As the last year was closing, I watched Sing, the newest and seventh animated film produced by Illumination Entertainment, one of the animation divisions of Universal Studios. It was the studio's second 2016 release after the smash hit The Secret Life of Pets and the second animated film of the year focusing a society of anthropomorphic animals. Despite this, unlike Disney's unexpectedly acclaimed Zootopia, it was less about the socio-political themes and more about the journey of a koala trying to save his theater from bankruptcy.
The film was a critical and commercial smash hit, grossing as much as Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets combined. But, marketing-wise, it was even more successful because Illumination isn't "from the creators of Despicable Me" anymore. The posters now proudly announce above the film's title "Illumination presents", like a badge of quality. The studio's name became the brand name in the business and it seems to be gathering more and more steam.
Unlike Disney and Pixar, with their overbloated 150-250 million dollars animated classics, Illumination is able to produce their animated movies for less than 80 millions. Minions is the least expensive movie to successfully make 1 billion worldwide, produced on a 74-million budget. The recipe for such a monster success at box-office is that Illumination spends too much money on their storytelling area, not on the visuals.
They spend a load of money into characters.
They produce movies with bland, generic and one-dimensional characters that are fully fleshed and well-written. Illumination discovered that the formula for its success was making those kinds of characters more likeable and relatable, not throwing money in their movies like nobody's business. This is true: Illumination's best movies are the Despicable Me films, The Secret Life of Pets and Sing. If you compare the textures, shading, hair and other technical details between Illumination's offering and the Disney classics, there's an obvious difference in their budgets. Despite this, Illumination has no interest in making photo-realistic settings and characters - just ask the creators of The Good Dinosaur how well its magnificent visuals helped it at the box-office. Illumination's animation unit seems to understand that they're making digital cartoons, not recreating reality. And it's a virtue in itself - one that audiences reasonated to very well.
But Illumination's road to its success wasn't a walk in the park. It may have started with a bang in the beginning of this decade with Despicable Me, but miracles weren't made in just one day. They endured a torturous road to reach the recognition they have now. Not a splendorous recognition: the company, to date, has never made an universally acclaimed movie by critics. Regardless, it's a recognition in where it matters the most commercially: among audiences, a public trust. So, in order for me to track how the house of Gru and his three adopted daughters dethroned Dreamworks as Disney's fiercest rival, I'll go back to the period where the Animation Renaissance started, the context at which Illumination found itself into.
When the 1980s started, Disney was already struggling since Walt passed away in 1966 and the 1979 exodus of Don Bluth and his close colleagues made that situation worse. Bluth founded his own animation studio in direct competition with Disney. The critical and commercial death of Disney's 1985 film The Black Cauldron only gave Bluth the greatest power as in 1986 he partnered with acclaimed Jurassic Park and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial director Steven Spielberg, a long-time animation fan who wanted to produce an animated movie, to create An American Tail which became an animation classic. Their next joint project, 1988's The Land Before Time, became a masterpiece, spawning 12 DTV sequels and a TV series. None of those sequels had neither Bluth nor Spielberg involved.
The huge critical and commercial success of An American Tail and The Land Before Time helped Disney regain its confidence in animation when they released The Little Mermaid in 1989, which was a smash hit, kickstarting the Disney Renaissance, a period of the 1990s in which Disney released three of their most prestigious masterpieces: 1991's Beauty and the Beast, 1992's Aladdin and 1994's The Lion King - all three Academy Award winners and all three of Disney's Fab Four (The Little Mermaid being the fourth). Meanwhile, a little struggling animation studio formerly owned by Lucasfilm called Pixar started making CGI animated movies for Disney. As CGI technologies were gaining confidance from Hollywood, computer-animated moviemaking seemed to be the next logical step and Pixar had been experimenting with that art in their awarded shorts and commercials. Lead by Disney Animation master John Lasseter, his company released its first feature film in 1995 called Toy Story, which won the hearts of critics and audiences alike. Not only it was a technological break-thought, it was also a work of genuine art. Everything in it seemed to be carefully thought about, as nothing seemed contrived or just f(censored)ed up. People have never seen this level of quality and dedication since the days of Walt. The film was dripping with care.
Pixar started gaining momentum in the following years. On the other hand, Disney became too dependent on Pixar, as their post-Lion King classics Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan, while still critically and commercially successful, failed to sit alongside the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King while Pixar took the lead.
At first, it seemed that Pixar would be without any strong adversaries - not even Disney itself, until Dreamworks Pictures was established in 1994 as Disney/Pixar's serious archrival. In case people have forgotten, Dreamworks is not an animation-only studio, it was founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen and produced great movies such as Saving Private Ryan, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind and A.I. It was small, but ambitious, sassy... actually the United Artists of its time. But as a star that shines twice as brightly and burns out twice as fast, it failed to sustain itself against Hollywood's long stabilized big six studios, and it was assimilated by one of them, Paramount, in 2005. Despite this, Dreamworks' animation division remained strong, becomnig almost like an entity of its own, something separate and distinctive, so much that Comcast bought it in 2016.
