Burning Questions: When Will America Get Animation For Adults?
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 12:01PM 
Day of the Dead comes with Lively ColorMichael C. here. Eyebrows were raised when Pixar recently announced their slate of upcoming films. After two projects we already knew about – a dinosaur focused film now titled “The Good Dinosaur” (May 30th, 2014) and the film that takes place inside the mind – there was a new project, intriguingly described as Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos.
The idea of the full resources of Pixar set to work on an animated film about the Mexican Day of the Dead is enough to get any film lover’s expectations soaring. Obviously, there is no promise the film will be any more artistically daring than the spooky yet family-friendly likes of Henry Sellick’s Coraline. But for now it is reason enough to hope we will soon have an affirmative answer to the question animation lovers have asked for decades:
When will mainstream American cinema finally accept adult animation?
I will not subject you to another rendition of that familiar tune about the rest of the world not holding our country’s prejudices about cartoons being just for kids. Suffice it to say the end of American animation’s extended adolescence is long overdue.
Disney appeared poised to take the plunge back in the Nineties. I am still stunned anything as mature as the tortured Catholicism of Hunchback’s “Hellfire” sequence found its way into a film with Happy Meal tie-ins. More after the jump
Tarzan likewise had glimmers of maturity in the relationship between the title character and Jane. But these were instances of one step forward, two steps back, with the more bold elements tied to safe gimmicks like wisecracking gargoyles and Rosie O’Donnell musical numbers. Then, when grosses declined from their early-Nineties heyday, Disney stepped back from the precipice completely with nary a toe stepped outside the safe confines of the family genre since. So how is it no other studio stepped up to the plate, especially considering the computer animation boom that followed in Toy Story’s wake?
After all, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture what a successful R-rated animated movie would look like with monster hits like 300 featuring so much CGI that for long stretches they may as well be animated. A quick glance at the box office charts answers that question. Of the 100 top grossing animated films only four are rated PG-13 or higher. Three of those have built-in audiences from TV (South Park, The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead) and the fourth is Beowulf, a box office underperformer that grossed 82 million domestically on a budget of 150 million. Other forays outside G and PG comfort zone like 9, Final Fantasy, or 8 Crazy Nights yielded similarly uninspiring dividends.
Can pixels turn us on? Beowulf thought so.
So with little hope the big studios will muster the nerve to go all out with an R-rated wide release animation, one can take consolation in the knowledge that the family fare is backing into mature material in small but clearly identifiable baby steps. Before the balloon house and the talking dogs adventure Up treats us to the life and death of a marriage complete with unfulfilled dreams. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a story about a midlife crises disguised as romp for kids, and Rango puts in so many jokes and references for the parents that if it weren’t for the bold character design and wild action there would be nothing left for their kids.
Or, if one gets impatient waiting for big budget films to get there already they can always hope for a unlikely breakout hit from among the foreign and cult arthouse stuff, like Persepolis and A Scanner Darkly. Technology makes quality animation ever more attainable to indie artists, and all it takes is one movie to show there is money to be made catering to this audience and then there’s no going back.
Even if this Day of the Dead project is not the one to shatter the barriers, I still believe, perhaps naïvely, that Pixar has the daring to go for it should the right story present itself. Is there anyone out there who wouldn’t camp out overnight to see Pixar go full-on horror along the lines of Let the Right One In? Or anyone who doubts they would make a movie for the ages if they did? And hey, if Gore Verbinski and Wes Anderson get to direct animated films, why has nobody given Guillermo Del Toro a crack at one yet? Think of the possibilities.
You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film.
Reader Comments (14)
I think it's possible if Don Hertzfeldt making a feature film, but yet I guess he's still too underground. For mainstream animation studio, there's no way that Dreamworks will make adult animation, and Pixar, although brilliantly, still pretty much consider children and family as their main audience.
As a result I don't think adult animation can break into mainstream in the US in near future. But adult animation from other countries, especially France (The Triplets of Belleville, Pepsepolis, a Cat in Paris...) can influence the way audience view about animation for adults. And undoubtedly there will be more auteur who experience animated feature in later years (like Wes Anderson, Gore Verbinski, Richard Linklater did in the past,,,). We have Frankenweenie this year, let's see how it turns out.
I remember hearing that Jhonen Vasquez was trying to do a movie a while back and it would make sense that it was an animated project. Vasquez has a pretty big pre-built audience (I don't think it's quite South Park big, but it's big) and, on the same note as what we're talking about, it would also make sense that, if Pixar was going to suddenly decide to do full-blown blood soaked "adult" animation, they'd probably make an adapatation of one of his comics to work as a kind of safety net, both in terms of quality and popularity. If that IS what they'd do, I'd put my best odds on I Feel Sick as their first attempt at an "adult" animation, if the Day of the Dead movie isn't their first stab at adult animation. Jellyfist and Everything Can be Beaten don't have seperate wikipedia articles (not really a good sign), Fillerbunny would be pointless even if it did have one, JTHM is too much of a blatant bloody risk for a first attempt (if I Feel Sick succeeds, expect it as a follow-up) and Squee (though very good) doesn't have enough of an overarching plot to adapt to a feature (expect the Squee stories as shorts if the first adult animation succeeds.)
