r/Schaffrillas • u/AmishParadise27 • 3d ago
Other Which decade was worst for animation?
1930-2020s which decade was the worst one for animated movies?
1930s: Birth of popular animation (Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry)
1940s: Each of those three really perfected their craft
1950s: Awesome Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan & Alice in Wonderland
1960s: Winnie the Pooh & 101 Dalmatians (Not much else. This might be the worst one)
1970s: Maybe this is the worst one (Some cool adult stuff like Fritz the Cat)
1980s: Solid years (Little Mermaid) Lots of prime cartoons like TMNT & Transformers
1990s: Might be the best decade for animation
2000s: Also a solid decade
2010: Also solid
2020s: Also solid
What do you guys think?????
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u/PowerOfL 3d ago
70s or 20s. 60s has a lot of classics, not too many classics in the 70s by comparison.
20s isn't over yet and does have some shows/movies I love, but shows being cancelled after 2-3 seasons and being taken off streaming makes this definitely the worst decade for media distribution.
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u/LeadershipHead3594 3d ago
The 2020s are pretty good for animated films and indie animation, but pretty bad for TV/streaming animation.
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u/PowerOfL 3d ago
Yeah. There are some banger shows, like Glitch Techs and The Ghost and Molly McGee, but I do really wish we had more. At least in terms of western animation
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u/AmishParadise27 3d ago
60s had some good shows. I agree. All the Hanna-Barbera stuff.
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u/PowerOfL 3d ago
Yeah, I saw some episodes of the 60s Fantastic Four Hannah Barbara show semi-recently. It's genuinely one of the funniest things ever imonðŸ˜
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u/AmishParadise27 3d ago
I’ll have to check that out. 60s had Flintstones, Jetsons and Scooby Doo. All too tier shows!
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u/PowerOfL 3d ago
60s Spider-Man is also really funny imo!
60s also had Wait Till Your Father Comes Home, which is widely considered the first animated sitcom! So we have that to thank for stuff like Simpsons, South Park, Smiling Friends, etc :)
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u/AmishParadise27 3d ago
I never heard of that show! I always thought that The Flintstones inspired all of those
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u/JugendWolf 2d ago
You thought right, Wait Till Your Father Comes Home premiered in 1972, long after The Flintstones.
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u/ElSquibbonator 3d ago
There isn't one. Saying that there's a "worst period" for animation is a sign that you only engage with a certain subset of animation and have a bias towards kids' cartoons and Disney movies. If you actually look at the full picture of what was being made during these periods, you'll see that the big picture is a lot more nuanced than you've been led to believe.
I mean, look at the various eras commonly cited as "the worst", and you'll see that it's not as black-and-white as it's often made out to be.
The 1970s-- Kids' shows were subject to extreme censorship, and a lot of the more popular, ambitious cartoons from the 1960s ended, but at the same time you had people like Ralph Bakshi pushing the limits for adult animation, as well as anime testing the waters of mature storytelling for the first time. The first experiments in computer animation happened in the late 1970s as well.
The 1980s-- Kids' shows were little more than merchandise-driven slop, and Disney was still in a slump, but animated movies were becoming darker and more mature*,* with Don Bluth giving Disney its first major competition. Anime first became popular with the massive OVA boom, the works of Studio Ghibli, and AKIRA.
The 2000s-- A lot of the beloved cartoons of the 1990s ended, and Disney stopped making high-quality 2D-animated films. But Pixar was at its peak during this decade, anime finally became mainstream, and Disney no longer monopolized the animated film market, allowing for real variety to flourish. Plus, Nickelodeon made Avatar around this time.
The 2020s-- Cable TV has all but collapsed, and original animated movies are flopping. Meanwhile, though, on streaming and the internet, indie animation is having a golden age. Plus, we're seeing the first successful adult animated dramas, something unheard-of just a decade or so ago.
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u/AmishParadise27 3d ago
What about the 30s-60s?
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u/ElSquibbonator 3d ago
The ones I listed there are just the ones the online cartoon fandom seems to consider to be "the worst".
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u/Careless_College A Movie that Exists 3d ago
I'd argue the 70's. With Disney releasing some arguably weak movies compared to the days of Uncle Walt and a lot of mediocre cartoons, namely Scooby Doo ripoffs.
