Mad God

Mad God is a 2021 stop motion adult animated experimental horror film written, produced, and directed by Phil Tippett. Completed in 2021, the film was produced over a period of thirty years. It was released on Shudder on June 16, 2022.
== Description ==
A corroded diving bell descends amidst a ruined city and the Assassin emerges from it to explore a labyrinth of bizarre landscapes inhabited by freakish denizens.
== Plot ==
The film opens with a tall figure shrouded in a jacket and gas mask known only as The Assassin, descending into a ruined, hellish world via a diving bell. In his possession the Assassin has a map of the world and a suitcase with a bomb which he has been tasked with detonating behind enemy lines within the desolate world. However, the map slowly deteriorates along the way.
Continuing his trek through the ruins, traveling through mutant lands, The Assassin encounters captive electronic torture victims and other horrors. Eventually he comes to find a city behind enemy lines, which is home to an army of nameless, faceless drones ruled by a baby-babbling monstrosity with filthy teeth and seared flesh. The Assassin halts for a moment here, pondering whether or not to take an ally, before he decides to escape while he can and descends into the bowels of the city, leaving a drone to be killed for walking away from the others.
The Assassin discovers a mountain of suitcases just like his own, beneath the city bowels. These contain bombs, which his own bomb will detonate. As the Assassin primes his bomb and prepares to set it off, sitting down to await his death along with presumably every other mutant and person behind enemy lines, the Assassin fails to notice the creeping presence of a mutant of technological design. The mutant then pounces on The Assassin, capturing him and dragging him away as the bomb fails to detonate.
The Assassin is put on public display, where he is stripped and tortured in front of a mass of spectators. Shackled to a table, The Assassin lies there for what appears to be many days and weeks. His bandages, which cover his entire body, are yellowed with age, and his one exposed eye is red with dryness, having not blinked for quite a while. The Surgeon, or the Torturer, appears with a Nurse, who both begin a sadistic medical procedure upon the weakened Assassin.
Systematically, painfully and ultimately fatally for the Assassin, the Surgeon cracks open The Assassin's chest, and begins rummaging through his chest cavity. Jewelry, and books, metaphors for useful secrets of war, are pulled and strewn about and read through - a particularly interesting book catches the Surgeon's eye, and he investigates, before throwing it away. Eventually, after a long period of rummaging and bloody searching, the Surgeon finds his goal; a precious, screaming child. The Surgeon hands it to the Nurse.
In the world above, the Last Man gives a map forged by witches to another Assassin and sends him down in another diving bell. Driving a motorcycle and then a jeep, the New Assassin follows the map through a munitions depot, a graveyard, and a war zone before descending down a spiral roadway. The nurse brings the baby to a floating creature who escorts the child to an alchemist’s lair. The alchemist grinds the baby into liquid, smelts the liquid into metal, and crushes the metal into crystals that he hands back to the creature.
The creature scatters the crystals into a fiery portal. A new universe forms that rapidly decays into another ruined world. Clocks continue ticking in some ethereal fashion. A cuckoo clock sounds. A yodeling choir sings as the Last Man looks down on yet another Assassin descending.
== Production ==
	This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2022)
While working on Robocop 2, Tippett began filming what would become Mad God. His work on Jurassic Park led him to believe the days of stop motion were over and the film was shelved.
Twenty years later, with the encouragement of members of his studio, Tippett began working on the project again utilizing crews of volunteers to assist him.So on the weekends I would get as many as 15 and 20 people coming round. They didn’t all have the talent or skill, but I’d figure out the processes during the week. I had them do all the heavy lifting.With aid from Kickstarter donations, Tippett was able to create the first three sections which make up about half of the film. Tippett released a behind-the-scenes footage on YouTube during production.
In 2013 Academy Award winning sound designer Richard Beggs agreed to do the sound design and mix for the project.
== Release ==
Mad God premiered in 2021 at the 74th Locarno Film Festival. Shudder acquired distribution rights to the film, planning a limited release in theaters and on AMC+ on June 16, 2022.
