From the Lion King to the return of Elsa, Disney/Pixar remain undefeated in the kids’ film industry. So why is everyone else lagging behind?
Here we (let it) go again. Frozen II has broken box-office records with presales before it has even been released, and will doubtless cap off a triumphant year for
Disney Animation and its subsidiary Pixar. The revamped Lion King is the biggest animation of all time; Toy Story 4 has also taken more than a billion dollars. Cue more fist-shaking at the unassailable hugeness of Disney. But if any rival is hoping to overturn this, they will have to try a damned sight harder.
At the beginning of the century, we considered ourselves in a “golden age” of animation, brought on by now-classic early Pixar titles Toy Story, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo, and the non-Pixar Shrek and Happy Feet. But looking around this year, you would have to acknowledge this era is over. Apart from Disney offerings, what have we had? Mostly underwhelming sequels and derivative new stuff. In the latter category you would put the recent, utterly extraneous The Addams Family, human-creature buddy movie Abominable, and forgettable stuff such as Ugly Dolls and Playmobil: The Movie. The rest are sequels: The Secret Life of Pets 2, Angry Birds 2, How to Train Your Dragon 3, The Lego Movie 2 – none of which made much of an impression.