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.

Amblimation

Amblimation was Steven Spielberg’s answer to all the animation studios that were around at that time. He had success working with Don Bluth for two films and with Disney for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and wanted to take a swing at it himself. Amblimation wasn’t around for too long, starting in 1989 and lasting until 1997. After it closed, many of the animators went to Dreamworks and helped it become the behemoth that it is today. Amblimation was known more for its quieter atmosphere, subdued acting, and more atmospheric pace compared to a great deal of animated films at that time. That characteristic may have made better movies in their eyes, but it also led to them under-performing at the box office. Amblimation made just three pictures in its lifetime, but any kid who grew up in the 90’s will remember them fondly.

A sequel to An American Tail had been planned by Spielberg for years, and he had always planned on Don Bluth to do the animation again. That didn’t quite work out, as Bluth had not enjoyed the lack of creative control that he had over the two Spielberg movies he made. Spielberg instead enlisted Phil Nibbelink, a former Disney animator, and Simon Wells to direct his sequel. The result was a movie with a distinctly different look than its predecessor. Several changes were made to character’s design from the first movie, though nothing that made it seem like they were re-booting the characters. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West was released on November 22, 1991, the same exact day as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Considering the competition, it didn’t do terrible, eventually making $40 million. Beauty and the Beast would go on to make $218 million in its first run. Critical reception was mixed, with most saying that there was nothing really wrong with the film, it was just a little dull. Beauty and the Beast on the other hand received rave reviews and would become the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I distinctly remember seeing both of these films when they came out. Most fall animated releases came in late November and that is when my birthday is, so I typically went to whatever had been released that year. That year was my 6th birthday and we went to see Fievel Goes West and then went to Pizza Hut right after, which was advertising for the movie hardcore. For this reason it’s hard for me to separate a movie like Fievel Goes West from my childhood nostalgia and look at it with a critical eye. That being said, I know that Beauty in the Beast is a better film. Sometimes you just gotta watch a movie that has and elderly Jimmy Stewart as a dog named Wyatt Burp.

Amblimation worked on all three of their films at the same time starting in 1989. The next, released in 1993, was We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. Based on the book of the same name by Hudson Talbott, it detailed the journey of intelligent dinosaurs who are dropped off in the present day by aliens. Yeah...I kind of forgot about that plot, too. I don’t remember much of this movie, but what I do remember is that Professor Screweyes was creepy as hell, and his death was very disturbing for a kid to witness back then. I also remember that it followed the very popular story line of kids being sad because their parents were yuppy workaholics. Back in the early 90’s there wasn’t a healthy family portrayed in films. Parents were divorced, dead, or neglectful. That was the reality for a lot of kids at the time, and it’s something you don’t see as much in movies these days. Not much to say about the production, besides that John Malkovich was supposed to play Professor Screweyes, but eventually left because he didn’t agree with the “vision” the children’s movie about super-smart dinosaurs brought to the future by aliens was going with. Look it up. Though it was promoted heavily, the movie was panned by critics and was a box office bomb, grossing only $9.3 million. I couldn’t find anything on what their budget was, but I’m guessing it wasn’t lower than $9.3 million.

Last but not least was a little film called Balto, released in 1995. Based on the true story about the dog of the same name who helped save children from the diphtheria epidemic in the 1925 serum run to Nome, Alaska. Amblimation seriously had bad luck when it came to releasing their movies, because this one had to go toe to toe with Pixar’s Toy Story. Balto had a mediocre critical reception, with most saying the same things they said about Fievel Goes West: not offensive, but not incredibly engaging either. Like We’re Back!, Balto a veritable bomb, grossing $11.3 million against a $31 million budget. The movie, like most non-Disney in the 90’s, benefited from VHS sales and was popular enough to have a few direct-to-video sequels. Not much to say about this movie from my personal experience. I saw it as a kid and that was it. Spielberg got the picture and the studio folded in 1997. Another movie that was in production, an animated version of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats, never saw the light of day, thank God for that. Amblimation’s films were not the cream of the crop that Spielberg was hoping for, but they were definitely highlights for 90’s kids.

The Land Before Time

An American Tail was a hit, and it allowed Bluth a period of time where he didn't have to worry about one of his companies going bankrupt. The next film being planned with Steven Spielberg (George Lucas jumped on board too) was described as a story like Bambi, but with dinosaurs. The early title was The Land Before Time Began, and it was originally planned to have no dialogue, similar to the Rites of Spring segment of Fantasia. Spielberg and Lucas decided that this would alienate children, so they made it a talking dinosaur movie. A lot of research went into the movie, with many of the film's animators and production teams visiting natural history museums and especially the Smithsonian. The film featured many different types of dinosaurs, but the research team didn't do a perfect job: in the setting of the movie, five species of dinosaurs depicted would have already been extinct. Oh well, kids aren't going to nit-pick that sort of thing. Plus, people are trying to tell me that there's no such thing as a triceratops, so now Cera isn't real! Scientists, stop messing with my childhood! You took Pluto away, don't tell me certain dinosaurs didn't exist!

