Of all the cinema arts, there are none more painstaking than stop-motion animation. The technique brought King Kong to life by moving and photographing a model one frame at a time. Like everything else, the digital revolution has changed how stop-motion is produced — just compare Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to an episode of Robot Chicken — but it will always be the most labor-intensive labor of love. Laika, a Portland, Oregon-based studio owned by Nike founder Phil Knight, has been at the cutting edge of stop-motion since 2009’s Coraline. Travis Knight (yes, Phil’s son) heads the studio, but he is also a filmmaker. His 2016 picture Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the greatest achievements in stop-motion since the days of Ray Harryhausen. Going in, Laika’s latest Wildwood already felt like a culmination of the studio’s mission to make stop-motion relevant in an increasingly computer-generated world. Stop-motion has a long history of being used as a special effects tool that is blended with live action. Even The Mandalorian and Grogu used it. But Wildwood is the longest pure stop-motion film ever made, and with a budget of $100 million, it’s also the most expensive.
When people call something a “fairy tale,” they usually mean a children’s story that is innocuous and wholesome. But actual fairy tales are anything but. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which collected fantastical tales from Central European oral tradition, features lots of murder, mutilations, child abuse, and war alongside the talking animals and charming princes.
Wildwood is a contemporary fairy tale in every sense of the term. Based on a children’s book by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and his wife, artist Carson Ellis, the story is intimately tied to the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, particularly the boundary where the city meets the forest. That’s where 13-year-old Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) lives with her unreconstructed hippie parents (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine). When her parents want to go to a craft fair, Prue gets the assignment to babysit for her infant brother Mac (Arthur Knight), who, they stress, is not allowed to go outside. But once they’re gone, the headstrong teenager decides to take Mac to the playground. Their rollicking afternoon bike ride through Portland, complete with Powell’s bookstore cameo, is the film’s first tour de force.
On their way to the playground, Prue runs into her classmate Curtis, a nerdy D&D player from her eighth-grade class who has a bit of a crush on her. At the playground, Curtis can’t help but notice a murder of crows who appear to be eyeing young Mac. When the crows pick up Mac and fly away with him, Prue and Curtis give chase until they reach the border of the Impassible Forest. Prue has been specifically forbidden to enter the forest by her parents, but that never stopped her before, so they press on through the curtain of mist which surrounds the trees.
Inside, it’s as difficult to get around as advertised. Trying in vain to follow the murder, they encounter an astonishing sight: coyotes dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers armed with muskets. Did I mention the coyotes can talk, and that the coyote commander is voiced by Tom Waits, or did you just assume it?
The coyotes give chase, and Prue and Curtis are separated. Prue gets a ride with a postman (Len Cariou) who is shocked to find out she is from outside the Wildwood, as only creatures born of magic are allowed to pass through the misty veil. Curtis wakes up in the coyote warren castle of Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), the Dowager Governess of Wildwood. Alexandra never recovered from the loss of her son, who disappeared into Wildwood years ago, and her husband, who died of grief soon after. After an experiment using dark magic to create a clockwork copy of her son was exposed in the most horrifying way possible, she was exiled, and now seeks to use brute force and black magic to reawaken the magical ivy which could overrun the forest and find her son.
In Wildwood, the talking animals have their own complicated bureaucracy, the rest of the birds are not friendly with the crows, and Awkwafina plays a friendly rat bandit named Septima. The plot clearly shows the influences of epic fantasy, particularly C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories. Chris Butler’s script pulls few punches. Injustice is rampant in the woods. Things go dreadfully wrong for our heroes. Characters are suddenly killed. The epic battle scenes make a point of including the cost of war. But everything feels earned, and the scary moments are balanced out with messages of resilience and self-reliance in the face of adversity.
I can’t overstate what an incredible artistic achievement this film is for the indefatigable team at Laika. Hundreds of characters fill the screen during the expansive set pieces. The General, an eagle voiced by Angela Bassett, is one of the most amazing stop-motion creations ever put to film. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s camera soars over sets and countrysides that look infinite, even though they were all created in a suburban Portland studio. Everything has a handmade feel, even if “handmade” in this case includes machine shops and 3D printers.
Laika took a huge risk by investing so much capital and time (the production was first announced in 2011) in an original story instead of a sure-fire legacy intellectual property. Lucky for us, the gamble has produced a modern classic. There’s little doubt that Travis Knight’s film is the instant frontrunner for the Best Animated Feature Oscar — and a strong contender for the greatest stop-motion film of all time.
Wildwood
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