The Live-Action Animated Film looks at the history of movies that combine live action with animation to hallucinogenic effect. From Technicolor musicals and creature features to remakes, reboots, and mash-ups, this history suggests that the mixed pictures of the twentieth century paved the way for the mainstream blockbusters of the twenty-first.
Since cinema’s beginning, live actors and cartoon characters have traded places and invaded each other’s spaces, with real people getting animated and animated character getting real. The Live-Action Animated Film looks at the long history of movies that combine live action with 2D, stop-motion, and 3D animation to hallucinogenic effect. This survey suggests that the experimental and idiosyncratic mixed pics of the twentieth century set the template for the mainstream blockbusters of the twenty-first. Covering everything from Technicolor musicals and creature features to contemporary remakes and reboots, The Live-Action Animated Film brings this significant, boundary-blurring genre into sharper focus. In retrospect, the introduction of cartoons into live action looks as central to film history as the coming of sound or color.
