Stop-motion movie Wildwood is a staggering masterpiece. It's a miracle it exists at all
Sixteen years in the making, stop-motion animation company Laika's Wildwood is its single best movie ever.
Company behind Coraline took 16 years to make Wildwood, a stunning achievement of human ingenuity
Jackson Weaver · CBC News
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There are the kinds of movies that switch something in your brain.
Movies that, after watching, make you skip the bus and inexplicably walk 10 kilometres home. Movies that make you stumble through your door, sit down and fumble out a piece of art — even if it's something remedial, unfinished and perhaps even ugly.
Ones that inspire you to make anything: it just needs to exist, because you're suddenly reminded how astounding it is that each and every one of us can perform a legitimate type of magic: artistic creation.
In this case, that spark of inspiration would be Wildwood, the newest dark-fantasy, stop-motion marvel from stop-motion powerhouse Laika. A 16-years in the making animated behemoth from the studio responsible for Coraline, ParaNorman, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and Kubo and the Two Strings. And given that pedigree, it's perhaps not too surprising to sit up and take notice when the studio puts out what it — and this critic — are touting as its obvious magnum opus.
That is, perhaps, to be expected, given the amount of work and waiting that's gone into Wildwood. Adapted from the 2011 novel of the same name, Laika's film is a passion project from CEO Travis Knight, one that has been in production for nearly the exact amount of time that he's run the company. The end result just so happens to be the longest, most expensive and one of the most ambitious such projects ever attempted. Which is quite a feat, given it is made in a medium already infamous for its time-intensive creation process.
But it is a process that's led to a stunning achievement of human ingenuity, crackling with so much raw beauty that it feels an understatement to call it one of the best animated movies ever made.
WATCH | Wildwood trailer:
Wildwood is so packed with casual displays of complicated artisanal mastery, it makes you stop and stare every time a character casually hops off a rock — given that animation sequence that must have taken weeks to execute — or when a murder of hundreds of jet-black, clay-constructed crows flit through a spellbinding murmuration that fills up the screen, in what feels like a natural phenomenon that couldn't possibly have been rendered by hand.
What's more, throughout the film, all these characters are physically breathing. Their chests are actually rising and falling due to an internal breathing mechanism Laika invented and maintained for the film's entire runtime — just to give it that one added bit of realism.
The visibly obvious effort it took to make all of these seemingly impossible scenes is the point; a not so subtle jab at generative AI that runs through both the medium and the narrative.
That is even as its story — of a young Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and her reluctant friend Curtis (the scene-stealing endearing Jacob Tremblay) travelling through a fantastical forest to save her kidnapped baby brother from magical kingdoms on the brink of war — doesn’t exactly sound all that original.
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Because to believe some critics, if you’ve seen one Spiderwick Chronicles — or Labyrinth, Bridge to Terabithia, Where the Wild Things Are and on and on — you’ve seen 'em all.
That exact complaint — that Wildwood's done-to-death storyline is its weakest aspect — is already an established critique. This is even as its technical mastery is hailed: a reported $100 million US, more than 200 unique puppets, more than 1,000 artisans and one particularly jaw-dropping battle scene.
That last epic sequence utilizes 3,000 characters across a 12-minute runtime — and its sets, if laid end to end, would be taller than a small building. According to Laika, it required one worker whose entire job was tracking the evolving facial scars of the main character — just for that one scene alone.
Brendan the Bandit King, voiced by Mahershala Ali, appears in a scene with Prue. (Laika)
But according to some early watchers, Knight only afforded those resources for the — admittedly astounding — visuals, effectively sinking all the money into ingenuously crafted internal skeletons, functioning under-skin bicep muscles and fully articulated horses. And then he used the last two pennies to scratch out a script that reads something like Narnia 2: This Time it’s Personal.
Which is strange, given the end result. While it is true Wildwood could have subverted expectations, its stellar execution of the magical kingdom/children-in-peril genre comes together remarkably well. And for its supposed target audience of actual children, there’s a lower chance they've already been embittered by such tropes. More likely, Wildwood will likely become their core memory of such tales.
What's actually the most original aspect of its plot — at least for modern American animated cinema — is a truly shocking level of violence for what is a children's film: guns, swords, death, snarling teeth, blood-curdling threats, arrows in chests and blood trickling from mouths.
Along with the bone-chilling performances of Carey Mulligan as Dowager Governess Alexandra and — especially — Tom Waits as the genuinely terrifying coyote soldier Maksim, it is genuinely surprising how far Knight goes to explore the extremes of terror and emotion that do in fact come along with childhood.
Because now, more than ever, it is genuinely surprising anyone would use so much money to grapple with the realities of how unsettling and terrifying childhood can be. More often, when modern children's entertainment is mixed with true peril, it's released in the walled garden of tax-supported systems: leading Canada's past, uniquely interesting children's programs like Cybersix, The Odyssey or simply deeply disturbing PSAs.
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When brought into modern American contexts, they're expected to ditch the harshness, as Apple TV did for the sunnily sanitized Time Bandits reboot). Or, like some fans already expect will happen to the almost identically terrifying Brothers Lionheart adaptation, the sensible business decision is to instead market dark fantasy as gritty drama to adults.
Which is what makes Wildwood's existence such a singular miracle; it is the result of a particular set of circumstances of its creation — the likes of which are unlikely to happen again. Laika is partially bankrolled by Knight's father, Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and the company's sole money-earning feature remains Coraline. Beyond the labour-, time- and cost-intensive production, every decision in Wildwood — from its alienating animation style, to the specificity of its genre and inherent violence — seems lab-designed to continue that money-losing pattern.
It is a message even cheekily, defiantly shown in the background: "Enjoy handmade art before it's gone forever,” penciled in on a street sign. Its a sort of clarion call for itself; a hidden Easter egg making an argument for a format that can't hope to last long. And, obviously, it's a shot across the bow of generative AI.
But Wildwood also feels designed to do what our current profit-focused system rewards the least: craft something challenging, memorable and aimed away from the lowest common denominator. It feels designed to celebrate human achievement. And it feels designed to celebrate humanity; what we are worth, and what we can do.
Which, of course, is to do magic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jackson Weaver is a reporter and film critic for CBC's entertainment news team in Toronto. You can reach him at jackson.weaver@cbc.ca.
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