The story of ImageMovers Studios' animation wing is a short and sad tale ofRobert Zemeckisand his attempts to present a new, relatively untested style of filmmaking. Motion capture has been an industry-standard in live-action films for quite some time, giving us iconic performances considered impossible to deliver before its conception.However, to fully animate a film in that style with no intervention from real actors or sets was rarely implemented in video games, let alone cinema.It makes sense the jump would happen eventually. After all, it’s digital rotoscoping, and that’s a practice that’s as old as the medium, and ImageMovers Studios tried it. Only five films were made under this studio on a sliding scale of quality,with its closure leaving behind several unfinished projects.Monster Houseis generally believed to be the best, with a 75% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the last film by the studio not only caused its death but is still consideredone of the biggest box-office bombsof all time.
Mars Needs Momswas a production by ImageMovers Digital, the second after its acquisition byDisney. It was released in 2011 and was directed by animation veteran and great-grandson of H.G Wells (no, seriously)Simon Wells. This film, like four of the five in the ImageMovers animated catalog, was based on a beloved story, a picture book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning authorBerkeley Breathed.It follows a misbehaving boy named Milo (Seth Green/Seth Dusky) whose mother (Joan Cusack) is abducted by aliens and sent to Mars to nurture the next generation of Martian children. What is known by parents and children alike as a touching tribute to the sacrifices a mother makes for her children did not translate very well to the screen at all. Bad animated films exist, of course, but there was something monumental about the failure ofMars Needs Moms,one that would shape Disney’s future in possibly irreparable ways.
Mars Needs Moms
Mars Needs Moms is an animated sci-fi adventure that follows nine-year-old Milo, who embarks on a daring mission to rescue his mom after she’s abducted by Martians. On Mars, he teams up with a tech-savvy Earthman named Gribble and a rebel Martian girl named Ki. Together, they race against time to save Milo’s mom and uncover the truth behind the Martians' plan.
What needs to be established first is the state of this project, both in reputation and in returns, wasn’t in the best shape before the release ofMars Needs Moms. The uncanny valley nature of the films already threw audiences off.The Polar Expresswas already showing its age,Beowulffailed to impress, andA Christmas Carol,ImageMovers' first film with Disney, did fine but was not the box office hit the latter studio hoped it would be. None of these films were the hits they needed to be considering their budgets. Animation is always expensive, but when making these fully motion-captured films, you’re also funding a theatrical production to use as a template.This method requires more actors, props, and money than most animated films.Audiences and critics alike considered the idea redundant, asking why not just do one or the other. But despite the hesitancy,Mars Needs Momswas the film that truly flopped.
This Notorious Flop Was the First Film to Use Motion Capture
It lost money but changed the industry. Profit?
The box office numbers are considerably rough,making only $39,233,678 worldwide compared to its $150,000,000 budget. Critics and audiences were relentless in their derision of not only the film but the entire animation style, and that word spread quickly through social media. It didn’t help thatRango,the best-animated film of the year, came out the day beforehand, but evenGnomeo and Julietwas doing better numbers. There have been worse box-office bombs out there, but for Disney, this was a huge loss, both in their finances and reputation, putting them in a $140 million deficit. The film is thoroughly wiped from history now, locked tight away in the Disney Vault and never given a mention by the studio,but the repercussions ofMars Needs Moms’failure go beyond money.
The Astronomical Fallout of ‘Mars Needs Moms’
The first after-effect is fairly obvious; this was the final film of ImageMovers Digital. That was already going to be the case even beforeMars Needs Moms. Disney announced the studio’s closure in January 2011 afterA Christmas Carol’s tepid release, but any chance of this film being a Hail Mary for further projects was dashed. Not only that, but it spelled the death of the whole aesthetic. Motion capture animation was out,killed by diminishing returns and people finding it unsettling. There were attempts afterward to revitalize the style.The Adventures of Tintindid fairly well, and Zemeckis continued utilizing the animation style inWelcome to Marwenand the 2022Pinocchiofilm to resounding apathy. All in all,Mars Needs Momswas a nail in the coffin, with people realizing that video games use the same technique and do it better.
The even more brutal consequence came in conjunction withthe release and failure of 2012’sJohn Carter.The sci-fi film based on the 1912 novel didn’t sting the company as hard asMars Needs Momsor was even that poorly received. It was considered more unimpressive than out-and-out bad,but the inflated cost exacerbated the same issue. It was too expensive for the amount of money they got back. The same can be said with 2013’sThe Lone RangerandOz: The Great and Powerful,as ifMars Needs Momsstarted this uncanny snowball effect of expensive flops.
This pattern did not go unnoticed by CEOBob Iger, who, through these failures, developed severe cold feet when creating new stories. The studio’s focus has quite noticeably been to"mine the IPs" as he said in a recent quarterly earnings call. The result is sequels, live-action remakes, and the ever-expanding franchises of Marvel and Star Wars. The earliest example is 2014’sMaleficent. If you’re wondering why Disney hasn’t come up with an original story in several years,withWishbeing subtler IP mining,you could reasonably link it to this specific string of failures.This is a confusing shame, not only because all the films previously listed weren’t original stories themselves but adaptations. Failure is an important part of the creative process. Art is not just about the dizzying highs but the maddening lows as well. This choice clearly shows the studios' priorities are warped to value profits rather than the expansion of creativity.It has become a matter of expanding the franchise, and audiences have taken notice more now than they ever did withMars Needs Moms.
Mars Needs Momsis available to stream on Disney+.
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