Forget Best Animated Film, that's already in the bag, so much so that talking about it is a waste of time.


But the film is extraordinarily groundbreaking in its grasp of drama, REAL drama that we have not seen in animation before.


And while that is all nice and well, it wouldn't matter much if the audience didn't respond. But...

I think they did and do. From everything I've heard (and from my personal experience watching it), it's as if people were talking about a serious film with occasional humour, which of course is what this film is all about.


I really want this to be recognized. And hot damn, the voice casting was superb! Holly Hunter is now the second female in a row to give a great performance in a Pixar film (Dory in Nemo voiced by the exquisite DeGeneres).


Sigh, but this is probably just a fanboy's dream...

Damn right (Just like my dream Kill Bill would get nominated as 1 film ), it would be great though if Incredibles got nominated as I did love it but it just won't happen, way too much competetion. Plus.. the Academy will probaly accept a more mature animated film. (ala Beauty and the Beast) Yeah, yeah, but it's true.

Ok, what competition?

The token drama about some massacre? Or the token indie that no one will give a second thought to come march? Or the token epic designed to glorify Hollywood?*

It's become painfully obvious what nominees will end up with what, and while I have no doubt those are good films, they are very much conventional nominees.

But what competition this film could have that would make it unworthy of a nomination is beyond me. I will soon enough see practically all the contenders, but comparing The Incredibles to previous winners and nominees such as the atrocious Chicago, it stands head and shoulders above those, yet those are the ones who got nominations.


Thing is, this is a very important milestone in American animation. A hugely important genre in cinema is undergoing a transformation right before our eyes and it is frustrating that the Academy won't recognize that. I have a feeling the animation Oscar was created just to push those films aside...


*this in no way is meant to belittle any of those films. I am merely statting that the films follow certain pre-estbalished formulas and are thus predictable nominees.

that would be great!!

but i believe there to much damn competition for that to happend!
ooh, well lets keep our hopes up!! :?

If Nemo couldn't snag a nomination, there's no way The Incredibles will, though I certainly wouldn't mind to see it.Add some controversy. A real Oscar cermony would have the folloing:

Mean Girls
The Notebook
Eternal Sunshine
The Incredibles
The Bourne Supremecy

Taking the best of all film all over the year, not the arthouse flicks from December.

That's a laugh! The drama is no more real here than it is in Finding Nemo or even Bird's own The Iron Giant.

This reeks of hyperbole.

Ever since academy created Best Animated Feature category three years ago, it pretty much prevented an animated film from getting nominated for best picture. It's similar to what foreign films and documentaries have to deal with because they have their own categories. It will take something extraordinary such as CTHD, combined with some weak competitions, for a film in those categories to get best picture nomination.

You pretty much brought it to the point.

Hyperbole my ass. Go back and watch the film.

The Incredibles is a very good film,But i agree,if Nemo didnt get a nomination than i dont see any animated film getting a nomination in a long time.Nemo had everything perfect,Drama,comedy and heart.

Do you really want to step up to the plate with me?

Since you were the one who opened your mouth and spat out such ridiculous comments, maybe you should back it up with why you think this film is "real" drama and other animated films are not.

You are completely being ignorant or dismissive of the entire history of animated film. Why did we like Dumbo? Bambi? Because real human connection to separation with parental figures? Is this not "real" drama? We spent half a year last year talking about why Finding Nemo was so great because the father/son bond was really strong with parents and children.

I won't deny that The Incredibles had that aspect of drama (and it is not the first film to tackle domestic drama either), but come on... the first one? Ever? That's a disgustingly ignorant statement.

I don't mean groundbreaking in that it's the first one. I've been praising a large number of animated films for a long time now, not least among them those you mentioned, because of their powerful emotional appeal and wonderful elements of drama, among other reasons.

What I find real in The Incredibles is that it gets rid of the cover that animation has used before to almost veil the dramatic undercurrents. Dumbo and Nemo gave off the illusion of being kids films and were and have been marketed as such because the're cute elephants and fishes. American audiences have always been conditioned to remain superficially distant from the characters in an animated film while being drawn in by the themes and messages therein.

Steps have previously been taken to directly show humans in animation in a dramatic light, of course. Pinocchio is probably the earliest example, and it's also easily one of the best films of all time because of its successful metaphor for growing up (ie, wanting to become a real boy). You also mentioned Iron Giant, a masterpiece, and I'd like to add Spirited Away as well. The protagonists in both are remarkably 'real', even if the world they move around in (less obvious in Iron Giant than in SA) is fantastic.

What leads me to claim The Incredibles as another step forward is that both the world that the characters inhabit (first part) as well as the set of characters (again, mostly in the first part of the film) are on the surface representative of the 'real' emotions that have been present throughout animation for decades. I'm putting great emphasis on how the characters look (ie, like humans) because this finally breaks down those awful misconceptions about animation being for kids, and that any animated film that has cute and cuddly characters (like that awful Shark Tale) is automatically a film for the whole family. Looking at the film's performance, whre Iron Giant and Spirited Away both performed poorly at the box office (each making a pitiful amount compared to Shrek 2's first Saturday alone), The Incredibles seems to have finally moved one step up in terms of audience acceptance.

