CHINA! NI HAO!
While enjoying a bit of free time during AniWow!, my good friend Tien Yang and I took in some sights. As we strolled along one of those narrow intensely busy
hutong streets that sit in the shadow of modern skyscrapers, he observed, “What you have to understand about China is that it is in the early stages of a renaissance, and it is going to go on for hundreds of years.” That is it in a nutshell. When you look at China, you need to adjust the focal length of your lens. The government there has put its substantial shoulder behind an effort to bring the Chinese animation industry into competitive alignment with the west and Japan and, based on what I have experienced during my two trips, I would not bet against it. Consider this: I taught a 3-hour Acting for Animators master class at the Communications University of China, and five hundred enthusiastic animators showed up! The creative energy in the country is contagious, and I am eager to return.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH…
I had a terrific time with the animation students and staff at
Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale, California. Thanks again, Andy, Michael and Chester!
ACTING FOR ANIMATORS WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
CRAFT NOTES
“Villains – Then and Now”
I have lately been thinking about Captain Hook (
Peter Pan), Cruella de Vil (
101 Dalmatians), the Evil Queen (
Snow White) and all of the other wonderful Disney villains. As Frank and Ollie write in
The Illusion of Life, p417, “Villains … make everything else happen. They are the instigators and, as (Charlie) Chaplin has pointed out, always more colorful than the hero.” Since that is still - now and forever - the case, why are the villains in most contemporary animated features so forgettable and bland? If you have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear from you. Meanwhile, I have a theory I’d like to share with you.
Start with this: Walt Disney knew his audience consisted primarily of kids, and he made movies especially for them. An audience of children requires a different kind of story and presentation than an audience of adults. A child’s perception of right vs. wrong and good vs. evil is very basic. She has not yet learned enough about life to appreciate a nuanced character. So, in Walt’s movies, the villains – especially the comic ones - sneered, curled their lips, cackled with fiendish delight, glowered and reveled in their villainy. They obsessively pursued their dastardly goals and displayed no apparent redeeming qualities.
A villain like Maleficent (
Sleeping Beauty), for instance, stands up to character description but not character analysis. From the
Disney.wikia website: “…Maleficent represents pure evil. She is ruthless and devious, and will do whatever it takes to achieve her goals.” From the perspective of acting theory, that kind of description is far too general to be useful. But the film nonetheless presents her that way right out of the box. There is never an attempt made to explain how she got to be like she is. She has just simply always been evil, take it or leave it.
Or consider my personal favorite villain, Cruella De Vil from
101 Dalmatians. Her creator and animator,
Marc Davis, said this about her in an interview: “…She had no realization whatsoever that she was cruel. That’s jut the way she was. She had no idea that the killing and butchering of those little puppies for a coat involved pain and suffering. She’s pure evil.” (from the
John Province interview w/Marc Davis) That is the definition of a sociopath, a person whose ability to empathize is broken. No wonder I like her so much.
So why don’t we see those kinds of villains much any more? I suggest it is because most animation studios, including Disney’s own, are not making movies for children. And the reason they aren’t making movies for children is because the movies they are producing cost too much. You can’t spend $170 million on an animated film exclusively for children because it has close to zero chance of turning a profit. And if you are not going to lower the cost, then you will have to expand the audience. When the financial stakes are that high, a movie must have broad appeal -- to adults at least as much as to children. It has to be an option for cross-cultural date-nights in addition to pulling in the Saturday matinee kids and their parents. And once you include adults in the target audience, you need a more nuanced villain.
In my opinion, the strongest and most effective villain in an animated feature this past year is the Other Mother in Henry Selick’s
Coraline. She is warm and welcoming to young Coraline, inviting her to remain in the Other World with her adoring Other Family. The only proviso is that Coraline allow Other Mother to sew buttons on her eyes. I am old enough to know better, and Other Mother even gives me the creeps! She is a marvelous character in a marvelous movie. But
Coraline was reportedly made for $60 million. That is a lot of money, but it is roughly $100 million less than anything that has come out of DreamWorks, Disney or Pixar in 2009. Nonetheless,
Coraline has grossed over $120 million, and it surely will show a profit.
Mega-budgets dictate that movie producers think like hedge fund managers on Wall Street. They must aggressively play the market averages at the least possible downside risk. The old Disney villains like Stromboli (Pinocchio) have, for this moment in history at least, shifted from the asset column into the deficit column because they limit the audience. The transition has happened in a drip-drip-drip manner while the tribe wasn’t looking. There has not been an industry announcement that villains are changing. The Little Mermaid and The Lion King both featured grand old-school villains with Ursula and Scar. But try to quickly name the villain in Bolt or Cars or The Road to El Dorado or Over the Hedge or Monster House. They are there, but they are so bland as to be practically invisible.
Hopefully, we will see the return of the over-the-top villain as new avenues for distribution and exhibition open up. There is definitely an audience for them, and there is plenty of room in the market for kids’ movies. There just is not a market for kids’ movies that cost $170 million. For a compass setting, take a look at almost any film by Miyazaki.
Spirited Away reportedly cost something under $30 million to produce.
