Twenty Years of AV – Animated Views

Wow. Twenty years. There’s no way we’ve been doing this for two decades! But it’s true. Animated Views turns 20 today.

Just last month, I noticed Google was celebrating their 25th anniversary, meaning they were just five years old when we started this site in 2003! Wikipedia was just two years old at that time. Facebook wouldn’t launch until the year after us, YouTube was two years later, and Twitter wouldn’t come on to the scene until our third anniversary.

Now, we’re obviously not on the level of those sites when it comes to readership! But being in the same breath as them when it comes to longevity is amazing to me.

As I like to say every anniversary, we started this site for one reason: we enjoy sharing our love of animation with fellow fans. But let’s be honest. The real reason we’re still here after all these years is because of you, our readers. So thank you all for giving us this opportunity!

To celebrate our 20th, we have a few fun features for you, with a new one going up each day.

Best Animated Year Poll: On our 10th anniversary we asked you to pick the best year for animation during our existence to date. Now it’s time to vote again, this time for the top annual slate of movies during our second decade.
Twenty Questions: Get to know more about the AV staff as we each answer twenty questions ranging from our site resume to our favorite movies.

A downside to being able to celebrate another milestone like this one is that we’ve kinda said all we can when it comes to the AV backstory. However, we were able to find another dusty bit of long lost content under some old boxes of studio cease and desist letters and moldy Norm Of The North promotional plush.

Animated News Weekly Archive: From the first week of our launch in October of 2003 and intermittently over the next six years or so, we had an email newsletter. Sure these messages may not be too useful anymore. But they’re actually kind of fun as a sort of virtual time capsule. So travel back 20 years with us to see how we covered the top stories of the day!

And be sure to take a look back at our previous anniversary features for even more AV history.

Animated Views: A Retrospective: The people that started it all and bring you Animated Views tell the site’s story in their own words.
Animated News Logo Archive: Just a week after launching in 2003, we started a tradition that would become a trademark — changing our logo for holidays and film openings. Come take a look back at the over 70 logos that have held the top spot on this site.
A Pictorial History of Animated Views: Let’s dig through the Animated Views archives! We’ll show you how things used to be and give you a peak behind the scenes at some things never meant for public consumption!
Animated Movies Database Archive: Take a trip back in time to 2003 and the site that we descended from! Olivier Mouroux’s Animated Movies held a treasure trove of information about past, current, and upcoming films. Now you can explore the database he compiled during its existence, as it last appeared online.
Animated Views Timeline: Looking back over the years, there were a lot of people, events, and stories that brought us to where we are today. Take a scroll through time with us as we recall some of the milestones and highlights in the website’s history and revisit key posts and images from our past.

I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that we’ve been doing this this long! My son had just turned one month old when AV launched in 2003. Last month he moved to another state on his own and into his first apartment! I’ve watched this place grow up right alongside my children. And while I’m proud to see my kids leave the nest to start their own lives, I’m happy knowing that Animated Views isn’t going anywhere.

And that’s thanks to you. We sincerely appreciate you for continuing to make us part of your web browsing routine. There’s no way we could have made it to twenty years without you!

— James and the Animated Views Team

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Randall / October 23, 2023, 11:12 pm ET

ANIMATED VIEWS TEAM

Choosing a "best year" in animation is a tricky thing! But I went with 2014 - a good Disney flick, a decent Laika film, the sublime Book of Life, a good Dragon sequel, The Lego Movie, and also good efforts from Ghibli and Cartoon Saloon. Just about every major studio had a pretty good effort that year. Overall, I don't see a stronger year in the past decade. Each year had its plusses, but also a lot of films that were mediocre to lousy.

Ben / October 24, 2023, 4:01 am ET

It does seem that we either get really good films nowadays, or really, really, really bad films in a single year, so trying to work out a decade which has a better than average balance is tricky!

