over the next few years. It seems that whenever Pixar has success with original and creative movies, then Disney's releases suffer and lack quality (just look at the mid 2000s). However, whenever Disney has major success, then Pixar seems to rely on returning to their hit movies with sequels (ergo Cars 2 and Monsters University). I think the success of Pixar's next movies will determine the quality and success of Disney's next releases. Pixar has a couple of new, original movie ideas in the works but they also have Cars 3 and The Incredibles 2. I, for one, would rather see Pixar's new ideas make it big instead of their sequels.

Dreamworks has this opportunity to push themselves to experiment with art and plot ideas. With the money they are making from their successful franchises, Dreamworks can afford a couple of more artsy, creative movies that expand the artistry of computer-generated animation and find a new franchise. Rise of the Guardians was an interesting idea that involved beautifully unique designs and artwork. The Croods (which I forgot to mention in the Dreamworks Animation post) was a creative idea that allowed the artists to experiment with design.

I think we may also see another big animation company rise up to take on Disney competitively. This hypothetical new company may be headed by a former Disney employee who wants to create quality artfully tasteful movies that have not been created in recent times.  Remember, Don Bluth was a former Disney employee who wanted to return to the quality of classic Disney artwork. Jeffrey Katzenberg was a former Disney producer who felt that the Disney films produced during his time was not up to snuff with Disney masterpieces. Don Bluth’s animation team lasted about 20 years. Dreamworks is coming close to having been a movie company for 20 years. It’s close to time for another animation company to make it big.

We will always have random animation teams making one or two movies that make it to the big screen. They may be hand-drawn, like The Swan Princess and The Iron Giant, or it may involve claymation like Coraline and Paranorman (the makers of those movies are coming out with another claymation movie called Trolls pretty soon). The reason why I did not make a post about studios like these, however, is because they do not have the same staying power nor the same popularity as films by Disney and Dreamworks.

Disney will always be around. It has been a powerhouse for so long, and even when the company does not release instant classics, they still make movies that become a part of children’s movie collections. Dreamworks will probably not go away pretty soon because they have a load of hits under their belt and really have established franchises that take attention and money away from Disney releases.