Zootopia

Co-director of Zootopia, Byron Howard, has been with Disney for quite some time. He first served as an inbetweener for the Pocahontas production, then animator for Mulan, before becoming supervising animator for the short John Henry, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear. He then graduated to co-directing, working on Bolt and Tangled before working on Zootopia. He was pitching ideas for a new movie to John Lasseter, and three of them happened to be about anthropomorphic animals. The first was an adaption of The Three Musketeers, the second, a 60's themed story about a mad scientist cat that turned kids into animals, and a bounty hunter pug in space. None of those ideas worked out, but the animal theme was consistent. Howard wanted to create a movie in the same vein as Robin Hood. It's a story filled with animals, but the animals aren't living in the human world, its their own world. Lasseter encouraged him to make something that kind of combined the 60's theme from the mad scientist cat story with talking animals. Out of that, Howard pitched the story titled Savage Seas, a spy film centered around a rabbit named "Jack Savage" who was somewhat like James Bond. Jared Bush joined on to help write the story, and they tried to flesh out more of the details of the movie. They soon learned that the most interesting part of their proposed movie was the city that was filled with animals, and over time the 60's were dropped for present day, and the spy story was changed to a police procedural. Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps were created at this point, but both were cops from the get-go and Nick was the main character, not Judy. They had started work on that version of the story, but again, they changed it to reflect on Judy Hopps instead of Nick Wilde, as that would create a better dynamic. What we ended up with was a story about a bunny cop that has to solve a mystery with the help of a grifter fox.

The animators took a lot of care in creating a world that is populated by talking animals. Zootopia is laid out in different districts, for the most part, and contains areas that any animal would be comfortable in. Like all films with animals, animators traveled the world to get inspiration on how to properly animate the inhabitants of Zootopia. Zootopia itself was modeled after several different major cities, including New York City, Shanghai, Paris, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Brasilia, and Las Vegas. Animators had to create a whole new piece of software to create the fur for all the animals, as they hadn't had a CG film with animals since 2008's Bolt. The IT engineers created iGroom, which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping and shading of fur and made it possible to create a variety of eccentric character styles for each animal.

The cast of Zootopia is headed by Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps, and Jason Bateman as Nick Wilde. They could not have cast this better. Bateman plays a smart aleck very well, and Goodwin plays Hopps well as a somewhat naive, yet determined, cop. The rest of the cast includes Idris Elba (he is in everything these days!) as Chief Bogo, Jenny Slate as Dawn Bellwether, Bonnie Hunt as Bonnie Hopps, JK Simmons as Leodore Lionheart (pssst...he's a lion), Octavia Spencer as Mrs. Otterton, Alan Tudyk as Duke Weaselton, and Shakira as Gazelle. There are two things I really like about the naming of characters in this movie. The first is that the missing otter, Mr. Otterton, is named Emmitt. If you happened to watch obscure Christmas specials from the 70's, you may recognize the name as an homage to Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, a Jim Henson TV special from 1977. The second thing is Alan Tudyk's character being named Duke Weaselton, an obvious joke about another character Tudyk voiced in Frozen, the Duke of Weselton. 

Zootopia continues Disney Animation's recent domination, honestly putting Pixar to shame. Considering that John Lasseter runs both, I'm sure he's doing just fine. Financially, they are both doing great, but critically, I feel that Pixar hasn't put their best foot forward in quite a few years. Inside Out is their only certifiable hit critically, but it's a movie that is surrounded by sub-par sequels and a dinosaur movie nobody watched. Both Finding Dory and The Good Dinosaur were not even nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. Zootopia has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been praised as an important movie in the Disney canon for its message (more on that later). Financially, the movie grossed $1.024 billion dollars against a $150 million budget. I'd say they made quite a bit of money. It is currently sitting at 5th for highest animated film gross (not adjusted for inflation) just below Finding Dory, Toy Story 3, Minions, and the mighty Frozen. Zootopia went on to win Best Animated Feature Film from the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, the Annie Awards, and the Critic's Choice Awards. It was nominated at the BAFTA's but lost to Kubo and the Two Strings. 

