Will Disney/Pixar Learn From Their Best Animated Feature Losses?

The 98th Academy Awards happened, and to nobody’s surprise, KPop Demon Hunters, the biggest animated film of last year and one of the biggest films of 2025, won Best Animated Feature. It not only gave Netflix their second win in this category; it also gave Sony Pictures Animation another win under their belt. Obviously, there were other well-deserved victories for KPop like the first animated film with a Korean cast to win Best Animated Feature, “Golden” winning Best Original Song, and many others. 

I would have loved to have seen Little Amelie or the Character of Rain win, but KPop deserved it for how much of an impression it left last year, and how most if not every studio will try to learn from its victories, but will probably miss the point entirely. What was also significant is that Disney/Pixar have lost the award category for the 4th consecutive year. Sure, they have won other awards in these past four years, but for the one that everyone cares about the most, they haven’t won an Oscar since 2021. Some folks have taken advantage of this losing streak to talk down to the many artists and creatives who are trying their best to make a movie under the tight restraints of Disney/Pixar. As usual, anyone harassing the artists, writers, directors, and animators who made a movie that they didn’t like deserves to be called out, perhaps even receiving a lifetime ban from the internet. Instead of the workers getting the blame for how the films turn out, as always, it should be the nameless execs’ studio noting’ projects to death because a flawed and completely inefficient algorithm told them to. Or maybe their AI girlfriend did. 

Let’s dive into this subject, because there is a topic worthy of discussion: what Disney/Pixar could and absolutely should take away from this debacle. For those curious, since its inclusion in the Oscars, there have been 26 Best Animated Feature winners. Out of those 26, Disney/Pixar has only won 15 of them. Their longest winning streak was from 2012, when they won with Brave, a Pixar film whose original vision was altered and its director removed, becoming an entirely different, watered-down movie that was considered the worst film of the nominees that year, to 2017, when they won with Coco. That streak of wins, along with their 2007-2010 streak with Ratatouille, WALL-E, UP, and Toy Story 3, has done anything but prepare film and animation fans for the Oscars and other award groups that seem biased towards Disney/Pixar to face the current situation. Understandably, you would think that, since even with the small sprinkling of foreign animated features nominated, like Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis, Chico & Rita, and Ernest & Celestine, to name a few, the voters, before the big shakeup of membership from 2017-now, tended to go to Disney/Pixar, no matter how good or bad the movie was. 2018 was less of a tipping point when Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won Best Animated Feature, and more of a testing round for a voting body that could begin not automatically giving the award to Disney/Pixar. Unfortunately, for anyone hopeful for change, they would have to wait three years for a non-Disney/Pixar animated feature to win the award. 

So, what changed? Outside of a different voting body than those previous years, why did more diverse films start winning?  And why did it become more of a trend for Disney/Pixar to lose the award that they would normally “win by default”? Let’s be really honest here, Disney/Pixar, on a creative level right now, aren’t in a good spot. With the multitude of articles about the nightmare production cycles in Disney/Pixar films, the fact that their line-up from 2022 – now has been extremely mixed in reception and box office success (or lack of box office success, since Disney forced Pixar’s films to be released on Disney+). Rarely were their films both critically acclaimed or box office smashes. Films like Wish, intended to be the crowning jewel of Disney’s 100th year celebration, only to result in a film with a lackluster story, characters, mediocre songs, and references and tributes to previous Disney movies that felt cheap and landed flat, were total disasters. While Moana 2 was a financial hit, it was because of elements outside of its rushed, messy production, having started as a limited series, then being forced into a movie. 

Whether it’s one studio or the other, the executives in power are hampering the creative ambitions of filmmakers, or doing something as petulant and awful as wanting to cut the queer elements of films like Inside Out 2 and Elio. 2021 can now be seen as the last gasp for Disney to win an Oscar, since that was the year when their three films, Raya and the Last Dragon, Pixar’s Luca, and Encanto were nominated, with Encanto getting a second life on streaming that made it blow up in popularity. Even when it was a film that was loved, the voting body and the public in general chose something else. It’s because, even when Disney/Pixar put out a film people liked or enjoyed enough to make them box office hits, the executives at these two companies are limiting the full potential of these movies. Films like Turning Red and Hoppers somehow escaped those pitfalls with minimal damage done to them, but the lack of trust or social awareness of these executives have hurt films like Inside Out 2 and Elio to a point where, at the very least, certain audiences, critics, and awards voters do not want to reward these films for executive interference. This lack of trust in their writers, artists, directors, and overall creatives, or, in the recent situation with Pete Docter, greenlighting ideas that weren’t cohesive or fleshed out enough, is a real problem for the studio giants.

Obviously, a lot of these problems could be handled by a multitude of fixes that the studios won’t put into action, because they need that continual financial profitability. You need to let creatives cook. Give them time to fully flesh out the ideas, stop thinking queer people or queer romances is some deeply complicated topic that will make parents worry about how their kids will handle it, and, for the love of everything that is golden, take risks! 

Companies like Disney/Pixar act like they are having to fit themselves into boxes because of making “products aimed at families” when everyone else is evolving and/or trying out different approaches to crafting animated experiences. Disney/Pixar, on the other hand, are fumbling the ball with very few lasting successes. Obviously, it would be better if Disney/Pixar would stop trying to cater to conservative reactionaries and grifters who won’t like their stuff even if they make the most boring ‘white people slop’. Art is about evoking emotions and experiences, leaving lasting impressions, and maybe leaving you with a changed worldview or thinking about certain important topics. Will Disney/Pixar learn these lessons as more interest is shown towards studios working in the same creative environment, or films, from overseas productions, like Arco and Little Amelie? I hope so. I don’t want to see any studio creatives get their ambitions hampered, unless it is necessary, and not because some executive is a crotchety out-of-touch homophobic dirtbag who couldn’t handle Inside Out 2 having a possibly queer human lead. 

Audiences can handle more nuanced or complicated thematic elements in animation, and talking down to them, even if those audiences need or want something lighter weight, only makes folks turn on you. They will look for something else, and when other studios or companies are offering something that you aren’t, then you either adapt or grow up, or you fall behind, until you reach the point where the Disney/Pixar brand recognition can’t even save you. What Disney/Pixar needs to do is learn from how Turning Red and Hoppers succeeded and how the films that won the major awards, and the growing interest in animation from overseas, are captivating audiences.