Is The Academy Teaching Monsters University a Lesson?
Yesterday the Academy announced the nominations for this year’s Oscars and over 50,000 people tuned in online. In the animation world, the favourites – Frozen and The Wind Rises were selected whilst short films Get A Horse! and Feral also earned nominations. This was all overshadowed however by the fact that Pixar’s Monsters University wasn’t even nominated. Here’s how some other news websites reacted on Twitter.
Congrats to all the Oscar nominees! Genuinely surprised that Monsters U didn’t get a nomination though – definitely deserved one.
— A113Animation (@A113Animation) January 16, 2014
‘Monsters University’ may not be one of the Pixar greats, but it’s still a very good film. Puzzling to see it left out. #TheOscars
— The Pixar Times (@ThePixarTimes) January 16, 2014
A little disappointed Pixar’s Monsters University wasn’t nominated for a Best Animated Feature Academy Award #oscars.
— The Disney Blog (@TheDisneyBlog) January 16, 2014
WHAT?! This is just crazy at this point – #MonstersU was NOT nominated for an Oscar!
— Pixar Post (@ThePixarPost) January 16, 2014
Pixar was robbed. #MonstersUniversity #BestAnimatedFeatureFilm #OscarNoms
— Mike Bastoli (@bigscreentoons) January 16, 2014
What makes this such a big deal? Well, with the exception of Cars 2 (Which received a negative reception anyway), Pixar has at least been nominated for the Best Animation Oscar, EVERY year (except 2005 when they didn’t release a film).
With only 5 films able to be selected, it must be tough to select the cream of the crop, especially with an incredible 19 films to choose from. However when we asked you on our poll which film was your favourite, you said Monsters University. Unlike The Annies, though, the Academy isn’t made up of just animators – it’s hard to fully understand the technical developments if you’re not clued up in the world of rendering systems, so there will always be a surprise here and there and the supposed snub could be a wakeup call to Pixar.
Mike was truly shocked to hear the news
It’s not all doom and gloom – The Academy, often accused of showing a bias towards English-speaking films chose not one but two foreign language animations. The Wind Rises was accompanied by Ernest and Celestine, the French-Belgian film which also scooped up an Oscar nomination. With 2D animation feature trends becoming less and less popular in English speaking countries, it’s a big relief to see two Oscar nominated films come from a 2D background. Maybe, with Pixar not in the picture this year, it’s made room for a little more variety across the board?
Frozen is also the favourite to win Best Original Song for “Let It Go” however it was a nice surprise to see that Despicable Me 2 is also nominated for their joyful song “Happy” by Pharrrel Williams as well as also scooping a nice nomination for Best Animated Feature as many were unsure if the box office smash would get nominated.
For the Pixar faithful it is clear to see why this is a shock but Pixar’s run of luck at the awards may have made the category rather dull and predictable and with the surprise of Monsters University out of the race this category just got exciting!