“Articles of faith” are what Travis Knight calls the stop-motion animated films that the studio Laika produces one meticulous frame at a time.
Knight, the president and chief executive of Laika, directed the company’s latest and most ambitious project yet, “Wildwood” (in theaters). Based on Colin Meloy’s 2011 fantasy novel, the film follows Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a teenage girl who enters a magical realm hidden within the forest around Portland, Ore. (Laika is based in the Portland suburb Hillsboro.)
The journey of “Wildwood” began in 2010, when Knight first read an early manuscript of Meloy’s text. At the time, Laika had only produced one feature, the 2009 film “Coraline.”
“It was exciting and terrifying because I had absolutely no idea how to make it,” Knight said about “Wildwood” during a recent interview in Los Angeles. “What the story asked of us was beyond our capabilities.” That narrative features grand-scale battles, a massive ensemble and vast set pieces.
Years later and after hours of painstaking craftsmanship, the studio has brought the story to life. Knight reflected on the staggering scope of “Wildwood,” the creative choices behind its PG-13 rating and why stop-motion remains essential in the age of A.I.
Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How would you compare “Wildwood” to Laika’s previous films?
It’s so far beyond anything we’ve ever done before. It’s twice as big as “Kubo and the Two Strings,” which was at the time the most epic thing that we’ve taken on. But now that feels like a short film compared to what we had to do for this one. For example, that battle sequence at the end of the movie is by far the most challenging technical thing that we’ve ever taken on. Prue gets a scratch on her face during the battle. We have to pick the exact frame where that laceration goes across her face because for the next 15 minutes of the film that scratch has to be tracked since we shoot these things out of sequence.
The violence and maturity of some of the themes in “Wildwood” might surprise some people. Why was it important to preserve these aspects of the narrative?
It’s the first PG-13 film that we’ve ever made at Laika. I actually do think it’s an appropriate rating because it deals with big complex themes that the youngest members of the family are probably not ready for. But this comes from a person who watched “The Exorcist” when he was five. Modern cinema generally tends to talk down to young audiences. But young people experience loss. They know what it’s like to feel afraid. We didn’t want the violence to be like a “John Wick” shoot-em-up. One of our characters has to commit an act of violence, but it’s not triumphant, it’s tragic.
Why was it important for “Wildwood” to embrace Portland and its landmarks?
Places have personalities and Portland is a very unusual and distinctive place. Wildwood as a place was the greatest hits of Oregon. We drew from all these different amazing locations throughout the state to try to make this place feel beautiful and fantastic.
Are there references that Portland locals will recognize but might surprise others?
There’s a moment where a guy on a unicycle with a Darth Vader mask goes riding by playing bagpipes that have big flames shooting out of them. That’s a real guy in Portland. He’s called the Unipiper. The theme that he plays, he actually came to our studio and recorded it. These are real places and real people in Portland.
Even the smallest elements of “Wildwood,” like whip cream on a hot chocolate are physically done frame by frame. What does such attention to detail do for the film?
Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands. Some of the containers in the kitchen of the McKeel household are filled with little bits of fusilli pasta. Somebody recognized that when they drilled into a bucket, it created tiny curls of plastic that look like pasta. It’s not something that you’re going to focus on, but the accumulation of all these things makes the world feel lived in and alive.
Stop-motion animation and the craft it entails feels antithetical to generative A.I. What are your thoughts on its use in creative fields?
With A.I., the entire history of the artistry and creativity that we have collectively as humanity invented, is now being ingested by machines and spat back out at us as if it’s something that’s been created. It is plagiarism. It is theft. You have to admire how extraordinarily sophisticated the technology is, but it has no soul. A machine does not know what it feels like to lose someone. A machine has never fallen in love. A.I. has no humanity.
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