A lot was changed in the movie as time went on. Littlefoot was originally going to be named Thunderfoot, though they had to change it when they found out a triceratops in a book was named that. I think Littlefoot has a better ring to it. Thunderfoot doesn't fit the character of Littlefoot, really. Maybe if Littlefoot wore cool sunglasses the whole movie. I'd pay to see that movie! Cera's character was originally going to be a male named Bambo (why so close to Bambi?), until Lucas decided that Bambo should instead be a girl and have a clever name instead of a stupid one. Also, I had no idea until a few years ago that Cera's name was spelled that way. I just assumed it was Sara, or some variation of how we spell it. My mind was blown. I mean, come on, triCERAtops?! Who does that? Spielberg and Lucas took one look at the finished project and realized that they had made one scary dinosaur movie. They had to tone it down a little or they would be stuck with a PG rating. This may be a common thing today, but back in the eighties it was pretty risky to let your animated film get a PG rating. The only two I can think of that did it around that time were Watership Down and Disney's The Black Cauldron. With Bluth complaining the whole way, Lucas and Spielberg cut about nine minutes of the film, mostly consisting of Sharptooth scenes, making the film only sixty nine minutes long. That's barely longer than Dumbo! Littlefoot's mother dying was deemed too emotionally scarring and the character of Rooter (the old clubtail dinosaur) was introduced to soften the blow. Doesn't matter, it's still probably the most tear jerking scenes in all of animation. Even the theatrical version seen in 1988 is different from the version you see on DVD. In the original, Littlefoot's mother is shown being bitten by Sharptooth on the neck and back, but apparently it was later deemed to intense. While the movie isn't the darkest of the Bluth films, it's easily the most depressing.

The cast of dinosaurs centers around an Apatosaurus (Littlefoot), a Triceratops (Cera), a Saurolophus (Ducky), a Pteranodon (Petrie), and a Stegosaurus (Spike). In the story, a tyrannosaurus named Sharptooth (I always thought it was Sharktooth as a child, I can't be the only one!) attacks a group of dinosaurs while a random earthquake happens. Littlefoot's mother fends off Sharptooth, who falls into a deep crevice, though it costs her her life. Due to the earthquake, both Littlefoot and Cera are seperated from what's left of their families and have to set out to find them. Their ulitmate destination is the Great Valley, a place that hasn't been ravaged by volcanoes and earthquakes; a place where food is plentiful and there are no sharpteeth. Along the way they are joined by Petrie, Ducky, and Spike. They run into trouble along the way involving other, more dangerous dinosaurs, though in the end they defeat Sharptooth and make it to the Great Valley. I know that was a short run-down, but there isn't much to this story in terms of plot. What I will go into however is the relationships between the dinosaurs.

Whether you knew it or not as a child, you were watching a big story about tolerance and acceptance of people different from you. At the beginning of the film we learn from Littlefoot's mother that there are four other main groups of dinosaurs that they live around, "Three-horns", "Spiketails", "Swimmers", and "Flyers." We also learn that historically these dinosaurs don't associate themselves with each other and generally mind their own business. This conversations stems from Cera's father insisting that Cera not play with a "Longneck." This is an easy reflection of race/class relations in our own culture. Two children of different backgrounds or race play with each other for a time, until one of the parents insists that they stay away from each other. The other child questions their parents, who tell them that's just how it is. Maybe you've been in that situation yourself, or have seen examples of it in your daily life, but the movie does a good job of setting up a realistic scenario of how fear of other kinds of beings will lead to chaos instead of union. Both Littlefoot and Cera are OK with playing with each other until they are told by their parents that it's not acceptable behavior. Each gets a different response; while Littlefoot's mother says that's just how it is, Cera's father makes Longnecks out to be an inferior group. Cera's attitude throughout the movie carries her parent's indoctrination, though it doesn't help that she's kind of bossy to begin with. It's only through their travels together that they realize that's there's nothing wrong with associating with other dinosaurs. In fact, they probably all would have perished had it not been for each other. I know I didn't pick up on most of those things when I was a kid, but I did know by the end that you shouldn't dislike someone just because they are different.

Released in 1988, The Land Before Time was a huge hit for Bluth, grossing over $84 million dollars worldwide (around the same as An American Tail, though Land Before Time did better domestically). Disney's Oliver & Company came out around the same time,  but came in about $10 million less than Land Before Time. Critics liked the film more than An American Tail and confessed that it was more like a classic Disney movie than Oliver & Company. The only common complaint against the film was that it spent more time on tragedy than it did on the sense of discovery and natural history. The film has spawned twelve direct-to-video sequels and even a television show. I've honestly probably only watched one of the sequels, but I remember it being garbage. So why isn't this film my favorite of the Bluth films? Well, honestly Cera and Littlefoot kind of bug me. I loved this film as a kid, but it's lost some of its sheen in more recent viewings. I love all the other characters, but for some reason Cera and Littlefoot just rub me the wrong way now. Still a great animated film, though, and a classic Bluth film.