For our thirteenth Rundown article, the best feature of the year that isn’t live-action. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Animated Feature as well as general commentary about the race. Thursday, we’ll cover a category where making someone look like someone else is the key.

Best Animated Feature

Winner Predictions

• Incredibles 2
• Isle of Dogs
• Mirai
• Ralph Breaks the Internet
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (WL O) (PP O) (TB O) (TL O)

Runner-Up Predictions

• Incredibles 2 (WL O) (TB O) (TL O)
• Isle of Dogs (PP O)

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Wesley Lovell: Sequels rarely do well at the Oscars iand that’s especially true in the Animated Feature category where they often struggle to even get nominated. There are two nominated here, but winning is also going to be a challenge. That said, the competition became moot months ago as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse became a dominant force in the category. With its clean sweep at the Annie Awards, there’s little reason to believe the film won’t take the Oscar as well.
Peter J. Patrick: Everybody loves Spider-Man. It’s unlikely there’ll be an upset, but if there is, then Isle of Dogs seems most likely to me.
Tripp Burton: Spider-Man hasn’t lost a major award yet and is an almost assured frontrunner here. The only thing that could stop it is the Disney-Pixar machine; it has been over a decade since a non-Disney-Pixar film has been defeated by a film from another studio. But that streak will probably end this year.
Thomas La Tourrette: For only the second time in over a decade, a non-Pixar or Disney film is set to win the Oscar for best animated feature. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse now seems destined to win the Oscar. Originally I thought the virtual stranglehold on the Oscar by Pixar meant that it would go to Incredibles 2, but that appears not the case. Wins at the Producers Guild, BAFTA, and the Golden Globes made it a frontrunner. Its absolute dominance at the Annie Awards, winning every category in which it was nominated, firmly places it into the lead. At this point it would be a shock if anything else won. It does boast an unusual design, looking more like a comic book brought to life, than the usual animated film. But it also boasted a sense of not just fun and adventure but also humanity that can be sorely lacking in some superhero films. It will be a worthy winner. The Academy has never been one to award sequels in this category, only Toy Story 3 has won, so it is not surprising that Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet have not gotten more traction. Wes Anderson’s stylized Isle of Dogs never was that big of a threat, and Mirai from Japan has had so little visibility that it is not surprising that it has not caught on. Look for Spider-Man to easily win.

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