1998: What if there already was a Best Animated Feature Oscar?
Friday, July 23, 2021 at 7:30PM 
Mariah Carey and Whitney Huston perform a song from THE PRINCE OF EGYPT at the Oscars.
Before implementing the Best Animated Feature category, the Academy gave out three special awards over six decades honoring individual achievements in the art of feature-length animation – Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Toy Story were the honorees. It was only in the new millennium that AMPAS finally buckled to rising pressures and created the official prize. In 2001, this Oscar was finally established. As we ready ourselves for the Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1998, it's easy to wonder what would have happened if the category had been around a few years earlier…
The second half of the 1990s represented a revolution in the way animated cinema was perceived within Hollywood. The Disney Renaissance had brought upon record-breaking hits and a newfound critical relevance for animated cinema. Beauty and the Beast became the first animated Best Picture nominee in 1991. This created an environment where more studios were willing to bet on cartoons, increasing the number of annual releases exponentially. A market heretofore dominated by one company was competitive, at last. The growing relevance of anime, imported from Japan, also added fuel to the fire.
1998 is a crucial year when it comes to setting the table for a Best Animated Feature Oscar. During the making and release of The Lion King, corporate schisms had led Jeffrey Katzenberg to leave Disney and found DreamWorks Animation. Armed with insider knowledge and a greedy understanding of what the public wanted, the man built up his studio as a direct challenger of Disney's hegemony. In the year we're analyzing, the rivalry manifested in the release of two titles, each created to directly challenge the House of Mouse and their new Pixar projects. Box-office-wise, Katzenberg's old affiliates won the war of '98, but that there was a war at all was already cause for celebration.
Indeed, perusing the eligibility list for the 71st Academy Awards, one finds seven animated features, four of which were recognized by the musical branch with nominations and even a win. If we added international releases to the number, there would have been even more contenders for a hypothetical Best Animated Feature Oscar. Either way, counting only the titles already eligible for the Academy Awards, it's possible to formulate a likely ballot. If the category had existed in 1998 and had three nominees, they would have been:
A BUG'S LIFE (Pixar)
If not for Katzenberg's doing, A Bug's Life would have been the second-ever CGI animated feature instead of the third. In any case, Pixar's follow-up to Toy Story proved that this new kind of animation wasn't a gimmick or a fad. Moreover, it showcased a substantial technological development, assuring the public that the technique was good for more than stories about plastic characters. It's interesting then that a movie of such historical importance is also so oft-forgotten. In some ways, A Bug's Life is the victim of its own best qualities – smallness, humility, and a taste for microcosmic world-building.
Transfering the Seven Samurai narrative model to a cartoon about invertebrates, John Lasseter and company developed a story that's not especially interesting or original. A Bug's Life further takes its setting as ornamental rather than something that informs the text. The movie's pure fantasy, anti-entomological in every possible way. It is, however, a great foundation unto which the filmmakers were able to build a splendorous game of scale, with miniature spaces presented from an anthropomorphic ant's point-of-view. The colors are intoxicating, and the lighting is even better, making for a kinetic marvel of ever-pleasant visuals.
The Oscar-nominated music is also great, though it's the sound effects work that takes the cake. All that, and it's a fun ride, full of memorably designed characters. If the Best Animated Feature Oscar existed back then, this would have been a shoo-in nominee, though a win feels less secure. Its competition is mighty.
MULAN (Disney)
In the annals of Disney animation history, Mulan holds a special place. On the one hand, it was the first film to be wholly animated in the Florida studios founded in 1988. But, on the other hand, it also represented Disney's first foray into non-Western folklore and mythology, after decades working within a milieu that privileged European storytelling tradition above all others. Even Aladdin, as much as it takes from Arabic culture, owes more to western translations, adaptations, and understandings of One Thousand and One Nights. Better yet, beyond nodding at another culture in its story, Mulan also imagines an animation style extrapolated from Ancient Chinese art.
The best example of this is the film's opening. No, not that Great Wall-set prologue. It's the credits sequence that genuinely shows the fantastic beauty of Mulan, its aesthetic specificity within the Disney canon. Watercolor and black ink, bleeding their way through paper and silk, paint stylized landscapes that look unlike anything in Disney's animation until then. The movie's also an outlier in that it tangentially deals with sexuality, female desire and identity, gender norms, and their transgression. This helps it work as a rather elegant bit of character-driven cinema that's still open to dramatic shifts in tone and exquisite action set pieces.
As much as I regard the film with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, some issues are impossible to ignore. The humor, for instance, feels incredibly shoe-horned into the flick, and the characters are all derived from American cartoon archetypes rather than Chinese mythos. As a result, it's fractured and unbalanced. But, in the end, and for our sake, the good outweighs the bad. Considering it was nominated for a Best Score Oscar, it's easy to imagine this smash-hit getting an Animated Feature nod if the category had been in place in 1998.
