Every year before the Oscars I break down each of the 24 categories. I do this to familiarize everyone with the category, how it typically goes, voting-wise, historically and also as a precursor to my picks article, allowing me to get most of the heavy lifting out of the way beforehand.
What I do is go over each category’s history, give you all the previous winners and nominees, then list the current year’s nominees. And then I’ll go over how each of the guilds (if there is a corresponding guild) have voted, how that corresponds to the Oscars (some guilds mean a lot to how a category will play out. Others mean nothing). It’s basically everything you need to know in order to make an informed decision when you make your picks on Oscar night. And then I also rank the nominees at the end in terms of where I see them in terms of their likelihood to win. So you know what the general favorites are.
Today is Best Animated Feature. AKA which Disney/Pixar movie is winning this year?
| Year | Best Animated Feature Winners | Other Nominees |
| 2001 | Shrek | Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Monsters, Inc. |
| 2002 | Spirited Away | Ice Age
Lilo & Stitch Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Treasure Planet |
| 2003 | Finding Nemo | Brother Bear
The Triplets of Belleville |
| 2004 | The Incredibles | Shark Tale
Shrek 2 |
| 2005 | Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit | Corpse Bride
Howl’s Moving Castle |
| 2006 | Happy Feet | Cars
Monster House |
| 2007 | Ratatouille | Persepolis
Surf’s Up |
| 2008 | Wall-E | Bolt
Kung Fu Panda |
| 2009 | Up | Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox The Princess and the Frog The Secret of Kells |
| 2010 | Toy Story 3 | How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist |
| 2011 | Rango | A Cat in Paris
Chico and Rita Kung Fu Panda 2 Puss in Boots |
| 2012 | Brave | Frankenweenie
ParaNorman The Pirates! Band of Misfits Wreck-It Ralph |
| 2013 | Frozen | The Croods
Despicable Me 2 Ernest and Celestine The Wind Rises |
| 2014 | Big Hero 6 | The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2 Song of the Sea The Tale of the Princess Kaguya |
| 2015 | Inside Out | Anomalisa
Boy and the World Shaun the Sheep Movie When Marnie Was There |
They’ve given out this award 15 times. Pixar has won 8 times, Disney has won 2 times. The other five are Miyazaki, DreamWorks twice, Warner Bros. and Paramount. Of those five, only three of them involved Disney/Pixar losing. The other two times, they weren’t even nominated.
The branch has become pretty easy to gauge — when Pixar is on, quality-wise, they get nominated. When they do sequels, they get left off in favor of cool foreign stuff.
This year, there were really only six choices for the category, and they left Pixar off in favor of the double Disney films. Makes sense.
Best Animated Feature
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Zootopia
Rankings:
5. My Life as a Zucchini — It’s cute, it’s stop-motion, it’s well made. Something like this manages to make it on over bigger competition, but the minute it gets on, it stands no shot. Foreign film — no chance.
4. The Red Turtle — It was beautiful, but not enough people will have seen it to vote for it. There’s an alternative contender here, and this isn’t it. This has no shot. The nomination is the reward.
3. Moana — Okay, now’s where we start getting interesting. Curious that Disney has two films on this list and are basically campaigning against themselves. I’m not sure how it was decided that this was the one that isn’t the one they vote for, but it’s ended up that way. This has flown so under the radar since it came out, and it might be the better film on this list from Disney. I can’t see this having a small shot, but not a real enough one to consider it a favorite. There’s no momentum.
2. Kubo and the Two Strings — This movie is beloved. I don’t know if there’s enough firepower there for this to win, but it’s definitely the alternate. Not the favorite for sure, but if there’s anything that’s gonna take down Zootopia, this is the one. That Visual Effects nomination and Costume Designers Guild nominations are not to be taken lightly. This is a legitimate contender.
1. Zootopia — It has a Globe win and a PGA win and a BFCA win. An eventual BAFTA win will all but assure a win at the Oscars. Definitely the frontrunner, likely the winner. Very rarely do you get a consensus like this and not see an Oscar win come through.
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Tomorrow is Best Foreign Language Film.
