A Beautiful Rebellion Against AI-Generated Art

It is not often that you leave a theatre marvelling at the craft you just witnessed more than at the story itself. With Wildwood, despite being a very well-written movie, the craft takes centre stage. By the time the end credits roll, you are simply left stunned by the absolute spectacle of what has been built on screen, by humans. A reminder in this day and age that this is what art is all about.

The Humans Behind Wildwood 

Wildwood is one of the most ambitious projects Laika Studios has ever taken on. The film based on the book with the same name runs for 132 minutes, making it the longest stop-motion film ever to be made. A stop-motion film means that every scene and every shot is created physically, with puppets and real miniature sets, rather than being left to CGI. It took 16 years to bring to the screen, with more than 1,000 artists involved and over 142,000 3D-printed faces made for its puppets. The film is a big, defiant rebuttal to the use of AI in the filmmaking process, but before I get to that, I want to talk about the humans behind Wildwood. 

Directed by Laika’s president and CEO, Travis Knight, the film moved at a pace where a single animator finished only a few seconds of footage in a week. Animator Dobrin Yanev spent four years animating the flight sequence of a golden eagle, for a scene that runs just a few minutes on screen. Then there is the final battle, the largest ever attempted in stop-motion, which runs for nearly 12 minutes with roughly 3,000 characters across more than 400 shots. Every part of the film, from Prue’s bedroom posters to every leaf in the enchanted forest, exists because people spent years building the beautiful world of Wildwood by hand.

The Complexities Beneath The Fairytale

The story is simple enough. Twelve-year-old Prue is left in charge of her baby brother, Mac, who for reasons unknown is never taken outside by her parents. Like any other kid her age, the moment her parents leave, she cycles around Portland with her brother and is joined by classmate Curtis, who tags along, clearly uninvited. The outing takes a dark turn when a murder of crows kidnaps Mac and the two children follow them into the Impassable Wilderness in a desperate attempt to bring him back. What awaits them is a land of talking coyotes, dark magic and a stifling bureaucracy.

This is probably where the children’s fairytale ends and the film begins exploring more complex themes. Love, grief, suicide, letting go, violence and even revolution surface at various points in the film. Laika’s previous films, Coraline and Kubo, also tackled heavy themes, especially harmful acts done in the name of love. Wildwood continues the tradition, only with darker stakes and little interest in shielding its audience from them.

The World Adults Leave Behind For Their Children

The film may not be a children’s movie in the way animated films are usually labelled, but it is very much a movie about children. Almost everything the children go through is not the result of their own actions but something set in motion long before they were born. A mother doing anything to revive her dead son. A couple risking the fate of their unborn child for a selfish reason. A corrupt government and the divisions of species within the forest. Prue is responsible for none of it, yet all of it puts her and her infant brother in danger. The film is as much about a child teaching adults what they refuse to see as it is a call-out to every adult who leaves children to deal with the consequences of their actions. 

Two Kids, Two Different Kinds Of Growth

Beyond its complex themes, the film is also a coming-of-age story. While both Prue and Curtis get trapped in the Impassable Wilderness together, they split up very early on and go through completely different journeys. The two protagonists are complete opposites, and their separate journeys allow the film to develop their characters in different ways. Curtis gets the rougher end of the deal, with murder, imprisonment and a bunch of bandits for company. He grows from a timid, innocent boy into someone who understands the brutality of war. Prue, meanwhile, refuses to believe there is magic in the world, yet sees it at every turn. By the end, neither comes out of the wilderness the way they went in, proving that growing up looks different for everyone. 

When Grief Becomes The Villain

At the heart of the film is an antagonist whose grief makes her both tragic and terrifying. Alexandra is not your everyday villain who wants to rule the world. She is just a mother who lost her son. She has no one to blame, no one to share her grief with and no one who understands her pain. Till the very end, she is ready to do anything to bring her son back, which includes killing someone else’s child. Her refusal to let go and her heartbreaking logic make her one of the most dangerous and interesting antagonists in recent times.

A Revolution Rooted In Land Rights

One of the most surprising parts of Wildwood, at least for me, was the not so subtle parallel to Indigenous rights and revolution. The bandits’ plight is a clear nod to how Indigenous people are thrown off their own land by someone more powerful than them. They rebel and revolt in any way they can, including violence, and are imprisoned, punished and even killed for their acts. The guns against the bows and arrows, the guerrilla warfare against the siege weapons, all of it echoes the resistance of Indigenous communities against displacement. Even in the end, when there is an attempt to reason with Alexandra, the bandits refuse to centre her pain and decide to fight back.

But even here violence is not seen as an answer but rather as a sad and brutal reality no one wants to be in. The film never makes you feel particularly patriotic or triumphant. Rather, the tragedy of it is visible in every fight scene. It simply asks you to understand why the revolution happened.

The Predictability Of Wildwood Takes Away Some Of Its Magic

That is not to say the movie is without faults. The story is quite familiar and predictable. There are times you know the eventual fate of a character. Even the number of times Prue escapes near-death experiences seems a little too convenient, even for a fairytale. But none of these take away anything from what the film is trying to say. The plot may not surprise you, but the emotion behind it still does.

There Is Something About Human Art That AI Cannot Replace

The movie, as the director states, feels like an act of rebellion against AI in creative spaces. While some filmmakers use AI to create art faster and, may I say, sloppier, every frame here reflects the human hand. This is reflected in the character of Alexei, a poor imitation of a human brought to life by technology, who chooses to die rather than live a lie where he is not real. There is a quiet irony in the fact that the machine itself chooses not to be real, while we still believe AI can replace human art. Wildwood is a reminder that no imitation, however convincing, can carry the weight of something made by human hands.

I can go on and on about the film, but what matters most is that movies like Wildwood get the support they deserve. It is a visual masterpiece best experienced on the big screen. Without a doubt, it will be one of the films the world of animation will be talking about for the years to come. 

Wildwood releases in Indian cinemas on 13 November 2026, with PVR INOX Pictures.

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