Obscure Animated Feature Films - Part 3: The Major Studios

1990s - 2000s: Major Studios

Warner Bros. Pictures

1994 was a pivotal year for animation when compared to the others in the decade. After the release of Disney's The Lion King, which became the highest-grossing film in the world that year, the other major film companies immediately rushed to start their own animation studios. They hoped to either see comparable success for their own creations, or that the very least to make a profit riding Disney's wake. Without a base of talent of their own, they mostly poached artists from Disney's studio itself, leading to an ever-increasing wage war that would ultimately lead to the downfall of traditionally animated features as a whole in the early 2000s.

Warner Bros. was one of these primary competitors, and while they started in the distribution business with Hyperion's Rover Dangerfield, Don Bluth's Thumbelina, and The Nutcracker Prince, they made their first entry into in-house productions with Space Jam (1996) using their own licensed Looney Tunes characters. It would be the only of their films to do well at the box office, however, and none of them would ever receive a positive critical reaction. While the lack of significant marketing could be blamed for their lack of success, these movies and those by others would nevertheless have an overall negative effect on the industry as a whole, as they cultivated a public perception that 2D films were cheap and exploitative, which wasn't far from the truth in most cases.

While Brad Bird's The Iron Giant is a must-see classic of its time, the others are all easy to pass up.

 

Universal Studios & Amblin Animation

Amblin Entertainment was started by director Steven Spielberg in the 80s as his own personal production company, and their films would be distributed by Universal Studios. They started with memorable television series based on Warner Bros. properties such as Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs through the Fox Kids and Kids WB networks. Their feature animation branch, nicknamed "Ambimation," would produce a small number of films in the early 90s during Disney's height of popularity, including a sequel to Don Bluth's An American Tail. As is usually the tale, none of these performed well in theaters and the studio was closed down in 1997.Some of the animation staff, however, would go on to join Spielberg and former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg at Dreamworks Animation, including the director of the films Simon Wells.
 
I'm a personal fan of Fievel Goes West, but the overall appeal of the Amblimation collection was so-so.


Crest Animation

Technically, they were still "Rich Animation Studios" at the time these films were released, but that doesn't matter considering that most people don't even remember their work. Their films were adapted from a ballet, a musical, and a novel respectively, but the majority of their output were those "bible story" cartoons shown to children attending Sunday school (no, not VeggieTales, the other ones). Lest we forget all those direct-to-video Swan Princess sequels and the ill-fated Alpha and Omega and Norm of the North films, from when they attempted to break into the lucrative 3D animation market.
The failure of their Rankin/Bass collaboration, The King and I, led to their selloff to Crest Animation by the new millennium, and they've been eternally punished to pump out DTV sequels to Alpha and Omega ever since.

20th Century Fox & Turner Animation

Technically, Fox had their in-house studio that produced Don Bluth's Anastasia and Titan A.E. (the latter which resulted in such a massive loss that it led to the studio's shutdown), but prior to that distributed Wizards and Fire & Ice for Ralph Bakshi and Raggedy Ann & Andy for Richard Williams in the 70s and 80s. In between these times, they would release films such as Bill Kroyer's FernGully, Hanna-Barbera's Once Upon A Forest, and Turner Animation's The Pagemaster. Cats Don't Dance was also one of Turner's films, but was distributed by Warner Bros., while their Tom & Jerry movie was handled by Miramax, which you may remember from the Thief and the Cobbler fiasco.

Out of these select three, only FernGully performed well, although Cats Don't Dance is often considered a modern animation classic. Afterwards, Turner was merged into Time Warner and 20th Century Fox would mostly produce animated films through their subsidiary Blue Sky, whose franchises included Ice Age and Rio. Other works of theirs include traditionally-animated The Simpsons Movie, the stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox directed by Wes Anderson, and The Book Of Life from newcomer 3D studio Reel FX.


