LAIKA released the most highly anticipated piece of stop-motion animation since “Kubo and the Two Strings” Oct. 23, entitled “Wildwood.” With a runtime of 2 hours and 20 minutes, it’s the longest stop-motion animation film to date. The theatrical experience of watching a stop-motion film is special as it’s not humans on screen, but handcrafted, classic “Claymation” characters.
Set in a fictionalized version of Portland, Oregon, the environment around the characters is especially stunning. The thick, luscious, green trees, rich flora, and colorful fauna which surrounded main characters Prue and Curtis as they ventured into the “Impassable Wilderness,” was especially memorable when watching in theaters. But a scene that seemed to have stolen everyone’s hearts was Prue riding on the back of The General, a majestic golden eagle, through the forest.
Every scene, even the less exciting ones, shows countless amounts of artistry that is even more impressive once you find out almost every scene is done by hand. Stop-motion is a special type of artistry because it can only be done out of passion and with a lot of money, particularly if you are ambitiously seeking to make a full Hollywood feature movie such as “Wildwood,” directed and produced by Travis Knight. It is almost guaranteed the intensely laboring animation you’re making won’t be a box office success. “Wildwood,” despite being in over 2,000 theaters domestically, is showing to be a box office failure. If some miracle doesn’t happen, LAIKA likely won’t make back its reported $100 million dollar budget. It’s a sad but fitting end to the journey of the making of Wildwood. LAIKA hasn’t seen a return on most of its investments since “Coraline” — something that only isn’t an issue because Travis Knight is the son of Phil Knight who is the current CEO of Nike.
LAIKA is not going anywhere anytime soon. Knight’s recent statements have been about LAIKA’s next projects that will be “unlike anything” it’s done before. With LAIKA now the only stop-motion animation studio investing money into the art form, I do find this loss blisteringly sobering. As a child watching “Coraline,” I didn’t realize the brutal limitations of making this distinctive form of art. Now I reflect on the very real possibility of not having stop-motion animation in the future. What are the lengths we would go for art and passion? There is a lot of buzz online pushing for a LAIKA win in the Oscars, and for people to support the film by buying a ticket for a showing in their local theater. “Art needs advocacy,” Knight said in a statement to Variety — and that has never been more true than it is now.
