Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2015

Animated Movies Throughout the Years: 2015

Note: Walt Disney Animation Studios did not release a single film this year.

In January, George Lucas decided to take another shot at making an animated movie with the ill-received Strange Magic, based on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. Despite being one of the newer animated films in the market, Strange Magic wasn't released on Blu-Ray.

In February, SpongeBob SquarePants returned to the big screen with The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. Rotten Tomatoes stated that "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water won't win over many viewers who aren't fans of the show, but for the converted, it's another colorful burst of manic fun." Despite being marketed as a CG film, Sponge Out of Water is actually primarily 2D animated with mixed mediums. There’s even a stop-motion dolphin voiced by Matt Berry!

In March, DreamWorks released their only animated movie for 2015, Home. While it was successful at the box-office, the film got mixed to negative reviews.

In June, Pixar made their triumphant comeback to quality filmmaking with Inside Out. The film got excellent reviews, grossed over 857 million dollars worldwide at the box-office, and rightfully won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

In July, the insanely popular banana-loving Twinkies made their feature-film debut with Minions. The film was rather disappointing to many, but managed to gross over a BILLION dollars worldwide!

In August, Aardman released their sixth feature film Shaun the Sheep, based on the TV series of the same name. The film got really good reviews and even got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. However, it did very poorly at the American box-office.

Also released in August was the internationally produced animated film The Prophet, based on the book by Kahlil Gibran. It was directed by Roger Allers, who was also the co-director of The Lion King.

There were two animated movies released in September. The first was the adult-oriented stop-motion film Anomalisa, in which it was shown at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The film also got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Inside Out. Anomalisa would have a wide release in December that year.

Also released in September was a return to the haunted hotel in Hotel Transylvania 2. The film got slightly better reviews than Hotel Transylvania 1, and somehow managed to win the KCA for Best Animated Feature over Inside Out and The Peanuts Movie. Perhaps it was because of the introduction of Kakie, a parody of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, that kids got intrigued in. There’s also a vampire that bears a strong resemblance to Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.

On November 6th, after 35 long years, the beloved comic strip characters of Charles Schulz returned to the big screen in Blue Sky's 10th animated film, The Peanuts Movie. It became Blue Sky Studios' best-reviewed movie to date, with an impressive rating of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes.

And finally, on November 25th, Pixar released their 16th feature film The Good Dinosaur. Unfortunately, it would be a box-office flop; The film had to compete against Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 at the box-office. 'Good Dinosaur' also got weaker reviews than previous Pixar films, and one critic even went as far as calling it one of Pixar's least original films. 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 2016, in which Disney released two different but still amazing animated films, Pixar went back to the big blue with Finding Dory, Laika took stop-motion animation to new heights with Kubo and the Two Strings, and DreamWorks released the overshadowed Kung Fu Panda 3.