Who Will Replace the Spiders? – Animated Feature Submissions Announced!

We’ve hit the second milestone of this year’s Oscar season, with the announcement of the 32 films vying for Best Animated Feature. As mentioned in the International Feature post, there have been some major changes to the rules for this year’s Academy Awards. One of them pertains to this category, as the minimum eight movie requirement has been waived, essentially making Animated Feature a permanent competitive category.

Unlike most other categories, Animated Feature submits separate from the main ballot, even though the entries are eligible for consideration elsewhere, typically for Visual Effects and Best Picture in recent years. And while the week of screenings in Los Angeles before year’s end is still a requirement for this as well as every other major category, the studios and production companies can submit early with the understanding that their entry is withdrawn if they don’t screen it on time.

Last year there were 25 entries in the field. This year we have 32. You can find the official Academy post here, but I’ll provide the list anyway, as well as links to any reviews I’ve done for the individual films.

The 32 submitted films are, in alphabetical order:

Abominable
The Addams Family
The Angry Birds Movie 2
Another Day of Life
Away
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
Children of the Sea
Dilili in Paris
Frozen II
Funan
Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Primal” – Tales of Savagery
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Klaus
The Last Fiction
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Marona’s Fantastic Tale
Missing Link
Ne Zha
Okko’s Inn
Pachamama
Promare
Rezo
The Secret Life of Pets 2
Spies in Disguise
The Swallows of Kabul
This Magnificent Cake!
The Tower
Toy Story 4
Upin & Ipin: The Lone Gibbon Kris
Weathering with You
White Snake

A couple of things jump out to me immediately. One is that Disney apparently is going to continue the charade of trying to tell people that their Lion King remake is live action when it is 100% animated, because they didn’t submit it for this category. My guess is that they’ll go for Visual Effects and maybe Original Song with whatever tacked-on track they wrote for this particular iteration.

Two, this could very well be a battle of sequels by the time the nominations come out, as I can easily see Lego Movie 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 3 getting a nod, only for the main contest to come down to Toy Story 4 vs. Frozen II.

Three, there’s usually one foreign film that makes it in the mix, and based on this list, the Animation branch of the Academy has a lot to choose from, with many intriguing looking titles.

As ever, I’ll see as many of these as I can, with the review for The Addams Family is coming tomorrow. If you’ve seen any of the entries that I haven’t, please let me know what you think of them, and if there’s a way to find them for personal viewing.

Except Angry Birds. Fuck that noise entirely.

Join the conversation in the comments below! What do you think of the list? How many have you seen? Is there any chance Disney doesn’t win this? Let me know!