Oscars flashback: Animation — and Pixar — have an ‘Incredibles’ night

Starting in 2002, feature-length animated films were included in awards season in the same way their short animated film compatriots had been since 1932 — with their own dedicated Academy Awards category. The new category was a breakthrough at the time, though in the years since it has also been controversial: Does having a dedicated animated feature category exclude worthy films from being included in the best picture discussion?

That discussion has swirled annually since the late 2010s — but it wasn’t part of the discourse on Feb. 27, 2005, when the 77th Academy Awards were held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles and “The Incredibles” took home Pixar’s second of a series of Oscar wins in the category.

That’s incredible!

Director-writer Brad Bird won for “Incredibles” with his first nomination. It was Pixar’s second film to earn the feature Oscar; “Finding Nemo” had won the previous year. Bird was also nominated for the original screenplay but didn’t win; in 2008, he would win again in the feature category with “Ratatouille.” Pixar films have won 11 of the animated feature film awards that have been given out. Disney would go on to acquire Pixar in 2006.

Accepting the award from Robin Williams, Bird (who wore an oval-shaped “Incredibles” themed pin on his lapel) noted, “I don’t know what’s more frightening, being watched by millions of people, or the hundreds of people that are going to be annoyed with me tomorrow for not mentioning them tonight.” He added that “Animation is about creating the illusion of life, and you can’t create it if you don’t have one,” then went on to thank his wife and children.

There were only two other nominees in the category, each on their first and (thus far only) nomination: Bill Damaschke (“Shark Tale”) and Andrew Adamson (“Shrek 2”). “Shrek” was the first winner in this category in 2002, with the award given to Aron Warner.

Short and sweet

For the first 50 years of animated short films receiving Oscars, the awards were given to the producers of the films, but current rules give the award to the person most directly responsible for the creation of the film — usually the director. In 2005, animated short film winner Chris Landreth wasn’t just the director of the documentary “Ryan,” he was also a co-star. The film focused on Landreth’s interview with Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who’d been nominated for his own Oscar in 1970 for “Walking,” and who fell on hard times in later years.

Landreth, who had also been nominated in this category in 1996, dedicated the award to Larkin. “I am here tonight because of the grace and humility of one guy watching from Montreal,” he said. Larkin died in 2007.

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The other nominees represented a wide spectrum of animation styles and largely leaned on humor and animals — or both. “Gopher Broke” by Jeff Fowler and Tim Miller looked at the frustration of a hungry, ambitious gopher; it was their first and so far only nomination. Bill Plympton received his second nomination (his first came in 1988) for “Guard Dog,” which provided insight to the canine mind and why some dogs bark at everything. “Lorenzo” was nominated for director Mike Gabriel (who co-wrote the script with Joe Grant) and producer Baker Bloodworth and was about a cat whose tail develops a personality of its own. It was their first and only nomination.

“Birthday Boy” took a different turn, looking at a young boy during the Korean War who roams his town to collect the remains of battles around him. The nomination went to first-timers Sejong Park (writer-director) and Andrew Gregory (producer).