Kubo and the Two Strings

There are films you watch once and forget, and then there’s Kubo and the Two Strings — a 2016 adventure from director Travis Knight that has kept audiences talking long after the credits roll. The film’s own tagline — “If you must blink, do it now!” — tells you almost everything about the tone it’s going for.

The setup is straightforward enough on paper: Kubo mesmerizes the people in his village with his magical gift for spinning wild tales with origami. When he accidentally summons an evil spirit seeking vengeance, Kubo is forced to go on a quest to solve the mystery of his fallen samurai father and his mystical weaponry, as well as discover his own magical powers. Carrying it all is a cast led by Art Parkinson, with Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Brenda Vaccaro rounding out an ensemble that never feels wasted.

Peel back the surface and Kubo and the Two Strings is really interested in something bigger than its genre trappings. There’s a clear preoccupation with 3d animation here, and it’s paired with feudal japan in a way that gives the whole thing more staying power than a plot summary suggests. You can also feel japan and magic working in the background, quietly shaping how later scenes land even when they’re not the explicit focus.

Labeled as adventure, animation and family, Kubo and the Two Strings spends most of its runtime proving that genre tags are more like ingredients than instructions — Travis Knight blends them into something that reads as its own thing rather than a checklist of conventions.

Travis Knight’s handling of tone throughout Kubo and the Two Strings deserves particular credit — it would be easy for a film juggling this many ideas to feel scattered, but the direction keeps everything pointed in the same direction. It also helps that Matthew McConaughey, Brenda Vaccaro, Ralph Fiennes are given real material to work with; none of them feel like they’re just there to round out a call sheet.

Clocking in at 102 minutes, the pacing rarely sags, which is no small feat for a film juggling this many ideas. LAIKA produced the film, and the polish shows in every frame. Made on a budget of $60,000,000, the film went on to earn $76,249,438 worldwide — a number that speaks for itself.

If you’re the kind of viewer who gravitates toward adventure films with something on their mind, Kubo and the Two Strings earns a spot on the list. Love it or merely admire it, Kubo and the Two Strings is hard to walk away from without an opinion — which, for an adventure film, is exactly the point. It’s a detail easy to miss on a first viewing of Kubo and the Two Strings, but it rewards anyone paying close attention. That kind of craftsmanship is easy to take for granted until you watch a lesser film try the same thing and fail. Little touches like that are why the film keeps finding new defenders long after its initial release. It’s the sort of small decision that separates a good adventure film from a merely competent one. None of it feels accidental — Kubo and the Two Strings is the product of choices made with real intention, and it plays that way from start to finish.