Alexandr Wang

wildwood is a true marvel of human artistry, craftsmanship, and storytelling. i honestly found it even better than You Can See Everything (gasp!). [spoilers if you read on] an interesting trend in both wildwood and hoppers is how they handle death. they’re both movies for young people that treat death as inevitable and natural, and both expose the audience to a surprising amount of it. this feels quite different from the cleaner moral universes of much of modern disney and pixar. both movies also have strong themes of non-intervention. of course, this is environmentally motivated, but there’s a broader Buddhist / Taoist morality running through both films: the world has a natural balance, and our attempts to impose our own ideas of goodness upon it can be destructive. this feels quite different from the more Christian-inflected morality of overcoming evil. in these films, nature isn’t inherently good or evil, and trying to eliminate everything we perceive as bad can itself be the source of harm. i wonder if this reflects a broader generational shift toward stories where it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s “right” or “wrong”, and where good intentions aren’t enough to make an action good. both films feel like spiritual siblings to princess mononoke, questioning the hubris of humans who believe they can impose their will on the natural world. wildwood is also visually spectacular and a complete and utter artistic achievement. it is always so rewarding to see fresh new takes on what a movie can be and how stories can be told. huge fan, go see it!