DreamWorks Animation

Now here's an interesting case. DreamWorks got its start after the initial success of Disney's early 90s films, when Jeffrey Katzenberg served as Chairman of the studio. After the tragic demise of then-President Frank Wells, he immediately petitioned for the vacant position, seeing it as his right that he earned after the achievement of said features. CEO Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney took offense to the audacity of such a move and his arrogance, even though they would have likely promoted him if he had not been so impetuous about it. After Katzenberg was forced to resign, he swore revenge in the form of DreamWorks SKG, a joint venture with Steven Spielberg (again) and David Geffen. 

The foundation of its animation studio comprised of animators pulled from Spielberg's Amblimation and some of the staff that Katzenberg had negotiated away from Disney. Signing a deal with Pacific Data Images, this new company would at first produce both traditional and digitally-animated films, starting with Antz and The Prince Of Egypt in 1998. They even partnered with world-renowned stop-motion studio Aardman Animations on Chicken Run in 2000, at the same time releasing their own The Road to El Dorado. The lackluster performance of their following 2D features, as well as the stupendous levels of success for 3D films starting with Shrek (2001), would lead to the exclusive production of CGI animation at the studio. Since then, DreamWorks has started a multitude of animated franchises, all of which finding varying levels of fortune but mostly scoring lower on average in critical reviews than Disney and Pixar's output for the remainder of the new century.

The Prince Of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado are both fantastic flicks at least, though Rotten Tomatoes seems to disagree, but the other two were admittedly mediocre at best. What makes my feelings towards the studio even more mixed is that as a general rule, I've had an extreme distaste for their 3D films and their decidedly anti-Disney approach to storytelling, which contributed to my disinterest in animation as a whole in the mid-2000s. But, if I can compliment Katzenberg in any way, it's that regardless of the questionable quality of his company's work he will find a way to turn a profit regardless, as was the approach during his tenure at his previous employer.

 
Miscellaneous

Speaking of Disney, and specifically the 90's Renaissance, even they weren't safe from the plague of "mockbusters" that became notorious in more recent times through companies such as The Asylum, Video Brinquedo, and Brightspark. In the animation world there was perhaps none more infamous a studio than Golden Films, which proceeded to ride Disney's coattails with their cheaply-produced knockoffs, most of which bore the exact same name as their legitimate counterparts. Their defense was the fact that the majority of Disney's adapted stories were based on fairy tales and other folk stories in the public domain, but their scheme was obviously to make as much cash as quickly as possible with minimal effort.

Alas, I remember somewhat enjoying their version of Aladdin, released in the same year as the "real" version, which itself borrowed heavily from Richard Williams' ongoing project. Other completely original works of their can be found here.

Filmation, however, was a legitimate animation studio and was producing content as far back as the 60s. Most of their work consisted of animated series, DTV and made-for-TV films, television specials and theatrical shorts, but they created a handful of feature films before finally folding in 1989. Happily Ever After, the "unofficial" sequel to the Disney classic, was released posthumously four years later. Before that, they also produced their own sequels to The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, and...a BraveStarr movie?

 

Foreign Imports

Hemdale Films

None of these films have anything to do with each other, they all just happened to share the same distribution company. Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland is a Japanese and American collaboration produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha (the studio behind the 1988 Akira film) and based on the classic comic strip by Winsor McCay, and it is an excellent movie. The same can't be said for the others, especially not The Magic Voyage, which is a German feature from out of nowhere.
The Princess & The Goblin was made in Hungary (those guys again!) and wasn't received that much better.


Trickompany

Trickompany was one of the few reputable German animation studios, but I can't find any information on them that isn't translated into English. Regardless, the two films that American audiences *might* recognize them are Felidae and Pippi Longstocking. Felidae, like the Martin Rosen adaptations of Richard Adams' novels, is remembered as a non-child-friendly and graphically violent animated film, released at a time when G-rated family movies couldn't have been more prominent.
Yet for adults, it is a surprisingly well-made and intriguing crime thriller - just, y'know, starring talking animals.
Pippi Longstocking (1997) is the only animated version of the character I'm familiar with, aside from DTV sequels
made by the same company.

Stay tuned, the present state of traditional animation (and its future) is next!