Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

PG for being absolutely terrifying for kids.  I'm not saying this as a bad thing.  It's perfect and I wouldn't change a thing.  But I also decided to show my real little ones and, yeah, that got scary. The Wolf of Death is potentially the scariest kids' movie villain I can think of.  Also, the movie plays the swearing game, only using bleeping as a joke  Not really my favorite part in front of the kids.  Doesn't mean that I didn't giggle.  PG.

DIRECTORS: Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado

It was 72 degrees and breezy.  Yeah, I broke open the garage movie theater to have a good time watching a movie that should have been watched in the theater.  That's what Puss in Boots is, by the way.  These are movies that have a cinematic quality behind them, despite being animated (and by some, disposable) movies. Just for the people keeping track, this is my fifth blog for the day and I'm just making dent after dent into my list.  Sure, it's still wildly intimidating, looking at how many movies I still have on that list. But I'll tell you what, I don't feel bad about it.

I said in the MPAA section that it is a perfect movie.  I might need to backtrack that a little bit.  It's an amazing movie, especially considering that it is a spin-off of the Shrek franchise.  I know that I can't be the only snobby adult who wrote off those movies as fluff.  But that reputation is probably deserved to a certain extent.  Shrek almost bred itself on its lack of deep content.  It was distilled, weaponized entertainment.  But what those early Shrek movies didn't realize is that it wasn't an either / or thing when it came to entertainment and content.  Instead, there's something in the messaging that can actually be pretty darned entertaining.  It's not like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish gets political or anything.  I wish it would.  I would love an aggressively political Puss in Boots movie.  Alas, it becomes more about heavy themes and messages.  With The Last Wish, there's the entire notion of fear of aging, arrested development, and vulnerability.  Come on.  That's a lot of my bread and butter right there.  It's actually weird that Guillermo del Toro doesn't have his name attached to this because it is the best in the franchise.

I know, I started talking about themes and messaging.  But I'm going to talk animation style.  Maybe it is still a novelty and everyone's going to jump on board the train, but I love the application of the Into the Spider-Verse style of animation for Puss in Boots.  I saw the trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem yesterday and saw a similar art style, so there might be a blog a few years from now where I lament that every movie now looks the same.  The thing about the Shrek universe is that those movies look ugly, especially when it comes to people and action.  I know, the early-2000s were a different time and that, at one point, was revolutionary.  But it didn't age well and I'm glad that the filmmakers behind The Last Wish decided to just let it die.  This style of filmmaking really works well with action sequences, something that Puss as a parody of Zorro, does really well.  People look stylized, but not gross.  Movement is frenetic, giving it almost a Bourne Identity Paul Greengrass style of movement.  It's so odd that removing frames from movies somehow create a sense of cleanliness.  Or maybe it is a lack of cleanliness.  There's something garage-band about it all that I like.  Almost underproduced, despite the fact that I know that a movie like this takes way more work.

It's going to be a little hard to talk about Puss in Boots: The Last Wish properly because there are so many balls in the air.  Normally, I'd call this movie overcrowded.  There's one thread that really doesn't belong in this movie, but the rest actually make a ton of sense and everything works as complimentary ingredients.  I hate to be the guy dunking on John Mulaney because I'm not quite sure how I feel about him right now.  (Again, that genius versus the person versus the addiction.) I'm more concerned that Jack Horner doesn't quite fit the movie as cleanly as it can.  We have the Death Wolf as the Ur-villain.  He's the one that ties directly into the main plot and central characterization of Puss.  Then there are Goldi and the Three Bears, which work as a reminder of the adventures that Puss prides himself in while simultaneously talk about the role of the found family.  It's just that Jack Horner A) doesn't match the voice of Spider-Ham and B) really doesn't contribute much to the story outside of being the White Walkers of The Last Wish.  Maybe the movie wanted to have one villain who stayed a villain, but how does that tie into the main storyline?

Anyway, I like the idea that there is a villainy to being everyone's hero.  Mostly, the movie is critiquing Puss in Boots for having a life where he gets to be a hero without having the risk of being a hero.  I know that the last movie stressed that the nine lives and the landing on the feet things were myths, but I'm okay with a mild retcon for this movie.  (Part of me also believes that the nine lives thing wasn't addressed, but  watched a lot of movies in a very short amount of time, so I apologize for that.)  I always loved Superman because he has every reason to be cocky, yet his defining trait is humility.  But Puss has a bit of that immortality to him.  He parties hard because he can.  After all, if you have nine lives, what can really go wrong until you start knocking that list down?  Now, I'm going to go ahead and say that I completely was blown away by the Death Wolf deal.  I thought that he wasn't real.  I thought that the metaphor stayed a metaphor, talking about how Puss is his own worst enemy and that he actually fears death.  When the movie shows that he's a real manifestation of death, I don't know why that threw me so much.  I maybe like the idea of the internal conflict becoming the external conflict.

Yeah, that wolf got scary.  I normally don't re-MPAA people, but I would like to stress that someone behind the scenes got a kick out of terrifying children.  It's great.  It's exactly what I wish I had the guts to do and I applaud that choice.  But I like how everything in the story was about becoming the best version of the self.  I suppose lots of story have that as a central idea, but I don't think a lot of movies nail it as hard as The Last Wish.  I do want to talk about the eponymous last wish though.  I'm floundering on the central conceit.  I mean, it's a Macguffin, right?  The movie treats it as such. Everyone wants this magical item that can make anything happen.  But I also like how the last wish itself represents the worst of people.  Outside of Perrito. Perrito has the best use for the wish and I applaud that we have our own little Frodo Baggins, who doesn't get corrupted by the potential of a final wish.  But Puss has the most justifiable reason for getting the wish.  He's actively being hunted by the most terrifying, unnerfed villain (although I should probably explore that).  He knows that he cannot win and he just wants to live for the day.  Goldi would be using the wish to hurt her found family, which is sad in itself.  Big Jack Horner is already irredeemable, so that just adds to the toxic notion of wishes.

But I love the beauty in accepting one's mortality as a metaphor for the last wish.  Yeah, the wolf is scary and if death looked like that, I, too, would consider abandoning my peers for survival.  It's convincing.  But I also like that there's something circular about Puss's behavior when it comes to that last wish.  Death comes for Puss because he's far too cavalier about life.  Puss's disregard for the sanctity of the gift he has received has caused him to break his own rules and intervene.  He's mad at the notion that he feels that he has to break the rules, which is the only motivating factor that you need to know about that character.  He hunts Puss, knowing that Puss cannot beat him, which causes Puss to do something for the first time, and that's run.  Fundamentally, Puss is still the same cat that he was before this scene.  Yeah, he didn't run.  But that's because his heroism was only a show.  But when Puss confronts the Wolf a second time, this time accepting that he's chasing death, there's something noble about it.  Maybe because he's doing this choice not for his own mythos, but for Kitty Softpaws and Perrito.  That true heroism is what inspires the wolf to let him live.  I kind of like the idea of treating life as a gift gives it value and turns the same actions into something different.  Context is fun.

Naw, this movie is great.  You know what?  I watched all of the Shrek movies to get to this point and I don't regret it.  Sure, there's barely a tie-in to Shrek in this one. We get a little tease, implying that we're going to meet those other characters in either a Shrek 5 or a Puss in Boots 3.  But when a series gets better and better, I have to say that makes a good franchise.  Heck, if Shrek the Third didn't make the list, I would say that this went the same path as Parks and Recreation. But Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, while probably not my pick for Best Animated, is completely deserving of the award.  I'm holding out for Turning Red, both because I loved it and for the hipster cred that I would get for that one.