Wildwood was released in theaters on Oct. 23, making it the 6th stop motion movie produced by the company Laika. Laika has been producing stop motion movies since 2009, following the release of their biggest hit, and only profitable movie, Coraline. Stop motion requires so much time and dedication that they have to be fully funded! Crazily enough, this funding comes from the well known, billion dollar company Nike! The original CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, is the father of the CEO of Laika, Travis Knight, and fully funds their projects himself. Seeing a company as big as Nike itself, funding a smaller company with its hopes of producing art for the world is really incredible to see.
Although Wildwood isn’t making the huge amounts of money other movies have seen this year, it launched with a 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and is still holding an audience score of 97%! Not only has it hit strongly with its audience, it also holds records of its own against other stop motion movies. One of the most notable is its total length of two hours and 11 minutes, making it the longest stop motion movie of all time. Another incredible feat was the huge drawn-out war sequence at the end, featuring hundreds of individual characters all in the same moment! This easily makes Wildwood the largest-scale stop motion movie of all time, shown even more in its development time of 16 years!
I went and watched Wildwood for myself last week, and it was amazing! Even though it was right over 2 hours the movie flew by, due to the amazing and well done fast pacing. It was a beautiful and captivating story, explored within a vast, mythical forest. The stop motion itself was mesmerizing, you could clearly see the emotions and thoughts of the characters, truly making them feel alive. The theater was surprisingly more active than I thought it would be; there were at least 15 others enjoying the movie in there with me. Laika isn’t as popular as the huge movie brands, and has a hard time making big impacts. This is also due to the fact that it’s stop motion, and is known to fly under most people’s radars. So it was great to see people in there with me!
Overall it was an amazing experience, and I would gladly go back to see another Laika movie, far in the future if they decide to produce again. I would highly recommend going out to see it for yourself, especially if it could be your first stop motion movie. Supporting Laika and their 16 years of hard work could be an awesome way to spend your Friday night with friends, while also enjoying a massive and thrilling film. On the next Weather Vane I’ll be doing a movie review of the new and highly anticipated Hunger Games movie! Be sure to grab another paper and check it out!
