Fox takes its shot at the animation crown with an Epic trailer.

Putting aside the unfortunate "comic relief" of Aziz Ansari's wisecracking slug, this looks quite promising.  The film looks gorgeous and there does seem to be an attempt to tell a mostly serious adventure story.  I missed the earlier, nearly wordless teaser from awhile back, but both previews use Snow Patrol's "What If the Storm Ends?" to rather powerful effect, similar to how well 20th Century Fox used Creed's "Higher" for their Titan A.E. campaign thirteen years ago.  I could do with a little less celebrity casting (Christoph Waltz is distracting as the heavy), but a female protagonist in a film like this is always a plus. Also a plus: Danny Elfman is doing the score.  What's curious is how much this feels like a Dreamworks film, in a good way of course.  For years every wise-cracking animal cartoon was accused of ripping off Dreamworks even as DWA made but a single such movie, Over the Hedge (arguably the best such film in that sub-genre), which came out right at the same time as the likes of Open Season, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and The Ant Bully.  This feels more like an attempt to capture the, well, epic adventure found in the Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, the Kung Fu Panda series, and Puss In Boots.  Still, say what you will about the diminishing creative returns for the Ice Age series, Rio was a genuinely entertaining and arguably original animated feature.  As I said a few weeks ago, the holes in Pixar's armor has allowed its competitors to come out in full force.  This seems to be Fox taking its best shot.  Epic opens May 24th, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson        

A kingdom with no ruler: The current animation landscape...

For the second year in a row, Pixar will not have anything close to the best animated film of the year and will not have the highest-grossing animated film of the year, not worldwide anyway. This is not a rant to bag on Pixar, as they will be fine (I'm optimistic that they are merely experiencing growing pains) and I'm more curious to examine what the animation field looks like without an uncontested leader. The critical disappointments of the likes of Cars 2 and Brave along with the lack of any guaranteed masterpieces for a little while puts Pixar in a position where it's now just 'one of the guys'.  Disney has been trying to reclaim its once-uncontested title, but it too now sits in a position where it's 'just one of the gang', as there is no guarantee that the likes of Wreck It Ralph will even out-gross The Lorax domestically (worldwide, Tangled was the first Disney toon to top $350 million since Tarzan back in 1999).  Critically, Disney has not had an out-and-out gem since Meet the Robinsons back in 2007, where it was matched by Pixar's Ratatouille.  So the question becomes what does the animation landscape look like when neither Disney or even Pixar is the uncontested king of the proverbial hill?  The answer is somewhat more exciting than you'd think.