Wildwood

Wildwood is one of the best movies of the year. It’s an epic stop-motion animated saga about a young girl trying to rescue her brother, and it’s filled with raging battles, fantastical animals and a voice cast featuring Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, and Tom Waits. Wildwood was made by Laika, the studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings. If you’re looking for other great animated films, check out these episodes: In 'Toy Story 5,' playtime's over and screentime's in https://www.npr.org/2026/06/19/nx-s1-5862016/in-toy-story-5-playtimes-over-and-screentimes-in 'Forgotten Island' is a cluttered feast for the senses https://www.npr.org/2026/09/29/nx-s1-5982735/forgotten-island-is-a-cluttered-feast-for-the-senses Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:13Glen Weldon?

  I worry that there are sell-in teens out there who are like, I'm not gonna watch a kids movie. I just want to say to you, hey, sell-in teen, hey, Goth at the beach. This is for you.

• 0:21Stephen Thompson?

  You're pulling a chair, turning it around.

• 0:23Glen Weldon?

  Yep.

• 0:23Stephen Thompson?

  Glenn's tough talk for teens.

• 0:30Stephen Thompson?

  Wildwood is one of the most ambitious animated features ever made, and I'm just gonna say it. I think it's one of the best movies of the year. It's an epic stop-motion saga with raging battles, fantastical animals, and even a detail-rich recreation of downtown Portland, Oregon.

• 0:47Glen Weldon?

  Wildwood tells the dark, intense, visually imaginative story about a girl who enters a magic forest after crows steal her baby brother. I'm Glen Weldon.

• 0:57Stephen Thompson?

  And I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Monica Castillo, film critic for the AV Club. Welcome back, Monica.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  So thrilled to be back to talk about this one.

• 1:08Stephen Thompson?

  Just gonna say it right up front. We like this movie.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  Love this movie.

• 1:11Stephen Thompson?

  So if you're unfamiliar with the studio Laika, it's the stop-motion animation studio behind not only Coraline, but also films like Paranorman and Kubo and the Two Strings. Wildwood tells the story of a girl named Prue who lives in Portland with her protective parents and baby brother. Prue's parents insist that her brother must never go outside. And when she defies them by taking him to a playground, he's carried away by crows who spirit him into the dark and forbidding woods outside Portland. So Prue ventures in after him, joined by a nerdy neighborhood kid voiced by Jacob Tremblay. What follows is an intense, sometimes surprisingly violent adventure as Prue attempts to navigate the forest realm and its world of warriors, magical wildlife,

• 1:55Stephen Thompson?

  feckless politicians, fearsome bandits, a dowager governess, and, because we're not that far from Portland, hippies. Wildwood was directed by Travis Knight, who did Kubo and the Two Strings, with a voice cast that also includes Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, and Tom Waits. It's in theaters now. Glenn, I'm gonna start with you. What'd you think of Wildwood?

• 2:16Glen Weldon?

  Oh, you nailed it, Stephen. Easily one of the best movies of the year because this thing, this is a movie. Capital M. This is an achievement. And this desperately needs to be seen. My fear is that people are gonna lump this in with the dreamworks of it all. You know, they hear all the celebrity, like, voice actors, and they're gonna think, oh, I can skip it. I can wait to stream it, you know, later. Don't wait. This is so gorgeous. It's the last movie I can remember wanting to just crawl inside and live in, which is, you know, that's down to the visuals. We will talk about the visuals. But also the vibe. This is epic adventure storytelling. It's exciting. You referenced this already, but fair warning, it's dark. It goes hard. There are stakes. Folks die. There's violence. It's very intense imagery, but man, it all works.

• 3:01Glen Weldon?

  And there's also plenty of humor, which I like. And I was worried at the beginning, there is a very standard comic relief character that we are introduced to. But the humor in this movie arises out of character and situation organically. It's not quippy one-liners. It's not pop culture references, which is why it feels timeless. It feels classic. It feels like a movie I'm gonna be watching every year for the rest of my life.

• 3:24Stephen Thompson?

  So you liked it?

• 3:25Glen Weldon?

  I liked it.

• 3:29Stephen Thompson?

  All right. How about you, Monica?

• 3:30Speaker 03

  It does feel, I kind of compared it to, like, the big epic adventures of the 1980s, where there was a sense of real kids in danger, of an adventure where death is a real thing that could happen. And there's a finality to it. No one magically comes back alive, and there's no get out of jail free card. It's, there are consequences to their actions if they choose the wrong path. I felt really scared, but I was also really entranced by finding out more about this world. This world is so detailed. It has so many layers. There's so much else going on in addition to the main story, which is already really engrossing as it is. And then there's more. And then there's all these wonderful characters you get to meet.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  I can't wait to geek out about the visual style of it because there were moments where I forgot I was watching a stop-motion animated film. It's so smooth. It's so detailed. My brain just kind of assumed, like, yeah, those are trees. No, no, no, no. Those are hand-painted, like meticulously constructed and done. And individually, the leaves move together as they're rustling in the wind. And it's beautiful and it's enchanting. And wow, I just can't say enough good things about this film. I really, really enjoyed it.

