Updated on December 10, 2021
It’s time once again to look at the 2016 Academy Award nominees for animation.
Best Animated Feature
- Anomalisa
- Boy and the World
- Inside Out
- Shaun the Sheep Movie
- When Marnie Was There
Best Animated Short Film
- Bear Story
- Prologue
- Sanjay’s Super Team
- We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
- World of Tomorrow
Best Original Screenplay
- Bridge of Spies
- Ex Machina
- Inside Out
- Spotlight
- Straight Outta Compton
Here’s the complete list of this year’s Oscar nominees.
I assume this year, “Inside Out” will be the feature winner by a mile, given its critical (and box office) success. Of note is that “The Good Dinosaur” wasn’t even nominated, nor was “The Peanuts Movie.” I assume the Oscar judges might’ve frowned on its being a spinoff of a comic (a la the various Marvel films). This despite the average Oscar judge’s age demographics meaning they should have nostalgia for “Peanuts,” unlike Legos or video games.
However, once again the major story in this year’s Oscar race is diversity. The nominees for best actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress are all Caucasian. A few other categories also aren’t overly diverse.
Online reaction’s appropriately livid about the whole thing. The hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite,” used during last year’s Oscars, has once more started trending on Twitter. Of course, I’ve also started hearing excuses being made by some, mostly of the “they hired the best people for the job” variety.
My reaction’s still the same as from last year—changing demographics, moviegoing audiences, and similar are proving Hollywood gatekeepers’ stereotypes to be false and based on flimsy pretenses. An award show that claims to be the “best of the industry” should actually reflect the entire industry, not just people that resemble the voters.
One point of interest that’s been raised is that Chris Rock will be the host of this year’s awards. While I expect him to make plenty of snarky and insightful jokes about the nominees, it doesn’t change the flaws in the award show’s nature. Rock might’ve been chosen in part to help shore up the award show’s declining TV ratings, which last year had hit a then-six-year-low.
Since I mostly care about the animation nominees (and best picture), that and the aforementioned problems make me suspect I’d be better off watching something else, and checking in occasionally on Twitter for amusing remarks/the results. Perhaps I should watch some of the Oscar snubbed films? Or some of the animation nominees, which ironically have more diversity than the live-action side of things? Some of this year’s animation nominees were produced in South America and Japan, while one of the shorts stars a cast of Indian characters.
