Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is an Academy Award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the best animated feature film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
For much of the Academy Awards' history, the AMPAS was resistant to the idea of a regular award for animated features, considering there were simply too few produced to justify such consideration. Instead, the Academy occasionally bestowed special Oscars for exceptional productions, usually for Walt Disney Pictures, such as for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938, and the Special Achievement Academy Award for the live action/animated hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1989 and Toy Story in 1996. In fact, prior to the award's creation, only one animated film was nominated for Best Picture: 1991's Beauty and the Beast, also by Disney.
By 2001, the rise of sustained competitors to Disney in the feature animated film market, such as DreamWorks Animation (founded by former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg), created an increase of film releases of significant annual number enough for AMPAS to reconsider. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first given out at the 74th Academy Awards, held on March 24, 2002.
When the category was first instated, the nomination went to the person(s) most involved in creating the film. This could be the producer, the director, or both. For the 76th Academy Awards in 2003, only the director(s) of the film received the nomination. For the 86th Academy Awards ten years later, this was amended to include one producer and up to two directors. For the 91st Academy Awards, this was amended once again to include up to four individuals, one of whom must be a director and one of whom must be a producer; an exception to this is that "[i]n the case of a TWO-PERSON TEAM with shared and equal director or producer credit, an additional statuette may be awarded."
The Academy included a rule that stated that the award would not be presented in a year in which fewer than eight eligible films opened in theaters. In regards of the Academy, it allows for all members to make voting for animated films more acceptable.
At the same year, the Academy enacted a new rule regarding the motion capture technique employed in films such as A Christmas Carol (2009) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011), directed by Academy Award for Best Director winners Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg respectively, and how they might not be eligible in this category in the future. The new rule now reads "An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time." This rule was possibly made to prevent nominations of live-action films that rely heavily on motion capture, such as Avatar (2009).
Only three films (most are live-action/animation hybrid) have been disqualified for not meeting the 75 percent of animation threshold under submission. With exceptions, it was unclear whether Marcel the Shell with Shoes On would be eligible for the award at the 95th Academy Awards due to being a stop-motion animated film with the use of live-action elements. Director Dean Fleischer Camp said that he and A24 had to submit documentation in order to prove the film had enough animation to meet the award's minimum requirements. The AMPAS officially deemed the film eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature category and was eventually nominated for said category.
Notes
A number of non-English-language or non-dialogue films have been nominated or won. Almost all non-English language films on this list have also been released with English-language dubbing. Winners are highlighted in bold below.
The winners of non-Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks Animation films led its significant influence among animation studios for its aesthetics as well as displaying statuettes at museums, solidifying the animation's recognition in mainstream cinema.
Some members and fans have criticized the award, saying it is only intended to prevent animated films from having a chance of winning Best Picture. DreamWorks had advertised heavily during the holiday 2001 season for Shrek, but was disappointed when the rumored Best Picture nomination did not materialize. The criticism of Best Animated Feature was particularly prominent at the 81st Academy Awards, in which WALL-E won the award but was not nominated for Best Picture, despite receiving widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike and being generally considered one of the best films of 2008. This led to controversy over whether the film was deliberately snubbed of the nomination by the Academy. Film critic Peter Travers commented that "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it's WALL-E." However, official Academy Award regulations state that any movie nominated for this category can still be nominated for Best Picture. In 2009, when the nominee slots for Best Picture were doubled to ten, Up was nominated for both Animated Feature and Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards, the first to do so since the inception of the Animated Feature category. This feat was repeated the following year by Toy Story 3.
Many pundits were critical of its category for snubbing non-Disney/Pixar animated films in favor of Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar films as a perennial frontrunner of the award season dominance, with animation historian Amid Amidi accusing Academy voters occasionally of ignorance about the animation medium. There have been complaints that the Best Animated Feature award is held in unfairly low regard by Academy members with many members refusing to vote for films they consider mere children's fare beneath them, or letting their own children see the films and go with their opinions instead. The dominance of Disney and Pixar allegedly as a result of this bias is suggested to be injuring the credibility of the award.
Anonymous interviews with a selection of Academy voters in 2014 and 2015 revealed indifference towards the animation category, treating animation as being for children, and ignorance about international titles; although the biggest controversy was the omission of other animated films like The Lego Movie and The Book of Life.
The category has also been criticized for frequently snubbing critically acclaimed Japanese animated films not from Studio Ghibli, such as Your Name, A Silent Voice, and In This Corner of the World. 2018's Mirai became the first non-Ghibli anime film to receive a nomination in this category.
In 2017, a new rule allowed any Academy voters to vote in the category regardless of background or connection to animation, which led to the nominations of The Boss Baby and Ferdinand, a decision that received significant criticism from critics and audiences alike because of their lack of solid quality to make them worthy of being nominated, especially above snubbed, but better acclaimed films. Besides being viewed as highly ignorant of this category, it was seen as a move from the Academy to put aside small, foreign and/or independent movies in favor of mainstream ones to attract audiences to something they might know and to keep a Hollywood predominance; this allowed any members of the Academy other than the Animation Branch.
Despite these changes, other Disney and Pixar films won again since 2019, these are Toy Story 4, Soul, and Encanto, causing outrage among pundits of the category. With the latter at the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, the Academy's decision for having three actresses (Halle Bailey, Lily James, and Naomi Scott) who played Disney princesses in their live-action remakes to present the category was heavily criticized. While presenting, the three actresses joked about kids singing their favorite songs from their favorite animated feature repeatedly, leaving its ignorance of animation as a medium that can also be for adults as well (as was the case for the documentary Flee being nominated in said category).
Alongside Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and The Boy and the Heron, the 2024 Latvian film Flow marked the first time that non-Disney films won the category in three consecutive years, breaking Disney and Pixar's winning streak, while also making history as the first time an independent animated feature won the top prize in this category.