Opening Night of Animation is Film - Wendell & Wild Recap, Facts, and Video
The Animation is Film Festival returned to the TCL Chinese theater for their fifth year of showcasing line up of animated works of superb and memorable quality. Each year the festival continually proves over and over again how amazing, profound, and astounding animation films are. It’s hard not to find at least one film in the festival that doesn’t leave an impression of awesome. Wendell & Wild was indeed awesome.
Keegan Michael Key, Henry Selick, and Jordan Peele
The opening night for the festival hosted the US premiere of Wendell & Wild, an upcoming Netflix feature on October 28, 2022. The animated film is directed by Henry Selick (Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas) and Jordan Peele (Key& Peele, Get Out). This seemingly odd pair of an iconic director of stop motion and an iconic director of comedy and horror had collaborated together to bring a stop motion movie that tugged hard at your heartstrings, collectively grieve together, bop our heads to some Afropunk, and made us all want to be a hellmaiden.
As we found out through interviews, this wasn’t a very odd pairing at all. The movie is inspired by a short story that Selick wrote about his two sons being little demonic children. It wasn’t until Selick started watching the Comedy Central series, Key & Peele, that he wanted to bring that short story to life but with Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael Key as the brothers. When Selick approached Peele on the project, he had no idea that Peele was a hardcore fan of Selick and that this was project as an absolute must for Peele.
Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross)
Wendell (voiced by Keegan Michael Key) and Wild (voiced by Jordan Peele) are a pair of demonic brothers dreaming up a way out of their stagnant stature in hell. As they toil away under the watchful eyes of their father, they maintain their hope of opening their own theme park. Thanks to psychedelic visions from inhaling demon hair cream, the brothers see a vision of a hellmaiden,. Hellmaidens live in the realm of the living and are the demons only way to make it to there. For it is in the living realm that they may be able to obtain the funds for their park. The demon brothers are essentially entrepreneurs.
That hellmaiden they saw is our heroine, Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross). Kat is a young child but has clocked in a lot of tragedy and guilt to punk-armor herself in safety pins among the plaid as the afro-punk warrior that she has become. Her past experiences has solidified her distrust of authority and wary of genuine kindness and care. She is alone and has kept it that way to protect herself. The demonic brothers promise to grant a wish that she so deeply wants that she doesn’t even hesitate to use the possessed teddy bear for some late night demonic summoning.
It is no secret that the movie begins with a tragedy. Even the trailer starts with hints of a tragedy. It is this tragedy that Kat feels responsible for causing and that guilt has seeped deeply within herself. Even as she is grieving, she is plucked from one foster home to another, dealing with unscrupulous caretakers and bullied by other children. Each encounter grows another layer to her hardened personality. Until a particular incident lands her in hot water and she is taken to Rust Bank Catholic school as a last chance. On top of the recent grievance, being forced to attend Rust Bank catholic school also means heading back to her hometown and the site of the tragedy.
The welcoming party at Rust Bank Catholic school
Tragedy is a pretty heavy start but the movie is not all doom and gloom. Death and life are equally weird and funky to handle in this movie. Aside from the shrieking ghouls and glowing green, there is a healthy dose dark comedy to be entertained with and sometime just plain gross juvenile humor. Be prepared for boogers and squishy bits. Those squishy bits were meticulously crafted and handles over and over again. So remember as your gaggin’ at the booger jokes: someone had to craft that. And craft it well to make you gag!
The silliness and wacky humor and dark elements are balanced by the great heart of the story: Kat. She is either so fearless or completely jaded to not even hesitate when actually going through the ritual to summon the demon brothers on her own. Possibly because she’s already harboring a much darker and violent demon within herself. It is the kind of demon that has been fermenting due to years of re-hashing tragedy, soaking in massive disappointment, heavily caked by fear, and topped off with a heaping layer of self-loathing. All of this mental baggage is a heavy burden to carry for a young child. With that weight though, she has built up an inner strength. A strength that may be possible to draw upon to save everybody.
The demon brothers are not the main threat of the movie. It is an aggressive force of human nature that will not hesitate to murder and is driven purely by greed for wealth.
Wendell & Wild was such a stylistic and super fun animated film to enjoy. Fans of Nightmare Before Christmas and other stop motion films will be familiar with the landscape but will still be in awe at the overall effect. It is so easy to forget that these are miniatures that have been manipulated over a hundred times to move. It’s really hard when you see such delicate things like the coil of a hair or the flutter of a ghost. It is a visual trip.
On a scary meter of absolutely nightmare-inducing to chortle of cheesy ghouls, this leans more towards chortle. There are moments when it feels like Key & Peele are cameo players as the demon brothers are not the main focus. When they are onscreen, the influence that Selick felt while watching the Terries skit on Key & Peele can definitely be seen.
There are parts where it gets eerie and it may scare off children from teddy bears forever. However, if they were able to watch the “Friends on the other side” portion of Princess and the Frog, they will be just fine.
There are still parts of the movie that still linger after the last credits roll. Early in the movie, a pair of worms emerge from an apple screaming at a young Kat. There is a flashback memory but otherwise, it’s not really mentioned. Were these screaming worms a foreshadowing of Kat’s connection to the underworld? Or are screaming worms a common thing in Rust Bank?
Ultimately, make time to watch Wendell & Wild when it premieres on Netflix on October 28. It is awesome.
Enjoy the red carpet interviews with some of the talent of Wendell & Wild below:
34 Chillingly Fun Facts About Wendell & Wild
1. The street number of Kat’s childhood home in Rust Bank, 237, is an homage to Room 237 in Stanley
Kubrick’s 1980 horror film THE SHINING.