At the point, Dreamworks Animation was noted for being highly creative and original. Releasing CGI, hand-drawn and stop-motion animated movies, it revolutionized the family animated genre, visually and thematically. Dreamworks produced films like The Prince of Egypt and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, all of these dealing with themes never explored by other family or even adult films before. Their very first animated film Antz, released in 1998, was very ambitious with ideas, symbolisms and social fluff and featured the voice of Woody Allen as its main character, which was the ice of the cake. It was released in the same year and same season as Pixar's similarly themed A Bug's Life and this started the bitter rivalry between both studios.
In the new century, CGI started taking over the place of hand-drawn animation. To give you an idea, the last Disney hand-drawn animated movie was The Princess and the Frog, released in ancient 2009. It made a modest box-office of 267 million dollars on a 105 millions budget, leading Disney to not try its hand in 'outdated' technologies for now. Meanwhile, the last Dreamworks hand-drawn animated movie was 2003's Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas which, for all its celebrity voices, grossed 80 millions on a 60 millions budget. Many claim that Pixar is the one to blame for that swift, but actually it was bound to happen, sooner or later. Even hand-drawn animated movies such as Titan A.E. and The Iron Giant featured heavier CGI elements. As CGI was getting constantly perfected, it proved to be more practical and more fun than classic animation, easier actually. So it was going to happen, and if it wasn't Pixar that opened the doors, it would have been someone else. So be thankful it was Pixar: just imagine if it everything started with Foodfight!
With Shrek winning the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature over Pixar's Monsters Inc., it seemed everything was going well for Dreamworks. Despite this, for some reason, the studio found a formula of releasing as much films as possible. To celebrate quantity over quality. Artistically, this proved to be its downfall, as it kickstarted the release of some generic films that just didn't click with the audiences instantly. Films that came, made their business, and then were forgotten. Stuff like Shark Tale, Bee Movie and Turbo.
Bee Movie, for example, is very curious: it felt like an anaemic attempt to create Antz 2.0 and it immediately felt into obscurity in the months following its release, though it was revived by the online community as an internet meme, just like Shrek. Seriously: Youtube is now filled with silly videos about Dreamworks' 15th animated feature film. And what to expect from a movie in which Ray Liotta has his own honey brand, and in which bees... sue humans. Wow. Meme potential or not, I dunno what the hell is this. With a story like this, it feels like Dreamworks animators and creative talents were dirty with cocaine during the whole creative process of this movie, from start to finish.
What was the last Dreamworks film everybody loved? When was the last time they made a movie that people would remember for years to come? Who's EVEN gonna remember Trolls in a few months now? Phew, people are barely aware that such a film exists NOW. Dreamworks was ruined by a s#%&ty and capitalistic mentality. Those are works loaded with celebrities' voices and lacking in heart.
To this date, Dreamworks has released 33 animated movies against 17 of Pixar - nearly half. While Dreamworks started shoving films up the wall to see what sticks, Pixar is a more composed and focused studio, and each film they release is an event itself. Dreamworks makes more money. This is logical when they release too much films. Despite this, to this date Dreamworks movies have made an average 419,2 million dolars each, against 634,8 millions from Pixar. Lasseter's fabled animation studio has two films that successfully made over one billion dolars while Katzenberg's one has none.
In this sense, it seems that Pixar was the undisputed hero of animation. Sure, there's 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky Studios, though it never became the powerhouse contestant most expected it to be. It was always an OK studio, a company that started well, only to later proceed making OK and sometimes plain embarassing films. Ice Age: Collision Course was the most brutal, painful and violent kick in the groin of the once promising company, the point in which they just f(censored)ed something up and went away to the bank. It's almost like if they accepted that they didn't have be the other Pixar, so they started acting as if they didn't have to - a self-fulfilling prophecy. And a tragic fate to a studio that with films like the original Ice Age, The Peanuts Movie and the original Rio had everything to be the next big thing.
So it was Pixar alone until something happed. Something wicked that this way came. Disney officially bought the studio in 2006. At first, the results weren't harmful as Pixar still released timeless classics like Toy Story 3, Wall-E and Up. But John Lasseter also started to save Disney from the inside and suddenly it wasn't dependent on Pixar anymore. Whereas in the past, Pixar was the one to blame for Disney's creative death, now the roles were inverted, as Disney began releasing some of the most beloved animated classics of these last years. Sure, Disney created some bullpoop like the horrendous Chicken Little, but it was the baby step to Big Hero 6, Wreck-It Ralph and now Moana. Meanwhile, Pixar started to become neglected, faded to revisit its own materials. Not even an excellent story, its universal themes and enjoyable new characters could convince me that Finding Dory was an overall necessary film. If you want to see or create something original, Disney has now become the happiest place on Earth to stay.
