Wildwood (Travis Knight, 2026)

Where the wild things are

Too long didn't read: Travis Knight's Wildwood in a nutshell is easily the best animated of the year-- of several years-- one of the best stop-motions ever, one of the most beautiful autumnal films ever made. Better than Lord of the Rings, easy.

Actually not being fair. Never been a fan of Lord of the Rings. 

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in some detail)

Not kidding about the autumn. Easy enough to do eyepopping burnt gold and glowing orange but what Knight does is more interesting-- deep green backdrops against which the occasional full-color tree stands out, like a staked-out Christian flaming in the middle of the night. The town of Portland, Oregon is a main character, the eccentric shops and even more eccentric passing unipipers standing or pedaling past streets lit by the dying embers of Persian Ironwood and Japanese maple. 

The stop-motion-- well I'm a purist; I love Wes Anderson's love of classic stop-motion's herky-jerky motion, the occasional rippling knitted sweater, the masklike faces that suggest a mysterious melancholy, even malevolence. But this smoother more fluid go-motion puppetry with the 3D printed faces does a fair enough job, the easier workflow allowing the animators to focus on a larger more intricate more ambitiously colored canvas, and on story. I can accept this present generation with its new priorities, virtues, values.

As for the story-- from Chris Butler's screenplay, based on Colin Meloy and Carson Elles' first book (two sequels followed), about young Prue (voice of Peyton Elizabeth Lee) leaving her hometown of Portland to rescue Mac (voice of Arthur Knight, the director's youngest) who has been spirited away by a flock of crows (not seagulls?). Classic quest, and part of the charm is how the realm of Wildwood is imposed on recognizable locations of Forest Park, the woodsy 5,1000 acres of second-growth trees located within the city. North Wood is primitive medieval farmlands; South Wood recalls the small towns of the early 20th century. In between the two regions is Wildwood, a deep wilderness filled with bandits and coyotes.

The plot seems tailored to exploit the setting: Prue ends up in the South Woods' governor's mansion (based on the actual Pittock Mansion) dealing with the repressive bureaucracy there; her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) is captured and taken to Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) the dowager governess, exiled for daring to use forbidden sorcery to reanimate her dead son. A complicated plot with a few twists, and some of it doesn't quite make sense at first glance (why does Alexandra have to make a bargain with folks outside Wildwood?) but as with a film like Chinatown the head-scratching complexities fall away in the grand doomy presence of the aforementioned dowager, easily one of the most memorable villains in recent American animateds. Alexandra is driven not by greed or ambition or madness but by grief for the death of her son, further intensified by South Woods' rejection of her. She's by turns seductive-- giving off distinct Narnian ice queen vibes-- commanding and, when occasion calls, psychotic. But it's not all suggestion and threats; she works hard at it, studying books of magic and technology, working with spells and gears, building and organizing a coyote-and-crow army of considerable size, armed with turn-of-the-century artillery. Alexandra is no mere shadow looming over the realm; more than Sauron in Lord of the Rings she's an actual presence driven to do what she does for reasons less abstract than the thirst for power. 

And when you think about it, Alexandra has some merit to her grievances. Why is sorcery and technology shunned? When she offers a bargain, why wasn't it kept?  It's actually common practice in present society, the only twist being her dark reasons for doing so (which she kept hidden). Given all that, you almost feel she's justified in raising an army to raise hell-- almost. Prue does give her some of her due towards the end, not enough for my taste, but some, and I salute the film for allowing that moment. 

The film is no crazy quixotic endeavor like Phil Tippett's tremendous Mad God; it took only sixteen long years to make, not three endless decades, and it doesn't have the same bewildering variety of texture and unmitigated horror. It doesn't quite measure up to a fantasy epic like Princess Mononoke-- there the differing factions have more complex near-irreconcilable issues with each other, and Lady Eboshi (who Alexandra seems to be partially modeled on) has this levelheaded commander-in-chief gravitas that you really struggle to resist, and there's a majesty and clarity to the battle sequences and ensuing ecological holocaust that Wildwood doesn't quite match. But this does have its merits, and the glorious setting and detailed animation carry the day. I'm suitably impressed.