2. Rust Bank, the fictional town in which the film is set, is modeled off of both Detroit, Michigan and
Henry Selick’s hometown of Red Bank, New Jersey.
3. You can spot the word “Selick” on the tires of the juvenile justice van as Kat and Ms. Hunter first drive
across the bridge back into Rust Bank.
4. The Lyric Theater in downtown Rust Bank is named after Lyric Ross, the actor who voices Kat.
5. The sculpting team made a bust of Selick that you can spot in the trash as Kat drives through Rust
Bank with Ms. Hunter in the beginning of the film.
6. Selick wrote and directed the Fishbone music video for “Party at Ground Zero” in the ‘80s. The band’s
music is featured in the film, and the Fishbone band logo features prominently in the character
costuming for Kat and her father.
7. Kat also wears her mom’s gold necklace throughout the film — the same necklace Kat was holding
when she was pulled out of the water the night of the crash.
8. Green is an important color throughout the film, and ties into the Underworld. Wendell and Wild’s eyes
go green when they’re angry, and Sister Helley’s redemption chamber is full of green. Kat’s green hair
visually ties her to the green colors throughout the Underworld, a nod to her Hellmaiden powers.
9. Kat has roughly 160 individually hand-curled strands of hair on her head, each made of dyed wool.
10. The costuming team thinks through every detail of each outfit, down to creating scale-correct wrinkles
and creases in clothing.
11. Kat’s plaid Rust Bank Catholic skirt that she rips up and remakes to look more punk took
the costuming team 45 steps and five days to make. Kat’s skirt has a vertical plaid pattern, and
the rest of the RBC girls have a straight pattern, visually setting her apart.
12. The design for Belzer’s giant hands, which were built separately, was inspired by King Kong’s iconic
hand design from the 1933 film, originally built by the Delgado Brothers.
13. Across all of WENDELL & WILD, there are 342 individual puppets with 129 unique designs. There
are 165 unique sets total, most of which were then broken into smaller sets and redressed for specific
camera angle needs.
14. A few of the gravestones in the Rust Bank Cemetery have crew members’ names engraved on them.
15. Sparkplug, Wendell and Wild’s beloved creature sidekick, is based on a real-life micro-animal called a
Tardigrade, aka a Water Bear.
16. Selick and director of photography Peter Sorg’s visual approach for the film was first inspired by a
broad spectrum of other works they shared with each other, including the films THE DARKEST HOUR
and LET ME IN, as well as the TV shows BLACK SPOT and MR. ROBOT.
17. Sorg visually differentiated the framing for the Underworld through slightly off-kilter camera framing
and bright colors. The Land of the Living is less colorful and more drab, which reflects Kat’s emotional
journey, and the feelings of guilt and trauma she’s dealing with.
18. The puppet for Belzer was cast using silicone and sugar pearls, the same kind you would use
to decorate baked goods, to give him a squishy, stretchable, lightweight body.
19. Ms. Hunter’s Link Wray shirt is a little nod to the late ‘50s guitarist and musician, who was of
Shawnee descent.
20. The souls condemned to Belzer’s Scream Faire are what Selick calls “Danged Souls,” and many of
them are based on people from Selick’s own life, including a bar owner who fired him when he was a
piano player, an ex-lawyer who cheated him, the high school wrestling team coach who made him lose
weight, and his wife’s old boyfriend.
21. To help character designer Pablo Lobato prepare for designing the characters, Selick suggested
watching Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key’s comedy show KEY & PEELE. Selick specifically noted
the sketch “Prepared for Terries” — the famous sketch where two eccentric airline passengers prepare
to combat a hypothetical terrorist plot.
22. Kat’s overall character design was most heavily influenced by the Afropunk movement. Lobato was
also influenced by African masks, an idea he got from Pablo Picasso, who also utilized African mask
designs in some of his work.
23. Lobato’s key artistic influences involve a lot of cartoons and cubism: Pablo Picasso, Argentinian
painter Emilio Pettoruti, and the animated TV shows SAMURAI JACK and THE POWERPUFF GIRLS.
24. Lobato watched the film SISTER ACT to study how nuns’ habits move, which helped him design Sister
Helley’s look. Her habit is gray and white, which is closer to an Argentinian Roman Catholic nun’s
signature color palette.
25. Bearz-a-bub’s design is based on a large teddy bear that Lobato’s wife’s grandmother made for her
when she was a child. It’s now been passed on to their two daughters. Lobato’s wife and daughters love
the creepy bear, and he hates it.
26. Lobato designed two Rust Bank Catholic background character students to look like his two young
daughters, Olivia and Anita.
27. Raúl’s character design was influenced by Mayan sculptures, Mexican masks, and voice actor
Sam Zelaya.
28. Siobhan’s character design was influenced by the character Cher Horowitz in the 1995 film CLUELESS,
and Nicki Minaj’s famous blonde wig with blunt bangs.
29. Manberg’s character design was influenced by Marlon Brando.
30. Buffalo Belzer’s character design was inspired by pro wrestlers and Barry White. His sunglasses
are a direct nod to Elvis Presley’s famous shades. Belzer even has a “B” in the same spot as
Elvis’ “EP” initials.
31. Fawzi, owner of Fawzi’s Falafel, is based on the film’s esteemed production designer Lou Romano.
32. The news van in the final scenes of the film is from network “42 WURG,” a nod to THE HITCHHIKER’S
GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, in which Douglas Adams wrote that the number 42 is the answer to the
meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
33. Selick and composer Bruno Coulais wrote two original songs together for the film: “Raising the Dead”
and “Scream Faire.”
34. You can spot two surprise Jack Skellington appearances in the film: during the opening credits first
leading us down to the Scream Faire, and on the antenna of the juvenile detention center van.
