Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2010

Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2010

Note: Blue Sky Studios did not release a single film this year.

In March, DreamWorks kicked off the year with the crowd-pleasing How To Train Your Dragon. The film got very good reviews, with an impressive rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and spawned a sequel, a TV series, a Christmas special, and even an arena show with animatronic dragons! 'Dragons' also got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Toy Story 3.

In May, the fourth and final Shrek film, Shrek Forever After, was released. While it may seem like a good way to book-end the franchise, it was no match against Toy Story 3.

In June, the toys came back to town with Toy Story 3. It was the first animated movie to gross a billion dollars worldwide, got excellent reviews, and got the Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. TS3 also won the Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

July saw the release of Illumination Entertainment's first feature film, Despicable Me. Despite receiving mixed reviews, the film managed to gross over 500 million dollars on a modest 60 million dollar budget. Despicable Me also surprisingly won the KCA (Kid's Choice Award) for Best Animated Feature, beating out both How To Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3.

There were actually three animated movies released in September. The first was The Illusionist, from the creators of The Triplets of Belleville. It was shown at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, got favorable reviews, and got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.

The second was the mediocre CGI movie Alpha and Omega. While it wasn't that successful at the box-office, the film managed to spawn several direct-to-video sequels and a small fanbase.

The third was Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. This was the second film from Australian animation house Animal Logic (their first was Happy Feet). This film has gorgeous animation, but the story will confuse younger viewers. However, the film managed to win the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture.

On November 5th, PDI/DreamWorks released the rather underrated Megamind. It was about what would happen if the super-villain really did defeat the superhero. While the film did do well at the box-office and got favorable reviews, the film is somewhat forgotten nowadays

And finally, on November 24th, Disney released their 50th animated feature film Tangled, based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale Rapunzel. The film got great reviews, grossed over 590 million dollars worldwide at the box-office, and got the Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Too bad it didn't get the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, which I think it deserved. Thankfully, it won the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture and got a perfect 5-star rating on Common Sense Media. Well, that's all I have to say for this weeks Animated Movie Throughout the Years! Tune in next
week when we talk about animated movies from 2011, in which Pixar released their first critical disappointment with Cars 2, DreamWorks released two surprising Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature, Blue Sky went to Brazil with Rio, and Aardman and Sony collaborated to create the underrated Arthur Christmas.