Good afternoon, I'm here today once again, hoping to give out my thoughts on animated movies I find under-appreciated. I've decided to start this series because I find animated movie to be looked over and considered as "child-ish", when many of them are capable of carrying much deeper stories than one could imagine. Today's guest is a movie called "Wolfwalkers" !
The story's protagonist is Robyn, a young girl who moves to Kilkenny with her father, whose job is being a wolf hunter tasked with wiping out the wolves surrounding the town. While exploring the forest, Robyn meets Mebh, a fearless girl who belongs to the mysterious "Wolfwalkers", a group of people who can leave their bodies while sleeping and transform into wolves. What begins as an unlikely friendship gradually puts Robyn in conflict with her father, the town, and the authority controlling them in a strict system.
!!!! SPOILER WARNING: This review contains major spoilers for WolfWalkers, I recommend watching it before reading this, or read the last paragraph after the attached photos !!!!
This movie posed a strong relationship between freedom and control. Robyn starts the story trapped by expectations, her father constantly tells her to stay inside, behave properly, and avoid the forest because he believes he is protecting her. What he doesn't realize is that his protection is also a form of control that Robyn wishes to break free from.
The same idea is reflected on a much larger scale through the "Lord Protector", a man who wants to destroy the wolves and "tame" the forest. He represented an obsession with controlling anything wild, unfamiliar, or outside his authority. Unlike many stories where Wolves are depicted to be the antagonists and / or the opposing bad side of the story, here they are a symbol of the wilderness and how it refuses to bend its rules for the sake of others.
I also really liked how the movie handled Robyn and Mebh's friendship. Mebh essentially introduces Robyn to an entirely different way of understanding the world. Robyn's transformation into a Wolfwalker is almost symbolic of her learning to see beyond the rules she has been given. She becomes more confident, compassionate, and willing to question what she has been told !
As for the relationship between Robyn and her father, I found it to be the most emotionally interesting part for me. Her father genuinely loves her, but his fear causes him to become increasingly controlling. He is afraid FOR her and her safety, and so he thinks that keeping her safe means keeping her away from everything dangerous, while Robyn eventually realizes that living entirely according to someone else's idea of safety isn't really living. Thus amplified the emotional reaction we viewers get when he chooses to stand against the system for her, realizing that her safety and comfort lays in her happiness, in the system *she* chooses to create for herself.
The animation was absolutely gorgeous, the art direction of this movie is probably my favorite thing about it ! The movie has this beautiful hand drawn style that makes everything feel like an illustrated storybook. The human town is full of rigid lines, straight buildings, and muted structures, while the forest feels much more fluid and chaotic with its environment ! When the characters turn into wolves, the animation becomes expressive, the movement feels fast and fluid and paired with the sound track, it brings a whole new perspective. I also think that there's something to be said about the differences between the town and the forest, the approach the art directors took with designing it reinforces the movie's themes of freedom unconsciously.
★ The film is surprisingly a strong commentary on colonialism and the suppression of nature. The Lord Protector's desire to clear the forest and control the wolves reflects a broader historical pattern of authorities imposing their ideas of order onto places and people they don't understand, or rather they *don't* want to understand. The wolves are treated as pests that need to be eliminated rather than living beings that belong to the environment.
In the end, what I really appreciate about WolfWalkers is that it doesn't pose humans as an enemy to the forest, it rather asks why humans assume that everything has to be controlled in the first place. The forest is a metaphor for what humans can't understand, an uncontrolled chaotic power with its own balance that it lives by, this power is harmless as long as it isn't muddled with, which is something that people in power seem to fail constantly at doing.
In all honesty, the movie does become predictable at times, especially if you're familiar with stories about children rebelling against oppressive authority. But I don't think that hurts it much because the execution is well done and presented differently. The emotional moments, character relationships, music, and animation all work together incredibly well and it makes up for the generic storyline it follows :)
• Animation: 10/10
• Story: 7/10
• Characters: 9.5/10
• Themes: 9/10
• Emotional impact: 9/10
~ Overall: ★★★☆☆
