The Screen Addict | Tippett
Last night I indulged myself with a particularly wonderful double feature – Phil Tippett’s Mad God (2021) followed by Mad Dreams and Monsters (2019), the documentary about the white-bearded effects wizard’s career.
MG is basically all the stop / go-motion and miniature work you loved watching during The Seventies and Eighties, crammed into one blissfully bonkers film.
In my opinion, Tippett is one of the five great effects-artists – the other four being Rob Bottin, Stan Winston, Rick Baker and the team of Tom Woodruff, Jr. & Alec Gillis. With MG however, Tippett places himself firmly in a completely unique category – that of effects guru turned feature-film director.
You have to be a little mad yourself to create a stop-motion animation film now that audiences apparently crave only superheroes and sequels. So thank you Phil – and patron of the arts Shudder – for going gloriously against the grain.
The sheer artistry of MG is breathtaking. And in many ways, the practical effects-work moves me even more than the amazing CGI of, let’s say, Avatar (2009). To be clear – I deeply adore James Cameron’s magnum opus, but the miniature work, special makeup-effects, and stop-motion puppets of MG are almost tangible. Artisans like Tippett truly breathe soul into a movie.
MG is the gothic / steampunk acid-nightmare you need to have, and I encourage everyone who reads this to just surrender yourself to Phil “Mad Scientist” Tippett and dream big.
MDaM delves deep into the creative psyche of Tippett through extensive interviews with the man himself, his admirers, and frequent collaborators. It’s truly lovely to watch this doc after you’ve screened MG, because you can actually see Tippett work meticulously on the stop-motion puppets and other creations that feature in his film.
MDaM obviously also touches on the game-changing CGI that came about through Willow (1988), The Abyss (1989), T2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993) and the particularly painful effect that development had on Tippett, who remains, to this day, an advocate for physical-effects work. Hearing this story told always breaks my heart a little bit, especially because it was Tippett’s close friend Dennis Muren who co-pioneered the rise of CGI.
Tippett’s initial resistance to digital effects is very much in line with his personality though. If MDaM taught me one thing, it is that the Motion-Control Maestro always does exactly what he wants to do – even in today’s digital domain.
Tippett’s closing words in MDaM are: “You’ll be either forgotten or, you know, read about in history books.”
I’m pretty sure the latter will be the case for this Mad God.
Sold recommend, both of ‘em.
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict