Tag Archives: ‘The Boxtrolls’

Interview: Writer-director Chris Butler talks ‘Missing Link

A “Missing Link” has been found — in cinematic form, that is — and for writer-director Chris Butler, the discovery has been years in the making. But it’s not like Butler has been sitting around, biding his time since his last feature film as a writer-director, “ParaNorman,” in 2012.

That’s because “ParaNorman,” as well as “Missing Link” are stop-motion animated films from the acclaimed studio LAIKA, based in Portland, Oregon, where the action is meticulously assembled frame by frame as Butler and his fellow animators magically bring inanimate objects to life on the big screen.

The years LAIKA has been producing its stop-motion features have paid off handsomely, though, since all four of the studio’s offerings since 2009 — “Coraline,” “ParaNorman,” “The Boxtrolls” and “Kubo and the Two Strings” — have been awarded with best animated feature Oscar nominations.

“They take a long time to do, and ‘Missing Link’ was probably our longest production — five years, pretty much, from beginning to end,” Butler said. When ‘ParaNorman’ was finishing, ‘Missing Link’ already existed in some form, so I gave what I had at the time to (LAIKA CEO, animator and director) Travis Knight, and we agreed that it should be my next project. As I started to develop it, I also got involved with ‘Kubo’ and did a couple of rewrites of the script, so for a time, I was doing half a week on ‘Kubo’ and half a week on ‘Missing Link.’ After that, while ‘Kubo’ was shooting, I was in pre-production on this.

Opening in theaters nationwide Friday, “Missing Link” stars Hugh Jackman as the voice of Sir Lionel Frost, an adventurous monster hunter who, in a bid to fit in with upper-class society, sets out to prove the existence of the fabled Sasquatch in the Pacific Northwest. Much to his surprise, he locates the 8-foot-tall creature quite easily, and to his bemusement, Lionel discovers the furry behemoth can read, write and speak, too.

Seeking Lionel’s help, all this missing link (Zach Galifianakis) hopes for is to find his equally legendary cousins, the Yeti, in the Himalayas in what was thought-to-be the fantasy land of Shangri La — simply because he’s lonely and wants to be around others of his kind. The trip across the globe won’t be easy, though, since feared bounty hunter Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) is pursuing Lionel and his new Sasquatch friend, who are accompanied by Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), the spunky widow of Lionel’s late partner.

With an “Indiana Jones”-type of adventure narrative (accompanied by loads of comedy) and majestic sets throughout the film, there’s no question that “Missing Link” is LAIKA’s largest production in scale to date. It’s a film meant to be seen on the big screen, and one that Butler hopes isn’t just a movie to viewers of all ages but an experience.

“When we’re making these features, we’re thinking of them as proper movies,” Butler, whose stop-motion resume also includes work on Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride.” I’ve said many times, but the idea that animation is just some babysitting device to plop a child in front of while you go off and do other things … that idea doesn’t work for me. What I want is to have a cinematic experience. We’re going to create an experience that families can go to together, enjoy together, laugh together and talk about. That’s important to me.

Missing Link is a PG film both kids and adults can enjoy in equal measure, one through which Butler said he wants to create the same sense of wonder that he experienced when he was growing up.

“I loved animation as a kid — it inspired me and moved me and set a course for the rest of my life,” Butler recalled. Today, when I see or talk to kids or young students who say that ‘ParaNorman’ or ‘Coraline’ or another movie that I was involved in has changed the course of their life, that’s important to me. That’s what makes it worthwhile. The work is never a cartoon. It’s much more than that.

Essentially, Butler said, he respects the intelligence of all of his audience members, whether they are 5 years old or an adult. The youngsters, he said, are much more perceptive than people give them credit for.

“My philosophy has always been, ‘Never talk down to kids.’ Sometimes people will query some of the decisions I’ve made or the dialogue I’ve put in the film, and will say, ‘Well, kids won’t understand that,’ and I think that’s a misunderstanding of what being a kid is,” Butler explained. “There’s so much as a child that goes over your head, but there’s also the bits that you grasp that make you grow and challenge you to think more, that challenge you to evolve, which seems to be an apt description for ‘Missing Link.’ So, for me, I try to never talk down to a kid, ever.”

United Artists

Casting Wolverine

Appropriately, Butler creates three-dimensional characters to embody the puppets his animators are bringing to life, and with that, he’s thrilled that among the cast this time is Jackman. The actor, of course, rose to prominence in the “X-Men” movies as Wolverine; but in the midst of making those superhero adventures, he’s managed to expand his palette as a song and dance man on the Broadway stage, as well as in the smash movie musicals “Les Miserables” and “The Greatest Showman.”