• 4:46Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, I'm with y'all. I loved this movie. Not only is it, I think, the best animated film of the year. I think it's one of the very best films of the year. And I, I hope that when people talk about it, they start to talk about it in those terms as not just like, this is good for an animated movie. What, no, this is just fantastic. You've both kind of alluded to the visuals here. The surfaces in this film.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Unreal.

• 5:11Stephen Thompson?

  The surfaces of the birds, the surfaces of the trees.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:15Stephen Thompson?

  Monica, you kind of mentioned, like, you forgot you were watching stop-motion animation.

• 5:19Glen Weldon?

  Right.

• 5:19Stephen Thompson?

  There are definitely scenes where you're, you're watching this and you're like, there's no way this isn't traditional animation. There's no way they're doing stop motion for this scene. And then you realize, like, no, that's, that is stop-motion animation. It's just a huge crowd, and they did it in spectacular detail. This movie looks like it took 50 years and cost $500 million. I mean that as the highest of compliments. And at the same time, it would be so easy and so understandable if they had spent so much time on the look of this film that they had somehow kind of cut corners in the storytelling or made this an overly simple story. They do not.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:01Stephen Thompson?

  This movie, as Glenn said, it goes really, really hard. But there's just, there's wit to it. There's movement to it. It's never, it's never stiff. It's never boring.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Never slow.

• 6:12Stephen Thompson?

  Never slow. And it's, and this is the longest stop-motion animation film ever made. It's more than two hours long. It's all on the screen. It's all on the screen. And yet, in the closing credits, and this is giving nothing away, in the closing credits, you get that thing where they show you a little bit of the animators making this film. And I realized I could watch another two-hour movie of them making this movie.

• 6:35Glen Weldon?

  Well, see, that's the thing. I mean, you do find yourself forgetting it's stop-motion animation. And then you snap back. It happened to me every few minutes. And, because you just think the craft, the work, like, the, the sheer labor. You get kind of mentally exhausted by proxy, just imagining human hands entering the frame and making microscopic movements on these little miniatures and then stepping back. And the amount of work and the amount of skill here makes me retroactively angry at every mid-computer animated kids movie that they have been pawning off on us for years. It's like you're living off of processed meat and somebody hands you a steak. And I ducked out before that, before the credits there. So I'm glad I did. Because part of me wants to watch the special features and behind these and stuff

• 7:19Glen Weldon?

  because you just sit there goggling. And I think I know one of those moments, Stephen. We get flaming cannonballs. And I'm like, sitting there with my arms crossed going, how did they do the flaming cannonballs? And I live for those moments. Like, a strand of ivy moves in a way that's clearly not digital. It's analog. It's human. It's real, which makes everything around it more intense, makes this world all the more real. Fantastic.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  So this is essentially like the stop-motion animation equivalent of The Odyssey, where everything is just so big. I mean, there are moments where the camera cuts to a wide shot, and you realize, like, oh, this is an entire set that they've built, that they also include the sky and all of this land. And you can see what looks like miles, but it's all, you know, forced perspective. It's just incredible. There's so many little moments like that, like, the kids walking into a clearing and having the light stream in through the leaves. And you're like, what? It's just so beautiful to just marvel at.

• 8:21Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, that's a good point. We have got more thoughts about Wildwood after the break.

• 8:26Speaker 00

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• 9:43Stephen Thompson?

  Welcome back. I also want to point out, like, yes, this is a stop-motion rendering of these fantastical realms, right? But there are also scenes that are just set in Portland, Oregon. And those are full. You know, at least, I know Glenn and I have been to Portland. We've actually been to Portland together. Monica, have you been to Portland?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have.

• 10:02Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  So I was very happy to see, you know, Powell's books, well represented. Voodoo Donuts, little nods to local businesses and chains that started there.

• 10:10Stephen Thompson?

  It's this loving depiction of Portland, right down to things like when somebody's pulling a Radio Flyer wagon. It says Malloy Flyer in like a little nod to Colin Malloy, who, you know, wrote the book that this is based on. And obviously, you know, the Decemberists perform songs on the soundtrack.

• 10:39Stephen Thompson?

  This is a movie where every detail is thought through. And yet there is still this looseness and this kind of knockabout quality that is just, I found so, so, so appealing.

• 10:54Glen Weldon?

  And the character design, like, it's not just slick, computer animated character design. Every character, well, many characters have bags under their eyes. I love that. I love that. Even the beautiful, like, Dowager governess, which person, she's still tired. We're all tired. The protagonist is tired.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Movie of our times.

• 11:13Glen Weldon?

