In Japan, dogs are carrying a disease and so the Mayor of Megasaki has them sent to an island full of trash. The Mayor’s ward, Atari, goes onto that island to find his bodyguard dog, Spots. Five dogs, Chief, Rex, King, Boss and Duke help Atari find his dog.
Blaine: The idea for “Isle of Dogs” came to Wes Anderson during production of “Fantastic Mr. Fox." In England there’s an industrial area called Isle of Dogs and Wes passed it as he was on his way to the studio where they made “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. The name, Isle of Dogs, sounded interesting to Wes and then this idea just popped up into his head about five dogs on a garbage island. Wes had also been wanting to make a movie that takes place in Japan and so he mixed those two ideas together. The reason why Wes wanted to do a movie on Japan was because the Japanese cinema was an inspiration to him. Wes had talked about the idea of dogs being abandoned on a garbage island with Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and together they wrote the script for “Isle of Dogs." Wes and the others did their research on Ukiyo-e style woodblock prints that were used in 18th century Japan. They also went to the Metropolitan museum in New York because they have a huge collection of those prints.
“Isle of Dogs” was shot in East London at 3 Mills Studios, the same place where other stop-motion features like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” have been made. They set up a shop for a team of artists to make these stop-motion figures that were going to be used for the film. 600 people with a lot of experience in stop-motion were hired to work on “Isle of Dogs." There are over a thousand puppets in the movie and that’s more than any stop-motion feature has required. A lot gets put into each figure they make and it took 16 weeks to make them all. The human characters have up to 53 sculpted faces that show different expressions. While applying freckles, eyebrows and bruises on a new face, the artists would look at the previous face they just worked on to match all the details on the new face they were working on.
The main thing Wes Anderson wanted from the beginning was for it to have wide spaces because he wanted to create a world that was visual and detailed. Two hundred sets were built. Green screen was required for stuff that is supposed to be from a distance. The most challenging set to put together was the bedroom of the foreign exchange student, Tracey. It had four walls covered in newspaper clippings, photos and official documents which she can use to write an article against the Mayor of Megasaki. They spent a long time on that set designing every detail for walls you only get to see for 2 seconds each. They wrote all the newspaper articles and all the documents in small letters. For the props they looked at real Japanese objects in photos.
It takes a lot of time and work to make a stop-motion film. The animators have to move these figures slightly one frame at a time and it took 85 weeks for the animation to be done on “Isle of Dogs”. There’s more to this stop-motion feature than I’ve ever seen in any other movie because of these sets they built and all of these puppets the animators had to move whether they were main or background characters. Towards the end of the film, Atari has lost both kidneys and needs a new one. The Mayor offers one of his and it shows the whole surgery of the Mayor’s side being cut open, the kidney being taken out and put into Atari. I was telling my friend, James, “I’ve never seen that in a stop-motion feature before.” For the voices of the characters, Wes Anderson called up actors he has worked with before in other movies he has made. Other actors he hasn’t worked with had to audition and all they had to do was have Wes listen to their voice so he could decide what character was suitable to go with it. A lot of the actors play dogs.
“Isle of Dogs” has a great ensemble of actors to do these voices, but the character the story focuses on the most is Chief, voiced by Bryan Cranston, because all his life he has been a stray dog and has never known what it feels like to be loved by a human. Chief doesn’t want to help Atari look for his dog at first until this female dog, Nutmeg, convinces him to change his mind. Chief and Atari get separated from the other dogs, Rex, King, Duke and Boss, which gives the two of them some time to connect with each other and they develop a bond. Atari gives Chief a bath, cleans him up really good and his looks have changed. His fur is now white with black spots, which makes him look similar to the dog they are looking for, Spots. That only told me one thing and that it’s possible Chief and Spots are brothers. And then later after they find Spots, he tells Chief that he is his younger brother by a few minutes.
My rating on “Isle of Dogs” is five out of five stars.