THE PRINCE OF EGYPT (DreamWorks)
This might be a controversial opinion, but it must be said that The Prince of Egypt is one of the most successful Biblical epics Hollywood ever produced. Yes, better than De Mille's campy Ten Commandments. Trying to be both a piece of blockbuster entertainment for the whole family as well as an exercise in spiritual enlightenment, The Prince of Egypt adapts the first half of Exodus into a Broadway-style musical in the same vein of Disney's 90s hits. That it fails in theology is beside the point since the need for entertainment is so splendidly answered. Moreover, DreamWorks Animation's sophomore picture is bursting at the seams with cinematic grandeur.
The opening sequence set to the film's best song, "Deliver Us," is an operatic showstopper, so impressive it makes the rest of The Prince of Egypt pale in comparison. Unfortunately, none of what follows achieves the same miraculous play with scale and po-faced drama, but it's still unbelievably engrossing. Even from an atheist perspective, the narrative is gripping, reshaping Moses' storyline as an ever-present conflict between the desire for familial peace and the duty to one's community. Even Rameses' character, changed as it is from the Old Testament, manages to be a fascinating figure and a great showcase of human figure animation. In the end, the movie's beautiful beyond belief and features a crowning achievement in Hans Zimmer's career as a composer.
As much as Mulan is outstanding and was the biggest-grossing animated feature of 1998, it feels like the hypothetical Oscar would have been won by DreamWorks rather than Disney. The Prince of Egypt was released late in the year, right in the heart of the prestige-movie season, putting it in a great position to grab the attention of AMPAS' voters. Moreover, its serious tone and monumental scope had a sheen of respectability to the musical epic. Indeed, even without a category to honor animated features exclusively, The Prince of Egypt still managed to win an Oscar – Best Original Song for "When You Believe."
The other animated contenders in the Academy's eligibility list were less consistent quality-wise. Warner Bros' Quest for Camelot managed to win a Best Original Song nomination, but it was justly torn apart by critics. Nickelodeon had The Rugrats Movie while DreamWorks rushed the completion of Antz to open before A Bug's Life. That quickened production schedule has noticeable effects, though the humor and general design are the picture's principal problems. The last film to mention is Bill Plympton's I Marriage a Strange Person! which would have been an admirably out-there and artsy pick for the Academy at this point in history.
Do you agree with these Oscar-y conjectures? Also, what's your pick for Best Animated Feature of 1998?
Reader Comments (30)
A Bug's Life would've been my pick. It was an entertaining film with some tremendous animation and was an inspired take on The Seven Samurai.
Princess Mononoke was released in the States in 1998 and I believe it would be a shoe-in for the nomination. The Oscar has always in favor for anything-Ghibli and Princess Mononoke was a box office hit in Japan.
Let me rank them - "Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a tie" : 1) A Bug's Life & 1) The Prince of Egypt, trailed by 2) Mulan.
MULAN (just like POCAHONTAS, HUNCHBACK, etc) from that late '90s stretch are... not good, but have some of the most beautiful animation I've ever seen. I was stunned when so many people spoke fondly of MULAN last year upon the release of the live action version.
Kind of crazy that none of Mulan's songs were nominated that year. Not sure what happened there.
Kirikou and the Sorceress it was't released in the US in 1998? That would be my pick followed for A Bug's Life
The picture of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston makes me remember to Debra Wilson who play both of them in MadTV. LOL
I’ve thought about this in the past for sure. Always thought about the year of Anastasia and Cats Don’t Dance and something more popular that I’m sure I’m forgetting lol.
I love Mulan; it’s one of my favorite classic Disney animated films, along with Hercules and Lion King, but I was a child at the time so I can’t speak on actual quality lol. Nostalgia does a lot.
A Bug’s Life is cute and funny but haven’t seen it since I was a child. Same with Prince of Egypt, although I remember it being so epic.
Mariah Carey.
The real winner would have been Mononoke, which is a far superior movie to any of the mentioned here.
I’m pretty sure Princess Mononoke was released in the U.S. in ‘99, not ‘98, so that’s when it would have been eligible for the Oscars had there been an Animated Feature category then (and ‘99 would have been a really competitive year too). The ‘98 Animated Feature category would almost certainly have been the three movies Cláudio suggested here, and I agree The Prince of Egypt would likely have won (Pixar favoritism wasn’t a thing yet).
Edwin -- yes, you're correct. PRINCESS MONONOKE was a big deal toward the end of 1999. We didn't get it here in the US until that year. 99 would have been competitive for nominations since we got...
PRINCESS MONONOKE
TOY STORY 2
THE IRON GIANT
SOUTH PARK: BIGGER LONGER UNCUT
TARZAN
FANTASIA 2000
the first three are all so good but i imagine Tarzan would have booted one of them out of a nomination.
Edwin -- yes, you're correct. PRINCESS MONONOKE was a big deal toward the end of 1999. We didn't get it here in the US until that year. 99 would have been competitive for nominations since we got...
PRINCESS MONONOKE
TOY STORY 2
THE IRON GIANT
SOUTH PARK: BIGGER LONGER UNCUT
TARZAN
FANTASIA 2000
the first three are all so good but i imagine Tarzan would have booted one of them out of a nomination.
