Laika’s handmade epic blends stop motion and CG like nothing before it, and it deserves to win at the box office.
Last week I walked into a sold-out cinema screening, and let me tell you: it’s been a while since that happened. Yet that’s what I found at the Watershed arts centre in Bristol, where I watched Laika’s epic animation Wildwood in a cinema so packed that couples were having to sit apart because there were no two seats left together.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried, though. Yes, I knew all about the technical achievement behind Laika’s latest film—I’d interviewed the art director Matthew Maldonado, for Pete’s sake. But being technically impressive and being entertaining are two very different things. And I had no idea whether the animation style, a groundbreaking mix of stop motion and CG, would actually work for audiences on a big screen.
I shouldn’t have worried. Within seconds, I was sucked into the action, and I stayed there, mouth agape, until the credits rolled. The following day, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. The more I thought about it, the more I realised Wildwood isn’t just a great film. It’s a massive leap forward for the animation industry.
Best of both worlds
In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, Wildwood is the sixth feature from Laika, the Oregon studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. Directed by Travis Knight and based on Colin Meloy’s 2011 novel, illustrated by Carson Ellis, it follows a girl named Prue who… well, actually, I think the less you know about the story, the better.
My previous article was all about how everything, from 230+ puppets to 132 sets, was made by hand, and the enormous scale of the production. More than 1,000 artists worked over six years, during which animating a single second of film could take an entire day, or more.
But all of that would have been for nothing if the animation didn’t look good. So I’m pleased to tell you that on a cinema screen, it looks absolutely epic.
I shouldn’t have been surprised: people don’t put this much time and passion into a project unless they’re sure it’s worth it. The facial performances, for instance, were animated on a computer and then 3D printed, with a new face made for every character in every frame: more than 140,000 in total. Meanwhile, the visual effects team scanned the physical sets and puppets to extend locations and fill out crowds.
The computer here isn’t replacing the handmade; it’s serving it. Because every process starts from, and feeds back into, something physical, the result is a level of subtlety and realness that neither CG nor stop motion could achieve on its own.
More real than live action
It’s ironic, if you think about it. Most so-called ‘live action’ films are now largely made of CG. So, in one sense, they’re animations too. Unfortunately, when a supposedly real world is made entirely of pixels, it often stops feeling visceral and real. In fact, most of us have stopped expecting to feel anything when we look at it.
Wildwood is the opposite. Because the world on screen was physically built, it feels incredibly real. You can sense the weight of things: the texture of fabric, the grain of wood, the way light falls through the trees. The effect is subtle, but over time it draws you in and holds you in its grip.
Again, none of this would matter if the story was poor or the characters were undeveloped. But both are brilliant, intriguing, nuanced and endlessly thrilling.
Yes, there are elements of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe here and there. But overall, this is a strikingly original film: not just original in the sense of not being a sequel, but original in the sense of “This feels fresh and new, and I have no idea what will happen next.”
The need for scale
I did, I admit, get a little frustrated at times. Every set, costume and prop has clearly been obsessed over, so I kept wishing I could admire each frame like an artwork in a gallery. But the story kept pulling me along too much to linger.
So here’s my main plea. If you work as a creative in any capacity, please see this film on a big screen. There’s so much visual detail packed into every shot that a lot of it will simply be lost on a 50-inch TV, let alone a laptop or phone.
One more thing. If we want to push back against the slide of movies into AI slop, we have to prove audiences will turn out for something made with human hands. Because the only language Hollywood truly understands is box office.
So I urge you: don’t just go and see Wildwood. Tell your friends, colleagues and the random guy on the bus to go and see it too.
1939’s The Wizard of Oz didn’t turn a profit on its first release, and only became the beloved classic we know after it was shown on TV in the 1950s. A generation missed out on that movie magic. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to Wildwood, and keep the word of mouth going. The future will thank us.
