Kubo and the Two Strings

The faces in Travis Knight’s film were printed, not sculpted. Kubo’s face splits into two interchangeable pieces, brow and mouth; 4,429 brows and 11,007 mouths were printed, which yields more than 48 million possible expressions. The Stratasys Connex3 lays down only three colours at a time. The full size Moon Beast needed two hydraulic rigs, and production manager Dan Pascall says a good week yielded about two seconds of footage. Laika announced it at 16 feet and 400 pounds as the largest stop motion puppet ever built, a figure from the studio. The ending is not a duel. Kubo restrings his instrument with his father’s bowstring and a strand of his mother’s hair, then calls up the villagers’ dead. Both companions turn out to be his dead parents, and both are lost again in the last act with nothing undone. Two Academy Award nominations brought no win: Animated Feature went to Zootopia, Visual Effects to The Jungle Book. It did take the BAFTA for Animated Film. Voicing a Japanese story with a largely non Japanese cast drew criticism; the two actors of Japanese descent have small parts. A good fit if you want an armour and sword quest closed by remembering rather than fighting. Not for families taking a child in unprepared for parents who die a second time.