The 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Awards reveal the winner of Best Animated Movie as voted by ComicBook.com staff. This year’s previously announced nominees include Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (Warner Bros. Animation), the final film out of the DC Animated Movie Universe; Onward (Pixar), a fantasy adventure pairing Marvel stars Tom Holland and Chris Pratt as elf brothers; Over the Moon (Pearl Studio and Netflix Animation), an American-Chinese fantasy musical from animation veteran Glen Keane; Scoob! (Warner Animation Group), a CG-animated reboot of the mystery-solving gang set in the Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe; and Soul (Pixar), director Pete Docter’s jazzy follow-up to Up and Inside Out.
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And the winner of the 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Animated Movie is…
Soul!
This marks the third straight victory for the Emeryville-based animation studio behind previous Golden Issue Award winners Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4. In the existential film from Docter and co-director Kemp Powers, middle school band teacher and amateur jazz musician Joe (Jamie Foxx) receives his big break just before an accident separates his soul from his body. Transported to the Great Beyond, an end-of-the-line cosmic realm, Joe escapes to the Great Before — where newborn souls attend “You Seminars” to find their “spark” and get ready for life on Earth.
Desperate to reunite his soul with his body on Earth, Joe becomes the unwitting mentor of ages-old soul 22 (Tina Fey), a cynical mentee who has never found her “spark.” When 22 finds herself in Joe’s body — and Joe in the body of a cat — they learn what it truly means to have soul.
“I think that came directly from our own lives,” Docter told ComicBook.com about the spark behind Soul. “We’re kind of conditioned from little kids, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to be and somehow that fulfillment of that is really what makes you happy? And you know, for some people it is. Like, I find a great joy in what I get to do, but it’s not the end all be all. There’s more to life. And so, this film really just gets to unpack that.”
“I think we’re so used to and conditioned to the idea of just following your dreams. And that’s the answer,” added the Monsters, Inc. director. And so, we get to turn that on its head a little bit.”
Nominees:
- Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
- Onward
- Over the Moon
- Scoob!
- Soul — WINNER