While not a perfect allegory for how we are dealing with bigotry and prejudice in present day, Zootopia attempts to show what can happen when our fears get the better of us. In present day Zootopia, mammals all live in harmony, but it wasn't always this way. In the distant past, predators hunted and ate their prey, hearkening back to a more savage time for animal kind. Times have changed an all seem to live in peace, though it doesn't take much for a large amount of the population, animals that would traditionally be considered prey, to begin to fear predators again when they think they are going feral. Things get worse when it is incorrectly surmised that it is in the predator's DNA to be savage and violent, and therefore they could snap at any moment. It is only when Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde uncover a larger conspiracy that everyone realizes how silly they've been acting, including Judy herself. This film has humor, mystery, action, and some of the most nuanced characters to come out of Disney in a while. This is definitely a new Disney favorite for my family and I couldn't recommend it more. 

Dreamworks

The creation of Dreamworks, much like the merger between Disney and Pixar, was all thanks to Michael Eisner, then-Chairman and CEO of Disney. Jeffrey Katzenberg had been Chairman of Disney Studios since 1984, and was a big reason that Disney had a renaissance in animation. An opening as President of the company came up in 1994, and instead of giving it to Katzenberg as he had promised, Eisner instead filled the position himself. Katzenberg’s relationship with Eisner, Roy Disney, and Disney in general had diminished and he was forced to put in his resignation. Later that year Katzenberg recovered by joining up with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to form an animation studio that would rival Disney. Dreamworks SKG (Spielberg, Katzenberg, Geffen, if you were ever curious), or just Dreamworks was created under the agreement that they would make less than nine pictures a year, would let their workers be contracted out if they wanted, and workers would be allowed to make it home for dinner. Once Amblimation’s last film, Balto, was finished the animators came to work at Dreamworks. On top of this they bought part of Pacific Data Images, which specialized in visual effects (CG). The studio did not just come out with animated pictures, as some of their first films were live-action, including Amistad and Mouse Hunt. They would hit their zenith in the late 90’s and early 00’s for live action when they won three straight Best Picture Academy Awards for American Beauty, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. For the most part the studio has had smooth sailing, save for two times brought to light by David Geffen. Under Katzenberg’s watch, the studio lost an estimated $125 million from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and they sorely overestimated the demand for DVD’s of Shrek 2. Both instances brought Dreamworks to the brink of closing down.

Dreamworks Animation partnered with Aardman Animation, a British claymation studio, in 1996 to develop Chicken Run. This went well and the studios agreed to make four more films together. This was not to be as the studios ended up only making three total films together, citing creative differences. In 2004, Dreamworks Animation spun off from Dreamworks and became a publicly traded company. Katzenberg became the head of this department, with Spielberg and Geffen serving as investors and consultants. Fast forward to 2016, when Dreamworks was officially bought by Universal Pictures, AKA Comcast. Funny thing is, Universal already owns an animation studio, Illumination, but as of this writing, both studios have remained separate. I know I skimmed a little over some of Dreamworks, but nothing really huge happened out of the ordinary for them for quite awhile, save for maybe a distributing deal with Paramount and 20th Century Fox.

Dreamworks has come out with a lot of movies in its short existence. It has come out with at least one movie, sometimes two, every year since 1998, save for 1999. Dreamworks didn’t go the same route as Pixar and completely focus on computer animation, though that had varying levels of success for them. They started with 1998’s Antz, a story about ants that just happened to come out the same year as Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. These two movies caused a huge fight between Pixar and Dreamworks, as you can imagine, with both claiming that the other stole their idea. Katzenberg had looked into developing a story called Army Ants when he was at Disney, and eventually took that with him to Dreamworks, along with a story about Sinbad, and an adaption of The Ten Commandments. Lasseter felt betrayed by Katzenberg, whom he had told about A Bug’s Life a few years back. Dreamworks had initially wanted Prince of Egypt to come out in late 1998, but Disney too announced that A Bug’s Life would come out at the same time. Though Dreamworks tried to negotiate with Disney, Disney wouldn’t budge. In the end, the two films were released and though they have some similarities, have completely different tones. Antz was geared more toward older kids and teens and A Bug’s Life was more of a family film. Both films were well received and both made a hefty profit, with Antz having a much lower budget than Bugs. The feud between the two companies would last for quite some time, though many of the animators at Pixar and PDI (Pacific Data Images) remained friends from when they had worked together at earlier times.

