Kubo and the Two Strings

Kubo and the Two Strings was home to a lot of great advertising, a promising premise connecting back to a old-fashion form of storytelling with a samurai template featuring elements like prophecy, epic tales and mystical powers, and was being made by famous stop-motion movie production company, Laika, who was also responsible for such gems as Coraline and ParaNorman. With all this hype and strong backing behind it, you’d expect this film to be an instant success, but it was largely overlooked compared to its predecessors and didn’t do very well at the box office (only grossing $77.5 million against its $60 million). The film did do critically well and its Oscar nominations and eventual word of mouth did bring attention to it eventually, but what did this film do differently to prevent as much widespread adoration? In feudal Japan, a young boy named Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson) enjoys his quiet life with his mother until he is attacked by two ghost spirits simply known as The Sisters (voiced by Rooney Mara). After being saved by his mother who uses her magic to send Kubo far away along with a talking monkey created from a wooden snow money charm, (voiced by Charlize Theron), she explains the truth of Kubo’s origin, and how he is no mere mortal but rather a descendant of Moon spirits, and the one searching for him right now is his grandfather, the Moon King (voiced by Ralph Fiennes) who has sent the Sisters out to retrieve Kubo in order to take out his last remaining eye. The only to prevent this from happening is if Kubo finds the armor of his missing father, Hanzo. Equipped with a magical Shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese instrument) and joined by a humanoid amnesiac beetle who once served Hanzo (voiced by Matthew McConaughey), the team set out to retrieve the armor and stop the Moon King. While maybe not as effectively distinct and memorable as previous Laika films, Kubo and the Two Strings still carries a lot of the company’s similar pros like some great animation, a harsher vibe to its story, likeable characters with very good voice acting, and a lot of creative and interesting ideas that help it stand apart from other kids media at the time.

Being directed by the current CEO of Laika, Travis Knight (in his directorial debut for a feature-length film), his past experience working on the previous Laika films no doubt helped form this film’s tone and style, while also integrating a new energy that comes from its distinct presentation and idea. The premise for this film may be the best one they’d had in their entire film library as this story created by Shannon Tindle (who pitched the idea to the studio in the first place) and Marc Haimes creates a very digestible and distinct world that’s filled with interesting backstory that’s built into the narrative in a very natural manner, is incredibly rich with intrigue, culture and childish excitement, and It takes inspiration from classical samurai stories and Japanese folklore without losing track of its own identity. It features many elements that are the perfect mix of specific to a culture and familiar for the genre while layering them against elements that are atypical of any family film like memorable characters, colorful visuals and a sense of adventure and even climatic triumph. While the idea of travelling from one place to the other can seem a little repetitive and dull, it can work as long as it contains a likeable cast to be around and feature an energy that keeps people engaged, and this film continues to keep surprising its audience at every turn through a very solid screenplay written by Haimes and Chris Butler. It also knows when to push the boundaries of what you can get away with from a kid’s movie, mainly in how disturbing it can be at times. While Laika is known for being dark in a lot of their material, this one might be the darkest in terms of portraying a realistic kind of fear.  The threats are magical and the narrative does feel like Japanese myth of legend of old, but the situations and language presented in the film are incredibly grim and dire, containing this underlying brutality that’s pretty confronting but appropriately mixed in with the charming undertones. Even the idea of Kubo being a character whose missing an eye isn’t something you’d normally see in a typical kids movie (just the image of a baby Kubo already missing an eye from such a young age is a little uncomfortable to look it) but it never feels undeserving or forced in, it always adds to the film’s tone and atmosphere, proving to its audience that this won’t be a story that is easy to get out of happily. With that said, the film’s handling of its message, while sweet and leads to a nice ending, isn’t as powerful or even as clever as it could’ve been. While the climax is pretty effective and its resolution is likeable quaint and small, it doesn’t feel like a movie that needed a true moral, so its last minute inclusion feels a little forced in.

