![]() This series seems to me the culmination of everything you’ve done. Sometimes the process works great, other times not at all. Sometimes the drawing could be of an image that suddenly popped into my head. I’ll come up with a general concept or whatever in my head, and if I go, “Oh, that seems like it could be interesting,” then I’ll start drawing. Is that how you generate ideas, by doodling? I can’t explain why a project goes and why it doesn’t. I sold it a couple of times, at a couple of different places. And I was like, “Yeah, this could be really cool.” And from there it took almost 20 years to finally get it made. I doodled this scene of somebody running from a train that was on fire and alive. I wanted a bigger story, a grander scale, to push myself. So I thought maybe I should do some stuff with magic. I’d dealt with samurais, and space stuff through Star Wars, and I felt like I’d done a lot of superhero stuff. A restructuring was happening, executive-wise, when I was starting this project - a project where I really wanted to do something different. I think it was around 2003, finishing up Clone Wars. It’s something that I had started in my last days at Cartoon Network. You’ve wanted to do this show for a long time, right? We spoke to Tartakovsky about the genesis of this project, the evolution of his style, and his thoughts on letting the audience find their way. But as is always the case in Tartakovsky’s projects, the exact nature of the characters and story don’t come into focus for several episodes, and the audience is expected to pay attention to not just what the characters say and do, but how they move through the world. It is technically about a monk, an elf, and a sorceress who have been battling ancient evil for centuries in different incarnations, and who find themselves being reawakened in a steampunk alternate-reality version of 1890s England in the bodies of teenagers, with a galumphing robot named Copernicus as their erstwhile guide and protector. Unicorn: Warriors Eternal (an Adult Swim series streaming on Max) is the culmination of Tartakovsky’s aesthetic, blending the peppy, wide-eyed optimism of Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls with the brooding majesty of Samurai Jack, Clone Wars, and Primal. It runs counter to post-millennium cinema and TV that rely on a zippy montage or characters who walk into rooms and verbally announce who they are and what they want, then list which phobias and flaws will impede their quests. Long sections of these later shows are told without dialogue, communicating important story information through scenes in which the characters look around and think, rather than explicitly state their concerns. Tartakovsky continued in that vein with two more Cartoon Network action series ( Star Wars: Clone Wars and Sym-Bionic Titan), created a more adult-oriented fourth season of Samurai Jack in 2017 on Adult Swim, and then released the gorgeous and bloody Primal, a buddy-action extravaganza about a primitive man and a dinosaur struggling to survive the transition from reptilian to mammalian domination. In 2001, his work took an epic turn with the time-traveling series Samurai Jack, which alternated bursts of apocalyptic mayhem with long, nearly silent scenes. ![]() He then moved to the Cartoon Network, where he created Dexter’s Laboratory and worked as a director on The Powerpuff Girls, both cult favorites that defined ’90s American TV animation. The 52-year-old son of Soviet Russian émigrés was a filmmaking prodigy when he started working at Hanna-Barbera right out of college, serving as animation director on 2 Stupid Dogs. “There’s this old battle in animation where you’re told that things need to look more real for the audience to feel real emotions,” Tartakovsky tells me. As cartoonish as it is, the scene feels as immense as the climax of a live-action Star Wars or Marvel film, yet strangely more real, largely because Tartakovsky’s filmmaking keeps reminding the viewer of how small and fragile the characters are in comparison to the forces they’re struggling against. Take, for example, the finale of his 2018 movie Hotel Transylvania 3, a DJ battle to control the dance moves of an enormous kraken. His best films and TV shows rest on long, wordless sequences that challenge the audience to figure out his stories for themselves.Īnimator Genndy Tartakovsky is one of our greatest living action directors - a student of Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, and George Lucas who creates family-friendly, populist work that can be described as both terrifying and adorable. ![]()
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