These days there is a lot of hub-bub about live action movies, more specifically animated classics (such as Lilo and Stitch) being turned into ‘live action’ movies (such as Lilo and Stitch), the quotation marks are for movies such as The Lion King which are still animated just made to look more real and some people still insist is a live action movie. I mean 90% of the time Disney makes a billion dollars when they do this so I understand why they keeping pumping these things out, and thus I understand why other companies would want to get in on that action with a How to Train Your Dragon and eventually other movies in their back catalogues. Views on the quality of these films aside, they are here to stay for the time being, but as of late I have noticed a slight trend in the other direction…

As much as I like animation I do not want to bring down these movies as they at the very least serve a purpose and it is usually something a large amount of people want to see. Instead I want to talk about times when the wind blows in the other direction and something that was traditionally done in live action gets an animated adaptation. I have always felt that this should happen more (admittedly I am openly biased in this regard) as animation allows for visual creativity that is much harder and more expensive to replicate in a live action format. If you can imagine it, you can film it in animation. Another bonus is you do not ever have to worry about physics, which is great for a film maker who does not have to think “how am I gonna pull off this shot” but rather “pulling off this shot is easy, now how can I make it look as cool as possible?”. There is a freedom in animation that really comes out when someone is allowed to let creativity loose. Luckily some brave film makers have realized this and while it have given us mixed results so far when it works, it works great! Some stuff will just work better in animated form no matter what the movie going public, box office results or high powered movie executives who always take the wrong lessons from things think so when it does work it should be given proper recognition if only by a small amount of movie fans such as myself and a few dozen others.

So, hoping that this is not too limited in scope this weeks prompt is what is your favourite animated movie adaptation(s) from live action? To clarify, I am talking about instances where something started as a live action property and then had an animated adaptation after. Since I am pretty open with these prompts anything that started as animation, went live action and then back to animation adaptation counts (for example the Ninja Turtles franchise has gone back and forth several times). As does anything that is an animated entry from something traditionally live action even if it has nothing to do with other stories. I am going to take my own advice here and mention Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. A spectacular Batman movie based off the animated series, but following a rash of live action Batman movies (2 times Burton and that Adam West one where the Riddler, Joker, Penguin and Catwoman team up and this actually hit theatres believe it or not. There were earlier Batman movies as well in the 1940s). Mask of the Phantasm manages to capture the spirit of Batman like pretty much no other movie could… until they made one out of Lego 25 years later…