With Friday’s “The Sea Beast,” Oscar-winning animator Chris Williams begins a new era on Netflix.
After nearly 25 years at Disney, Williams, 53, made a surprise trip to write, direct and co-produce a wonderful 18th-century marine story about sea monsters, the sailors who track and kill them, and a brave young stowaway, Maisie Brumble, whose courage and prudence change many lives.
“Animation is the most collaborative art form that exists. It takes hundreds of artists and managers literally years to make one artwork,” Williams said in a Zoom interview last week. “I was one of the writers and director, so I certainly had a big hand in it. But I worked with the best of the best in this massive venture.
“You feel the scope, the scale, the ambition of it. And it was the added complexity of the pandemic that in the middle of it sent us all home. We had to do a lot of the film that way. “
Much of “The Sea Beast” takes place in and around the water as a monster-hunting sailboat hunts down what they call Big Red.
“In my heart I really wanted to do a great action adventure show and have it feel like a classic adventure story. Growing up I loved ‘King Kong’, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ I don’t mind wearing those influences on my sleeve; I tried to capture that classic feeling.
“At the same time, you don’t just want to retract what was done before. You want to bring in new elements, new ideas to make you feel like you’re moving forward. “
“Specifically, I’ve always loved those old unfinished sea monster maps where these great open oceans were and they inhabited the ocean with drawings of colorful sea monsters.
“I thought,‘ Man, that would be a really great starting point for an animated film. ’That was the momentum. And I liked the idea of this prototype agohero in Jacob Holland (voiced by Karl Urban). And then, ‘Let’s have a force of nature really hit him, hit him back on his heels: Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator). Their relationship is the heart of the story. “
That Maisie is Black is intentional.
“We changed the composition of the ship to reflect our world today. There are men and women, people of different ethnicities,” Williams said.
“And not just Maisie, but there are other powerful female characters in the film. Early on we see that’s exactly the way these ships are inhabited.”
“Sea Beast” airs July 8 on Netflix.
