Oscars 2013 Category Breakdown: Best Animated Feature

Every year, leading up to the Oscars, I break down every single category. It’s essentially a precursor to my picks. I explain all the stuff that needs to be explained in detail, so when the time comes to make my picks, I can refer to it as a shorthand.

In the articles, I’ll go over each category’s history, show previous winners and nominees, then list the current year’s nominees, talk about the guild history, if it’s important, what the guilds went with this year, whether that means anything for that particular category — all the background you need to know to make an informed decision. And then, once that’s all done, I’ll rank the nominees in that category in order of their likelihood to win, based on how I see it at the present.

The only difference between this year and previous years is that this year, I’ll be doing only one category a day instead of multiple categories. This is so I can take more time with each category and not stuff a bunch into a single article for information overload, and, simply, so I don’t have to do as much work. Though it is also easier this way. One category, one day.

Today, we’re doing Best Animated Feature, which is usually a really easy category to pick most years. Usually, you go Pixar. Or, on the off chance Pixar isn’t nominated, there’s typically a major favorite that emerges. So there really isn’t much discussion necessary. Like this year.

Isn’t it weird that Jimmy Neutron was in the very first Animated Feature category ever?

And that Surf’s Up is also a nominee?

Man, they make some weird decisions in this category.

Best Animated Feature

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Ernest & Celestine

Frozen

The Wind Rises

No shocker here, with this one. Monsters University got left off, but Ernest & Celestine got on. Personally, I’d have left The Croods off, put Monsters University on, and then swapped Despicable Me 2 for one of the lesser known hand-drawn animated films. But that’s just me. Otherwise, I don’t care. As long as those bottom three are on, I’m good.

Weird that two of my top ten films are in this category.

Rankings:

5. The Croods – It’s not winning. No matter what anyone says. Never gonna happen, clearly a fifth nominee. Those won’t win any votes.

4. Ernest & Celestine – This will get votes because there are a few purists out there who fell in love with this movie. It still won’t amount to anything, because there are two clear choices for this, but this will get more votes than The Croods, simply because it’s classic animation and is such a sweet and unassuming little film that it’s easy to root for it. (As opposed to The Croods, which has a giant studio throwing money behind it.)

3. Despicable Me 2 – Speaking of a giant studio throwing money behind stuff… this will get votes purely based on how hard Universal is campaigning for it. They got Pharrell an Oscar nomination for Original Song, for god’s sake. So they’ll earn votes based purely on that, but, again, does anyone really think this has a shot at winning? The first film wasn’t even nominated in the category (which is pretty hilarious). They’re not voting for this. There’s a clear winner here, and a clear second choice. It’s not happening.

2. The Wind Rises – It’s Hayao Miyazaki, and it’s his last film. They’ve voted for him before (Spirited Away won this category in 2002. There was no Pixar movie that year, and Disney had Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet going for it. So no competition, essentially), and since the category’s inception, he’s made four films, and three of them were nominated (and Ponyo, I believe, was eligible the year they had that crazy logjam of great nominees. Either that or it was the year before, when there were only three because there weren’t enough eligible films. Either way, it was up against too much). So they clearly like him, but it’s hard for him to pull out a win. I don’t think he’ll fare particularly well this year, simply because, in an open vote, his main competition is too strong to overcome. The people who want to go for hand-drawn animation and want to vote for him won’t be enough to counteract the amount of people voting for the #1 in this category. It just won’t. So, I’ll be happily surprised to hear his name called on Oscar night (if indeed it is called), but I can’t make that my choice and will not be voting for it, because I think we all know what’s winning this category.

1. Frozen – It’s being hailed as an all-time Disney classic, a return to the great Disney we all remember from 20 years ago, it’s made some ridiculous amount of money (and is still making money), there are children that don’t even speak English that know this movie (I know. I’ve seen them). It’s crossed over from “film everybody loved” to — we all know what this is now. Everyone knows this movie. And most people loved this movie. It’s going to win Original Song, and it’s going to win this. This category is basically a win-win for me. Because either this wins, and my #2 movie of the year gets the Oscar, or Miyazaki wins and my #9 movie gets an Oscar and a master gets to go out on top with a loving tribute. But I still can’t imagine this loses. How can it, at this point? It doesn’t even have Pixar in the category to make us think it’ll lose. They cleared away all the road blocks for this. It’s going to win.

And seriously, tell me all of us don’t randomly start singing this at least three times a week:

It’s winning.

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See, that was easy. I made sure this went up on a Sunday for that reason. Take it easy on the weekend and do the heavy lifting during the work week.

Anyway, tomorrow we start to get into the fun categories, i.e. the ones that are always a fun little crap shoot, specifically Best Sound Mixing, followed by Sound Editing on Tuesday. And then Visual Effects on Wednesday.

So, spoiler alert: Gravity, over the next three days. I’m counting five Oscars for it off the top of my head, to start. I think we all know which movie is gonna end up with the most, no matter how the big one goes.

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