When “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” director Joel Crawford was 5 years old, a wall fell on him.
He describes himself as a “hyper kid” and, at the time of the accident, he was scaling a crumbly outdoor cinderblock wall at his grandmother’s house. When it toppled over, he landed far enough back that he wasn’t seriously injured, although two of his toes had to be partially amputated. Crawford, a young boy so full of energy that he tried to climb a wall and was nearly crushed, was forced to spend time in a hospital bed. His grandmother brought him a ream of old copy paper and Crawford started drawing.
One day Crawford’s mom left to get lunch. When she came back, the nurses and doctors were huddled around Crawford’s bed. His mom was panic-stricken – did something happen? Had he gotten worse? But no. The medical staff was watching Crawford draw.
“I discovered that I enjoyed expressing myself through art,” Crawford said, sitting outside DreamWorks Animation’s lush campus. “It was also one of the only times I could focus and be in a zone. I got lost in in stories in my head when I’m drawing. And even when I got out of the hospital, and this is to the thing about how art is personal as a 5-year-old, I would draw my foot.” Crawford was used to seeing lizards grow back their tails, but his toes were never coming back. He would draw his new foot on notecards and pass the cards out to members of his family. He’d cheerily announce, “This is my new foot!” His brothers and sisters were not amused.
“Looking back, it was therapeutic – like, this is my world now,” Crawford said. It was the moment that art, for him, became “more than a hobby.” “It’s a central thing to express myself. As we tell stories, like ‘Puss in Boots,’ there’s so many layers of conscious and even unconscious storytelling that we’re using to glue things together.”
And in the most obvious “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” terms, that accident with the wall was probably one of his nine lives. Just like in the exceptional animated feature, as Puss (voiced once again by a lively Antonio Banderas) is forced to examine his choices when it’s revealed he’s on his ninth life, Crawford’s life took on a different dimension.
Crawford has been a DreamWorks Animation stalwart for more than 15 years. He was first credited as a story artist on Jerry Seinfeld’s future meme-generator “Bee Movie” and he worked in the story department of future DreamWorks favorites like “Kung Fu Panda,” “Rise of the Guardians” and “Trolls.” In 2017, he directed “Trolls Holiday,” a Christmas special set in the world of “Trolls.” That same year Crawford was also installed as the director of “The Croods: A New Age,” another long-awaited sequel to a DreamWorks blockbuster that had been temporarily shelved when Universal outright bought the Glendale, California-based animation studio in 2016.
At the time that Crawford took over the “Croods” sequel, the original filmmaker Chris Sanders wasn’t at DreamWorks Animation. (He has since returned to the studio.) Described by Crawford as “one of my idols,” Sanders met with Crawford. “He came back to meet with me and went through the script with me and gave me his thoughts on the characters,” Crawford said. “He gave me this really nice, sweet handoff that fully gave me the confidence to go. I got the OK from him.”
That experience also allowed Crawford to grow as a filmmaker – and fast. He asked himself what his tone was, what his inspirations were (and how those inspirations would make their way into the film), how easily he would mix comedy and drama. “It was such a great kind of opportunity for me to find my voice as a director. And what I learned is that if I’m authentic to the characters that people love and the world that the rules have been set up in, I can take them to a new kind of personal place and ego crazy with my sensibilities.” Somewhat tellingly, Crawford was even able to weave his childhood amputation into the story – when showing off her various wounds, Emma Stone’s Eep shows off her “peanut toe.” She’s lost a toe but replaced it with a peanut shell. Once again, Crawford drew his new foot.
The ”Croods” sequel opened in November 2020 and, incredibly, was still successful, something that was not lost on the studio. A few months after “The Croods: A New Age” was released, DreamWorks Animation announced that Crawford would be directing the “Puss in Boots” sequel, which had been in and out of development (most recently under the stewardship of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” director Bob Persichetti). Once again, Crawford was there to save the say.
Crawford said that he’s always been “bad with time” but that “the last three years have blended together.” “There was something that was, I think, beneficial in terms of finishing a movie and then jumping right into another one because, in a way, you’re warmed up and ready to attack all of the story problems,” Crawford said, noting that much of the same team was responsible for “The Croods: A New Age,” including Mark Swift and “Croods” head of story Januel Mercado, who became Crawford’s co-director on “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.”
