Matt Zoller Seitz interviews Genndy Tartakovsky at the Vulture! “Animator Genndy Tartakovsky is one of our greatest living action directors — a student of Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, and George Lucas who creates family-friendly, populist work that can be described as both terrifying and adorable. Take, for example, the finale of his 2018 movie Hotel Transylvania 3, a DJ battle to control the dance moves of an enormous kraken. As cartoonish as it is, the scene feels as immense as the climax of a live-action Star Wars or Marvel film, yet strangely more real, largely because Tartakovsky’s filmmaking keeps reminding the viewer of how small and fragile the characters are in comparison to the forces they’re struggling against. ‘There’s this old battle in animation where you’re told that things need to look more real for the audience to feel real emotions,’ Tartakovsky tells me. ‘And it’s complete bullshit.'”

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