Both Pixar’s Luca (2021) and Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers (2020) are animated films with similar plots, similar character dynamics, and similar audience perceptions when it comes to proposed queer readings of each film. However, there are also major differences that have impacted audience perception — mainly with the gender of the characters, and the scale of each film’s release. Through a combined lens of Queer theory, feminist theory, and animation theory, the several differences and similarities between Luca and Wolfwalkers can be explored, and in doing so, explain how a deeper elucidation of gender versus sexuality and the perception of which, when examined through an animated medium, can impact representation and audience reaction on a larger cinematic scale.
Luca is a coming-of-age film about a boy, Luca, and his newfound friend, Alberto, who have a summer of adventure in a small seaside town on the Italian Riviera. Together, they must overcome the ostracization of the town’s residents, who will hunt them down, and at worst, kill them, if they find out Luca and Alberto’s secret — they are both sea monsters, growing fins, tails, and fangs whenever they come in contact with water. In order to protect themselves, they hide their true identities, until forced to do otherwise.
Wolfwalkers is a coming-of-age film about a girl, Robyn, and her newfound friend, Mebh, who meet after Robyn moves with her father, a renowned hunter, to a town in the countryside of Ireland. When Mebh, a wolfwalker — a mythical creature whose spirit leaves her body and becomes a wolf when she sleeps — bites Robyn, Robyn transforms into a wolfwalker as well. In doing so, she finds herself as the very creature her father is hired to destroy. Together, Robyn and Mebh must overcome the ostracization of the town’s residents, who will hunt them down and kill them if found out. In order to protect themselves, they hide their true identities, until forced to do otherwise.
On the surface, Wolfwalkers and Luca seem like strikingly similar stories. They both focus on a pair of same-gendered new friends, who have the ability to turn into magical creatures. Yet, both are turned away, demonized, and ultimately violently hunted by their respective societies, providing the core obstacle within both films. Both pairs find solace with each other, and in those who understand their struggle. In Luca, their ally manifests in Giulia, a young girl who repeatedly saves Luca and Alberto from the town’s main teenage bully. In Wolfwalkers, this ally manifests in Mebh’s mother, who is also a wolfwalker, and helps the girls escape danger multiple times. The Queer metaphors are strong within each film, enough so that they can be easily read by those even outside of a distinctly Queer community. The arc that the character relationships’ go through, which in both films flow through a pipeline of acquaintances-to-unlikely-friends-to-inseparable, with one character betraying the other towards the climax of the film due to some internalized hatred of their own identity — Alberto in Luca, and Robyn in Wolfwalkers — and a resolution at the end with each pair on good terms again. Both pairs of kids can clearly be seen as a metaphor for Queer people, especially Queer youth, who feel ostracized, and in some cases villainized by those around them.
From a purely in-film story perspective, there are some key differences in the plots of both films — though arguably not enough to disregard the Queer readings of either. One aspect is the ending of both films: in Luca, the townsfolk simply change their minds after some input from Giulia and her father that sea monsters may not be so bad after all. Several other sea monsters living amongst the human residents are revealed, and both species are able to live in harmony by the end. In Wolfwalkers, the ending is not quite as cookie-cutter of a solution. In a climactic battle towards the end of the film, Robyn and her father and Mebh and her mother fight against the townsfolk and the Lord Protector, after Robyn’s father also turns into a Wolfwalker. Having resolved their differences, all four main characters end up leaving the town together as a family of sorts, to live out their days elsewhere, free from their still-antagonistic society. Outside of any strictly Queer-related themes, both films also deal a lot with thematic qualities like familial relationships and general adolescent self-affirmation. Wolfwalkers in particular also has a lot of anti-colonial and pointedly feminist themes that Luca lacks. As a result of these different endings and themes, the Queer metaphor and readings of each film are changed a bit, but still not enough to completely write off the major similarities between the two.
Outside of the film’s plots themselves and the Queer readings that result from them, the more meta-perspective that takes into account each film’s specific animated medium, the scale of release, and ultimately the gender of the characters may be more valuable in terms of dissecting the differences between Luca and Wolfwalkers. While both movies are set in small European towns, Luca is an American-produced film created by Pixar and Disney, and Wolfwalkers is an Irish-produced film created by Cartoon Saloon. The difference in budget and box-office revenue alone may be the best example of how minuscule Wolfwalkers ended up as a film, in comparison to Luca: according to Box Office Mojo, Wolfwalkers had a budget of €10 million (equivalent to $10,531,500 USD), and made a total of $1.26 million at the international box office (IMDb, 2020). On the other hand, Luca had an estimated budget of around $200 million and made $49.75 million internationally (IMDb, 2021). This 190% difference in revenue also likely has something to do with how each film was released — neither in actual theaters for any extended amount of time — Wolfwalkers was released on Apple+ on December 11, 2020, and Luca was released on Disney+ on June 18, 2021. Although Apple has never released its exact subscriber data for its streaming platform, CNBC reported Apple+ to have less than 20 million subscribers in July 2021, shortly after Luca’s release — another stark contrast to Disney+’s reported 116 million subscribers at the time (Leswing 2021). It can be inferred that Apple’s streaming site would have even less in December 2020, barring any chance for Wolfwalkers to keep up with Luca in terms of scale, and thus the sheer amount of audience reception, Queer or otherwise.
