In 1994, several monumental events occurred in the entertainment industry. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg won two Academy Awards for directing and co-producing the acclaimed and harrowing Holocaust drama Schindler’s List, while his dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park was, by then, the most successful film in box-office history. At the same time, Speilberg had been producing several animated TV shows (Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs), as well as feature films through his short-lived animation studio, Amblimation (which closed the following year after the release of their final film, Balto).
Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios (including the revived animation division), oversaw the creation and success of the original animated musical The Lion King, which became the most popular animated film in the history of animation, unadjusted for inflation. Following this landmark, Katzenberg left the studio amid studio conflicts after ten years. (Other sources say he was merely let go by then company CEO Michael Eisner.)
Almost immediately, Spielberg and Katzenberg (who had worked together on 1988's live-action/animated hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit) joined forces with music producer David Geffen to form a new independent studio, something that hadn't been done in the industry in years.Their goal was to produce original and high-quality entertainment through film, animation, TV, and gaming. And even though they started out in small ventures (the Michael J. Fox sitcom Spin City was a noteworthy success), it would be a few years before DreamWorks SKG (the three letters standing for the last names of its founders) began hitting its own strides, particularly in film and animation.
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| (L-r) Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen |
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| 1998's Antz |
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| 1998's The Prince of Egypt |
While Spielberg focused on live-action movies with historical epics like Amistad and Saving Private Ryan, and Geffen helped further the careers of artists like Cher, Elton John, and Peter Gabriel, Katzenberg was a primary force in creating a new animation division that would rival the likes of Disney and Warner Bros and other related companies. Utilizing and collaborating many former Disney animators (as well as those from Amblimation), they started out with two different kinds of animated projects. The first kind were hand-drawn features that eventually centered on epic historical periods. The other kind were edgy, adult-oriented CGI comedies with A-list voice talent.
1998 saw the release of their first animated feature, the eye-popping computer-animated Antz, which centered on a neurotic worker ant (voiced by Woody Allen) as he wrestles with conformity and individualism, falls for a sassy princess (voiced by Sharon Stone), and sets out to find a supposedly-utopian insect world. It was a groundbreaking achievement not just technologically, but also in its humor and clever writing (although some of its dialogue is not really child-friendly), setting a bar for the medium being more than just for kids. It is curious and interesting, however, that this film was released one month before Pixar Animation Studio's own insect comedy, a bug's life. It's anyone's guess which technically came first.
One month later, the hand-drawn biblical epic The Prince of Egypt was released. Based on the story of Moses in the book of Exodus, it became one of the most engrossing and evocative adaptations of the story, with high-quality artistry and craftsmanship not seen since Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 original The Ten Commandments. Add to that voice work from the likes of Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, and several others; and great music from lyricist Stephen Schwartz and composer Hans Zimmer.
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| 2000's The Road to El Dorado |
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| 2000's Chicken Run |
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| 2001's Shrek |
DreamWorks continued their string of quality hand-drawn epics with the colorful 2000 adventure comedy The Road to El Dorado. Featuring the voices of Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline as a duo of con artists who discover a lost city of gold, the film features catchy music by Elton John, Tim Rice and Zimmer (their first collaboration since The Lion King). But in spite of these elements, the film itself was peppered with some questionable violent and suggestive elements, similar to some of the criticisms that Antz received.
