The Race to Animate
In the streaming era, animation is big business.
Vulture takes a look at where we are, and how we got here.
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No, we didnt dream this.
It deserves to be better-known, and better loved.
This film was in development for a long time.
TheGuardiansproject had been in development for a while, and it was being done concurrently with the books.
The idea was always that Bill was going to co-direct, but his daughter got really ill.
The poor man had these family tragedies besetting him.
But he was around as a consultant and I talked to him pretty often.
We bounced creative things off him.
The concept is merging all these legends, and the film is like a great big overstuffed Christmas turkey.
Beyond the main characters, there are elements from Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, and even Harry Potter.
Santa Claus has swords and tattoos and a platoon of yetis that fight alongside him.
They just kind of fit, you know?
And some of them are really cool ideas.
Like the reason that the Tooth Fairy collects teeth is because they [contain] the memories of childhood.
Id never heard that before.
We wanted to dig deeper at what these characters mean to actual kids.
I remember believing in Santa Claus and thinking he was real.
That felt like a powerful thing to be able to play with.
And we have different associations.
But then theres, like, the Easter Bunny.Right, that was the tricky one.
Our version of him is like a forest ranger whos this wild guardian of the cycles of nature.
Things are going to rise again.
Obviously theres the parallel with Easter, but Easter originally comes from ancient myth and rituals, pre-Christianity.
These are mythic figures, like a bunch of demigods.
Theyre not just silly little fluffy Christmas decorations or holiday gift cards or whatever.
A mixture of childrens storybook with a more superhero, action-movie style.
But comics themselves draw on so many different forms and genres and influences.
The modern comic-book tone has that same, you know, child-with-a-thousand-fathers thing going for it.
It morphs and adapts to the moment.
And then the movie came out, and I think its fair to say it kind offlopped.Definitely.
So they didnt get it for a long, long, long, time and then they finally did.
We were starting to test screen it and the scores were great.
At the time, DreamWorkssShrekhad an irreverent style.
Meanwhile, your movie opens with a boy drowned in the water.
Its clear right from the beginning that this isntShrek.
Hes not dead; hes being born!
But DreamWorks was stuck behind the curve on how animated movies had to compete in the marketplace.
They were just thinking,Oh, were the only animated family film out.
Its the only choice.
They didnt realize our competition wasnt other animated movies but PG-13 action movies.
We were up againstSkyfalland theTwilightsequel.
We were marching into the lions den!
Im sure it was some kind of business arrangement that had gone sour.
It was completely different than I had any expectation that it was going to be.
Its the movie that inspired me to become an artist, or writer, or animator, or whatever.
Thats really kept me from getting bitter about the fact that the movie didnt do well.
That Jack Frost story, there are a lot of kids that has a real significance to.
It really evokes something in them.
The movie has a ton of shortcomings in my view, but it got something right, apparently.
I wanted to make that a little more central to the characters, specifically our bad guy.
They eventually turned into kind of a Spielberg-y, ragtag group of lovable mop tops.
But, initially, I wanted to make it feel a little more relevant.
So much of the movie is about fear.
What are the things that kids are actually afraid of now, in real-world terms?
I remember picking some movies to show people for reference.
I showedIts a Wonderful LifeandMr.
Smith Goes to Washington, which a lot of people just didnt get at the time.
You see the dark side of humanity in both of those movies.
It has some bite.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washingtonis such a common reference point for feel-good movies these days.
People forget that theres an entire montage in that movie of Jimmy Stewart beating people up.Yeah, thats right.
Theres also an entire montage of the antiMr.
Smith forces running newsboys off the road.
Theres, like, a whole suppression of free speech subplot.
All this dark stuff that theyre not afraid to dip their toe in, you know?
How does someone like Roger Deakins light an animated film?They light it!
There are a couple of different ways.
Your competition.Yeah, exactly.
Having another pair of eyes that gifted and experienced working with you is absolute heaven.
He could say, Oh, take that light down a stop.
Give me a little more bounce here.
Id like a little more fill on the right side there.
Flag off that area, so you know were drawing attention to this part of the frame.
Whats your most vivid memory of working on this film?Working with the cast was pretty electrifying.
It was the first time that I had ever worked with actors of that caliber, period.
With some of them it was a little bit of a tightrope.
Alec Baldwin is a real handful.
Oh my God, yeah.
But hes absolutely brilliant, you know?
It was kind of unbelievable.
The look of that movie is so much because of him.
It never got any of the praise that it was due, because of what happened with the movie.