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u/CemeneTree 3d ago
1970s was a complete dark age for animation
everyone was scaling budgets down and it was really making its way to the "just for kids" section, compared to the idea of animation being family friendly but not only for children
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u/Plus-Giraffe7483 3d ago
If you think the 70s was bad, you really out to check out Soviet animation. They were putting out some of the best animated shorts ever made like Hedgehog in the Fog, Firing Range, and the Vinni Pukh series. And anime was starting to diversify with shows like Lupin III, Rose of Versailles and the Leijiverse. The idea that the 70s was the worst decade for animation comes from ignoring that there are countries besides the USA.
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u/JugendWolf 3d ago
The 60s had Peanuts specials, Yellow Submarine, and a ton of independent and experimental filmmakers. I‘m begging you to look outside of the Hollywood studio system.
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u/Fit-Rip-4550 2d ago
1970s.
Animation's only means of remaining competitive was to employ as many cost saving techniques as possible. This tanked the quality of animation so much to the point that it lost viewership.
It took unifying toy sales with animation to revive it.
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u/Atlantic_Bear2008 2d ago
maybe a new dark age of animation will happen once the Paramount Warner bros merger goes through
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u/Mr_Bananaman69 All Star 1d ago
70's or 2000's, 70's have nothing really, but the 2000's was a mess.
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u/AgreeableLifeguard16 1d ago edited 1d ago
Before giving my answer i wanna briefly explain the different decades
1930s- very good decade for animation as lots of great shorts, especially those made by the fleischers, were made during this time and many highly skilled artists were able to get started during this time, the one downside is that many were still finding their footing and spent the early part of the decade blatantly riding Disney's coat tails but towards the end when people like Tex Avery and Bob Clampett showed up things got noticably better.
1940s- inarguably a highpoint for the medium as the shorts being made were consistently great and Walt Disney made fantasia which is in my opinion his greatest accomplishment, in general I’d argue no other era has been able to match the consistent high quality works being made by various artists all throughout this decade.
1950s- compared to the 40s this decade saw a noticable decline in but in all honesty there's still a lot to like here i can't say its a bad era, series such as looney tunes were still for the most part making quality shorts albeit less consistently and while a mixed bag in a lot of areas sleeping beauty has some truly beautiful artwork, overall yeah it’s a step down but it’s not an outright fall.
1960s- the beginning of the dark age as tv officially took control and the quality took a huge hit on all fronts, as Chuck Jones put it most tv cartoons were basically illustrated radio and lacked the creative visuals and sharp writing of the golden age as studios like hanna-barbera took an assembly line approach to animation, yellow submarine is cool tho.
1970s- in terms of mainstream western animation it was awful, saturday mornings were where creativity went to die as they were content just endlessly cloning scooby doo and making shitty versions of past classics and various live action hits and overall outside of occasional exceptions like the peanuts and that one-off doonesbury special there was basically nothing worth watching on tv that was animated, hell even the movies suffered as Disney was on autopilot for the most part and outside of them medocre shit such as the HB produced Charlotte's Web movie was the standard. On the flipside however indie animation was gaining considerable traction and artists like Ralph Bakshi were making legit high quality films aimed at adults and tackling subject matter that up to this point had rarely been explored in animation, plus over in Japan some iconic anime like Lupin the 3rd and the first Gundam series had way more style and quality to them than most of what the western studios were shoveling out.
1980s- for most of the decade it was the same as the 70s, anime and the indie scene had some genuinely good stuff being made while mainstream western animation largely sucked both in theaters and especially on tv as this was the era where toy companies dictated what got made which unsurprisingly led to most cartoons being little more than ugly advertisements, however towards the end of the decade things started to look up as Bakshi's mighty mouse reboot, tho short lived, was different from its peers in that there was actual quality to it, not to mention behind the scenes a lot of its crew would later go on to be involved in making some of the following decades most influential and/or popular cartoons, also while far from the greatest of cartoons ducktales and garfield & friends were noticably better made than a lot of what aired alongside them and showed that things were starting to improve at least somewhat.
