Wolfwalkers and My Father’s Dragon
Mar. 27th, 2026 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI showed up at asakiyume’s place just a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day, so we decided it would be the perfect time to catch up on the latest movies released by the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, still perhaps most famous for its first movie The Secret of Kells.
We perhaps should have saved Wolfwalkers for St. Patrick’s Day itself, as it’s actually set in Ireland. Young Robyn Goodfellowe has just arrived in Ireland with her father, a professional hunter who has been hired by Oliver Cromwell to eliminate the wolves in the nearby woods. Once the wolves have been driven out, the wild woods can be cut down and converted to farmland, thus by proxy also taming the wild Irish people.
Young Robyn is supposed to stay home and do chores, but in classic heroine mode, she would much rather dash about the woods hunting with her father. Unable to accompany him on his hunt, she instead goes into the woods on her own, and accidentally falls into one of her own father’s snares!
Robyn is released by mischievous young wolfwalker Mebh, and they spend a happy day frolicking through the forest together. But in the process of releasing Robyn from the trap, Mebh nipped her. And that night when she falls asleep, Robyn’s spirit rises from her body in the form of a wolf…
Absolutely gorgeous animation. I particularly loved all the sequences featuring the wolfwalkers in wolf form, particularly the eerily beautiful image of Robyn’s wolf-spirit frantically trying to return to her body when the whole town is attempting to hunt down this wolf that inexplicably got into the town walls.
I was also impressed that the film actually killed Cromwell. Stories are often a bit leery of killing major historical figures at times when they didn’t actually die, so I figured it would end with Cromwell hopping in a boat back to England, but no! The wolves straight up kill him.
The animation in My Father’s Dragon wasn’t quite as lovely, or rather didn’t have quite as many opportunities for numinous loveliness. But I also enjoyed it, which surprised me because I didn’t particularly like the book it’s based on and likely wouldn’t have tried it if it weren’t Cartoon Saloon.
The book (also called My Father’s Dragon) is a straightforward tale about a boy going to an island where he defeats and/or escapes various ferocious animals (crocodiles, tigers etc) in order to rescue a baby dragon. The end. A brisk recitation of a series of events without much character development or worldbuilding of the island or anything else.
The moviemakers clearly realized that in order to stretch the story to feature-length, character development and worldbuilding and so forth was just exactly what they’d need. The result is a much richer story, where the various ferocious animals are no longer basically an obstacle course but characters with their own motivations. Also, the human protagonist meets the baby dragon much earlier, which changes his journey from a solo quest into a sort of heartwrenching buddy comedy.
The filmmakers were trying very hard, and unfortunately sometimes you could see the gears grinding as they strained to get the emotional effect they wanted, which of course serves to undermine that effect. But still, an ambitious “shot for the moon and landed among the stars,” which is still a pretty decent place to land.
asakiyume’s place just a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day, so we decided it would be the perfect time to catch up on the latest movies released by the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, still perhaps most famous for its first movie The Secret of Kells. We perhaps should have saved Wolfwalkers for St. Patrick’s Day itself, as it’s actually set in Ireland. Young Robyn Goodfellowe has just arrived in Ireland with her father, a professional hunter who has been hired by Oliver Cromwell to eliminate the wolves in the nearby woods. Once the wolves have been driven out, the wild woods can be cut down and converted to farmland, thus by proxy also taming the wild Irish people.
Young Robyn is supposed to stay home and do chores, but in classic heroine mode, she would much rather dash about the woods hunting with her father. Unable to accompany him on his hunt, she instead goes into the woods on her own, and accidentally falls into one of her own father’s snares!
Robyn is released by mischievous young wolfwalker Mebh, and they spend a happy day frolicking through the forest together. But in the process of releasing Robyn from the trap, Mebh nipped her. And that night when she falls asleep, Robyn’s spirit rises from her body in the form of a wolf…
Absolutely gorgeous animation. I particularly loved all the sequences featuring the wolfwalkers in wolf form, particularly the eerily beautiful image of Robyn’s wolf-spirit frantically trying to return to her body when the whole town is attempting to hunt down this wolf that inexplicably got into the town walls.
I was also impressed that the film actually killed Cromwell. Stories are often a bit leery of killing major historical figures at times when they didn’t actually die, so I figured it would end with Cromwell hopping in a boat back to England, but no! The wolves straight up kill him.
The animation in My Father’s Dragon wasn’t quite as lovely, or rather didn’t have quite as many opportunities for numinous loveliness. But I also enjoyed it, which surprised me because I didn’t particularly like the book it’s based on and likely wouldn’t have tried it if it weren’t Cartoon Saloon.
The book (also called My Father’s Dragon) is a straightforward tale about a boy going to an island where he defeats and/or escapes various ferocious animals (crocodiles, tigers etc) in order to rescue a baby dragon. The end. A brisk recitation of a series of events without much character development or worldbuilding of the island or anything else.
The moviemakers clearly realized that in order to stretch the story to feature-length, character development and worldbuilding and so forth was just exactly what they’d need. The result is a much richer story, where the various ferocious animals are no longer basically an obstacle course but characters with their own motivations. Also, the human protagonist meets the baby dragon much earlier, which changes his journey from a solo quest into a sort of heartwrenching buddy comedy.
The filmmakers were trying very hard, and unfortunately sometimes you could see the gears grinding as they strained to get the emotional effect they wanted, which of course serves to undermine that effect. But still, an ambitious “shot for the moon and landed among the stars,” which is still a pretty decent place to land.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-27 01:55 pm (UTC)I enjoyed the animation of My Father's Dragon (I liked, e.g., how they did the tigers like Chinese lion-dogs), but it was much more a case of being just a tool for the storytelling as opposed to integral for the storytelling, the way it was in Wolfwalkers. And re: worldbuilding, I felt like if anything they almost had too much worldbuilding! Like those kids the protag connects with by the end. What's the deal there? Like we're in some kind of alternative Depression-Punk world where there are street urchins and maybe no school? And the situation with the protag and his mom, like--this implies a whole story (no dad, no family) that is sitting there with the possibility of being brought up, but no. And the tangerine islands and talking animals are all real (not the annoying thing of "I invented this because I was a wee unhappy child"), but so... could anyone go off to the tangerine islands? I'm not saying--at all!--that all those need answering, but rather that that's a large, complex, question-raising world that was created just for this short story.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-27 02:19 pm (UTC)Yes, I agree re: My Father's Dragon, there was just a bit too much going on. They added a LOT of frame story, and I think we could have gotten on without the lost store and the dream of the new store and the children across the street. Family needs money for rent, Elmer wants to help but instead brings in cat which enrages landlady (who is already mad about rent), cat offers Elmer some knowledge that might let him help - they could have pared back to those basics and given the story a bit more room to breathe.
Loved the tangerine islands, though. Happy to believe that you can only make it to the tangerine islands if a talking cat tells you how to get there (or if you are a talking animals yourself). Talking animal land only accessible to humans if the talking animals let you in on the secret!
no subject
Date: 2026-03-27 02:28 pm (UTC)Of course! This is the obvious answer.