Stuart Wilson of hoopla pointed me to this post at FlickFilosopher, and asked my view on the suggestion that this the best year ever for animated films.
The short answer is “no, that’s silly.” Even the author of the original article talks about it mainly in terms of volume of good films. It’s true, the animation industry is humming along, and we can give bonus points for the return of hand-drawn theatrical animation in the US with The Princess and the Frog, but looking at it by volume just changes the rules so much the notion of a “best year ever” becomes meaningless.
To justify such a claim you surely should be able to point to some really landmark works, or at least a field of such enduring excellence it makes the year special, in much the same way 1939 is often talked about in the live action context. I can’t see anything of that quality about, despite all the good releases this year.
The original post gives a nod to 1940, which saw just two animated features: Pinocchio and Fantasia. Sorry, but nothing is going to beat a double like that in a hurry. And they also mention 1999, which I would say in the recent era is a stronger candidate, largely on the back of The Iron Giant, which is for me probably the pick of the last twenty years, for Hollywood animation at least.
The other thing is that the whole thing is skewed by looking purely at features. If you included shorts, I wouldn’t put a single year in the last fifty years ahead of any given year between 1937 and the mid 1950s. That was a legitimate Golden Age.
David Bordwell [Correction: Kristin Thompson] also has some comments on the depth of animated features at the moment on his [David Bordwell’s] blog, here.