The characters in these kind of harsh oppressive movies need an intense level of charisma that to offset this bleak uncaring universe and bring a level of controlled seriousness but also sweetness to keep the film balanced and even approachable for most audiences, and this movie manages to do that very well. While they may not be the most complex cast of characters, each of the leads in this movie are very likeable, endearing, memorable and work really well in this environment and story. The heroes add some great wholesomeness to the film, and the villains are effectively threatening and keep the stakes high, which comes from the pitch perfect voice acting that seems to capture every emotion perfectly. While there was criticism that was raised at the time for having so many non-Asian actors voice characters that were clearly within a Japanese-based story (which feels a little weird considering they got Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and George Takei to play essentially background voices in the opening act), it feels like a different situation when animation is involved and while that is an important issue to address, the cast that they picked are very solid choices for these kind of characters. Kubo may not be a great character or have a lot to him, but he works fine within the role, his design as well as his ”missing feature” makes him stand out very well visually, and Art Parkinson does a nice enough job as the voice. Charlize Theron is particularly good as the Monkey, bringing a strong and sometimes blunt attitude that is matched with a motherly kindness and protectiveness which allows her to be both nurturing and imposing. Rooney Mara as the Sisters have a special kind of creep to the film, with their simple designs, perfectly scary voice acting and vicious actions which makes them stand out quite nicely for what could’ve been basic side villains. The Moon King does feel like a bit of a throwaway villain and doesn’t have as much presence as he should considering how much he was built up, his design is simple but works in a unassuming sense, the build up to him is legitimately pretty good and Ralph Fiennes does bring a nice menace to what sounds like a pleasing demeanor. The only actor that doesn’t always have the best delivery is Matthew McConaughey as the Beetle, as despite still being a likeable character and having a design and attitude that does match McConaughey’s energy fine enough, there are a few line reads that do feel awkwardly stilted from time to time.

The film’s art style again takes heavy inspiration from ink wash painting and origami to create some truly breathtaking visual moments that feel distinctly different from the rest of Laika’s style, but still uses its unique presentation to create something fresh and new. These backgrounds have so much detail and craft put into them with their smooth colors and lighting, and the character models all contain the usual Laika flair through their facial expressions and hand-crafted structures, but the unique culturally specific touches from the clothing to the landscapes is also a nice touch that breaths life into this world. The effort that would have gone into this movie in terms of its stop-motion is most definitely bigger than the other films, requiring much more grand situations that feel much bigger and more complicated to animated and maneuver through this specific style of animation, which makes it even more impressive that they actually pull it off as well as they did. The inclusion of a fully sized 16-foot puppet that is correct to scale despite not even being featured in a lot of the movie is beyond amazing, and shows how they took an already difficult job and were willing to elevating themselves to the next level. The music for the movie done by famous Italian composer Dario Marianelli ups the films epic scale but also features its more humble cultural verses with the heavy implantation of the Shamisen and other Japanese-based instrumentation. With music being a crucial element to this story, it was important to get that element correct and while it is still weird that they got an Italian composer to create Japanese music rather than just getting a Japanese composer, it isn’t too distracting or feel malicious in any way.

Kubo and the Two Strings is of no surprise a film that evolves the usual kids film norm and creates a memorable, creative dark but heavily colorful and interesting movies filled with likeable character, a great cast, great animation and music. In terms of why it didn’t do as well as other Laika films like Coraline and ParaNorman, its honestly hard to say and it seems to contain a lot of the similar pros (and even some of their cons). It more than likely comes through the handling of its message and even in many ways the overall complexity of its narrative, as those films provide so much through something so basic, whereas this film provides a lot of great material through a more complex but also more mainstream movie. It doesn’t devalue the film at all, but in hindsight, it does make sense yet doesn’t stop this film from still being one that’s worthy of being sort after. Check it out and see how the gentle guitar weaves us this story.