Because of the actor’s willingness to play all sorts of different characters, Butler said bringing Jackman into the fold on Missing Link was an easy decision.

The biggest thing he brought to the film, and it wasn’t really a surprise, but it was why I hired him, was the fact that Sir Lionel’s character is flawed. He’s self-centered and arrogant, but he becomes a much better character on his journey through the movie, Butler said. That’s why Hugh Jackman was vital to me. He’s so effortlessly charming that even when he’s doing bad things, you kind of like him. I knew I needed someone like that to play this character because you need to be on his side from the first step of his journey all the way through to the end.

Tim Lammers reviews movies weekly for The KQ92 Morning Show,” “KARE 11 News at 11” (NBC), WCCO Radio, WJON-AM, KLZZ-FM, “The Tom Barnard Podcast” and “The BS Show” with Bob Sansevere.

Copyright 2019 DirectConversations.com

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Q&A: NECA’s Randy Falk talks vintage movie licenses, SDCC exclusives

Founded in New Jersey in 1996, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) has not only long been associated with excellent product, but lauded for its ingenuity to produce action figures for films that didn’t get a toy line when they were released in theaters.

Currently, NECA is preparing for its annual pilgrimage to the San Diego Comic-Con next week to reveal upcoming products and sell exclusives figures from such licenses as “Coraline,” “Aliens” and “Predator.” In the middle of the madness, NECA’s director of product development, Randy Falk, answered a few questions by email about the company’s vintage offerings and SDCC exclusives.

 Tim Lammers: Thanks for your time, Randy. I have to admit, I was so thrilled to hear NECA was going to produce “The Lost Wave” of “Prometheus” figures. What factored into that decision? Was it because of the pending release of “Alien: Covenant” or the continuing success of the your “Alien” line? 

Randy Falk: Thank you! For the “Prometheus” Lost Wave, it was little of both, actually. There was continued interest from a small but vocal fan base that five years on still wanted to see these figures happen, and with the release of “Covenant” on the horizon it felt like the right time to do it. This is really a gift for the loyal fans.

TL: Could this signal the beginning of more “lost waves” being produced? Is there another example of something NECA had in the prototype phase that didn’t make it to store shelves, which you would like to see completed now?

RF: I don’t know if I would go that far… the tooling is the biggest expense in manufacturing figures of this kind, and usually if something does not get produced it’s for a good reason, so it’s tough to justify those costs.

TL: What are the chances of the first waves of “Prometheus” figures being reproduced to compliment the “Lost Wave” of figures?

RF: Slim to none, unfortunately. The audience has not grown much since release and as far as the toys are concerned, the sales were never near the level of our “Alien” line.

MORE: Tim’s articles on NECA for Screen Rant

James Cameron is getting an ‘Aliens’ action figure

Paul Reiser ‘Proud’ of ‘Aliens’ action figure

‘Alien: Covenant’ action figures revealed

TL: I think what separates NECA from so many other toy/collectible companies is their commitment to develop figures on vintage licenses whereas other companies concentrate solely on current releases. What drives that mindset to produce vintage licenses?

RF: Honestly, I would be thrilled to work in what I call the golden era/decade of ’77 – ’87 as much as I could. That 10-year period encompasses all the best in film, music, and video games and the nostalgia factor makes these brands successful 30 to 40 years on, not only with the people who grew up with them but the younger audience that has discovered that greatness on video or Netflix or cable. I love the classics and for the most part there isn’t much in modern entertainment that comes close. There is a reason Jason or Freddy or “Alien” or “Predator” still resonate today, or why a 4-year-old loves Gizmo as much as a 40-year-old who saw “Gremlins” in the theater in 1984.

A Rocky

TL: I’m thrilled that you’ve reissued the “Rocky” figure line (and I especially love the “Rocky IV” Apollo Creed). Given that these figures were popular enough to reissue, is there any desire to expand the line to include Mickey, etc?

RF: Thanks, and these are a lot of fun to create. It is unlikely we would do a Mickey or Adrian because of all the new tooling costs involved, added to their limited appeal compared to Rocky, Apollo, Clubber, etc. We do have a fantastic set of maquettes coming, though, based on the puppets used in an old iced tea commercial. These are great versions of Rocky and Mickey.

TL: Perhaps one of the biggest surprises for exclusives being produced by any company for SDCC is the “Coraline” Display and figure. Is that tied into the 10th anniversary of LAIKA, and, is it possible NECA will be reissuing any of its previous “Coraline” figures?