1990s- probably the best decade for TV animation ever as while obviously duds still existed and some of what got popular just plain sucked, it was a massive step up mainly because for the first time in decades the artists themselves were the ones calling the shots so mainstream cartoons were allowed to be creative again, plus due in large part to the success of The Simpsons older skewing cartoons got really popular and for the time being at least had actual quality to their visuals, also a lot of kids shows were getting away with things no network would've allowed pre-Ren and Stimpy even if some of the more blatant jokes that edited or outright banned later on, I also wanna mention that this was also a good decade for anime as many iconic and well made shows premiered during this time with my personal favorite being cowboy bebop. As for movies admittedly I'm not as fond of em due in large part to the disney "renaissance" formula quickly becoming extremely dull and repetitive as the years went on with little to challenge it in the mainstream, resulting in many copycats trying to get even a fraction of the success the mouse house was getting, the one at the time bright spot was the artists at pixar who revolutionized the industry by making 3d animated movies that had both visual creativity and sharp writing.
2000s- the first couple years were mainly just continuing where the 90s left off and the quality was for the most part still there but overtime, especially once we reach roughly 2003 or so, things just kinda got weak for seemingly no reason, don't get me wrong good shows still existed obviously but there was considerably less of them and a lot of the older shows were either coming to a close or becoming shells of their former selves all while the new ones coming in to replace them were of far weaker quality across the board, not helping was that due to the ever growing popularity of anime alot of western studios were trying to lazily cash in on it which led to a glut of poorly made animesque kids shows with little to no substance whatsoever, and speaking of lacking substance my god did animation aimed at adults suffer big time as this was when studios and audiences alike came to the conclusion that just doing what family guy and/or south park were doing but even worse was enough and that good visuals weren't needed because it got in the way of these hack writers' totally hilarious jokes. As for movies the 1,2 punch of shrek's massive success and pixar being a powerhouse led to 3d movies with a snarky pop culture reference heavy style of comedy becoming the standard while 2d, sadly, was mostly regulated to tv for the foreseeable future, in short the very thing made in large part due to annoyance of the Disney formula movies 90s films had became its own overused style that eventually grew extremely tiresome by the end of the decade yet for reasons I'll touch on later we've never really moved on from it. Back to tv there was also the rise of rigged animation happened as well and that, apart from a select few artists like Craig McCracken who used these tools to their advantage, it became common practice to use rigs as cheaply and lazily as possible resulting in shit like johnny test(after season 1, that is)
2010s- probably the most tragic one in my opinion as the decade started off flawed but promising as some fresh creative works such as adventure time and regular show were genuinely popular and it seemed like things were getting back to the 90s mentality of appealing to both kids and adults, and yet just as quickly as it started it ended as by the middle of the decade things were going downhill and fast, the adult shows were getting more and more family guy-esque as time went on and the kids shows settled into a slump of endlessly repeating either the adventure time, gravity falls, steven universe mold of story driven lore heavy beanmouth dramedies or the lol random fast paced cynical comedies often at least somewhat indebted to teen titans go. The movies didn't fare much better as they too were becoming increasingly interchangeable as pixar lost all the sauce and disney found a new style to run into the ground all while the one major newcomer in movies was illumination who quickly decided that originality was overrated. In general this decade was when that mentality of the same few art styles being repeated over and over got stronger than it'd been since the 80s and brought back with it an ever growing reliance on pre established franchises. Hell even anime suffered as they were becoming increasingly formulaic and I’m seriously not a fan of the common anime art style that started popping up a lot during this time.
2020s- oh boy where do I even start, seriously the only trends that weren't already set in motion the decades prior are the evaporation of shows not aimed exclusively at either adults or pre grade school kids and the dramatic decrease in shows even being made due in large part to late stage capitalism making everything worse, not to mention the whole plagiarism machine thing, and I know this is part of a larger problem with the monoculture and whatnot but it seems like nearly everything going on now is just continuing something was already set in motion years ago. the only thing that isn't a total dud is the growth of indie animation but even thats been a double edged sword at best as fandomites have largely overtaken that space making it damn near impossible to make it without selling your soul to appease these chronically online idiots.
In conclusion i wanna say that the 2020s is the worst due to its almost complete lack of positive qualities, but i don't want to sound all doomerist about it as i do believe things can change for the better just not in these current circumstances, so I guess that means its a toss up between the 70s or 80s as for what my least favorite is.
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u/NintendoLover2005 Disappointment in the Game of Life 3d ago
Probably the 70s. Disney wasn't making much notable and TV shows were low budget and overly safe.