Redwampa Meets Pikios

Redwampa Meets Pikios
Directed by Adrian Pikios
WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

I'm doing something for this review that may come off as sacreligious to how many people feel about RmP: I'm treating it as if it were a finished film. Like many, the first time I watched this I was completely blown away once again by Pikios's ability to tell a story in the most visceral way possible, though music and visuals alone, but a strange thing happened at the end -- the final shot of the film actually wrapped up the story. It's a crushingly dark way of looking at it, sure, but there's a kind of poetic brilliance about the way it all ties together, especially when you consider how Adrian's chapter in the history of 3DMM ultimately ended. He may have intended to end it on a good, happy note, but by thinking of RmP as complete, your mind fills in the gaps as to the only possible plot development that could happen after the last scene, and this resonates through the entire film.

Being the most well-known big name 'team' in the community, Redwampa and Pikios know each others' stuff inside-out. The squirrels Pikios animates in this movie don't move exactly like Redwampa's, but that's not the point -- this is a movie made about Redwampa's characters with Adrian's style of directing. The movie opens quietly and eerily, with a grandmother squirrel talking to her grandchildren about the stars. As the camera slowly zooms in on the faces of the eager children, it slowly transitions into a captivating story about a creature who's not quite a squirrel and not quite the Myth alien. There are shades of Edward Scissorhands here, so I'm told, but this character is not an outcast, and his struggle isn't to fit in, but to escape.

We are told that he is "Made to love, but trained to hate." Looking at what's presented in this unfinished version, I don't buy that for a second. Love seems to be the only thing on the creature's mind, even with the long stretches of physical and psychological torture he endures under the direction of his captor/mentor (I really liked the effect of the words etched into the walls of his room, blatant as they were). He climbs up the rope of the body bag once used as a torture device for him and escapes through a window; as his captor pursues him, the chase brings him to the edge of a cliff, where he falls into the river below and is saved by a squirrel rescue team that brings him to their world.

From this point on, the construction of the squirrels is often spotty and unfinished, but strangely this does nothing to hurt the mood or inertia of the film. This is partly because of how well animated the whole thing is -- in none of either Redwampa or Pikios's earlier work have the character movements been this expressive or this subtle. The way the main character guiltily looks away, avoiding the gaze of his captor tells worlds about his personality, especially when contrasted with a later scene where he cautiously looks up with joy at his benevolent creator. It's absolute magic. But the main reason the movie doesn't feel unfinished is because it flows so beautifully from start to finish. The direction and calculated detail of nearly every shot in the film effectively carries the viewer over any cosmetic bumps along the way. The music is well chosen and timed to the action (even on XP, a platform the movie wasn't originally designed for). The sheer splendor of the movie makes it feel like nothing's missing.

As I mentioned earlier, considering the final scene as an ending and not simply a cutoff where more stuff would go allows your mind to fill in the gaps in the rest of the story. They aren't happy thoughts, and suggest unrepairable damage and weakness to the character we've learned to love over the coure of the film. It makes me think of alternate version of the N.U.T.S. universe, where the squirrels don't fight back and the bad guy is able to do whatever he wants. It's an extremely depressing thing to think about, but no less poignant for that.

Footnote:
After doing some reading up on this film, it turns out the main complaint seems to be about it's unoriginality. When I watched it, I was concerned more with how well it was done, since the themes of isolation, torture, and redemption have been re-used to the point of it being just idiotic to accuse a film that uses them of ripping off another. On the plot level, it may not have an original bone in its body, but it's brilliant cinema nonetheless.

Critical Score: 90/100.
Personal Score: 85/100.