Film Threat Spotlights 'Mad God': A Review
This year marks a milestone in dedication, creativity and perhaps a little creative madness with the release of visual effects master Phil Tippett’s stop-motion animated film, Mad God . Tippett is revered within the industry, with a body of work dating all the way back to the original Star Wars, as his holographic chess game taught us all to “let the Wookiee win.” Since then, his craft has been witnessed in groundbreaking films such as Robocop, Jurassic Park, and Starship Troopers. For the past three decades, he has been slowly, meticulously bringing to life a world of stop-motion Miltonian magic and horror. Finally, after all those years, Tippett’s labor of love has been unveiled. With this, Tippett refutes his claim that “I just disappeared” at the start of the CGI revolution by giving birth to his passion project from 1987. After initially being shelved for decades, it once again entered production thanks largely to a Kickstarter campaign. Oddly enough, light is hard to come by in the world of Mad God, a dark, dank world of chaos and glare that makes the Tool’s Sober music video look like a My Little Pony episode. It’s a chaotic world where steampunk and flesh converge, and countless exciting hellish levels await.
Opening with a fiery passage from Leviticus, we are introduced to our main character, the Assassin, who looks like an old-fashioned miner with a helmet and gas mask. Essentially, he’s our guide as he descends into a world of nightmarish visions: faceless factory drones being plucked from their machines to be destroyed. Unnecessarily destroyed and replaced, toothy maggots crying like a child and an endlessly soft and fresh crane. There is dialogue, but it’s mostly infant gibberish piped through loudspeakers to all inhabitants, as Mad God is far more interested in world-building than narrative thrust. As the journey continues, we are introduced to live-action performers, such as The Last Man (played by mad-god director Alex Cox), which sidesteps from its miniatures in motion and feels slightly out of place, despite the addition of body horror that these scenes contain.
When he returns to his stop-motion world, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch comes to life (which Tippett cites as an influence). Each image gives us enough fuel for nightmares for years to come: cockroaches with human skulls, mutants created by the feces of giants in electric chairs, and countless combinations. combination of animal/vegetation carcasses and metal-corroded shipwrecks. Influences from other fantasy and sci-fi titles are buried throughout, including an object with striking similarities to R2-D2, a monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Even some characters resemble Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Tippett himself has stated that he did not intend for Mad God to follow a strict narrative structure, so it’s best to just immerse yourself in the lavish, detailed visuals and draw your own conclusions. you on the journey. It’s an intensely engaging, if somewhat flawed, visual experience. However, be warned that this should not be done by people with fragile constitutions. It is an exceptional vision that demonstrates commitment, craftsmanship and ingenuity, while also paying homage to a cinematic art form that proves it is still full of life.