Now, as to their picture about The Day of the Dead:
That sounds interesting. My best case scenario would be they're hiding the making of a Grim Fandango adaptation. The concept of Grim Fandango: You play (yes, it's a video game. Old school Adventure Game, so it would probably be great fodder for adaptation, unlike the mindless actioners they try to adapt) as Manny Caldavera, a Travel Agent of the Undead. The narrative's main driving action occurs on four consecutive Days of the Dead, so the announcement wouldn't be a lie if that was what they were doing. I know it's unlikely, but, similar to JTHM, there's a fair sized fanbase, so if they were to branch into more blatantly "adult" material, it'd be a good place to test the waters.
Adult animation lives on network television. That's about as mainstream as it'll get. Of course they can be exceptions to the rule—but they'll never be the rule.
3rtful: Are you confusing Adult-Child Swim (which, at various times, has been the home of CRAP like Superjail, Squidbillies and Xavier: Renegade Angel) with animation actually palatable for adults? Aqua Teen and The Venture Brothers are very good, but they're the two bright spots in what is currently one of the WEAKEST programming blocks in history. If you're talking about network TV alone The Simpsons is close to obsolescence as it is and King of the Hill was cancelled a while back. Other than those two shows, the Seth McFarlane crop is the only thing that has gotten to network TV and I think both 1. That he's heading for a fall soon, considering his boat's currently hooked to three shows that are visually and linguistically indistinguishable from one another and 2. That "adult animation" implies self awareness (if you're presenting something completely divorced from reality) or maturity (if you aren't presenting a series completely divorced from reality). McFarlane's works require maturity because of the universe his shows inhabit, something he never really had. Oh, and good animation helps, which disqualifies a lot of the Adult Swim material. And I think the idea presented in this article is that, in regards to content, there should be NO RULE in regards to the content of a quality animated work, whether or not it's "on TV". Stuff solely for adults should be just as prevalent as stuff solely for kids and stuff for everyone in the cinemas as well as on TV.
Volvagia you have a strong response to most things I post. It get a hostel feeling when reading your replies to me. I remember at one time we had a healthy back and forth. I suppose my openness in outright hatred towards Meryl Streep makes me an easy target to pounce on once I say something else you disagree with in the slightest.
When anyone says something I agree with and supplements the article, I nod. When anyone say something blatantly mean that openly disregards the article's perspective, I react in kind. I try not to be mean to other commenters, but you openly attacked the article's reasonable point of view.
I attached it?
Never mind. I can't win.
boys boys boys.... you're losing the point of the burning question itself! I think if we're ever going to get animation for adults in the US it's going to have to be baby steps like the HUnchback scene... I mean, even Hunchback would have been mega adult (as these things go) if they had only dumped the gargoyles.
tombeet -- i think you're right by the way about auteurs. Waking Life was pretty adult so i guess we just need more of those, auteurs who like the form and feel like experimenting.
Tombeet - Funny you mention Hertzfeldt, I recently caught his latest, "It's Such a Beautiful Day", at the IFC Center. As you may know, it is the third short in a trilogy, which if taken as a whole would qualify as a feature. I feel safe in saying that feature would be a masterpiece. Brilliant, beautiful stuff, I intend to write much more about it in the near future.
Nat- I should've posted that as a follow up question. Which director would you like to see take on animation? I've already declared my answer with Del Toro, although now I'm wondering if Aronofsky wouldn't be the more compelling choice.
I love Hertzfeldt's work too but I wonder if it would hold up at feature length because it's so idiosyncratic and dark and merciless. I don't know if I could handle a feature length "I Am So Proud of You"
I couldn't agree more Nathaniel! Hunchback is a very underrated Disney film with a fantastic score, great animation and real emotional investment (the "Sanctuary" scene brings all three of these elements together gloriously). It's Disney's most mature film to date (don't forget the scene where Frollo sniffs Esmerelda's hair in obvious arousal and she says, "I know what you're imagining!") and yes, the only thing preventing it from being a perfect film is the inclusion of the kiddie-pandering gargoyles. It's a good concept to have Quasimodo mired in an imaginary world since he's been locked in a bell-tower his whole life, but if he's going to have imaginary friends, they'd better be a whole lot weirder...and darker.
Darren Aronofsky would be a great choice, as Satoshi Kon is one of his favorite director and direct influence.
The animation sequences from films like Kill Bill and Hedwig and the Angry Inch are pretty innovative and does elaborate the whole films. Thus I think Tarantino and John Cameron Mitchell would also be a compelling choice.
Let's not forget that Spielberg made the leap into animation last year, and isn't Peter Jackson doing the next Tintin movie? Not that Tintin is adult animation, but it at least shows that established live-action directors are becoming more interested in animation. Personally, I think Guillermo del Toro would ROCK an animated movie.