Stop motion studio Laika’s newest film Wildwood has arrived in theatres after being in the works for 16 years, and it’s everything anyone could wish of it.
It’s the studio’s sixth film in 17 years, and only Coraline, their first film, turned a profit. Wildwood is trending to have box office numbers similarly low to their other works; and that is an absolute travesty.
Simply put, the film is a masterpiece of art, and it succeeding is incredibly important for not just film, but art as a whole.
Wildwood follows Prue, a young girl who ventures into the Impassable Wilderness to save her baby brother Mac, after he is kidnapped by crows. The film follows her adventures through the magical forest to save her brother, all while trying to evade the Governess Alexandra and her army of wolves.
Far and away the most impressive part of Wildwood is how it looks, and the work it took to make it come to life. The film is entirely stop motion, and at 24 frames per second, it took 24 pictures to make one second of the 140-minute-long behemoth of a film.
The characters, props, sets, and more are all physical, real things. When combined with the sheer scale on display here, the film is the most technically impressive I have ever seen. The backgrounds are absolutely stuffed with detailing on the ground and trees, characters have constantly changing, fully expressive faces, birds are flying and water is flowing; and it’s all real.
The amount of work, artistry, and sheer dedication it took to bring all this to life is nothing short of insanely admirable. On a physical and technical standpoint, the film is a behemoth, but that’s not to say it falls short elsewhere.
The story is incredibly moving and emotional, and while the basic premise is simple, Wildwood uses it to tell a beautiful, tragic story about grief and learning to move on. When combined with an actually dark tone and atmosphere, the film makes sure it’s not pulling any punches.
And believe me, this one gets dark. It’s far from a film for all ages. It gets bloody and violent at times, with much darker subject matter than most animated films would even think of attempting, let alone doing.
The voice cast brings their all, and it’s a phenomenal lineup. Peyton Elizabeth Lee brings everything she has into voicing Prue, and you hear the desperation and heartbreak in every scene. Carey Mulligan’s Alexandra is the star of the show, putting insane work into playing the grieving, brutally oppressive mother.
The ensemble star supporting cast does similarly well, with Charlie Day, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, and Amandla Stenberg all bringing their A-game.
Overall, the film is a masterclass in what it means to make art, and I cannot recommend seeing this one enough. Not only is it the best movie of the year, but it needs to succeed, given our modern media climate.
AI is running rampant, and generated content is being spread across all corners of the internet. Social media is plagued by it, and there’s increasing pushes to use it in the arts.
To put it plainly, the obsession with using AI for art is insulting and disgusting. Art is what it is because of the work a human put into making it. The result is not the point; the point is the heart and soul its creator put into it, where they were in life at the time, what they were feeling and thinking, and so on.
AI will never replicate that, because it can’t feel. It just knows how to spit out a product.
The rise of AI in the arts is exactly why real, human art like Wildwood needs to succeed. We have to keep our art safe, because if we lose that, we’ll lose so much of what makes us human.
Rating: 10/10