In the past few years, I, and many others, have noticed a decrease in quality from major blockbuster animations. There has been a trend of remaking animated classics into live action using subpar CGI and animated media is often sequels or uninspired and poorly received original stories. This isn’t to say all recent animated media is bad, Sony and Dreamworks especially have produced many fantastic and groundbreaking animations during the past few years. But, unfortunately, for every Into the Spider-verse or Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, there are many many more mass produced films. 

 

 

 

 

This week I have taken inspiration from discussions of capitalism and pursuit of profit during class. I feel that in the past decade, the film industry has taken a creative hit from major companies choosing profit over originality, and I take this quite seriously as someone going into this line of work. 

Companies such as Disney have realised that remaking their classic films as live-action is highly profitable, with some releases making over $1 billion. This also goes for studios that produce countless sequels, live action or animated, of franchises proven to do well, the capitalise of pre-existing fanbases instead of taking creative (and financial) risks. Therefore, there is a distinct lack of original cinema, and opportunities for creatives. I find live action remakes of animated work, most notably the Disney remakes, so offensive not just for the lack of creativity, but for the fact that live action films tend to produce much more co2 than the average animated film. Live action has a lot of factors, such as transportation, electricity used for sets and lighting, and physical waste generation that isn’t necessary for animation. Also, the fact that these films are often CGI heavy so the pollution caused by animation is added on top of this. 

This current production of film is distinctly capitalist. It is well known that major companies outsource their post production to countries where minimum wage is a lot lower and labour laws aren’t enforced, and underpay and overwork their own workers. Capitalist exploitation like this is heavily linked to climate change in that the cheaper the work, the less sustainable equipment used will be and exploited workers are much less likely to be able to consider sustainability as they will be overloaded and fatigued. It has been found that rich countries often outsource emission heavy work to developing countries to reduce their own emissions for reports, but in doing so they are creating so much more pollution as poorer countries don’t have as strict environmental policies, and international transport of goods becomes necessary. 

I don’t feel as if I could personally do anything to help this, aside from not working for these companies. My suggestion would be to increase focus on smaller, independent studios as they often have more creative output and stronger environmental policies. Take “Everything, Everywhere All At Once” for example. The CGI department for this film consisted of only 6 people, which means the carbon footprint of this film’s special effects will have been miniscule compared to its contemporary blockbusters. Not to mention the film won many, many awards, so are these massive studios really necessary?  

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Jul 4, 2025