Wildwood, the newest film from acclaimed stop motion studio Laika, couldn’t have come out at a better time. In a world where AI is starting to take over the vast majority of commercials we see and is even making it’s way into feature films, the folks behind Wildwood have made the perfect antidote against the rise of AI replacing artists. Wildwood is the epitome of the expression “you cannot replicate this with AI”. The film, which took sixteen years to make- is a sprawling epic on the scale of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy that’s entirely made through stop motion. It’s a staggering two hour and twenty minutes and I’m sure several animators who worked on the film have a lot of grey hairs after completing this, and the time, effort and 100 million dollar production budget is all on screen.
The film is about a girl named Prue who is disaffected by the outside world. She has a sense of ‘needing to grow up’ that several pre teens around her age have. Despite her parents warning of the outside world, she decides to take her little brother outside to explore the wonderful world of check notes Portland Oregon. That is until a bunch of crows takes him away. With the help of her friend Curtis, she chases him into a forrest and there we run into a mythical world filled with talking animals and dark magic that is equally as whimsical as it is scary.
Several reviews have stated that Wildwood’s plot feels more like a vehicle for the films visual splendor. I agree that if this films plot and script was accompanied by a less inspired visual splendor that the film would not be nearly as effective as it is. But I think this is a silly critique of the film. I love the film E.T. and I think that film has a really wonderful screenplay, but if it wasn’t for Spielberg’s direction of the film it wouldn’t be nearly as impactful of a film. A movie is only as good as it’s direction, and if that’s the case Wildwood is certainly among the best I’ve seen.
The animation in Wildwood is nothing short of astonishing. The world building, the attention to detail and the action set pieces are next level. I kept thinking throughout the movie “how on earth do you even begin to film this?” Since I see so many movies in a year and make my own films, the awe of filmmaking sometimes gets lost on me because I know what’s going on behind the camera. However, Wildwood feels like a magic trick, it feels like the action is happening right in front of you and you are there for the ride. It’s the definition of “movie magic” that we just don’t get very often anymore. There are very few films that feel like cultural benchmarks. I would consider the recently released documentary You Can See Everything as a benchmark for documentary filmmaking and Wildwood as a benchmark for animation. It’s a great time to go to theatres and be a fan of the medium, artists are coming together and changing the form as we see it. While making a movie like Wildwood may be impractical due to it’s budget and time, I can see several people siting Wildwood as the film that made them want to get into animation or make movies in the same way How to Train Your Dragon sparked my love for the medium sixteen years ago.
So I implore you to seek this movie out on the biggest screen you can. One day, when this film is a beloved classic you can say “I saw that on the big screen when it first came out” and isn’t that just so cool to think about?
If the film was just a vehicle for it’s spectacle and action set pieces that raise the bar even beyond the Avatar films, that would be enough for the price of admission. I’ve been vocal before about how I am not a fan of the writing in the James Cameron Avatar trilogy, I find the dialogue to be a bit clunky and the storytelling doesn’t give me enough reason to stay invested in the characters outside of the amazing world building. Wildwood doesn’t have this issue. While some epics on this scale feel their runtime to me at times because of how long and bombastic they are- Wildwood feels like a breezy two and a half hours and I didn’t want to leave the world when the film was wrapping up. I think a big reason why this film worked on me outside of just it’s spectacle is that it gave me a reason to care for it’s characters. Prue is a bit stuck up and cynical to her approach of the world. Even when she sees magic happening in front of her eyes she doesn’t want to believe it. While it’s nice to have a protagonist that isn’t immediately mystified, taken in or scared about the world around her- at times you can feel a bit irritated by her cynicism. By the end of the film, her final revelation left me in tears because I believe the film actually is able to point the mirror back at us, making me feel vulnerable in the process. Our own world is filled with so much magic that we take for granted, that we feel dissatisfied with and we take for granted. The film was able to remind me that even if the world around me isn’t filled with magic and monsters, there’s still a lot of magic to behold.
Her friend Curtis also has a great arc. He starts off as the nerdy and socially awkward friend who tags along and we figure out how brave he is and how correct he is about everything, how he’s still able to find magic in a disaffected world and find the courage to stand up in the things he believes in. I found myself being more emotionally invested in his character than I did with Prue at times.
Overall, does the story follow similar beats to classics like Pans Labyrinth or The Chronicles of Narnia? For sure, but it reinvents some of these themes and reinvents them to make Wildwood feel like you are experiencing a story like this for the first time again. It’s a wonderful film and one you need to go see and then go see again, it’s so important in the age of film being experienced more as a commodity vs an artistic expression to embrace a film that is being made for the pure love of the artform, it’s a masterpiece.
