Let me start by saying Mad God meant a lot to me.
I've tried writing this review about a dozen times and just didn't know how to do it.
I began following Phil Tippett's Mad God nearly a decade ago now, I found the trailer floating around on the internet and was instantly enamored by the unique look and feel of the film.
At the time it was little more than a dream of Phil's that he had been making out of his garage.
When the first two kickstarters were posted I was first in line to support them, Those two shorts shaped up to be everything the original concept trailer had promised. Practical stop-motion, shot on film, hand-made sets and props, everything done from scratch. The look and feel of something that lovingly crafted is unparalleled.
I remember waiting for part 3 and then I don't really remember anything happening for some time, I don't actually know what caused me to miss it, but I now think I know why.
Years later I stumbled upon the VR project Phil had done for Mad God by sheer chance and I enjoyed that as well, it got me to dig back into the project to see if anything had come of it since I had stopped following, what I found was that part 3 had never been posted to the site, and that was the end of it for then.
Another few years pass and I got thinking about it again, I went digging and discovered that Phil had gotten the project made into a feature and was touring it. I didn't manage to get to a screening but by then it had already been picked up by shudder and had a release date.
Finally I got to see what had become of the project.
The final film contains 40 minutes of what was the original two shorts, those parts remain masterpieces. They tell a dark and esoteric story of a strange assassin entering a hellish and lost world to pursue some unknown mission. It isn't much to go on but we have a central character and an idea of their objective. This gives us someone to root for, an idea that they're going somewhere, and an enemy for them to fear.
Like many artsy projects of this caliber it tends to be a fairly simple plot used to hang smaller sketches on. There are plenty of famed artist driven vehicles that function this way and plenty of them are excellent for it. The assassin travels through horrible places as an opportunity for Phil and his team to animate a bunch of interesting and horrible things.
Then we reach what was originally part 3, and from here it all falls apart.
The main character is rapidly dispatched, but not in stop-motion. From here on out they use almost exclusively full-motion digital.
It isn't lost on me how difficult and expensive stop-motion analog film-making is, however it was that dedication that made the project so special. I can accept the shift to digital, there are plenty of excellent sequences in the rest of the film shot on digital, but several of them rely heavily on full-motion, and that I can safely say looks jarring and cheap.
Gone are the sequences where every shot is full of life and creativity, lovingly hand-crafted and painstakingly animated. In their place we have drawn out sequences of repetitive actions, lazy full-motion capture, and tons of bizarre splicing.
To punctuate the most impressive portion of film-making and separate it from the stuff of similar quality, we have a massive sequence of primarily live-action that looks incredibly awkward and far less visually impressive. It is followed by a digitally shot sequence that essentially mimics the first act, but looks significantly less impressive. The final act, while visually impressive, has completely lost any thread the film had up to this point.
The plot has been abandoned, the visual style has been abandoned, the dedication to an art form has been abandoned. So what's left?
This is why I'm left extremely conflicted. I hate to trash Phil and his team for the effort they put in, this is still an incredibly interesting and original film, the kind of thing I love to see. I want to champion this film for everything it is, but as someone that was so inspired by the dream of this film in its original form I find it too hard to let go and value what it is now.
The 10 minutes of digging around the main characters guts is what I feel like happened to the whole film.
It feels like they ran out of money and passion, and so they killed their hero, dug around its guts for something valuable, tossed out everything meaningful or shiny, and plucked out a screaming fetus of what once was creativity then unceremoniously sacrificed it to something esoteric with the illusion of depth.
It's a shame that I don't love this movie... but I don't.
If you're compelled by anything you see, go support the short films instead of the full feature. I don't know if they're still listed in their original form but I'm sure you can find them, you will get more out of that.
I've tried writing this review about a dozen times and just didn't know how to do it.
I began following Phil Tippett's Mad God nearly a decade ago now, I found the trailer floating around on the internet and was instantly enamored by the unique look and feel of the film.
At the time it was little more than a dream of Phil's that he had been making out of his garage.
When the first two kickstarters were posted I was first in line to support them, Those two shorts shaped up to be everything the original concept trailer had promised. Practical stop-motion, shot on film, hand-made sets and props, everything done from scratch. The look and feel of something that lovingly crafted is unparalleled.
I remember waiting for part 3 and then I don't really remember anything happening for some time, I don't actually know what caused me to miss it, but I now think I know why.
Years later I stumbled upon the VR project Phil had done for Mad God by sheer chance and I enjoyed that as well, it got me to dig back into the project to see if anything had come of it since I had stopped following, what I found was that part 3 had never been posted to the site, and that was the end of it for then.
Another few years pass and I got thinking about it again, I went digging and discovered that Phil had gotten the project made into a feature and was touring it. I didn't manage to get to a screening but by then it had already been picked up by shudder and had a release date.
Finally I got to see what had become of the project.
The final film contains 40 minutes of what was the original two shorts, those parts remain masterpieces. They tell a dark and esoteric story of a strange assassin entering a hellish and lost world to pursue some unknown mission. It isn't much to go on but we have a central character and an idea of their objective. This gives us someone to root for, an idea that they're going somewhere, and an enemy for them to fear.
Like many artsy projects of this caliber it tends to be a fairly simple plot used to hang smaller sketches on. There are plenty of famed artist driven vehicles that function this way and plenty of them are excellent for it. The assassin travels through horrible places as an opportunity for Phil and his team to animate a bunch of interesting and horrible things.
Then we reach what was originally part 3, and from here it all falls apart.
The main character is rapidly dispatched, but not in stop-motion. From here on out they use almost exclusively full-motion digital.
It isn't lost on me how difficult and expensive stop-motion analog film-making is, however it was that dedication that made the project so special. I can accept the shift to digital, there are plenty of excellent sequences in the rest of the film shot on digital, but several of them rely heavily on full-motion, and that I can safely say looks jarring and cheap.
Gone are the sequences where every shot is full of life and creativity, lovingly hand-crafted and painstakingly animated. In their place we have drawn out sequences of repetitive actions, lazy full-motion capture, and tons of bizarre splicing.
To punctuate the most impressive portion of film-making and separate it from the stuff of similar quality, we have a massive sequence of primarily live-action that looks incredibly awkward and far less visually impressive. It is followed by a digitally shot sequence that essentially mimics the first act, but looks significantly less impressive. The final act, while visually impressive, has completely lost any thread the film had up to this point.
The plot has been abandoned, the visual style has been abandoned, the dedication to an art form has been abandoned. So what's left?
This is why I'm left extremely conflicted. I hate to trash Phil and his team for the effort they put in, this is still an incredibly interesting and original film, the kind of thing I love to see. I want to champion this film for everything it is, but as someone that was so inspired by the dream of this film in its original form I find it too hard to let go and value what it is now.
The 10 minutes of digging around the main characters guts is what I feel like happened to the whole film.
It feels like they ran out of money and passion, and so they killed their hero, dug around its guts for something valuable, tossed out everything meaningful or shiny, and plucked out a screaming fetus of what once was creativity then unceremoniously sacrificed it to something esoteric with the illusion of depth.
It's a shame that I don't love this movie... but I don't.
If you're compelled by anything you see, go support the short films instead of the full feature. I don't know if they're still listed in their original form but I'm sure you can find them, you will get more out of that.