Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2001

Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2001

In February, the (at the time) popular TV series Recess made it to the big screen with Recess: School’s Out. Because there were no other big movies at the time, the film did quite well at the box-office.

In April, the Pokémon invaded the big screen AGAIN with the US release of Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown. A mysterious Pokémon called Unown, which are based on the Latin alphabet, capture an archeologist and turn him into the Legendary Pokémon Entei. Molly, the archeologist’s daughter, discovers Entei and the Unown and uses them to make as many wishes as she can, turning the building into a crystal palace. After Entei steals Ash’s mom Delia, he and his friends must embark on a journey to restore peace to Greenfield, Johto. This would be the last Pokémon movie to be distributed by Warner Bros in the US, as the next two movies would be distributed by Mirimax.

In May, DreamWorks and PDI hit their stride with Shrek. It did very well at the box-office, earning over 480 million dollars worldwide, got great reviews, spawned a multimedia franchise, and even won the very first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

June saw the release of Disney’s first sci-fi animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Despite having the same directors as Beauty and the Beast, the film tanked at the box-office and got mixed reviews. However, Atlantis has become a cult classic to some Disney fans.

In July, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hit theaters. It was the first full-length motion-capture movie. Motion-capture is a form of CGI that turns live-action humans into CGI characters. While it had ‘Final Fantasy’ in its title, the film had little to do with the popular swords-and-sorcery role-playing video games. In fact, this feels more like a knockoff of Titan AE, if you ask me. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within failed to excite the general public outside of game players, was a box-office failure, and caused production house Square Pictures to close their doors.

In August, from Warner Bros Animation came a film called Osmosis Jones. It was about what really happens inside the human body, in a (kinda) similar fashion to Inside Out. Unfortunately, the film tanked at the box-office, but it managed to spawn a TV series.

November saw the release of Pixar’s fourth feature film, Monsters Inc. Like previous Pixar films, Monsters Inc did very well at the box-office and got great reviews. Monsters Inc even got the first Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Shrek.

And finally, December saw the release of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Despite getting mixed reviews, the film did quite well at the box-office, and even got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature! The success of Jimmy Neutron lead to a TV series and another CGI movie co-produced with Nickelodeon, but that’s another story. That's all I have to say for this week's Animated Movies Throughout the Years! Tune in next
week when we talk about animated movies from 2002, in which Blue Sky made their feature film debut with Ice Age, Hayao Miyazaki made his mark with the US release of Spirited Away, DreamWorks released an animated horse film in which the animals don't talk, and Disney released two very different animated films with Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet.