Oscars: “Best Animated Feature”, is it a race? Or another easy win for Pixar?

The 93 Academy Award ceremony is happening this 26 of April, and predictions are in for who wins it.

This year nominees are: Soul, Wolfwalkers, Onward, Over The Moon, and A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmaggedon.

The least likely out of the five is probably Shaun the Sheep: Farmaggedon, a sequel produced by Aardman Animations, this nominee is not likely to receive the award as stop motion has not been kindly looked on by the big ceremonies. Last year's Missing Link's win in the Golden Globe was a surprise that is unlikely to repeat itself again, not after Soul already has taken the win for this year's Golden Globes. Not to mention, that sequels are rarely given any attention if they aren't attached to an already popular franchise, e.g. Toy Story.

After that we have: Over The Moon, this film produced by Chinese based animation company: Pearl Studio, would be a nice surprise to have as a winner. The movie itself has everything in its pocket to be an actual winner: heartfelt story, good message, and mostly made by an international team. However, the movie was not planned for a theatrical release, and rather just given to Netflix. The Academy Award has to still get used to direct to stream movies, and with last year 3 Netflix nominees getting overshadowed by Pixar (again), this year does not feel any different.

Then: Onward, as the only mainstream movie to have theatrical release before the COVID breakthrough, had to be nominated. The story is great and the characters as well, but the movie was not as good or popular as previous Disney's original releases and it got immediately forgotten for Disney's next release: Soul.

With that said, we can see now why the idea of this year being a race comes into play, as the two other nominees are: Wolfwalkers and Soul.

Wolfwalkers is a beautiful 2d animated film, by Cartoon Saloon. Cartoon Saloon has already been nominated for 3 awards. In 2009 for The Secret of Kells, 2014 for Song of the Sea, and in 2017 for The Breadwinner. Most of the time, Cartoon Saloon lost because of heavy competition, like the case in 2009 and 2014. However, if we compare this year nominees to 2017, the Breadwinner (Cartoon Saloon) was competing against an independent stop motion movie (Loving Vincent-Shaun The Sheep), a movie with a popular name/studio (Boss Baby-Onward), a movie with international themes and a good heart (Ferdinand-Over The Moon) and an original Pixar film (Coco-Soul). In 2017 Pixar won because the movie was: a great movie, which in deep themes and remaining fun for the family. Meanwhile, even if the Breadwinner was amazing, it was just the independent film to have on the list.

This year will be no different.

Many news outlets like Variety and Techradar are already putting their foot down to say that Soul is probably going to be the 10th win for Pixar, and 14th win for Disney as a whole. This prediction had been built not only because Soul is a magnificent movie, which in its own right deserves the award, but because it is Pixar, it would be rare for them not to win.

Pixar, in the 20 years of this award, has won half of the and has only lost three times.

First time: Monsters Inc (2001). This was actually the first loss for Pixar and their first nomination. This came at a time where the academy just started to see the value in Animated Films and having its own category. So, Shrek being an experimental movie that made satire of the fairytale trope, represented the new 2000's experimental era of animation.

Second Time: Cars (2006). Cars lost because Happy Feet had used advanced animation technology that made it look even more realistic, and had a strong (even if too on the nose) message of activism in the story. Compared to that, Cars was not a very strong contender.

Third time: The Incredibles 2 (2018). The Incredibles losing was actually a surprise, after all, the sequel had been anticipated for almost 15 years, however Spiderman into the Spiderverse winning was not a surprise: it had a very recognisable name and brand (Spiderman and Marvel), and it had spectacular animation, as well as a strong story.

This year will not become Pixar's fourth lost, because Wolfwalkers what gains in the beautiful animation and amazing story, lacks in its brand name. Cartoon Saloon even if nominated for multiple Oscars still stands as an independent animation studio, and it standing as a 2d animated film makes it even harder to win, the last traditional animation movie was Spirited Away (2001) in 2002.

Pixar's Soul deserves the win, it has beautiful animation, a striking story and an experimental and alternative plot that could encourage other mainstream animated studios to be brave and make movies that deal with deep themes. But Soul, winning, will only help Pixar's already existing fame increase, meanwhile, studios like Cartoon Saloon, Pearl, and Aardman will not be taken as seriously or even acknowledged by Hollywood.