Sorta a mixed bag there but I like the mention of Fire & Ice and Watership Down. Watership Down really was overshadowed as a classic film for those who had not read the book. It's a great one but it would have looked greater had Don Bluth picked it up. Unfortunately, he was still working with Disney during the production if I recall.
Shrek always felt to me like Dreamworks' first and last great animated film. It's the single CG animated movie that I've gone as far as buying the blu-ray collector's set of. Personally, I despise animation being run entirely with computer without any traditional method. My wife showed me Shrek some 20-years after it came out and I said, "they got it!" I mean, the spirit of what makes a great animated film was all there and it was original. No one else had this story and it was done right. I believe this final version was much better than the earlier planned version with Chris Farley which likely would have been hand drawn. Now the sequels...2 and 4 were good. 3...really didn't move me. Thanks for posting this.My favourite animated movie is Shrek because it has a little bit of something for everybody. From humour, action, romance, adult references and a solid third act, it's the complete package when it comes to covering all the audience needs. I'm referring to Western animation and not specifically efforts from Japan and other countries as those would have a separate category in my opinion.
Watership Down certainly would have looked better and smoother with Don Bluth at the helm but I personally think it probably would have lost a lot of it's charm. It most likely wouldn't have featured blood and some one the characters wouldn't have looked as disgusting. The movie Plague Dogs has a very similar animation style. I'm not sure if the particular style has a specific name but many things about both movies have a very realistic, brutal and dreary feel to them even in scenes that are portraying something beautiful. Something that other animation studios didn't do at the time as far as I'm aware.
Bluth's animators weren't shy on blood (which is shown a couple times in Secret of NIHM) but agreed that the final product we have is great. The three movies I'd put into that category as 'real' (exuding Bakshi films which were known for being targeted for adults) would be: Watership Down, The Plague Dogs and The Last Unicorn. Heck, check out the different animator segments in the Garfield: His 9-Lives movie...it wasn't for kids either and had some incredible animation beyond the general Phil Roman / Lee Mendleson style (which does appear in a few segments)
The correct answer.
Aside from the stories...Bluth was willing to push his teams to give Disney-level animation output but target a much broader audience. He dove further in fantasy and realism than 80's Disney wanted. The impossible happened too. He beat Disney and possibly put the pressure on them which started their Renaissance after the Land Before Time crushed Oliver & Company at the box office. He hit a snag after All Dogs Go to Heaven and his films became more mediocre in the 90's. But his team (despite encounter multiple financial issues) in the 80's was peak for that decade.
Don Bluth's original Trilogy of movies that went WAY harder than they needed to.
I get that he and his team wanted to go after Disney, but Disney in the 80's (until Great Mouse Detective) wasn't exactly releasing anything that impressive.
These three movies have SOUL. Each of them in their own way being far more gut wrenching than they needed to be, but was exactly what they needed to give them that drive.
Bluth's animation style has something spectacularly whimsical about it. Just the way he does water, lighting, shadow and particles is still unmatched in terms of 2D. Characters are so expressive that silent scenes can be felt by face alone.
Plus Bluth knows how to draw and animated a fat woman and I have to give him props for that
I don't think there is a better animated movie at portraying what a mother would go through for her children than the secret of NIHM and how fucked up NIHM itself was. Admittedly I haven't seen this one in a while and I need to rewatch it.
My god, I STILL get chills when Fievel finally reunits with his family just because of every moment they don't meet up but are literal feet away. It killed me as a kid when his family finally saw he was alive only for him to fall into a pit. He lived, but they weren't aware and you can feel that.
Land Before Time made me numb to the death in Lion King cause you can't top the death of Littlefoot's mom. God as she spoke to him you can here the life fading from her the actress did way too well. The difficulty of their journey could be felt. The absolute defeat when the bigger dinosaurs stole their food in that one scene still pisses me off. The fuckers ran through a damn mountain wall to steal it and they just left. I hated every moment of that scene.
Bluth is a lot like George Lucas in that left unchecked the story of his movies tend to go off the handle. The original 3 from the 80s were heavily supervised by Spielberg who dropped Bluth's team after Land Before Time, which is why things felt off with All Dogs go to Heaven and onward (though I still enjoy that movie and Rockadoodle).