Obviously, it's still a bit away from being completely 'real' in the sense that a 'real' drama would be. They're superheroes, after all. But the moments where they live and act as real people, and where they, as human beings (which, despite being superheroes, they are) show weaknesses and genuine emotion, are a huge movement forward from a fish searching for his father, who also displays very real emotions.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with expressing human emotions via 'un-real' characters. That's ridiculous. The characters in LOTR are no more 'real' than any of the ones in Finding Nemo. But the point is that, if an animated film wishes to show animated characters, not in the guise of fishes or superheroes, but normal, everyday humans* dealing with normal, everyday issues, whereas previously the possibility of that being acceptable by the general audience would have been small, it now stands a greater chance of actually being embraced. Again, I'm not saying that The Incredibles itself is 'real' in every way, but it is more 'real' than Finding Nemo or any CGI has been, and in terms of portraying actual 'real' human beings, it's the closest we've come in a successful animated film. The Incredibles is at its worst when it beckons back to that realm of fantasy. In other words, as soon as the film shifts its attention to the island. That's the reason why I don't consider the film A material (I gave it A-). But that shouldn't dismiss the first part, which is filled with that kind of 'real' representation that I have been talking about. The idea that this exapnds the field of successful animation to include films dealing with humans in a human environment makes me very excited.


*This is not to suggest that they will look exactly like human beings; the idea is that the animated film acknowledges that the characters that it presents are meant to be human beings, and not, say, an ogre or a puppet or a lion.


Note: I'm putting a great emphasis on general audience acceptance, and I think that it's necessary that a film is embraced by such an audience, because that's the only way it can become a trendsetter. Animation is expensive, and the performance of Iron Giant and Spirited Away as not encouraging, to say the least. The Incredibles' $240m, however is. On the other side, Shark Tale's $160m is utterly depressing. It shows that if you can package garbage in the form of cute animals, it will likely sell well no matter what.

As Xia said, animation doesn't even do under consideration now that it has its own category. Too bad, for its genre, it is excellent.

The Aviator: B
Corporation, The: C-
Fahrenheit 9/11: B+
Finding Neverland: B+
Hero: C-
Hotel Rwanda: B+
House of Flying Daggers: C+
The Incredibles: A-
Manchurian Candidate (2004): A-/B+
National Treasure: B-
OUTFOXED: A-
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: B-

These are all of this years films I've reviewed and I'll add A- for eternal sunshine and B for Saved, and so you can see that I too thought Incredibles was one of the best movies this year (only four have touched A range). That being said, its a lovely dream, and they say that if you dream a dream more than once, its bound to come true...but they lied.

A best picture nomination for The Incredibles is about as likely as Holly Hunter being nominated for best actress. I think it's one of her best performances, but it won't happen of course.

A best picture nomination for The Incredibles is about as likely as Holly Hunter being nominated for best actress. I think it's one of her best performances, but it won't happen of course.

I just finally saw The Incredibles not 20 minutes ago!

I wasn't too impressed.
Now grant that for some reason I was really tired and I was finding it really hard to stay awake, I still thought it wasn't that awesome even if I wasn't in focus some of the parts.
I thought it was good, but for the first time I was right about PIXAR, they didn't top their previous picture.

I was actually more underwhelmed at the drama aspect of it than the entire movie itself. To me, it felt a bit forced in the midst of an almost ordinary animated flick. I really don't see how much more special this was than Finding Nemo or Monsters Inc. both of which had stronger emotional impacts on me.

I'm rootin for shrek 2 all the way and I dream it will win, though it seems an improbability now.

Just because something is good doesn't mean it will get nominated. Oscars are about the politics of Hollywood as much as anything else, which is why films that are reviewed greatly don't always get nominated and ones that get mediocre reviews can still get nominated.

I don't have Rotten Tomatoes open before me, but two of the highest rated filme of the year were Spiderman 2 and Incredibles, both over 95% or so. (Closer, meanwhile, is in the 70% area). Notice that hardly of the Oscar prediction sites are listing two of the top films of the year.

It's all politics.

Finding Nemo was at 99% and Toy Story was at 100% (RT's best-reviewed movie ever) and yet none of them was rewarded (aside of Nemo winning Best Animated)

I don't think it The Incredibles should be nominated, even if it could, It was good but Finding Nemo was much better. I hope Shrek 2 wins Best Animated movie, I liked it better.

Animated films got their own best movie catagory leave well enough alone.

TI vs Shrek2 for best animated feature GO Shrek!! hehe

That logic(less) can be given to foreign films and documentaries as well.

It would be nice seeing Pixar getting their long-overdue nomination for BP, but it obviously won't happen. They need another movie with Toy Story 2's reviews, but a very weak year.