I’ve recently had a discussion with my friends about the quality among animation movies and shows that are targeted towards kids around the age of 10. This came up when I believed most kids are more mature than we were when we were their age; however, my friends did not agree for the content that has been and will be created within animation kid movies and shows reflects the kids. I thought this because I have a younger sister who I consider to be mature for her age and have friends similar to her. However I changed my mind when my friends gave me examples of current content that have and will be put out.
Although kids currently have so much access to information due to technology, I believe there has been a bit of a digression among the story content created within animation.
Within these past few years movies, such as The Angry Birds Movie (2016), The Boss Baby (2017), Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018), and Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018), have came out. I have not seen many of these movies, but in my opinion it seems that the quality of the story is not as ambitious or creative as it used to be in my generation. Don’t get me wrong; there has been great animated movies that have come out these past years, but I believe majority of the content isn’t what it could be. Companies seem to be creating movies that aren’t great stories with meaningful concepts but rather for the comedy aspect, such as The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), Frozen 2 (2019), How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), and Minecraft (2019). As one can see many movie just seem like a “fun” movie to watch had a high gross or will have remakes done.
It seems that content being created are not taking ambitious or daring steps and are comfortable making a certain kind of story. This could also be said about animated kid shows. There are a good amount of amazing animated shows, such as Steven Universe, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Adventure Time; however, on the other side there’s shows, such as Teen Titans Go!, Powerpuff Girls (reboot), and Ben 10 (reboot).
There seems to be a trend of reboots and certain “XD RANDOM LOL humor and memes” comedy within current animated kid movies and shows because that’s what is appealing within current pop culture (Barnfield). Movies and shows are just being created like this due to the profit it will bring in. However, it is important that good stories are also being created. Kids are influenced by what they watch. Kids can take these content and unconsciously act upon or similarly to what they have watched; therefore, creators need to be careful about what they put out there. There definitely can be a way that appeals to kids with this current humor while talking about serious issues like The Amazing World of Gumball.
Bibliography
Barnfield, Oliver. “The Problems with Modern Animation.” Canyon Echoes, 20 Mar. 2018, canyonechoes.org/9682/showcase/the-problems-with-modern-animation/.
Mann, Court. “Court Mann: PG Films Have an Animation Problem – and Vice Versa.” DeseretNews.com, Deseret News, 22 Aug. 2018, www.deseretnews.com/article/900028956/court-mann-pg-films-have-an-animation-problem-and-vice-versa.html.