== Reception ==
=== Box office ===
In the United States and Canada, the film earned $8,416 from two theaters in its opening weekend. It expanded to 26 theaters in its second weekend and made $36,588. It added $24,451 in its third weekend, and $37,617 in its fourth.
=== Critical response ===
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Mad God holds an approval rating of 91%, based on 65 reviews, and an average rating of 7.80/10. Its consensus reads, "A rich visual treat for film fans, Mad God proves that even in the age of CGI, the cinematic allure of stop-motion animation remains strong." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
John Defore of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film's animation, bleak atmosphere and design, calling it "a tech achievement FX geeks will need to see", and "among the bleakest dystopias [of] science fiction". Sight and Sound's John Bleasdale offered similar praise while also criticizing its bleak setting, summarizing that the film "has all the makings of an instant cult classic". Scoring the film four out of five stars, Drew Tinnin from Dread Central praised the design, atmosphere and animation, as well as the film's soundtrack, calling it "sheer artistry coming to life".
Rafael Motamayor of IndieWire rated the film a B, writing "Mad God a cacophony of savagery and cruelty– [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror." Nerdist's Kyle Anderson rated the film a score of 4.5 out of 5, offering similar praise to the film's atmosphere, visuals, bleak setting, and production design while noting the film's simplistic narrative. Reviewing for Tilt Magazine, critic Thomas O'Connor called the film "a deeply unsettling spectacle", highlighting the film as a technical achievement in stop-motion animation as well as praising the film's bleak atmosphere, and disturbing imagery.
Christopher Stewardson from Our Culture Magazine rated the film four out of five stars, commending the animation, visual design, hellish atmosphere, and dream-like quality, writing "Mad God almost has an anti-war ring to it. In its abstract madness it presents the nightmare of what war does. Nobody is human. Only monsters exist".
The film was not without its detractors. IGN's Kristy Puchko gave a score of five out of ten, commending the atmosphere and visuals, but criticized the film for what she felt was the 'lack of any real plot or substance'.
== Awards and nominations ==
Mad God won the Audience Award at the 27th L'Etrange Festival.
== Notes and Trivia ==
* According to Phil Tippett, lots of work on the film was done on Saturdays by students who wanted to get some filmmaking experience. The scene with the mountain of dead soldiers was done by melting thousands of little army men together on wire, and it took six people three years to complete the scene.
* This fully stop-motion animated film was Phil Tippett's pet project. More than thirty years in the making, he started working on it in the late 1980s after making RoboCop 2 (1990), but considered abandoning it when Jurassic Park (1993) was released, and CGI animation seemed to make stop-motion a thing of the past. However, after some urging, he started a Kickstarter campaign that allowed him to finish the movie.
* The film has no audible dialogue, and consists almost entirely of stop-motion animation and puppet work, although there are a few live-action sequences where actors in puppet suits were used.
* Around the first quarter of the movie, a robots' graveyard can be seen in the background of the character. Amongst the abandoned machines an ED-209 from Robocop can be seen.
* Over the years, Phil Tippett released three short clips of this movie, which made up about half of the full 82-minute version that was eventually screened at various film festivals.
== Production Crew ==
* Mad God Credits Crew
== External links ==
* Mad God official website
* Mad God at IMDb
* Mad God at Rotten Tomatoes
* Mad God at Metacritic
Category:2021 films
Category:English-language films
Category:2021 animated films
Category:2021 horror films
Category:2021 science fiction films
Category:2021 science fiction horror films
Category:2020s American animated films
Category:2020s stop-motion animated films
Category:Adult animated films
Category:American adult animated films
Category:American independent films
Category:American animated horror films
Category:American animated science fantasy films
Category:American animated science fiction films
Category:American science fiction horror films
Category:American dark fantasy films
Category:Animated post-apocalyptic films
Category:American body horror films
Category:Crowdfunded films
Category:Kickstarter-funded films
Category:Films directed by Phil Tippett
Category:Films without speech