Europe

With few exceptions, animated feature films worldwide are being produced for children. A close examination of the movies coming out of Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks indicates that they are getting dumber and dumber the higher the international grosses. Hollywood producers know that, if a movie is to succeed in foreign markets, it cannot contain a lot of American metaphors, nor can it have too much American-ese dialogue because of the challenges of subtitling and dubbing. And it definitely cannot feature themes or characters that might be remotely offensive to China’s film censors because China is increasingly essential to the bottom line. Themes must remain simplistic – “Every person’s ideas are valuable” (The Lego Movie), “Growing up is hard to do” (Inside Out), “Everybody is a potential hero” (Big Hero 6) and so on. Hollywood produces animated feature films the same way an ice cream store might produce just three flavors of ice cream – chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. There is barely any Western feature animation for adults, and, when a producer tries it, the results are invariably loaded with animated sex and nudity, as if that is what makes adult subject matter adult.