{"id":20335,"date":"2016-09-04T17:46:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T07:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=20335"},"modified":"2016-09-04T17:46:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T07:46:26","slug":"kubo-and-the-two-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=20335","title":{"rendered":"Kubo and the Two Strings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kubtwostringsposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Travis Knight
\nWriters: \u00a0<\/strong>Marc Haimes, Chris Butler
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei<\/p>\n

K<\/span>ubo and the Two Strings<\/em> is the fourth film from the animation studio Laika and is it their best work to date. \u00a0To be clear, their previous efforts –\u00a0Coraline, Paranorman<\/em> and\u00a0The Box Trolls<\/em> – received favourable reviews and did respectable business at the box office. \u00a0But in a year that has had a high bench mark set for animated features with both Zootopia<\/em> and\u00a0Finding Dory<\/em> shattering all sorts of box office records and receiving rave responses from critics,\u00a0Kubo<\/em>\u00a0surprised me with its quality and may well end up\u00a0as my favourite animated film of the year.<\/p>\n

Over ten years in the making and the first film to be directed by studio president Travis Knight,\u00a0Kubo<\/em>\u00a0and the Two Strings<\/em> makes you sit up and take notice from the opening\u00a0shot of the film which makes clear that it has the world class production values and confidence in story telling to rival the best works of Pixar and Dreamworks. \u00a0In fact,\u00a0Kubo<\/em> is exactly the sort of the film that makes me wish that more studios would invest in animated features. \u00a0Kubo<\/em>\u00a0manages to be both technically accomplished and accessible to all ages whilst retaining a clear identity of its own – it never feels like it is cribbing from any of the other major studios to tell its story.<\/p>\n

“If you must blink do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear no matter how unusual it may seem.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And what a story it is.<\/p>\n

Kubo and the Two Strings<\/em> is a fable that gives its young audience a lot of credit and never condescends to them. \u00a0This is a children’s tale that has the darkness and sharp edges\u00a0of a Brothers Grimm or a Roald Dahl yarn.<\/p>\n

We are first introduced to the eponymous hero Kubo when his mother Sariatu barely survives a stormy night at sea as she attempts to whisk her son to safety from the clutches of her evil sisters and father. \u00a0The pair survive with their lives but it comes at a cost. \u00a0Kubo’s left eye is claimed by his grandfather and Sariatu never fully recovers from her ordeal. \u00a0She becomes an ill recluse who seldom speaks and has a fading memory. \u00a0The pair live out of their days in a tiny cave at the top of a mountain.<\/p>\n

Each day, Kubo travels down from the mountain to visit the local village where he busks for money to buy food and drink for his mother. \u00a0We see that Kubo has a gift for storytelling which captures the attention of the villagers. \u00a0He enamours them with stories of the great warrior Hanzo, Kubo’s estranged father whose fate remains unknown. \u00a0After earning some coin, Kubo must hurry home before nightfall. \u00a0Stay out after dark and he risks drawing the attention of the Moon King who will come to claim his other eye.<\/p>\n

\"kubotwostrings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you’d expect, there finally comes a day when Kubo doesn’t return home before sun down and this alerts the Moon King to his whereabouts. \u00a0Sariatu sacrifices herself to temporarily impede her sisters from reaching Kubo who is magicked away to a far-flung mountain pass. \u00a0There he meets Monkey, an ally and companion who explains to Kubo that he must quest for three special objects that once belonged to Hanzo, in order to defeat the Moon King –\u00a0 The Armor Impenetrable, The Sword Unbreakable, The Helmet Invulnerable.<\/p>\n

This lays out the journey ahead for Kubo. \u00a0It’s a mission that will take him through many colourful landscapes, crossing swords with all sorts of perilous enemies. \u00a0On his travels Kudo\u00a0will\u00a0be introduced to some strange and wonderful allies such as an origami samurai who points the way forward like a compass and the loud-mouthed Beetle, a once famous knight who suffers from amnesia and is now permanently adorned with a suit of armour in the shape of, well, a beetle.<\/p>\n

What makes\u00a0Kubo and the Two Strings<\/em> such a resounding success is the sure-footed direction from Travis Knight. \u00a0There’s actually quite a detailed narrative for the audience to unpack but Knight has managed to let the story breathe whilst keeping room for some delightful moments of interplay between Kubo, Monkey and Beetle. \u00a0Art Parkinson, Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey all do a wonderful job bringing their characters to life. \u00a0Their bond with one another is the heart and soul of a film that throws plenty of action and spectacle at the screen. \u00a0These sequences hold our attention not just because they are artfully shot and feature some wonderfully designed monsters and creatures, but because\u00a0we actually care about the fate of Kubo and his friends.<\/p>\n

Kubo and the Two Strings<\/em> is one of the best cinematic adaptations of the Hero’s Journey that I have seen in years. \u00a0Like the ones that did it the best –\u00a0Star Wars IV: A New Hope, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Princess Bride\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Never Ending Story<\/em> –\u00a0this film has a great underdog hero, a likeable cast of allies and an entertaining journey filled with trials and ordeals that must be overcome in order to confront the Big Bad. \u00a0One of the year’s most pleasant surprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A young boy named Kubo must locate a magical suit of armor worn by his late father in order to defeat a vengeful spirit from the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1275,2606,1419,1923,2607],"class_list":["post-20335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-charlize-theron","tag-laika","tag-matthew-mcconaughey","tag-ralph-fiennes","tag-travis-knight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20335"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20347,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20335\/revisions\/20347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}