Thoughts on Wendell & Wild (Fixed!)

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR WENDELL & WILD

Sorry for the double upload, but I think this should work via Patreon Video! (Earlier uploads got caught badly in Youtube's Content ID, despite fair use criticism.) If this still ultimately gets caught up in some kind of copyright snafu, I'll stand defeated, but I think this should be okay under fair use criticism.

That said, I'm still going to shift this format over to more of a "rambling about a movie/tv/game while animating or modelling" process video so they can be uploaded on Youtube. Patreon currently limits 500 hours total for uploading, and I'll save those for shorter, tightly edited videos. But I wanted to get this out there in its intended format as thanks for joining!

I'll remove the original post in due time, I hope this ends up working out. Thanks!

ORIGINAL POST:

Hi! Thank you for supporting me! Sorry for the double upload here.

Patreon is a great place to go way more in-depth about my thoughts on TV, movies, games and etc., and I figure the perfect first video could be about Wendell & Wild as a sort of "sequel" to my Henry Selick video!

I'm also still getting used to collecting my thoughts and improving my public speaking, so forgive me if it sometimes sounds like I'm stumbling over my words. I'll try and improve things for future recordings, and you can always give me feedback on what to improve.

My notes are provided below if you prefer reading rather than listening.

I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think about videos like this and I'd love to chat with people about the film and Selick's other work in comments or in the Discord. Thank you again!

Notes I wrote before recording:

• When I was putting together my video on Henry Selick, part of my motivation, aside from Selick being one of my favorite directors and him releasing his first film in a decade, was that if this film was really good, then I’d be striking while the iron is hot.
• So after watching it, even though I really liked it, I actually had a pretty mellow takeaway from it. It felt like everything was a recipe for success, and this was finally a true vision from Henry Selick unrestricted, just like Nightmare Before Christmas was.
• And it’s a very visually beautiful film, probably one of the most visually creative on Netflix, but fairly flawed and not quite as perfect as I had hoped.
• So, before I get into the story and characters, let’s talk real quick about the visuals.
• For a while I’ve felt like LAIKA kinda lost the plot with stop motion and movies like Missing Link, to the point where LAIKA was basically hiding the fact that they were doing stop motion, so I was really happy Selick and his team kept the sort of “flaws” stop motion naturally create intact.
• Seams in the eyes, ruffling clothing, practical effects, so on. I think that stuff makes animation feel a lot more magical than what can come out of a computer.
• But Selick is still willing to use a lot of technological advancements and stylistic improvements made in the past decade for his film.
• Wendell and Wild as characters, when they’re in the underworld, have this flat 2D look to them that is super gorgeous. I love that you can sometimes see that they didn’t put Wendell’s beard on the other side of his face, because that side would only barely be seen.
• And all the character designs in general feel so different, yet somehow all fit together so well and takes full advantage of being in stop motion.
• Super lovely shapes in the faces, eyes, — really diverse cast with everyone feeling like they have their own unique identity, personality, culture, even characters that only have a few lines.
• Kat herself, her design is super creative and slick. I love how fuzzy her hair is and the practical materials her clothes are made with. She’s just such a cool character to look at and watch move.
• I feel like everyone in the film almost has the look of a vinyl toy, smooth shapes with real materials where it’s needed. I know nobody was expecting anything less from Selick, but this film is by far one of the most visually appealing films from him and on Netflix as a whole.
• So, let’s talk a little bit about the story and screenplay, which is by far the most flawed part of the film.
• It’s kind of unfortunate that the characters are so well established and unique, but they’re placed in a story that doesn’t really use them well.
• It kind of shows you just how important and different a screenplay is from the narrative itself. You can have bad narratives but good screenplays, like, for example, The Big Lebowski’s story isn’t very good, but its screenplay is phenomenal.
• And I think the overarching narrative in Wendell & Wild is excellent, I feel like it had everything that a good film would have, but the threads connecting that story, the dialogue, specific moments, all that sort of thing, just didn’t get there.
• One of it’s biggest flaws is the pacing is incredibly fast, despite the film having a fairly long run-time. It really needs to slow itself down and focus on the best moments, so the audience can sit and process was just happened.
• So let’s play script doctor for a moment and see what we can change about the narrative to make it all work, and feel free to chat with me in the comments or the Discord channel about what you think, whether you agree or disagree. Keep in mind this is a few months after I’ve seen the film, so if I make a mistake, just let me know.
• First: I have a big belief in combining characters and narrative moments. It cuts out the fat of a story and focuses on the best parts, making the pacing a lot more breezy.In the film, Kat’s parents die by swerving off a bridge, while the main antagonists of the film, the Klaxons, burn down her parents’ brewery. Why not just make them victims of the fire as well? You give Kat a lot more stakes and a stronger negative relationship with the antagonists.
  -Combine Siobhan and her friends into one character, the other two only get one or two lines in a film that already has far too many characters. She’s a good foil to Kat and Raul, but doesn’t have much depth beyond just being the Klaxon’s daughter.
  -Either combine the Klaxons and Father Level Bests into one character, OR when Father comes back to life, he kills the Klaxons right back. The film has way too many antagonists in addition to Buffalo Belzer, but Father Level Bests is by far the strongest of those. It would be hilarious if he gets killed and the narrative sets up a pretty standard plot where a wealthy family wants to ruin everything, until the priest of the Catholic school Kat goes to ends up being the REAL antagonist. The Klaxons in general are pretty weak antagonists that just feel like they have no true impact on the story until the very end.
• The “Hell Maiden” aspect of the plot has very little impact and can be cut entirely. You can just have characters with a past history with the supernatural, it doesn’t really need a name and powers associated with it. Kat’s motivation to revive her parents should have been far more closely tied with serving Wendell and Wild as demons. It’s funny to have Wendell and Wild force her to do stupid tasks like getting sandwiches, but that should come after the consequences she takes on to revive her parents, and it should happen way earlier in the film. It feels like it’s made up somewhere in the middle despite having a really cool visual to show for it, and then quickly removed with Sister Helley’s ritual.
  And speaking of, this was suggested by Mel who’s editing this video, but just have Kat do the ritual by herself! Sister Helley gets knocked on the head out of nowhere right at the very end of the ritual, and then is very quickly perfectly fine — why not have Sister Helley get hurt in the middle of the ritual and force Kat to complete the ritual and confront her demons by herself, and then help Sister Helley.
• There’s also a part of me that feels like you could have started the film around where Wendell & Wild appearing to Kat in her dream. Present the two of them as though they are far more powerful than they really are, spooky devils that want to make an offer with Kat to return to the world of the living, and then when we actually see them imprisoned and applying hair cream to their father, it creates a much more compelling motivation and characterization for the two of them.
• As for Kat, show us what happened to her parents later. Start the film with her in the prison bus so it gets a question for the audience that they want answered. Then, as she’s settling into the Catholic school, and after she meets Wendell & Wild, have the film rewind a little bit and show us what happened with her and her parents.
• The mural that Raul paints is a really cool idea, but it gets forgotten about pretty quickly until the end when Beezer sees it and changes his mind. It all feels pretty rushed. I feel like it either needs to be cut entirely, or have a greater purpose throughout the story. Maybe the council notices it and tries taking it down. I’m not sure, it’s an idea worth keeping, but it’s just not pulling it’s weight.
• Kat’s future vision is most unnecessary to the story, and it feels like it was there just to give the ending more emotional weight. But I feel like you could have the exact same ending and just have Kat…talk to the two of them about what she wants to do with Rust Bank. She doesn’t really need to be able to predict the future to talk about her ambitions with the town.
• All that being said, I think there was a handful of things that did work in the narrative.
• I really liked the zombie council and the idea of reviving the dead to get the votes you need. It’s a really funny motivation that worked for basically everyone involved.
• Basically any scene with Wendell & Wild in them were great, they have an excellent dynamic and a pathetic nature to them that’s hilarious. Like, sure, it’s basically just Key and Peele, but it works so well.
• I loved the janitor and felt like he could have had way more presence in the narrative. His interest in collecting jarred demons and his past relationship with Sister Helley was super cool — the film doesn’t need to get into any of that, it totally works as a past history that adds depth to the characters, but man they should have done more wit him.
• Beezer is a really cool depiction of Beelzebub, and I feel like he also deserved way more screentime. He feels super powerful and intimidating, but not immediately evil, which I think works well for the ending.
• In the end, it’s not a bad story by any means. The characters involved still carry it heavily, and it’s still a really funny film. If the characters weren’t nearly as strong as they are, the film would be way more of a slog.