Illumination Entertainment proliferated from this fertile soil. Pixar wasn't in good shape, Dreamworks was dead beyond revival, Blue Sky was a broken promise and Warner Bros. slowly and finally came back to the game despite the less-than-stellar box-office performance of Storks. If there was a time for Illumination to shine, this is now.
Illumination was founded in 2007 by former 20th Century Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri who helped produce Blue Sky Studios' best offerings and The Simpsons Movie. He kickstarted Fox's animation renaissance after the costly flop Titan A.E. left the studio out of the animation game. After reviving Fox Animation, he left to create his own animation studio Illumination. Meanwhile, Universal wanted to go back to the animation game after both An American Tail and The Land Before Time helped starting the animation renaissance. Animated movies had already become Hollywood's main moneymakers, so Universal wanted a piece of that pie. They wanted their own feature animation division, their own Pixar. So, in 2008, Illumination became Universal's own feature animation studio.
Their first film was the wonderful Despicable Me, created and executive produced by former Disney animator Sergio Pablos and released in 2010 - a film that could have done some things better, but did nothing wrong. Like The Incredibles, it had a retro-futuristic style with a much appropriated James Bond vibe. It was a story about a globetrotter supervillain Gru and his best friends in the form of the bumbling yellow creatures called Minions and the deaf old scientist Nefarious. Fearing obsolenscence and outdone by other villains, he adopts three orphan girls (one of them called Margo, voiced by Miranda Cosgrove from Nickelodeon's iCarly fame) to use them in a plan to steal the shrinking weapon, so he can fullfil his most ambitious plan: to steal the moon. He's grumpy and has no other need for the girls, but... it was obvious that the girls would break into through his defences and warm that grumpy guy up. But it was sure exciting and pleasant during its running time. It made a glorious box-office of 543 million dollars with a budget of 69 millions, and the studio started off in good terms with Universal.
Their second film was the Easter-themed oddity Hop, a live-action/animated film released in 2011. It starred the talents of Russell Brand, James Marsden, Kaley Cuoco, Hank Azaria, Gary Cole, Elizabeth Perkins and Hugh Laurie. There's not a lot of movies about this holiday (at least not the memorable ones), but Hop was determined to try its luck and maybe even to make the date a thing to be explored in Hollywood. But for all its ambition, the film underperformed at box-office: it made its money back, though it failed to break the 200 million mark, while panned by critics and hated by audiences. This is why the studio wisely refused to do another live-action film.
In 2012, there was The Lorax and it was undoubtedly bad, a bad film overall and a failed adaptation of the Dr. Seuss' masterpiece. The Lorax (the amazing Danny DeVito) himself was a good character, with a laid down attitude and a sense of coolness, apparently channelling Jake from Adventure Time. Unfortunately, the whole film was just one big misguided and cynical attempt to excite us. It ended up looking like one of the most formulaic animated films one could think of. It concluded with a happy ending that betrayed what Dr. Seuss originally had in mind, which was meant to have an ambiguous ending to help children reflect about their world. As if it wasn't that bad, they had the balls to call Zac Efron and Taylor Swift to voice the pubescent characters ungracefully named after Dr. Seuss himself and his widow Audrey Geisel, respectively, just to pander to kids these days. The film was a box-office hit, making 348 million dollars... but it was still inferior to their smash hit Despicable Me.
What they decided to do to revert the situation? To simply make a sequel to a movie people loved so much. And it worked like a charm: 2013's Despicable Me 2 was a massive hit, making 970 million dollars. For two years, it was actually the highest-grossing Universal movie ever. Like Dreamworks' Megamind, the film turned the villainous Gru into a hero and I thought this was one of the film's flaws, as Gru should have remained true to who he really is: a supervillain... but one with a heart of gold (a gentleman thief, maybe). Nevertheless, the movie itself works well, and it even feels like a necessary sequel: we want to see what will be the next step for Gru's new family, their new challenges. The film featured some gratifying new characters such as Lucy Wilde, voiced by Kristen Wiig (Lola Bunny from The Looney Tunes Show). It also featured a vain valley girl voiced by Kristen Schaal (Mabel from Gravity Falls).
The film put Illumination back on the track, and from then on, it was a smooth sailing for the studio. In 2015, now with Universal assimilated by Comcast, the studio produced a spin-off Minions, which told the origins of Gru's supporting sidekicks. The characters were proving to be very beloved by audiences, making huge success on merchandising and pretty much being everywhere. It wasn't something Universal foisted into audiences: the appeal of the Minions was organic. So naturally, a prequel was necessary with them as the main heroes.
