Upon seeing the 1958 filmThe 7th Voyage of Sinbad,Phil Tippett’s life was forever changed. Fascinated by the film’s stop-motion animation effects, courtesy of the legendaryRay Harryhausen, the impressionable seven-year-old was inspired to try his hand at filmmaking and began experimenting with a Super 8 camera. After years of learning and developing his skill set, Tippett joined the big leagues of visual effects artistry when he landed a gig designing stop-motioneffects for a sci-fi filmthat few people thought had potential:Star Wars.
Well on his way after the film’s huge success, Tippett lent his talents toThe Empire Strikes Back,Return of the Jedi,Robocop, andStarship Toopers– among many others – in a prolific career spanning decades, but he eventually found himself at a crossroads as the traditional approaches to visual effects were largely eclipsed by digital technology. In the early 1990s, however, he began working on what would becomeMad God, an ambitious cinematic undertaking crafted entirely via stop-motion animation. While it would take three decades to complete,Mad Godsaw Tippett proudly return to his roots as an artist and filmmaker, and the result is a singular viewing experience that reveals the imaginative depths of a once-in-a-generation mastermind.
The Assassin travels through a nightmare underworld of tortured souls, ruined cities and wretched monstrosities forged from the primordial horrors of the unconscious mind of Phil Tippett, the world’s preeminent stop-motion animator.
Driven far less by anything resembling a cohesive story than it is by vivid imagery, an unsettling soundtrack, and a brooding atmosphere,Mad Godis a gleefully disturbing yet undeniable feast for the senses and imagination. Clocking in at 84 minutes,the stop-motion odyssey follows a faceless protagonist, simply credited as “The Assassin,” on a journey into the horrifying depths of a subterranean apocalyptic wasteland. Armed with a map and a mission of unclear aims, The Assassin, donning a uniform that calls to mind World War One trench warfare attire – complete with a helmet and gas mask – encounters a hellish hierarchy of predatory creatures, mindless and oppressed masses, and a brutal industrial system engaged in a cycle of creation through destruction.
Thematically influenced by the works ofDante,John Milton,Carl Jung, and the Book of Leviticus,Mad Godbrims witha palpable sense of nihilismand existential dread as its protagonist journeys further into the realm of the surreal. Captured by adversarial forces, The Assassin undergoes a surgical operation, with his captors retrieving a grotesque life form from his body that’s used to kickstart a new cosmic cycle of life and death. If all of this seems speculative and cryptic, well, that’s because it is. Ultimately,the filmdefies conventional explanation and analysis in favor of plumbing the depths of the human subconscious to create a purely sensory experience, a notion that wasn’t lost on Tippett whenhe told Empirethat “the final form ofMad Godisn’t the film itself, but the memory after you watch it. It’s bringing you to that moment just after waking up from a dream, frozen, exploring fragments of your feral mind before they fade back into the shadows. That’s the moment.Mad Godis just a way to get you there.”
While designing visual effects forRobocop 2, and being confronted by the possibility that the rise of digital technologymay eventually pose a threat to crafting traditional effects, Phil Tippett began experimenting with ideas that would ultimately culminate withMad God. “Years ago, I shot about six minutes of footage, way back in the late ’80s,“he told Variety in 2021. Admittedly overwhelmed by its unwieldy scope and scale, however, he shelved his ambitious stop-animation project for years, although he never forgot about it. After spending years working on other films, evolving and adapting to a radically shifting visual effects landscape thanks to groundbreaking films likeTerminator 2: Judgment DayandJurassic Park,Tippett returned toMad Godat the urging of enthusiastic co-workers.
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In an interview with The Guardian, Tippett said of his colleagues' interest, “These were the guys who grew up onRobocopand all of that stuff and that’s what they wanted to do: work with lights and models and tangible things.” Picking up where he left off withMad God, and with a cohort of creative allies who didn’t necessarily possess expertise related to stop-motion animation,Tippett rallied enough support–partly through generous donations via Kickstarter–to chip away at the film in relatively fluid and improvisational manner over the course of years. Disillusioned with the increasing dominance of digital technology in filmmaking, Tippett’s dedicated team, which often worked on weekends, helped bring his vision to life through miniatures, models, and the time-tested yet incredibly time-consuming methodology of stop-motion animation.
After 30 years of development and painstaking work,Mad Godfinally premiered in its 84-minute form at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, marking Tippett’s feature-length debut as a director. Garnering praise for its visuals, imagination, and creative ambition, the long-gestating film proved a welcome return to form for its creator, generating appreciation for a bygone era of traditional approaches to animation and special effects. ButMad God, whileresurrecting Tippet’s legendary reputationas a practitioner of bold, experimental filmmaking, also confronted him with personal challenges that had gone unaddressed for years.
By spending decades plumbing the depths of his subconscious to bringMad Godto the screen, Phil Tippett’s creative mind was put through the wringer. Though he hoped to complete the film, finding the motivation to continue moving forward on such an abstract, confounding, and disturbing project wasn’t an easy or particularly enjoyable process as it dragged on, ultimately leading the embattled filmmaker down a path of mental instability. “I kind of became a method director and I just got totally lost,” he told The Guardian. “I hated working on it, and I just went down a rat hole of a psychic breakdown.“As a result of his breakdown, Tippett was hospitalized in a mental health facility, diagnosed as bipolar, and began taking medication.
While makingMad Godwas no walk in the park, the decades-long experience appears to have reinvigorated Tippett’s passion for raw filmmaking as he is confirmed to be embarking on the writing and directing of another feature-length effort.Officially announced in 2024, and dubbedSentinel, the new project will purportedly feature a combination of visual effects technology, from stop-motion animation to CGI to A.I. Rumored to be taking narrative inspiration from literature, includingWilliam Golding’sPincher MartinandAmbrose Bierce’sAn Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, Tippett has confirmed the project is in development and will take a more conventional approach to storytelling thanMad God.“It took a lifetime to get into a position where I understood cinema enough to be able to break it,” he humbly acknowledged. For fans of Tippett’s work, and traditional visual effects in particular,the legendary artist’s reemergence as a creative force has proven to be an exciting new chapter of his decades-long influence and legacy.
