We have already had the actresses Oscar roundtables from The Hollywood Reporter. Today, I bring you a discussion about films that have not gotten much of say in the previous ones: animated films. I thought this was a pretty down year for animated films. Even the very popular and well regarded ones like The Lego Movie did nothing for me. That does not mean the creators talking is not interesting, and this roundtable features directors and producers of some of the most popular animated films of the year.
This panel includes Don Hall (director of Big Hero 6), Bonnie Arnold (producer of How to Train Your Dragon 2), Dan Lin (producer of The Lego Movie, Tomm Moore (director of Song of the Sea), Travis Knight (producer of The BoxTrolls and CEO of Laika), and Jorge Gutierrez (director of The Book of Life).
They discuss the phenomenon that was last year’s Frozen, the personal connections to all of their respective films, test audiences, and, the part I found most interesting, sequels. One sequel is represented on the panel (How to Train Your Dragon 2) and The Lego Movie has two planned sequels coming up. However, Travis Knight was not afraid to take a stand against sequels, going so far as to say they are “killing our industry” (I totally agree with him). He goes on to say:
But if you think about storytelling generally, your film should be the most significant, most poignant moment of your hero’s life. And so the sequel automatically is a diminishment of that. As artists, we have to look at it and say, “Is this good for us in the long run as an industry to continue to churn out these same things?” We get to an end of a trilogy, and then we restart that; we reboot it in another way. And at some point, we just become an echo chamber. Some stories are big and require a big canvas. And I think some stories should never have a sequel. And that’s why we will never do a sequel.
I think that is a very refreshing thing to hear from the CEO of a production company. Warner Bros.’ Dan Lin tries to fire back and talk about loving Indiana Jones growing up, to which Knight responds with “Yeah, but you know what? The Temple of Doom sucked. As did The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Last Crusade. They should have stopped at one film.” I disagree with The Last Crusade being terrible, but I agree with his point.
You can watch this exchange, as well as the rest of the roundtable, below.
