Intrigue and thrills await on the far side of a bridge
JUST WEST OF DOWNTOWN Portland, nestled between the rugged canyons of the Tualatin Mountains and the Willamette River, lies Forest Park. Home to all manner of wildlife — from great horned owls to ospreys to coyotes — this 5,000-acre expanse truly is a wild wood. But in Wildwood’s fantastical version of it, stranger things are afoot. Where ivy seems to slink between your feet and whispers abound from unhuman mouths, there you will find the jaw-dropping magical realm that awaits our intrepid heroes when they bravely cross the portal bridge to rescue baby Mac. And once they’ve made it over, they’re sure not in Portland anymore.
If you’re thinking a trip through the Impassable Wilderness sounds like little more than a walk in the woods for headstrong Prue and her head-in-the-clouds sidekick Curtis, that’s not quite the case. “The thing about Prue is she likes to don the duds of adulthood. She pretends that she’s more grown-up than she is,” explains Travis Knight. “But she’s still a kid, and she’s heard all these horror stories, she’s been told, ‘Don’t go into the woods.’ Yes, she pretends like, ‘Oh, that’s nonsense, that’s kid stuff,’ but when she is at the threshold, she is scared, and the only thing that propels her to move forward is the love of the person that she adores most: her brother.”
Curtis and Prue make their way into a mysterious new world.
Set dresser Martin MacPherson hard at work.
With Laika’s HQ nary a stone’s slingshot from Forest Park’s verdant environs, this meant Wildwood’s cinematic foundations were built quite literally on the actual places that inspired Colin Meloy’s book. “We started our design process by visiting the locations in the novel and gathering leaves, moss, bark, branches, rocks and whatever else we could find outdoors,” shares producer Sam Wilson, noting how the team would often review book and script pages before heading straight into the woods “to gather reference and inspiration and realise the novel in miniature form”.
For screenwriter Chris Butler, it’s this attention to detail that exemplifies “the most cinematic movie” Laika has ever made. “It’s got a truly epic scope,” Butler says. “And I think that really comes into itself when Prue and Curtis cross the threshold into this magical place, because it’s not just them walking into a forest. They’re walking into an entire world within the forest.” Yes, by entering the awe-inspiring and perilous Wildwood, the young duo are just taking their first steps into a much, much larger realm…
While darkness and danger await our heroes, so too does immense beauty and wonder, handcrafted from root to treetop by Laika’s fabricators. (Yes, hundreds of thousands of laser-cut, hand-painted leaves were used throughout the film.) “I’ve seen so many approaches to magical forests in film that I decided to take a different one,” says production designer Nelson Lowry, who’s been walking Forest Park’s trails for so long now, he affectionately calls the real-world place ‘Wildwood’. “I would let Wildwood be Wildwood. It’s already magical. Knowing that the storytelling and its denizens are fantastical enough, I opted to lean into exaggerating its most beautiful aspects.”
The friends deep in the forest’s breathtaking environs.
Words: Jordan King
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