It is clear that based on said reception to Luca, however, there is a distinctly Queer value surrounding the film and inherent in its story. Despite no explicit Queer characters or relationships, the audience reactions, in the form of responses on social media, even before the full film was released on Disney+ in June 2021 — also during Pride month, which spurred additional queer readings and theories for the film — as well as official reviews after its release, Luca had a distinctly Queer impact on its viewers. It made waves — no pun intended — even outside strictly Queer communities, being compared to Call Me By Your Name nearly as soon as it was announced by fans on Twitter and other social media sites. Even now, searching the various hashtags for the film, like “#Luca, #Lucamovie, or #LucaPixar,” on Twitter or Tumblr will conjure fanart as well as written theories and readings of the film that read its two main characters as Queer, and often in a romantic relationship.
Although it is difficult to find direct numeric evidence in support of the audience reception of either film, based on the additional near-immediate social media response to its release, Wolfwalkers also had a comparatively large collective Queer reading, despite its smaller release and overall reception. Simply put, fewer people watched Wolfwalkers, and so fewer people had Queer readings of Wolfwalkers — however, it still stands on its own as a decidedly Queer-read film. Similar to Luca, although there are fewer results, searching hashtags like “#Wolfwalkers or #Wolfwalkersmovie” on various social media sites also conjures the fandom-led creations of fanart and Queer readings of the film’s two main characters.
There is also an argument to be made that Wolfwalkers had less fanfare in terms of its Queer readings — disregarding its lesser status as a film in general — because its two main characters are female, not male. When it comes to readings of non-explicit Queer media, or media without any “out” characters, or ones that have simply been theorized by fans as Queer without any confirmation from the show’s creators, male or AMAB characters are generally focused upon in far larger swaths than female or AFAB characters. Again, because of the nature of fandom and Queer theorization and the reading of subtext by fans as a difficult-to-quantify concept — we must rely on the statistics for blatant (explicit, non-theorized) Queer representation in TV and cinema. Queer women are decidedly less represented than men, or at least have been up until this point in history — according to GLAAD’s 2021-2022 edition of Where We Are on TV: “For the first time in this report’s history, gay men do not represent the majority of the total regular and recurring LGBTQ characters on broadcast…For the first time since the 2006-07 season study, gay men do not represent the majority of regular and recurring LGBTQ characters on cable” (GLAAD, 2022). Interestingly, the very opposite was true for the most recent findings: “This year, lesbian characters represent the majority of the LGBTQ characters on broadcast” (GLAAD, 2022). Although this is not air-tight proof that Wolfwalkers suffered as a result of some inherent bias within its audience or even its creators, it does imply that because of a lack of historical representation when comparing Queer groups of women as opposed to Queer men, audiences are more likely to interpret male characters and the subtext around them as Queer rather than female characters. In short, Wolfwalkers was seen as less gay, and maybe even less in general, because Robyn and Mebh are female rather than male.
Additionally, when it comes to the art of animation itself, both Luca and Wolfwalkers are prime examples of how Queer interpretations find homes in animated mediums more often, if not more easily, than in live-action media. Luca, made in the computer-run, CGI animation powerhouse of Disney and Pixar, versus the 2D, traditionally made Wolfwalkers from the comparatively cramped studios of Cartoon Saloon. While both are heavily stylized with uniquely storybook-esque, almost childish artistic take in their own right, Luca clearly embodies a newer, smoother form of animation, while Wolfwalkers attempts to capture something older, more charming in its quaintness, which could also contribute to its lack of reactive fanfare. Despite these differences, and despite the stories being told from the perspective of child characters manifested in a medium often meant for children, both films found themselves in the Queer eye. Even as a medium so frequently associated purely with children, and with Queerness so often demonized as unsafe for children (not to mention historically censored from film and TV as a whole), it is intriguing that animation is so often, again, existent as a type of home for Queer characters, stories, and interpretations — a home carved out among the stiff unending seas of straight-only media. According to a section of the 2008 revision of Queer Cinema in Europe by Aylish Wood, “Studies of queerness in the cinema tend to focus on live-action film, but animation is equally a place where it is seen. A number of animation techniques abstract and exaggerate gesture, movement, and looking, and via a stylization of these elements can create a potential site for queering” (Wood, 2008). Additionally, according to a section from the 2010 edition of Queer Cinema by Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, animation has historical precedent when it comes to Queer theory. The section titled “Pronoun Trouble, The Queerness of Animation” describes the short-lived 1990s-era theory that Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street are a gay couple: “Although the Bert and Ernie affair died away relatively quickly, the incident points out how easily it is to read queerness into these texts. Animation, an art form generally conceived as made for children, has always had a history of queerness” (Griffin, 2010). Despite Sesame Street lacking animation in the traditional cartoons-on-paper sense, it still conveys the same paradox in harboring Queer interpretations in a medium meant for children. Animation can be a safe haven of sorts, in its exorbitant and often fantastical nature, especially in the case of Wolfwalkers and Luca, where Queerness can be found amongst magical sea monsters and legendary werewolves.