Now, the film is actually a decent mess. In one hand, I enjoyed how it was set in 1968 and I was awed to see both New York and London at that particular time. The soundtrack served the setting masterfully with tunes of the time such as "Happy Together", "You Really Got Me", etc. And I loved Scarlett Overkill, voiced with charisma by Sandra Bullock (Speed and Gravity). The film was pleasantly narrated by Geoffrey Rush and Michael Keaton (the first Batman to ever become an iconic movie character) killed it as an evil dad. I even enjoyed Queen Elizabeth getting drunk in a pub among a bunch of blokes. There was plenty to love in this movie, but also pelnty to hate in it.
For starters, the Minions are more enjoyable as supporting characters instead of main protagonists. By their nature, putting them upfront is too much, and while the film only focused on three Minions, it didn't necessarily develop them as characters. This is why Cars 2 became Pixar's critical faillure, because Mater is a more likeable character in the background. The film also had silly moments in which not much happened, and we saw Minions just fuzzing around. The story relied too much in coincidences, and there were contrived moments that made absolutely no sense, such as a character conveniently surviving an explosion and somehow being "saved" by it. At one moment near the end, both characters just take the Imperial State Crown in a crowded event and run among the Londoners. A scene so s#%&@y that I believed the writers themselves were thinking "Oh, let's just end it already! It's just an animated film." Something like that would never have happened in the Golden Age of Pixar.
Normally, there are three kinds of 5-out-of-10 movies: ones that are simply mediocre and could have been better, ones that tried, and ones that suck and rock at the same time. The latter was the case of Minions, a film that wasn't bad like people say and not even good like box-office says. It was actually a mixed bag, because it could have been done very better with all of its functioning elements. It didn't matter for it was a monster hit for Universal as always. Curiously, Universal never had a billion-making film before. In 2015, they had three at once: Minions, Furious 7 and Jurassic World. All of them sequels, none of them perfect. Despite this, Illumination was now the king of animation. It was churning out hits that Dreamworks never did and reached a level Blue Sky was never able to. It became a force to renown.
Last year, they made The Secret Life of Pets, which was better received than Minions and made a massive box-office of 875 million dollars. It featured a beautiful jazzy soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat and evoked a strong New York vibe: the city is not just a setting, but a vital element for the film.
The film was compared to Toy Story, and in the same year they made Sing, which is inevitably compared to Zootopia and La La Land. And the fact the studio relies heavily in franchising proves originality is not their main focus.
Again, the focus is on character development. It's on Gru, trying to put those girls on bed. It's on those girls, flipping Gru's world around. It's on the Minions, trying to throw a birthday party to Dracula that goes terribly awry. It's on Scarlett Overkill, with her retro bad girl appeal. It's on the Lorax, with his calm yet assuring personality. It's on Buster Moon, with dreams of restoring his family theater to its full glory. It's on Mike, with his get-rich-quick schemes. It's on Johnny, with dreams of quiting his family's crime business. It's on Rosita, who dreams of becoming a pop star after a miserable life. It's on Ash, trying to overcome her breakup with her former boyfriend. It's on the titular pets of Manhattan, each with their own traits. It's in the characters, some of them overblown, others relatable, but all enjoyable.
As we should all know as of now, massive price tags will never automatically make any movie good, because it needs something else. From all the Disney animated movies, I'll take the 44.4 million dollars made by Recess: School's Out over the 968.5 million dolars made by The Lion King any day of the week. Ask me which are the best Aardman films, and I'll answer that the less costly will always be the best. The first 1977 Star Wars film was made for only 11 millions, and it's fantastically better than George Lucas' Star Wars prequels. And don't get me started on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides which cost... 378 MILLIION DOLLARS! THREE! HUNDRED! SEVENTY! EIGHT! MILLION! DOLLARS!!! So much money that ended up in a mediocre film. Its predecessor At World's End cost 300 millions! The newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie Dead Men Tell no Tales will cost 320 millions! This is the total cost of nearly a billion! And how much the Despicable Me movies did cost? Less than each of those films individually. If I was Jerry Bruckheimer, I would hunt down whoever is responsible for controlling of spending on those films. And if Bruckheimer himself was responsible, so I - as him - would commit seppuku.
In conclusion, Illumination is not a fully artistically strong studio like Pixar in its golden age. But the fact it spends plenty of money not on expensive visuals but on characters who audiences love and respect may be perfect formula for success that Hollywood should copy. And for all that's worth, it gave me hope of seeing Illumination perfecting its storytelling skills, so those characters would be on stories that suit them well. Illumination is now making Despicable Me 3, The Secret Life of Pets 2 and their own animated version of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And I'm actually looking forward to them, as it seems the studio is improving in each film.
Source: thedrifterwithin.deviantart.com/journal/The-Rise-of-Illumination-600600378
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