The era of the animated action movie is here

polygon.com:

2023’s most exciting and successful animated movies all share one big thing: They all have unusually daring, innovative, exciting fight sequences.

There’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, with its web-slinging action and groundbreaking visuals. But the year kicked off with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish(technically a tail-end-of-2022 movie that really gained popularity in early 2023), and now the summer is closing out with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Netflix’s The Monkey King. All of these movies feature visually dynamic fights that make full use of the animated medium in rare and playful ways.

For decades, American animated movies were primarily assumed to be musicals (thanks to the Disney formula), comedies (thanks to DreamWorks), or both. But slowly, trends have been shifting, and animated action movies are finally getting their place in the limelight. Leaning into quirkier science fiction and action-adventure stories has historically not worked out well for animated movies. But audience tastes shift, and in 2023, action-forward animated movies are finally finding more mainstream success.

We can probably thank Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which not only revolutionized the look of American animated movies over the past five years, but also widened the genre possibilities for U.S. animation. Additionally, the growing popularity of anime in America — particularly punchy shonen anime — means that it’s less jarring for audiences to see intense fight sequences on screen. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish includes a major Attack on Titan homage, and Mutant Mayhem outright references multiple anime sources.

It’s not that previous animated movies were bereft of action. Some other action-centric movies