Used to be that Disney was the, er, mouse of the walk when it came to animation. Studios would cringe at the thought of competing head-to-head with "The Lion King," "Tarzan" or the "Toy Story" series.
To a certain extent that's still true. Disney's latest big-screen offering, "Dinosaur," got a four-week head start before DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox and other studios unloaded their cinematic goods. But get a load of the competition. By the time summer slows to a steamy crawl, a record seven animated films will pop up in movie theaters, bringing fans a screenful of aliens, pocket monsters and chickens.
"Animation is really competing like live-action does," says John Canemaker, director of the animation program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. "It's actually a very healthy thing that's happening."
What's unique about this summer's roundup, say people in the industry, is the variety of animation styles being showcased. In the past, filmmakers would replicate Disney's winning combination of music and comedy to fashion a hit. (See, for example, 1997's "Anastasia" from 20th Century Fox.)
Now, even Disney is playing with that formula. "Dinosaur" features a seamless mixture of computer-generated monsters paired with live shots of the Australian coast, Florida swamps, and Venezuelan plains. "Titan A.E. (After Earth)" attempts to entice the teenage masses with a pop soundtrack arranged by No Doubt's producer Glen Ballard and vocal characterizations by hip young actors Drew Barrymore, Janeane Garofalo and Matt Damon.
"The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle," which opens today, tugs the nostalgia chord by pairing the hand-drawn moose and squirrel with actors Robert De Niro and Rene Russo. And "Chicken Run" not only boasts clay-animated fowl by the makers of "Wallace and Gromit," it's got Mel Gibson voicing one of the lead characters.
Why the sudden diversity of styles? Studios are finding, says Canemaker, that animated work is "competitive if they don't try to do what Disney does. That's where the danger comes in. Disney has perfected that turf. If you use interesting characters or a different technique or a different kind of content to the films . . . I think you have a better chance."
Animation seems to be everywhere these days. A renaissance is occurring on television, where choices range from "The Rugrats" to "The Simpsons" to "South Park." Fans can even tune into the Cartoon Network, where it's all animation, all the time.
About five years ago, that interest began filtering down into the movie business. Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and DreamWorks all began adding animation to their pipelines in an effort to garner "Lion King"-size grosses for themselves.
Some of these company's initial efforts followed the Disney formula a little too closely.
"In the past, it seemed like anytime anyone's tried to take on Disney, so to speak, it's been in a form of mimicry" says Eric Leighton, co-director of "Dinosaur," who earned an Academy Award nomination for his visual effects work in 1993's "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
Take (again) 20th Century Fox's "Anastasia," which was made by longtime creative partners Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, veterans of Disney's animation studio, who, as independent producers, were responsible for such 1980s works as "An American Tail" and "The Land Before Time." Even Goldman, who co-directed "Titan A.E." with Bluth, says that because of the style of "Anastasia," people who saw it were likely to say, " 'Oh, look, a Disney movie.' They wouldn't know the difference between the way we draw and the way Disney draws."
But as the box-office tallies of "The Rugrats Movie," "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" and "Beavis and Butt-head Do America" show, films that shun the Disney style can do quite well, particularly when they're spun off from well-known franchises. As a result, more and more studios are willing to rip up the old Disney blueprint — within reason, of course.
"It's still there to a certain extent," says Leighton, "but we're starting to see a little bit more escape from it, a little bit more playing around with different media and methods of storytelling."
Disney's own "Dinosaur" certainly falls into the new way of thinking. It's part of the studio's goal to add more live action/animation hybrids to its traditional animated fare, says Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation.
Not that Disney admits to being threatened by the increasing amount of animated product being sent to theaters. "It doesn't really effect me," says Schumacher, nonchalantly reeling off a list of animation hits by other studios. "They're not movies I want to make."
"Titan A.E." challenges animation in another way: by making a science-fiction film that appeals to young adults. The film pits humans against an alien race called the Drej. As in "Dinosaur," the earth takes a beating, getting blown up by the Drej soon after the film starts. For the rest of the movie, Damon and friends use their spaceship, the Titan, to elude their enemy and search for a safe haven.
The goal with "Titan A.E.," says Goldman, was to "make it an animated Indiana Jones — with that kind of pacing, that kind of jeopardy to your characters, that kind of sophistication and subtle humor."
The teen focus inspired the filmmakers to use more modern musical elements than are found in the typical animated flick. You'll find no Broadway-style show tunes here. Instead, viewers will hear Luscious Jackson and Lit, a fact that gives Goldman, 55, some misgivings.
"My argument has always been, you want to make a classical movie that lives forever," says Goldman, 55. "If you're going to put rock music into it, you definitely don't want your characters to sing it because it's going to have a five-year life and you'll never play it again.
"I'm hoping," he adds, that "this music does not date the movie."
But those are the chances animators will have to take as they push this art form into the 21st century.