  Yeah. And like, the design of the dad, the hippie dad, Prue's hippie dad, is so, like, sharply observed. I have met this dude. I have seen this guy's top knot.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  He's in a food co-op right now, somewhere.

• 11:29Glen Weldon?

  Right. And I just worry that there are, about the marketing of this film and who this film is for, I worry that there are selling teens out there who are like, I'm not going to watch a kid's movie. I just want to say to you, hey, selling teen, hey, Goth at the beach, this is for you.

• 11:44Stephen Thompson?

  You're pulling a chair, turning it around. Glenn's tough talk for teens.

• 11:48Glen Weldon?

  There are also adults who are going to dismiss this because it's got a kid protagonist. This movie is for you. Go see this movie.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  It's so much more mature than you might think at first glance, because it's like, kids on an adventure. Great, seen it. And then it deals with very heavy subjects about death and grieving, and how do we process that? How do we talk about these things? It's so smart about the whole thing. Even the villain, the Dowager governess Alexandra, you know, her whole backstory comes out throughout the journey and you kind of feel sympathy for her, but it's more complicated because she's also trying to achieve this evil plot. It's so fascinating how they weave all of that together.

• 12:31Stephen Thompson?

  This is a film that also understands the awesome destructive power of Ivy.

• 12:38Stephen Thompson?

  And as someone who lives in the mid-Atlantic region of this country, that spoke to me.

• 12:44Glen Weldon?

  I got a weird question for you, Stephen. I don't know the Decemberists. I don't know Colin Malloy. As I get older, I find myself channeling Marge Simpson more often. Music is none of my business. But you know the Decemberists. Obviously, this is an adaptation of Malloy's book, so it's not a direct line. But if you know the guy's music, do you watch this movie and think, yeah, that checks out?

• 13:02Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, certainly, you know, he wrote the story, he wrote the book on which this is based. It's naturally going to reflect a lot of his sensibilities. If I were to critique the music of the Decemberists or compare the music of Decemberists to this film, the music of the Decemberists is a little bit twee. It's very kind of multi-syllabic, a lot of, you know, big words. It's often perceived as a little too smart for its own good. And he definitely has a rich vocabulary of $10 words that he likes to work into what he does. This film feels like, like an extrapolation from his work. And it feels very much like a collaborative vision. There are some changes to the story, you know, from the book to the movie. And it incorporates

• 13:47Stephen Thompson?

  Decemberists' songs, but it's not governed by them. The songs, I think, are supporting the film, instead of the film being retrofitted to suit the songs. And so, I'm somebody who has always admired the Decemberists. I've sometimes admired them more than I've loved them, because I sometimes am not necessarily able to hook in emotionally because they're so wordy and florid. And to me, like, this is really, like, teasing out what I like the most about what he does.

• 14:16Glen Weldon?

  I will say, I'm interested in the book. In fact, I'm so interested in the book because, again, this movie has, I don't want to say lore, I want to say world building. I mean, yeah, there's like, a lot of stuff in it, as you mentioned, Monica. There's like, different competing factions. Did we need these scenes with the governor voiced by PCHH favorite Mark Evan Jackson? Probably not from a story perspective, but from a vibe perspective and from a, this makes this world feel more real, definitely. But I did stop on my way home from the theater. I stopped by my local bookstore and I ordered this book because I just love this world.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  I also wonder, you know, Stephen, you were mentioning that there was differences from the book to the movie, how much on the cutting room floor or what changes they were made, because this already is incredible. I can't imagine the book has even more details, maybe even more characters that didn't make the cut. So I'm so curious to see how the two compare.

• 15:07Stephen Thompson?

  Monica, is there anything else you want to add?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  I think one of the beautiful things about the fact that it pays tribute to Portland, and I also love that Laika is based there. So it is their hometown. There's a sense of hometown pride in making this story and bringing it to the big screen and giving it this big royal treatment, is that we don't really get to see these sort of regional specific stories as often. Like, you know, it feels like every third movie is set in New York City, which, fine, I love, I get. But there are so many different parts of the country. There are so many different parts of the world. And it's such a treat to see stories from different corners of our own country. And I really love that they retained that sort of local flavor and really made it a part of the story.

• 15:49Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah. They made it specific. They made it fantastical. They made it earthbound. They made it beyond earthbound. I think it's fair to say, we think you should see it.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Make time for it. And see it on the big screen to get involved and enmeshed in that world.

• 16:06Glen Weldon?

  Big screen.

• 16:08Stephen Thompson?

  Absolutely. That brings us to the end of our show. Monica Castillo, Glen Weldon, thanks so much for being here.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 16:14Glen Weldon?

  Thank you.

• 16:15Stephen Thompson?

  This episode was produced by Hufsa Fatham, Liz Metzger, Caden Mills, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Audio engineering was performed by Travis Hagan, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.

• 16:40Speaker 00

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