RF: I can’t elaborate too much on this at the moment, but yes, we are definitely celebrating Laika’s 10th anniversary. We love all of their films and are thrilled to be working with them again. “Kubo and the Two Strings” was one of my favorite movies last year, in fact! We have a lot of things in the planning stage now, but for the moment I can only say there will be new figures and more.

NECA

TL: It’s great to see that NECA is offering the Jungle Briefing Dutch as an exclusive at SDCC. Any chance we’ll get Carl Weathers’ Dillon at some point?

RF: We would absolutely love to produce a Dillon figure and have made many attempts to reach an agreement with Carl for the use of his likeness as Dillon. Fox, which holds the license for “Predator,” does not have any of the likeness rights to the actors within the film. We were able to make a separate agreement with Arnold to include Dutch in the line, but that happened around the 7th series in the “Predator” line, so as you can see it can take a while. This year we celebrate “Predator’s” 30th anniversary, so we have some Dutch figures and classic Jungle Hunter Predator figures back out in the market. We would still love to include Dillon and hope that one day it can happen, but that is still to be negotiated with Carl Weathers.

Copyright 2017 DirectConversations.com.

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Reviews: Tim Lammers talks ‘The Equalizer,’ ‘The Boxtrolls’ on KARE-TV, more

Denzel Washington in 'The Equalizer' (photo -- Sony Pictures)

Tim reviews the new action crime thriller “The Equalizer” and “The Boxtrolls” with Bryan Piatt on KARE 11 TV in Minneapolis, and on radio on WCCO-AM (19 minutes in), KTWIN-FM, KKLN-FM and KSCR-FM.

Also read the reviews of the films on BringMeTheNews.com, and read an interview with “The Boxtrolls” filmmaker and Laika CEO Travis Knight HERE.

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Interview: Laika CEO, filmmaker Travis Knight talks ‘The Boxtrolls’

When it came to producing animation studio Laika’s third stop-motion feature “The Boxtrolls,” company CEO and lead animator Travis Knight clearly had one thing in mind: Think out of the box. After all, it was that sort of innovative thinking that landed the studio’s first two films, “Coraline” and “ParaNorman,” Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature.

Thankfully for “The Boxtrolls,” Knight had a deep well of source material in Alan Snow’s 550-page children’s book “Here Be Monsters,” which encapsulated all the things Knight, born in 1973, loved as a kid.

“It was like the stories of Charles Dickens and Roald Dahl,” Knight recalled for me in a recent interview. “It had a really great, biting satirical point-of-view like you see in ‘Monty Python,’ plus it had all of these incredible environments and all these different creatures.”

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Scene from “The Boxtrolls” (photo: Focus Features/LAIKA).

While the first time Knight read “Here Be Monsters” dates back 10 years, his path to the stop-motion craft tracks back to his childhood. It was then that the son of Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight watched Rankin-Bass stop-motion classics like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and saw inanimate creatures come to life via the gifted hands of Ray Harryhausen in films like “Jason and the Argonauts” and “Seven Voyages of Sinbad.”

Then, Travis Knight said, he would create his own movies in his mind with his own action figures.

“There was something about those films to me that was absolutely so magical, and as I try to diagnosis what it was that turned me on to stop-motion, it really comes down to the things I did as a kid,” Knight observed. “Whether it’s action figures, Tonka trucks or dolls, kids can imagine scenarios in their heads and believe these things can come alive. When your imagination kicks in, you have this whole world exist within these toys. For me, stop motion is primal in that way.”

Ultimately, Knight said, stop-motion movies are like seeing child’s playthings being brought to life — except for now they’re characters in their own story.

“Stop-motion has this sort of weird, magical charm and energy that reminds us what it was like when we were kids,” he said. “I still have that feeling to this day. Even though I’ve been doing this for 20 years, when I walk to a stop-motion set and I see the puppets underneath those beautiful lights, I don’t feel the medium has lost any of its allure, charm or magic. It’s still just as beautiful as it was when I was a kid running home from school to see those after-school specials and movies.”

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Here be ‘Boxtrolls’

Opening in 2D and 3D theaters nationwide on Friday, “The Boxtrolls,” which contains some elements of computer animation, tells the story of Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) — an orphaned, 11-year-old boy who has spent nearly his whole life underground being raised by a lovable set of trash-collecting creatures dubbed the Boxtrolls.

Above ground is the Victorian-era town of Cheesebridge, which is driven by wealth, class and town’s cheese product — and an evil exterminator, Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), who wants to rid the population of the Boxtrolls as a way to climb the social ladder to become one of the town’s aristocrats. The problem is, the Boxtrolls aren’t as fearsome as Archibald portrays the creatures to be, and it’s up to Eggs and a morbidly curious girl, Winnie (Elle Fanning), to set the record straight before it’s too late and exterminator executes his dastardly plans.

