How Did 2D Animation Die Out?

by Nicholas Lemieux

In the media community over the last few years, a question commonly brought up is: whatever happened to 2D animated movies? Once a major powerhouse in the film industry in the 90’s, today, outside of countries such as Japan, 2D animation in films and theatres is nowhere to be seen, with CGI having become the more prominent animation software. My article today will examine the downfall of 2D animation, my personal theory as to how exactly it occurred and also the theoretical possibility over whether or not it could possibly return to theatres in the near future.

Throughout the 90’s, hand-drawn films were the norm, with the Disney Renaissance at its highest peak producing hit after hit 2D films. Imitators tried to compete but could not compare. Several non-Disney films at the time, such as Quest for Camelot and Thumbelina, were all simply seen as Disney knock-offs and quickly bombed at the box office. Meanwhile, in the animation industry of TV, Nickelodeon was dominating with its brand new show Rugrats. Similar to The Simpsons or SpongeBob today, Rugrats was a massive phenomenon in the 90’s, complete with tons of publicity and merchandising. 

Capitalising on the show’s immense success, Nickelodeon tried its own hand at the film industry with 1998’s Rugrats: The Movie. This movie became the first animated film not made by Disney to gross over $100 million worldwide. Considering how much cheaper the film’s budget, $28 million, was when compared to Disney’s Mulan that year, $70 million, Rugrats: The Movie was minor financial risk returning a massive profit at the box office. As is so common in Hollywood show business, once an all-original product becomes success, many imitators will soon arise and try to cash in on the trend. After all, why try to beat Disney at their own game, putting tons of time, effort and money into your own original work, when you could just go for a simpler option of using a recognizable brand, such as for example beefing up a TV-quality cartoon for the big screen.

Following the success of Rugrats, nearly every 2D animated TV show was getting adapted to theatres. Pokémon, SpongeBob, Powerpuff Girls, South Park, Yu-Gi-Oh, two additional Rugrats sequels, the list goes on. From 1998 to 2004, 15 of these kinds of movies were released all in the span of 6 years. The quality of these movies ranged depending upon whatever effort was put into them. Some of these movies had careful input from their respective creators trying to make an enjoyable viewing experience for fans of the shows, such as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Others were simply cheap direct-to-video TV films hastily dropped off in cinemas, such as the rather ironically named Doug’s 1st Movie. As this trend of TV movies slowly started to run out of steam, so too did the big-time dedicated hand-drawn films such as Disney.  The Disney Renaissance had ended at the dawn of the millennium, and several of their more recent films had heavily bombed. Think of your average movie goer who had been constantly scorned by these cheap TV movies in theatres. How were they to know which of these 2D films were actually made with effort and not to just rob audiences of their money?

With this trend of cheaply produced films corrupting the media, audiences needed to find a new brand which you could rely upon. Around this time during the early 2000’s, a brand new animation studio by the name of Pixar started to try their own hand in the animation film industry. Using a new animation software of 3D CGI animation, completely unlike other studios at the time, Pixar put actual time and effort into its work, releasing a new film every two years or so. Back then, the release of a new Pixar film was a major event. CGI of this quality you could not just get for free on TV and it was to this new kind of animation that the minds of the masses flocked to. 2D animation soon started dying out. Famous animation studios at the time such as Don Bluth Entertainment, famous for films like The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail, ended up bankrupt after the bombs of their final 2D films, whilst other studios, such as DreamWorks animation shut down their 2D department, following the bombs of their own films such as The Road to El Dorado and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and started to focus more on their CGI department, especially following the major success of their 2001 film Shrek. But if there was one animation studio particularly struggling during this time period, it was Disney.

The Disney brand had been badly tarnished. Once a major trend-setter for animation films in the 90’s, Disney had ironically found itself following the trend of these cheap TV movies and suffered badly for it. When people went to see a Disney film back then, they wanted to be blown away by its mass scale, not to be given some cheap media you could easily get for free on TV. This was a time after all when films such as Teacher’s Pet: The Movie sat in the same genre as films like Beauty and the Beast. After the critical and commercial failure of their final 2D film Home on the Range in 2004, Walt Disney Animation Studios officially shut down their 2D animation division and started focusing more on CGI projects. After a rough start, Disney finally found itself back to its high post during the 2010’s with hits like Tangled, Frozen and Zootopia, particularly after John Lasseter, head of Pixar, stepped in to give a hand with these CGI projects. But even though Disney had returned to its former glory, 2D animation, the very technique which launched Disney to where it is today, was no more.

Before completely shifting to CGI animation, Disney made a couple of final attempts to save the 2D media near the start of the 2010’s. 2009’s The Princess and the Frog was intended to be a throwback to the hand-drawn hits of the 90’s Disney Renaissance. Although it did fairly well financially and critically, it was nowhere near the money-making hit Disney intended it to be, seeing as though it came out at the wrong time, during the same period of James Cameron’s mega hit Avatar, and the wrong title, which Disney executives claimed turned many people away since they just wrote it off as a girly fairy tale adventure for kids, the latter reason being the primary reason as to why 2010’s Rapunzel was renamed Tangled. Disney’s final 2D film Winnie the Pooh all but sealed 2D’s fate, seeing as it was released the same weekend as the final Harry Potter film. Disney took these films as the final signs of 2D animation’s decline and since then Disney has never looked back, returning to a possible brand-new renaissance with its overly successful CGI projects.

2D animation may be dead in theatres but it still lives on in TV. Besides, 2D is still heavily involved during the production of CGI films, but looking at things today, even CGI may be coming to an end. Once a major visual effect in the 2000’s; CG today is not impressive, it’s just standard. 2002 15 years ago only had 2 CG films released. 2017 today has about 12 films released every month or so. Take into consideration, one of the biggest films of the 90’s was Independence Day, which at the time was heavily acclaimed for its extravagant special effects. When its sequel Independence Day: Resurgence was released 20 years later, it simply received mediocre reviews and profits seeing as though all action movies today have amazing visual effects. Just like special effects, there is nothing amazing about CGI today, and with technology constantly evolving and an increase in VR sets, who’s to say that in the next 10 years or so 4D animation won't rise and become the new animation medium?  

This is personally why I think that it’s about time that Disney and other animation studios like DreamWorks or Warner Bros should make a possible return to 2D animation, at least this time with a determined effort. After all, Disney’s still constantly selling merchandise of their older films, people are always writing articles on their 2D films (right now in fact),  live action remakes of these films constantly break box office records, parents constantly introduce their kids to these films they grew up with. Nostalgia of these films is at an all-time high, so why not bank on 2D again? With all of the films they’ve got coming up on their slate, surely Disney has at least one more room among their high-grossing Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars films for one more 2D film?