K, E, A.
Predicting the year before and the year after?
1997:
1. Cats Don't Dance (Yeah, I think this might have been able to take it, in spite of the flaming failure at the box office. The category is Animated Feature, not Voice Over Performance.)
2. Hercules (Yes, people LOVE James Woods' Hades. Nothing else, though. Can't really see it winning.)
3. Anastasia
1999:
1. Toy Story 2
2. Princess Mononoke
3. The Iron Giant (And ANY of these would be HANDSOME winners)
I agree, Nathaniel, that Tarzan would probably have made the ‘99 lineup despite being obviously inferior to the first three you listed. And unfortunately The Iron Giant would probably have been the one left out since it had the stigma of being a box office flop at the time. That movie took a few years to develop a following, and while I’m glad it eventually did because it’s an incredible film, back in ‘99 it was sadly bogged down by its poor box office performance, and I’m afraid that might have cost it a nomination in this hypothetical Best Animated Feature lineup.
For the record, my guesses for what this category would have looked like in the years prior to its existence:
1998:
A Bug’s Life
Mulan
The Prince of Egypt (winner)
1999:
Princess Mononoke
Tarzan
Toy Story 2 (winner)
2000:
Chicken Run (winner)
The Emperor’s New Groove
The Road to El Dorado
Tarzan over Fantasia 2000? Only if the Academy is blind and deaf.
Funny that 1999 has three of the best animated movies all time, all great and all look and feel so different.
Fantasia 2000 was Oscar-eligible in 2000, as it wasn't released theatrically (in IMAX) until New Year's Day 2000.
https://www.atogt.com/askoscar/display-reminder-list-text.php?yr=73&origin=overview
The Prince of Egypt, by far.
Cash -- but you have to go by buzz at the time and Fantasia 2000 was seen as a pale imitation of the original and Tarzan was.a hit.
agree with the three mentioned, don't see what other movie would have been a viable option (maybe Antz but it was clear Dreaworks would have put all the eggs in the Prince of Egypt basket)
Nathaniel -- I stand by my statement. I don't remember the buzz at the time, but come on! Of course, this was the same Academy that gave the Oscar to Shrek over Monsters, Inc. just a couple years later, so who knows?
@Volvagia - Cats Don’t Dance won top prize at The Annies so 🤷🏻♂️ Def possible.
South Park also would have a decent change, though. Oscar nomination for song and everything.
AntZ is so superior to those three... AntZ was a film that was rounding on my 1998's Top Ten and was in my final quintet - if I remember correctly - of Original Screenplay. Yes, the animation was superior on other films, but as a movie, it was really, really good (and better than A Bug's Life)
1999 should have been
The Iron Giant
Princess Mononoke
South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut
(if 5: Toy Story 2 and Fantasia 2000)
1. "Antz" would've been in the mix -- a shame that it gets just a throwaway mention here. It's better than the three movies cited. Was on my yearly top 10 list for sure.
2. Umm.. while it may have been informed by contemporary translations, surely "Aladdin" is still Disney's first foray into non-Western culture.
Paranoid Android -- First of all, thanks for the feedback and sharing what movie's your favorite of the bunch. I guess my statement regarding Disney's first real foray into non-Western storytelling needs some more explanation than the one I gave.
Questions of authorship over the book we now know as ONE THOUSAND ONE NIGHTS have been going on since its first publication. Some scholars even accuse Antoine Galland of fabricating the versions of these tales he presents. Moreover, ALADDIN is an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation, when one considers its main sources of aesthetic and narrative inspiration wasn't Middle Eastern Art, but Hollywood's very own THE THIEF OF BAGDAD and the illustrations of Al Hirschfield.
If one's going to ignore such factors, then, in my opinion, neither ALADDIN nor MULAN deserve the distinction of Disney's first non-Western-based story. While adapted from a book that philtered Indian iconography through a British imperialistic perspective, THE JUNGLE BOOK still purports to portray a non-Western culture and environment. And that's not even touching the little powder keg of cultural mismatch that make up those 1940s features/short collections.
All-in-all, to me, it's fair to say that MULAN represents Disney's first true divergence away from Western folklore, myth, storytelling, and aesthetics. Sure, it's still very Hollywood, but at least it's not the end of a chain in a literary game of telephone. Again, you're free to disagree, and I can see other people's points regarding this issue. But, at least, I hope this comment helps my short comments in the piece make a bit more sense. Thanks :)
I actually think it might've been A Bug's Life (though we agree on the lineup). Pixar had exploded after Toy Story was seen as a generational milestone, and A Bug's Life somehow met the incredibly high expectations as a worthy follow up. It was a bigger hit at the box office and also a December release, so I'd venture to guess it would've taken it.
It's actually hard to say though, and the Annies don't help at all with giving a hint at what might've occurred since they both competed in 99 there and lost to Toy Story 2.
Don't comment so profoundly if you don't want to get a K, E, A. Up in here ;)