Smallfoot is a recently released animated film from Warner Bros. which follows Migo, a friendly Yeti, whose world gets turned upside down when he discovers something that he didn't know existed -- a human. He soon faces banishment from his snowy home when the rest of the villagers refuse to believe his fantastic tale. Hoping to prove them wrong, Migo embarks on an epic journey to find the mysterious creature that can put him back in good graces with his simple community.
Karey Kirkpatrick, who both wrote and directed Smallfoot, recently told Screen Rant his thoughts on animated films, those being that he believes they're similar to tales of ol':
I think animation are our modern-day Aesop's Fables. So, back in the day when fables and myths came about, they were usually to deal with things like the plague or whatever was going on. So, I'm always interested in what is the allegorical fable that's being told here and why. You know, how Aesop used an ant and the grasshopper to, you know, you are the earth. Or when they use three little pigs to tell them… your anthropomorphizing an animal to make a human point. And it allows you to do it in a sort of a more subversive, satiric way.
Kirkpatrick continued, explaining what it is that the film is based on - that being the current political situation regarding migration:
So, while we were making this, Brexit happened and [the] election happened. There were migrants all over the world. There were people that were suddenly getting more and more nationalist, more and more isolationist. There were lots of talks about strengthening borders, not between the US and Mexico, just everywhere.
And suddenly we realized… and truth was under attack. It just became… certainly phrases like alternative facts were being thrown around. So, it became an age of misinformation fueled by agendas that are often fueled by fear. And like, ‘I want this result, and so I am skewing the truth.’ That is just in the zeitgeist.
So, we come in, and here's what happens in the process. Is that you'll do anything to not work [CHUCKLES], which is talking about whatever happened last night or the news you were listening to in the morning. But it was just like, ‘Hey, we don't need to look very far to realize what this movement is actually about.’ Which is the importance of truth in the face of fear. And that fear is of the other thing.
The writer-director then explained just how the film tackles the subject - such as how the clouds surrounding the mountain represent a border wall, and how Common's character "The Stonekeeper" tells necessary lies to protect his people: the yetis - as well as the film's overall message.
And so, in our movie, this mountain that goes up through the clouds, where the cloud is our border wall. And it's like, ‘We are isolation stuff here.’ And it's a myth that's being fueled by our bad guy who's not really a traditional bad guy. He's like, ‘I'm telling lies and I am actually justifying them.’ And said, ‘These are good lies because they protect us.’ And when he shows us that cave wall, I think we look at it and we go, ‘Yeah, that's how humans will, you know, I can see where humans would react that way.’ But it was important to us to get to the end of the movie and say, ‘Not all of them.’ And the movie is trying to say there are more good ones than bad.
What do you think of the director's comments? Did you pick up on the film's themes?
Smallfoot is in theatres now.
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