Let’s talk the art of stop-motion.
In this day and age of easy computer animation, that’s a form that’s only really still done by people who do it for the love of it—and considering the effort and expense, it has to be some love. When every frame has to be adjusted by hand, when every expression and motion has to be simultaneously planned and continually adjusted, the time taken to render any intricacy and creativity your fingers can muster must be appreciated. You may have heard of Nick Park’s various projects, you may have even heard of classic fantasy effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, but it goes further than that—I recommend for instance Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, whose experiments in stop-motion surrealism are definitely worth a gander.
And that brings us to today’s topic of Phil Tippett, who cut his teeth in major projects like the original Star Wars and Jurassic Park—but for nearly thirty years, gestated a passion project of an experimental film where he could release his id without limit. This wasn’t made truly possible until the internet age when kickstarter arose—and over time, he was able to finally realize Mad God, releasing it as instalment online and eventually seeing a final release on the Shudder streaming platform. I was lucky enough to catch a theatrical screening, where every iota of madness and deranged creativity Tippett has bought to bear could be appreciated on a big screen.
First and foremost, discard any notion of conventional plot going in—only the first third really has an appreciable semblance of narrative. We follow a gas-masked soldier inserted into an underground world of ruins, giant fossils, colossal machinery run amok, and grotesque creatures—you can draw easy comparisons to surrealist artists like Bekinski, even if that gives but an inkling to what’s on offer here. The grimy atmosphere, the scenery, the sense of scale—it’s all amazing on the aesthetic and technical effort, and much like the soldier we follow, there’s little to do but admire the unrestrained nightmare scape Tippett has made for us.
Eventually things shift around—and you can tell fairly easily that the later acts were made down the line, shifting into a more digital style. The middle segment is probably the weakest—there’s a sequence that, while it’ll certainly stir the stomach, feels a little lazy and repetitive if I’m being honest. Still, once more do we resume a trek through different landscapes, bringing us to new over the top characters that seemingly walked out of a severe fever dream.
You can discern themes of war, insanity, and how the two ultimately conflate. There’s something there about technology and ultimately the act of creation itself twisted into destructivity—much like how Tippett, by his own hand, made everything we see just to invite in all the lunacy we’re able to witness.
And that’s how Mad God is something that can be appreciated on both a level of sheer overwhelming technical artistry as well as thematic. If you prefer your narratives and structures to be defined and conventional…this certainly will not be for you. For me personally, however, I can always forgive a slightly scattershot end result, as this is to a degree, if it enables a creator to simply release every ounce of unrestrained imagination—and this most certainly does. If imagery inspires, if it invites you to share in that id, that’s good enough for me—and if you feel the same way, why not give this one a gander…
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