Their next film, The Prince of Egypt, had been in production before Antz, but came out two months later and was traditionally animated. With a team of 350 artists, Dreamworks created one of the most visually stunning animated movies ever. Seriously, the animation is amazing. Extra care was taken by the producers to make sure that the story would be as accurate as possible. They visited sites in the Middle East, spoke with religious leaders and received their input, and designed the characters around what people actually look like from that area. If you are looking for the most faithful adaption of The Ten Commandments, this isn’t it. There are definitely some liberties taken with the story, but that doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the film. While it doesn’t have the highest scores of Dreamworks’ canon, I think this is their best film, and it just happened to be the first they ever started developing. Prince of Egypt was a hit, grossing $218.6 million against a $70 million budget. Dreamworks went on to make a straight-to-video sequel, Joseph: King of Dreams, which is just OK. Dreamworks, outside of working with Aardman, had terrible luck with traditional animation. Toy Story had ruined it for everyone. All audiences wanted to see was CG films. Dreamworks lost money on The Road To El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. These weren’t exactly stellar movies, either, so I’m not really surprised they did poorly. Chicken Run, their first film with Aardman, was a huge success, but I’ll talk about Aardman at a later time. Things really started going well for Dreamworks with their next CG film.

John H. Williams was introduced to a book called Shrek! By his children, who thought the book hilarious. He took the book to Jeffrey Katzenberg who knew he had something special on his hands so he quickly bought the rights to the book in 1995. Casting the title character is probably the most interesting part of the development. At first they wanted none other than Nicolas Cage to voice Shrek, but he didn’t want to look like an ogre. He felt people would connect the character too much with his real life look and it would interfere. OK, then. Chris Farley was then hired to voice Shrek and actually almost completed all of his dialogue before his untimely death. The role was then re-cast with Mike Myers, though he demanded a completely different script, as he didn’t was the sames lines as Farley. Half-way through Farley asked if he could re-do his lines with a Scottish accent, something his mother would do when telling him bedtime stories. Katzenberg loved it and that’s the version that we have today. Shrek came at the perfect time for Dreamworks, as Disney had effectively left its renaissance and wouldn’t get its groove back for almost a decade. Released in May, 2001, the film’s raunchier and self-referential tone was a huge hit with audiences and it ended up grossing $484.4 million against a $60 million budget. Reviews for the film were also better than Dreamworks could have hoped. They finally had a film they could build a series on. And build one they did. Shrek 2 would use a much larger budget, $150 million, but it paid off. Shrek 2 grossed a gaudy $919.8 million becoming their biggest hit ever. At the time it was the highest grossing animated film, when not adjusted for inflation, until Toy Story 3 came out in 2010. Grosses for its other two sequels were equally good, with the critical reception dropping off a bit.

Dreamworks’ next big hit was Madagascar in 2005. That film would go on to spawn two direct sequels and a spin-off movie. All are just OK, with Madagascar 3 being the best out of the bunch in my opinion. Kung-Fu Panda became their next franchise, coming out with two sequels. Their best franchise, though, is How To Train Your Dragon. The first movie came out in 2010 and was based on the book series of the same name by Cressida Cowell. The original treatment of the film was very close to the book, but after Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois came on as co-directors (they had done Lilo & Stitch) the story changed to make it less whimsical and geared toward a younger audience. The story changes paid off and How To Train Your Dragon was a huge hit, earning $495.8 million against a $165 million budget. The film is also the highest rated film Dreamworks has come out with. A second film came out a couple years later and was equally great. A third is coming out in 2019.

With Dreamworks under the Universal umbrella, it’s hard to say what will happen to the animation company. They’ve successfully competed with Disney for many years, though it seems like most of the animation studios still going have a pretty strong foothold. What I’m trying to say is that there is actually room for more than one or two animation studios. Dreamworks may not have the same storied history as Disney, but they have come out with some real hits and crowd-pleasers. That being said, they have also come out with some serious duds over the years. I can honestly say that I have seen a little over half of Dreamworks’ films. For me, it isn’t an event the way seeing Disney, Pixar, or even Laika films are. Dreamworks is in the same wheelhouse as Blue Sky and Illumination, capable to some good and not so good movies, but they’ll undoubtedly make a profit.