2014 wasn't bad, but there are no real standouts in there. Big Hero and Book Of Life aside, nothing else there ever really rose above being "good" and "decent", as you said, and that doesn't sound like a decade winner to me -- but then we could rip apart any of these years! 2015? A great and a lame Pixar, some interesting indies but mostly terrible studio franchise pics.

2016 looks more like a contender for me: yes, we get the awful (Angry Birds, Dory, Norm, Clank, Sausages), but there's a better than average level of indies (Little Prince, Zucchini, Turtle, Your Name) and some fair to surprisingly good quality studio films (a fun Ice Age, better than expected Panda 3, Pets, Storks, Trolls) and a handful of great ones in Kubo, Moana, Sing and Zootopia). Yeah, 2016 is looking pretty good!

2017 has Coco and Ferdinand, both fair films but nothing sublime, the rest being more franchises and poor indies; 2018 has maybe three big films, but I'm not sure if they were more anticipated at the time rather than lasting even these short years later; and 2019 sure has volume, but maybe only one true great (Klaus), a couple of almost greats and a lot of sludge. 2020...again one or two big hitters but a lot of "meh", and nothing that's lasted or potential classics.

20s one, two and three are pretty much the same: lots of volume but nothing past "good" in '21, certainly no real "brilliance" in '22, and only a couple of interestings for '23 amongst a pretty wishy-washy year in which all the potential possibilities have yet to come out. Spider-Man already has the feature Oscar in the bag by default, unless being a sequel knocks it back a bit and Wish is really, really, really good, so that gets it like a Disney100 "career achievement".

So, yeah, for me, it looks like 2016 has the better than average score. Sure, some really lame films (and bad ones at that), but too much good and decent to ignore along with some greatness sprinkled on top. Yep, I think that's my year, for what it's worth. Sadly, though, I donut think there's really anything in that whole decade that's going to be remembered that well in the decades to come, unless we get another sequel in a franchise series. It'll be interesting to see which have the Comic-Con cosplay longevity in another five to ten years!

Ben / October 24, 2023, 4:06 am ET

Ha! The one time I use italics instead of leaning in *like this*...and they don't show up!

James / October 24, 2023, 8:29 pm ET

I'm with Randall.

For me, 2016's Moana, Sing, and Zootopia are just pretty good, bad, and middling respectively. That leaves only Trolls and Storks as good and Kubo as great.

2014 had the good Big Hero 6, the great Book of Life, and the amazing (and criminally robbed at the Oscars) Lego Movie.

On top of that, Norm of the North just drags the rest of 2016 down by association!

Ben / October 25, 2023, 4:04 am ET

This is true.

But then that's only if you like the Lego Movie. I've never quite understood how you didn't like Happy Feet and yet liked that one.

Any word on why the italics aren't working?

Daniel / October 25, 2023, 12:49 pm ET

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I'm guessing you have something checked that shouldn't be. (possible BBCode) When I'm on the full edit page the only box I have ticked under options is "Attach a signature (signatures can be altered via the UCP)". When I quote your above message it displays the way it should.

James / October 25, 2023, 6:31 pm ET

Nice catch Daniel, I bet you're right about that! Edit your post ben and make sure "disable bbcode" isn't checked.

{ CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS ATTACHMENT }

Ben / October 25, 2023, 7:25 pm ET

That's a bingo! Thanks guys!

James / October 31, 2023, 12:01 am ET

As our anniversary month comes to a close, we have one last piece of business -- the poll results!

https://animatedviews.com/anniversary/best-animated-year-poll-20/

Thanks to all those who entered! In a tight race, the winner was the year 2016, with 31% of the vote. That year featured films including Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, Zootopia, ~~Norm of the North~~, My Life as a Zucchini, and The Red Turtle. The year 2014 came in a close second place with 22% of the vote. And in third place was the current year, 2023, with 17%.

Again, thanks for sticking with us for two decades and for celebrating this milestone with us!

Ben / October 31, 2023, 5:31 am ET

Called it!

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