“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” Crawford said, was nestled “in an interesting place.” “It being 11 years since the last one it’s in this thing of its own nostalgic and loved by some and obscure to others because there may be some kids who never saw the ‘Shrek’ movies,” Crawford said. “That’s some of your audience. And then there are people who grew up on ‘Shrek’ and who would now be in their 20s or 30s. Our audience is broad. And it excited me actually, because yes, we’re returning to the fairy tale but we could create a fairy tale for our time. And we can introduce a new look, a new tone, new sensibilities that build on and expand the world and the characters. For us, we were like, Let’s just take a big swing.”
And “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is a huge swing.
Not only is the movie rendered in a beautiful, painterly art style that the team described as “fairy tale,” which looks and feels very different from everything else in the expanded “Shrek” universe, but the movie is much deeper emotionally than you were probably expecting. There’s the first drop of blood in a DreamWorks Animation movie since “The Prince of Egypt” in 1998. And Puss in Boots, a fairly broad comedic hero, really gets put through his paces – there’s darkness, introspection, danger. And yet it is still hilarious and joyful, imbibed with a fearlessness that only Crawford could muster.
Clearly, audience and critics are responding to the approach. Since opening in December the movie mas made almost $450 million, which is astonishing considering its super-sized competition in “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the fact that it has been available on PVOD for the past few weeks (it’ll be available on Peacock starting on March 10). It has also been a hit with critics. The New York Times described it as a “pleasant surprise”: “It contains amusing jokes and has an old-fashioned impulse to tug at heart strings.” And our own review referred to it as a “colorful and sometimes visually innovative” adventure. And when the Oscar nominations were announced for Best Animated Feature, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” was nominated, edging out features from filmmakers like Henry Selick (“Wendell and Wild”), Richard Linklater (“Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood”) and Disney vet Don Hall (“Strange World”). The morning of the nominations, we asked Guillermo del Toro which of the nominees was his favorite and he said “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” “I have a great familiarity with DreamWorks Animation. I’ve been very moved by everything that is being tried to push the media,” del Toro said.
On an emotional level, one sequence has resonated more with audiences more than any other (if social media is any indication): a moment where Puss has a panic attack and his canine companion Perrito (voiced by “What We Do in the Shadows” scene stealer Harvey Guillén) puts his head on his stomach.
“Usually when something becomes viral on the internet, it’s because it’s hilarious or badass and cool,” Crawford said. “This sentimental, soft, quiet scene of Puss in Boots experiencing paralyzing fear and being helpless, I never expected that to be something that just caught on.”
Part of what made the sequence go viral was that, after someone posted it, Taylor Meacham, a storyboard artist at DreamWorks Animation who worked on the film, shared his artwork for the scene. Usually artists are somewhat restricted in what they can share but the team on “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” has been posting the work they are most proud of across social channels for months now.
“What’s really cool about seeing a scene like this resonate, I think it shows how animation can go way beyond what boxes we put it in, because in thinking about what the panic attack is doing, it’s connecting kids to these feelings of anxiety and at the same time connecting adults, parents, teenagers, everybody is able to somehow emotionally connect with a cat that’s wearing boots as he’s feeling fear and anxiety,” Crawford said.
“Animation is so fantastical that I feel like it has this beautiful way of disarming the audience and allowing them to step into this fictional character’s shoes in order to feel that emotion,” he continued. “And, for me, one of the things that was really wonderful to see with ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ is that if you trust the audience, that you can put challenging, thematic elements in things that that actually create discussion. The ride of this movie is a rich and full ride. By just going for it and being honest and not playing any jokes there, that it’s connecting with people and I think that’s what’s really been this beautiful about it.”
Right now, after making two giant animated movies that belong to very important franchises (with all the pressure and scrutiny that accompanies a project like this), Crawford says he’s “exhausted” from the “crazy pace” of the past few years. “And then even the reception to this movie, the excitement of which has led to opportunities to talk to talk about it a lot and that is rejuvenating. It’s just been so rewarding,” Crawford said.
As for what Crawford does next, he didn’t say (or doesn’t actually know), beyond remarking that “I definitely do want to tell original stories and it must have some that I’m developing.” There has, of course, been increased interest in reviving the “Shrek” franchise properly, something the end of “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” hints at, and it’s hard to think of somebody more perfect for the job than Crawford. “I love the fairy tale world and these characters,” Crawford did admit. Because the only thing that might be a bigger challenge (and more rewarding) than saving the “Croods” and “Puss in Boots” franchise would be rescuing the big ogre himself.