While the story is filled with colorful characters, the ones that stayed with Knight most after reading Snow’s book were the Boxtrolls — a set of jibber-jabbering monsters that have as much if not more charm on-screen than the Minions of the “Despicable Me” movies.

“Of all the stuff in Alan’s book, his most unique invention were the Boxtrolls. They were just this really interesting breed of species that we never really seen before,” Knight recalled. “As we were developing the story over the course of the eight-nine years we used to turn it into a film, we always went back to them. There was something fundamentally compelling about them in this marginalized community. They were living in squalor, yet they were rich in what matters. They had love, affection and commitment to each other. They were timid yet had the external appearance of being monstrous, but they were actually very sweet, gentle souls.”

The medium of stop-motion animation is perhaps one of the most time-consuming of all filmmaking efforts, considering the infinite number of movements are shot to give the appearance that a character has come to life. But perhaps even time-consuming in this latest Laika feature was the task of whittling “Here Be Monsters” from its nearly 550 pages into a workable screenplay.

“The tricky thing with adapting something that’s 550-some odd pages is that you somehow have to fit the essence of that story into a 90-minute film,” said Knight, who appears in a time-lapse end credits scene to demonstrate the amount of effort it takes to animate a scene. “If you tried to do it straight adaption would have been a 12-hour movie, so you have to get the core of the story. It’s like a process in ruthless economy, where you have to strip out all the stuff that doesn’t support the core story.”

While Knight said several iterations of the script were developed, he always felt like there was something off.

“We were very close to Alan’s book, and there was a ton of stuff going on, and it was fun and frenetic, but in the end it was hollow,” Knight added. “There was nothing underpinning it, there was nothing at the core of it that was really resonant.”

Ultimately, Knight said, he and the film’s co-directors, Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi, decided that the story needed to hit home, quite literally.

“Works of art are a Trojan horse, underneath the surface is a personal point-of-view or a deeply-held philosophy from the filmmaker that keeps everything at the foundation level going,” Knight explained. “For me, Tony and Graham, what really sparked us was this idea of family, because we were all fathers of young children. We were struggling with that thing all parents struggle with, which was trying to find that elusive balance between family and meaningful work.”

Once the filmmakers were able to tap in to the ideas surrounding the balance of work and family, everything started to fall into place.

“We explored that themes within the prism of this film and that’s when we really started to feel that we had something there,” Knight said. “That was the turning point when we felt we had the emotional core. Once you have that, then you can start layering in the fun, the weirdness, the metaphors and the big ideas. But without the core, it all falls apart.”

Lighter tone

While Laika’s films already have a distinct feel that separates them from other animated fare, there’s no question that “The Boxtrolls” is much lighter in tone than “Coraline” and “ParaNorman.” Knight said the decision to go a different route with the studio’s latest feature wasn’t as much a conscious effort to put out a lighter film as it was their responsibility to tell a story the way it was intended to be told.

“Each story demands something different. Yes, there were superficial similarities between ‘Coraline’ and ‘ParaNorman’ in that they both had supernatural elements, the films are different from each other,” Knight told me. “‘Coraline’ was inspired by classic fairy tales, so it had some primal scares at the core of it that were consistent with the source material, so you have to honor that in the best way.

“While I think that’ something historically family films have done, over the last 20 years they’ve been eroding that edge,” Knight added. “It’s to the point where we almost have this inoffensive approach to filmmaking for families, which I think in the end isn’t doing our kids any service at all. The material in ‘Coraline’ was something that we had to honor and we couldn’t fluctuate from the consequences of it.”

Knight said while there were also scares in “ParaNorman,” they were much different from those in its Laikan predecessor.

“‘ParaNorman” had scares, but they were funhouse scares. They were rooted in Amblin films and schlocky Hammer Horror films from the ’70s,” Knight said. “But while it had elements of scares and it dealt with death in a serious way, the scares were more superficial.”

“The Boxtrolls,” Knight said, “isn’t scary at all.”  That’s because while the Boxtrolls are perceived as monsters by the townsfolk of Cheesebridge, audiences will quickly discover that perception is simply not the case.

“The film does have intensity, though. It’s rooted in Dickens, Dahl and ‘Monty Python,’ so by virtue, it’s a different kind of story,” Knight said. “It’s an absurdist coming-of-age fable. It certainly has moments where things are intense, but it’s not a horror film by any stretch of the imagination. Each story demands something different from the filmmakers, and while we always approach a film with the idea of balancing something artfully — the lightness and dark, intensity and warmth, emotion and heart — so we really have a dynamic story, the ingredients will vary depending on what the story requires.”

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