That same year, however, DreamWorks partnered with Aardman Animation (the stop-motion studio behind the award-winning and acclaimed Wallace & Gromit shorts) with the release of their debut feature film, the charming and entertaining Chicken Run. about a group of farm chickens who plan a "Great Escape" with the help of a circus-performing rooster (voiced by Mel Gibson). By this point, DreamWorks had been involved with various mediums of animation: hand-drawn, CGI, and stop-motion (a first since the peak of Disney's renaissance period in the early Nineties). Their relationship with Aardman continued with the release of the long-awaited film debut of cheese-loving inventor Wallace & his faithful dog Gromit in the 2005 Oscar-winning feature, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
But it was 2001 that proved to be the animation division's breakout year, as the fairy tale satire Shrek (based on William Steig's bestselling children's book) became popular with audiences and critics. Marketed as "the greatest fairy tale never told" (and the first of its kind since 1987's The Princess Bride), Shrek centers on a grumpy green ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) who just wants to rid his swamp of various fairy tale characters recently forced there, as well as a fast-talking, scene-stealing Donkey (voice by Eddie Murphy). He soon makes a deal with the scheming Lord Farquadd (voiced by John Lithgow) to rescue a castle-bound princess (voiced by Cameron Diaz) and reclaim his homeland. Perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of the time, in terms of postmodern cynicism in popular culture, Shrek subverts said fairy tale conventions by pulling off the amazing feat of being both comically irreverent and genuinely sincere. And it's this accomplishment that helps it hold up today, giving the fantasy genre a fresh take in a year that saw the release of two other fantasy franchises, based on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Shrek also became the inaugural winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature the following year. (The other two nominated films were Pixar's equally-celebrated and imaginative Monsters, Inc; and Nickelodeon's quirky kid adventure Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.) It was even recognized for its brilliant screenplay (a first for an animated film since Pixar's 1995 landmark Toy Story.) By this point, DreamWorks Pictures had three consecutive live-action Best Picture-winners with Sam Mendes' 1999 dark drama American Beauty, Ridley Scott's 2000 sword-and-sandles epic Gladiator, and Ron Howard's harrowing 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind, signifying the studio as a force to be reckoned with.
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| 2002's Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron |
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| 2003's Sindbad: Legend of the Seven Seas |
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| 2004's Shark Tale |
Even with CGI making an exponential mark in the film industry, DreamWorks had two other hand-drawn projects in the pipeline. 2000 saw the release of the now-underappreciated horse adventure-drama Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, which feature Matt Damon as the narrative voice of the titular wild mustang who refuses to give into despair as he fights to return home. Although the film was well-received by critics and the general public, it didn't do financially well. It also didn't help, perhaps, that its human subplot was a bit heavy-handed at times nor that some of its background animation is a bit dated, compared with the majestic and heart-tugging sequences with the non-speaking animals. Nevertheless, for the sake of its brilliant showcase in animal animation (not to mention its endearing songs by Bryan Adams), Spirit deserves another look.
The release of the less-than-stellar adventure Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas in 2003, however, proved disappointing. Despite the charisma of stars Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michelle Pheiffer, and some rollicking action sequences against an otherwise mediocre story, the financial failure of this film (along with the poor reception of many other hand-drawn features at the time) led DreamWorks to shift its focus solely on making computer animated films from there on, beginning in 2004 with the record-breaking (though not great) sequel Shrek 2 and the over-the-top and forgettable underwater gangster comedy Shark Tale.
The latter films did have their standout elements (i.e., Antonio Banderas's scene-stealing vocal work as Puss in Boots in the former, and filmmaker Martin Scorsese as the voice of a puffer fish in the latter), but their emphases on pop culture references and edgy adult humor did start to wear thin, ditto two subsequent (and mediocre) Shrek sequels. And considering Shark Tale's release more than a year after Pixar's acclaimed fish story, Finding Nemo, it may be safe to assume that DreamWorks' brief rivalry was more than evident. Fortunately, DreamWorks Animation apparently took these concerns to heart and improved their audience appeal with subsequent films like 2005's Madagascar (about zoo animals who escape to the wild) and 2006's Over the Hedge (based on a popular comic strip about forest critters who discover a suburban neighborhood).
While not all of their films were or are memorable, to be candid, their universal and diverse appeal was evident over the years, from the zookeeping cast of Madagascar to the Asian-cinema slapstick of Kung-Fu Panda, and (perhaps their best work to date) the colorful and well-rounded characters and creatures of How to Train Your Dragon. And even though their hand-drawn division was short-lived, it nevertheless serves as an important stepping stone in the history of animation and filmmaking, breaking new grounds (some good; others, not so much) and maturing the art form into more than just a kids medium.
As for the studio's founders, Geffen left the company in 2017 while Katzenberg sold the animation division around the same time and eventually launched a new online platform, titled Quibi. Spielberg has remained and continues to produce and consult on various projects, including his own history pieces like 2015's Bridge of Spies and 2017's The Post, as well as award-winning feature-length hits like Peter Farrelly's 2018 true story Green Book and Sam Mendes' 2019 war thriller 1917.
One last thing worth noting, as a trivial fact: DreamWorks Animation and Pictures had partnered with several other major studios over the years, including Universal (1994-2005), Paramount (2006-2012), Disney/Touchstone (2010-2016), 20th Century Fox (2013-2016), and Universal again (2016-present). Talk about coming full circle. Or in this case, full moon. At least for now.
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