Pixar alumnus Dave Mullins and Peter Jackson's New Zealand-based visual effects company WetaFX have come together to get the message of "war is over" out in a different way.
'War Is Over'
Originally released in 1971, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is likely the most popular piece of music John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote as a couple. With the vocals from the Harlem Community Choir, it has become a holiday standard and was the culmination of a two-year peace activism campaign that began in 1969, consisting of renting billboard space in 12 major cities around the world for the display of black-and-white posters that declared "WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko".
'War Is Over! If You Want It' billboard in Times Square, New York City, Christmas 1969.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sean Ono Lennon wanted to reintroduce the song's timeless message. The song "just felt like it deserved some kind of piece to help get it out there for another generation," Lennon said. The only problem was that every music video idea appeared "goofy," he noted. "Like a Hallmark kind of thing. What are we going to show, a family sitting around a fire? It needed an actual narrative."
Lennon connected with Dave Mullins, who had directed Pixar’s 2017 Oscar-nominated short film Lou, and started a job as the CEO of a new, LA-based animation studio called ElectroLeague in 2020. He came up with an 11-minute animated movie about a chess game played across enemy lines with the help of a heroic carrier pigeon.
"Sean and I are friends and he was initially wanting some advice about his script," Jackson told the Reporter. "I first heard from Sean a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, and it was clearly an important project for him. I remember telling him that an animated short film would take 12 to 14 months to make, and there was a very good chance the war in Ukraine will have resolved by the time it was finished. Here we are, and not only is the misery in Ukraine continuing with no end in sight, there’s now the war in Gaza."
Peter Jackson and daughter Katie at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards, Royal Albert Hall, London, February 10, 2019.
Visually, the film's style was inspired by artists including Norman Rockwell and early 20th century illustrator JC Leyendecker, as well as stylized World War I propaganda posters.
The movie closes with the Lennon and Ono song over the credits, but the story itself unfolds against a score written by 15-time Oscar nominee Thomas Newman, who has written the music for features like Shawshank Redemption, WALL-E and Skyfall.
The film is being shown with hopes of getting a distributor. Lennon is aware that even something as seemingly universal as a call for peace can land terribly in 2023. "Some people are very sensitive about this message of peace today," he said. "They feel like it’s a denial of peoples’ pain. And I am not criticizing anyone. I’m saying I really believe in resolving problems peacefully as a concept, even though it sounds very naive. It’s something I was raised to believe and I still believe it."
