If you can draw a distinct line between fantasy lit and fairy tales — and why not try! — it might be in the world-building. Fantasy writers typically build universes from scratch. Fairy tales, on the other hand, have one foot plant in the familiar: the woods beyond the village, the strange creature at the edge of the road, the crow that steals a baby.
At least that’s what The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and artist Carson Ellis tell me when I attempt to draw a distinction. Bless smart, creative people. For the husband-and-wife creative team behind Wildwood, the distinction matters.
Their story, adapted from Meloy’s novel and Ellis’ illustrations into a new animated film from stop-motion studio Laika, sets a fantastical adventure in the Pacific Northwest they call home. But on the other side of a nearby bridge, an otherworldly wilderness awaits those who possess the right spirit. Inevitably, it ends up like fantasy in the context of 2026, but that’s what we were shooting for.” For Meloy, fairy tales are the roots from which modern fantasy grew.
Lewis built their invented worlds by cobbling together the language and imagery of older stories. But there’s a difference between creating an entirely new mythology and reaching back into the collective imagination for something that already feels ancient. Ellis, an illustrator whose richly detailed work helped define Wildwood on the page, points to the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen as the fairy tales that have already been canonized.
The trick is making those old stories feel alive again. In Wildwood, that means beginning with a particularly grim piece of folklore: the kidnapping of a baby by crows, an image Meloy traces to Irish myth. If that sounds dark… it super is.
Meloy says director Travis Knight wanted to embrace the stranger, scarier side of children’s entertainment, in the tradition of films like Watership Down, The Dark Crystal, and The Secret of NIMH (movies the musician loves). Those films trusted young audiences to grapple with danger and grief rather than sanding down every sharp edge. Wildwood does the same, which earns the animated film a rare PG-13 rating.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