Pixar

 Getting it’s start in 1974 as members of Alexander Schure’s Computer Graphics Lab, the team that would found Pixar then worked under George Lucas at LucasFilm, creating CG effects, with the eventual ambition to create the first CG movie. In 1986 they left LucasFilm after it became apparent that he would liquidate the section they worked in and created their own company. They decided that they still needed time to create a full length movie and instead became a computer hardware company. Their main product would be their Pixar Image Computer, a system primarily sold to government facilities and hospitals. Looking for someone to back them financially, Steve Jobs, who had just been fired from Apple, was interested. George Lucas still owned the group’s technology rights, so Steve Jobs had to wager with him. While Lucas initially found Job’s offer to be too low, no one else was interested, so he sold. Though they had sold products to Disney, no one else was buying and it caused Jobs to continue investing money into the company until he gained control of it. John Lasseter headed up the company’s animation department, initially starting as just four people, and in 1989 started making commercials for companies. In 1990, Pixar sold their hardware division to Viacom and focused solely on animation. Though they had started 1991 by laying off 30 employees, Pixar regained its footing by signing a three picture deal with Disney, the first being Toy Story. Despite this good news, the company was still not making money and Jobs considered selling it several times leading up into 1994. What changed was learning that Disney would be distributing Toy Story and buzz around the movie was generally good. Jobs decided to take a more hands-on approach with the company and named himself CEO. Toy Story became a certifiable hit and shares for Pixar climbed from $22 all the way to $49 before falling to $39 by end of day. Pixar creating a “Braintrust” shortly after, where directors, writers and lead storyboard artists would look at each other’s ideas and offer notes. This style of product development would later be adapted by Warner Animation Group.

Disney and Pixar’s sunny relationship didn’t last very long. Toy Story 2, originally meant to be a straight-to-video, was later changed to a theatrical release. Pixar was under the impression that since it started out as a straight-to-video, it didn’t count toward its three picture deal with Disney, but Disney said it did. Though the movie ended up being profitable for both companies, Pixar didn’t find the arrangement very equitable. They were making the films and Disney was just advertising and distributing them. Profits and production costs were split 50-50, but Disney owned the rights to the stories and sequel rights, plus collected a 10-15 percent distribution fee. Pixar demanded a new deal be put in place where they only paid Disney distribution fees and would pay for the movies themselves, thus gaining all the profit. Disney, of course, disagreed and things weren’t looking good. Steve Jobs and then-Chairman and CEO of Disney Michael Eisner’s contentious relationship didn’t help matters. Jobs declared that Pixar was actively looking for a new partner outside of Disney, with Disney creating Circle 7 animation, a CG film department that would create sequels for the Pixar movies they owned. Despite all the contention, the contract between the two kept being extended until they could come up with a permanent solution. Talks began again between the companies in 2005 when Eisner was out of Disney and Disney ultimately bought Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal. Jobs, owning 50.1% of Pixar’s stock, became the largest individual shareholder in Disney with 7%. For comparison, Eisner, who had once been the largest shareholder, now only held 1.7% and Roy Disney owned just 1%. As part of the deal, John Lasseter, who by then was Executive Vice President at Pixar, became Chief Creative Officer for both Pixar and Disney Animation, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Disney Imagineering (they develop everything at the Disney Parks). Jobs was not retained as Pixar’s chairman and CEO, instead he took a seat at Disney’s Board of Directors. The deal had gone through thanks to current Disney CEO, Bob Iger, realizing that Disney Animation had not created any iconic characters in the last ten years, and that they’d all been Pixar’s. Disney Animation did hit its stride again once Lasseter took over, as from Bolt on they have come out with hit after hit. The closest Disney came to a hit before that in the last ten years was Lilo and Stitch. Part of the deal was that Pixar would still be a separate entity. This let them keep their HR procedures and made sure that Disney couldn’t scrap the Pixar name later on. Though Lasseter headed creativity for both animation studios, he kept them separate. If one studio had a problem with a production, they couldn’t ask the other for help. While he brought the Pixar Braintrust mentality to Disney Animation, Disney has kept in line with their own culture. Pixar has since expanded to a campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. That studio mainly works on Pixar shorts.

I would like to cover all of Pixar’s films in the future, so I’m not going to go super in depth for each film. Everyone reading this knows Pixar and knows that it stands head and shoulders above anything else out there. Disney has recently found its footing, but Pixar has been, for the most part, consistent. Three quarters of their movies have been met with near unanimous praise, and the others, Brave, Monster’s University, The Good Dinosaur, and both Cars films, having still decent reviews. The only real stinker out of the bunch is Cars 2. While I completely understand why Pixar released it theatrically, they really should have made it straight-to-DVD. Pixar and Disney are both going the routes of sequels right now, something both tried not to do very often. It remains to be seen if this is a good idea, as Pixar’s track record for sequels beyond Toy Story and Finding Nemo is not great (I still like Monster’s University).