Over the last few years, no animation studio in the business has left as much of an impact as Laika. Known for films like Coraline and Kubo & The Two Strings, the Oregon-based stop-motion powerhouse is known for their willingness to take (comparatively) bold risks in storytelling and advance the stop-motion artform in revolutionary ways...and for the fact that the studio is the pet project of former rapper and heir to the Nike fortune, Travis “Chilly Tee” Knight. Bringing this up isn’t to insult the man, no, but rather to provide context for the fact that, since the aforementioned Coraline, every single one of Laika’s films has either failed to make back its money at the box office or outright bombed on arrival. The strangest (and perhaps most fascinating) thing about that is, under normal circumstances, a track record like that would have absolutely decimated a studio like Laika. However, despite the increasingly diminishing returns, they always manage to spring back, bigger and more ambitious than before. It almost begs the question: “Will the tennis shoe money ever run out?” It’s hard to tell, but there’s a recently-emerged factor that may help us find our answer. Or, rather, a recently-emerged Link.
They Call him Mr. Link

Seeing the forest for the moss
It’s impossible to properly comprehend the sheer effort put toward actually making this film. Despite what the trailers may suggest, this is still Laika-grade stop motion, utilizing full sets and physical characters as opposed to vector graphs and textures...for the most part. CG is used to help expand sets, simulate textures like water, and populate backgrounds with computer-animated extras, and for what it’s worth, it helps sell the verisimilitude of the film’s world. However, there are moments when this cohesivity almost acts against the very point of doing the film in stop motion itself. As legitimately paradoxical as it sounds, the animation in this movie is good...too good. It’s to the point where you can only really see through the illusion when characters are in close-up through specks of paint and stray plastic used to 3D-print the characters’ expressions on their faces. It’s this cleanliness in the film’s genetic make-up that almost works against the semi-rugged adventurism that the film centers around. I’ve always held the philosophy that it is often our flaws that characterize our defining traits, and if there’s anything this film could have used, it would have been more flaws in its practice. A change as simple as using proper matte paintings in lieu of green screens (or even just leaving the horizontal faceplate line on each of the characters’ foreheads as opposed to erasing it in post) would help reinforce the otherworldliness of the medium, while not being intrusive enough to impede on the characters’ innate humanity (or lack thereof). Regardless, it is still an absolute marvel to behold.The difference between good and great

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