Furthermore, the similarities and differences between Wolfwalkers and Luca also continue in the way their creators reacted to the widespread Queer interpretations of each movie. For both films, the creators (Luca’s director, Enrico Casarosa, and Wolfwalkers’ directors, Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart) have each stated that while they are not opposed to any reading of the story or characters as Queer, they also did not intend to convey any allegory or metaphor, let alone create explicitly Queer content. In a February 2021 article by Kevin Polowy with Yahoo! Entertainment, Casarosa stated that “‘we really willfully went for a pre-pubescent story…This is all about platonic friendships.’ Therefore, it is not, to clear the record, Call Me by Your Name: the prequel” (Polowy, 2021). Interestingly, amid Disney’s recent controversy surrounding the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, Casarosa has since slightly backtracked on his statements that Luca was not intended as anything other than a story of platonic friendship. In a January 2022 article by Drew Taylor for TheWrap, the director of Luca said that the filmmakers at Pixar “talked about it” when considering a romantic relationship between the film’s main characters, Queer or otherwise, and that “There’s no crush yet. And we kept on saying, well, the next summer probably, right?” (Taylor, 2022). When talking about the Queer reaction to Wolfwalkers, Moore had a similar statement to Casarosa’s initial thoughts. In an October 2020 article by Ian Wang for The Quietus, Moore also said that they “didn’t do any of that deeply intentionally,” but that “we had plenty of women working with us on the movie, who spoke to how important that was.” Stewart elaborated, stating that “one of the most important parts of Robyn’s arc is her ‘coming out’ moment, when she decides that she has to tell her father that she’s a wolfwalker” (Wang, 2020). This lack of intention, yet careful acceptance and encouragement of the Queer readings from the creators of both films provides an intriguing look at how the interpretations of media might interact with the industry as a whole. Especially in the case of Luca and Disney, after recent controversy, the floodgates may very well be opened when it comes to the creation of explicitly Queer material in mainstream animated content meant for children.
Ultimately, Wolfwalkers and Luca are examples of how animation can not only harbor Queer interpretations as its own medium or method of film, but an example of how the gender of characters can impact the readings of media, especially when the collective audience reading involves Queerness. Although the scales of each film are wildly different in generated revenue and overall production, both are valid in their still-existent widespread Queer interpretations that can be seen across social media, and across both LGBTQ+ communities and mainstream straight ones, especially in the case of Luca. Additionally, both films' stories are important allegories — whether they were intended to be or not — for Queer youth, especially seeing as both were created for children themselves. Altogether, this shows that ultimately, animation has an important role to fill as an ambassador of sorts, to usher in contemporary Queer cinema through a kid-friendly lens, using the very fantastical, magical medium that both Luca and Wolfwalkers exemplify.Works Cited
Benshoff, Harry, and Sean Griffin. “Pronoun Trouble The Queerness of Animation.” Queer Cinema The Film Reader, Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group, New York, NY, 2010, p. 105.
Griffiths, Robin, and Aylish Wood. “The Animated Queer.” Queer Cinema in Europe, Intellect, Bristol, 2008, p. 93.
Leswing, Kif. “Apple Claimed It Had Less than 20 Million TV+ Subscribers in July, Showbiz Union Says.” CNBC, CNBC, 25 Sept. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/apple-told-a-showbiz-union-it-had-less-than-20-million-tv-subscribers.html.
“Luca.” Box Office Mojo, IMDb, 2021, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt12801262/?ref_=bo_se_r_1.
Polowy, Kevin. “Pixar's 'Luca' Debuts Trailer: Director Says Coming-of-Age Adventure Influenced by Miyazaki, Fellini and 'Stand by Me'.” Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo!, 25 Feb. 2021, https://sports.yahoo.com/luca-trailer-pixar-coming-of-age-miyazaki-fellini-stand-by-me-call-me-by-your-name-143451999.html.
Taylor, Drew. “'Luca' Director Enrico Casarosa on the Film's Underlying LGBTQ+ Themes.” TheWrap, TheWrap, 5 Jan. 2022, https://www.thewrap.com/luca-enrico-casarosa-is-luca-gay/.
Townsend, Megan, and Raina Deerwater. “Where We Are on TV 2021-2022.” Glaad.org, GLAAD, 2022, https://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/GLAAD%20202122%20WWATV.pdf.
Wang, Ian. “Film: Film Features: Call of the Wild: Inside 'Wolfwalkers', the Game-Changing Irish Animation.” The Quietus, 23 Oct. 2020, https://thequietus.com/articles/29116-film-wolfwalkers-interview.
“Wolfwalkers.” Box Office Mojo, IMDb, 2020, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt5198068/?ref_=bo_se_r_1.
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