Laika, the animation house behind Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, just unveiled the second trailer for its new movie Kubo and the Two Strings. It kind of looks like a stop-motion animated version of Tenacious D’s The Pick of Destiny layered over 47 Ronin and Mulan. The title character is a young boy in ancient Japan who “accidentally summons an ancient evil and must defeat it while solving the mystery of his legendary samurai uncle.” In the trailer, though, that mostly translates to him wielding a two-string guitar-like instrument and letting his magical musical notes fell his enemies. Heck, the music playing underneath the whole trailer is an orchestral version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
This movies needs to come out tomorrow. I want to marry this movie, have little Kubo and the Two Strings babies with it.
Wait. Walk it back. I fear I’ve gone too far. This doesn’t look quite that awesome, but it definitely should be worth checking out when it comes out on August 19th….August 19th! Oy. That’s like six superhero movies from now.
One potential political soccer ball, though: For a movie about ancient Japan, Kubo and the Two Strings sure is topped out with non-Japanese voice actors. For example, Kubo is being voiced by an Irish child actor, Art Parkinson (best known for playing Rickon Stark on Game of Thrones). Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, Rooney Mara and Ralph Fiennes fill out the roles of Kubo’s collaborators and enemies. George Takei and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa are also around though. So that’s good.
I don’t actually know how much that kind of thing matters in an animated movie, not when voice actors are uniquely capable of being vocal chameleons. Still, I wonder if in this new era of heightened awareness of Hollywood’s lack of diversity if Kubo could become a target of criticism, but that doesn’t seem to be happening for Kung Fu Panda 3 right now even thought among its top 12 billed cast members there are only 4 actors of Asian descent (Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong). Either way, I still want to see this movie just as much as I did a minute ago, minus the whole marrying it thing. That was weird.
Here’s the trailer:
August 19th. That’s when it comes out.
Source: io9