After several years of working as an illustrator and designer on hit animated film projects like Coraline, filmmaker Chris Appelhans makes his feature directorial debut with Netflix's latest animated film Wish Dragon. Appelhans penned the screenplay for the Netflix original film alongside Xiaocao Liu, who provided the film's dialogue. Set in modern Shanghai, Wish Dragon follows a teenager named Din who discovers a magic lamp that summons the mythical dragon Long. The dragon offers to grant Din his three greatest wishes, but soon after discovering Long, Din is chased by sinister forces seeking to gain the dragon's magic.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Appelhans revealed his inspiration for the story, shared its martial arts influences and discussed his hopes for the film's perspective into Chinese culture.

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How did the genesis of Wish Dragon and this partnership with Netflix come about?

Chris Appelhans: It's weird, I always find myself having to explain how this kid from the middle of nowhere in Idaho is making a personal movie about China, like, how could that be a personal story? [Laughs.] It was very much born out of my own life: I traveled to China when I was about 24 and I made friends with a guy about my age there and I was like his doppelgänger except we came from opposite sides of the world. We became lifelong friends and I knew him over the next few years. We kept in touch and I traveled there occasionally as we navigated life. And 2000-2015 was an insanely transformative age and he was dealing with these really dramatic issues of his family changing, his neighborhood was demolished, his career was more of an intense rat race than what we deal with here and he was in a romance that was very class-based and heartbreakingly tragic.

We were talking about it one day and I told him his life was like a Dickens novel or like a fairytale story like Aladdin or something. And he was like, "Well, you know that was originally a Chinese folk tale!" And a little lightbulb went off and he told me to look it up. And once I did, because of his life and all the things he was facing made me reflect on my life and all the choices I was making and the world that I lived in. And I wondered if this could happen to me, maybe I could recreate that effect for a much wider audience by telling the Aladdin story in a modern setting.

Knowing it was a Chinese folk tale and looking at the details of that -- which weren't actually very different from the Disney version of Aladdin that I grew up with -- there were some interesting differences and there were a lot of things that seemed similar, but could so perfectly relate to what he was going through as a human being and I related to, so it was like who could we persuade to make this movie? In a weird way, it was like an indie animated film that was born from [me] basically wanting to make the movie for my friend. [Laughs.] And here we are seven years later, and I'm old and tired, but we did it. [Laughs.]

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You're navigating a tricky balance, making this movie for Western and Chinese audiences, and with Chinese producing partners. How has that been?

When I first came up with the idea, I had a very important choice to make which was to make it here with a big American studio -- which would've been a lot easier and we would've had a lot more money to do it -- or go and make it in China. I had one meeting with the studio in China, Base Animation, and they were a VFX company, they had never done animation but they had this team of 20-30 Chinese young millennial types and they were like, "We love and relate to this story and here is everything that is completely wrong with what you're trying to do." [Laughs.] And I was like "This is who I need to make the movie with."

I think the moment that mattered the most was choosing to make it with a studio in China and with a primarily Chinese crew and go live there for three years. And even then, it's still a Western movie in many ways from the fundamental ways the characters approach life. There's a sense of independence to the main character to go get what [he] wants that's very Western in a lot of ways, but we're also living in a really connected [world]. When I talked to my crew and the filmmakers I worked with in China who are of that generation, they were like, "We're part international citizens now and have a lot of influences not just in traditional values and ideas of the family, but all the ones we see around the world, we're all cross-pollinating."

I wanted to make a movie that's not meant to speak for China as a culture. It's also not meant to be some outsider, third-person observation. It's meant to be a story about basically what happened to me: Here's one person's journey through this world and yet it touches on questions and feelings that everybody has in all cultures so let's make a story to serve the universal and the specific. Which is hard and that's why I'm very tired. [Laughs.] Hopefully, it worked! I think it's a new generation of stories with creators from different countries that share so much and yet there's so much that's foreign to each other. I got to know my crew so well and, in some ways after three years, it was likely I barely knew them at all and barely understood this culture at all, but I think it's the type of film that's really healthy for us to be making and connecting around.

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In terms of hard work, there is a surprising number of martial arts fights and big set pieces in this film compared to other children's animated movies. How was it staging those?

It's really fun and really hard because good action is a hard thing to do. It needs to be advancing the story or else you get really bored really fast and [not] make it feel like they're just throwing punches for no reason. We were really inspired by Jackie Chan's cinematography and the way he approached action, so we studied that and wanted to bring it in one or two sequences in a way that I hadn't really seen in animation -- in terms of the very specific editorial style in cutting and exaggerating action. Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan pioneered that and it's still timelessly great. Their films are almost animated in some ways, which is why the action pops so much better than a lot of American action does. We really wanted to pay tribute to that.

The last part was we had a really tiny budget and it was about can we make this action mean something in context so you're invested in what's happening. Sometimes you have a big-budget action movie and they have 45 minutes of action and you remember 1.5 minutes of it because that was the stuff that actually had dramatic meaning. It was a combination of all those ingredients to use the most of what we could.

With this set in Shanghai, you've got the crowded neighborhoods but also the more modern designs. What did you want to bring to this vision of Shanghai and what did you want to heighten for the movie?

I think one of the striking things about China was the visual contrast of change. We went to neighborhoods in Shanghai and interviewed a 90-year old woman who was living in a half-demolished apartment building from the '30s, cooking on a little stove, and literally [opposite] was a Lamborghini dealership with a bright, purple Lamborghini driving away. It's like a time machine, with two centuries right next to each other and it's everywhere with them right on top of each other. I go to my hometown in Idaho and it's hard to tell what's changed, the cars are newer but, other than that, it's kind of the same. In some ways, that's comforting and orienting, so I can't imagine going to my hometown and having a luxury mall.

That visual was such an important representation of what the characters were going through and how the culture was undergoing this change. [The setting] was going to have to figure out those physical structures and [show how the old] way of living is gone now [and ask], How about the values? Communities, families, what is the new structure there? The direction they were headed in felt familiar to me. It's way more isolated and, in some ways, more comfortable and better. It's nice not to have to wait in line to brush your teeth or share a bathroom. In other ways, there's a loneliness that I experience in modern suburbia that I didn't get living in those communal structures -- there's a warmth and connectedness to all these families that share this life. That visual analog provided a lot of what the movie was about.

Wish Dragon - Long and Mrs. Song (Constance Wu)
WISH DRAGON - (Featured) JOHN CHO as "Long" and CONSTANCE WU as “Mrs. Song”. Cr: ©2021 SPAI. All Rights Reserved.

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How was it working with actors like Jimmy Wong, John Cho and Constance Wu in the recording booth to embody these characters you created?

It was not very hard because they are so good! [Laughs.] They made it easy in the sense that they understood their characters really quickly and the key ingredients that made them tick. It really became a theater of the mind and creating in those 4-8 hour sessions. We were jumping chronologically all over the movie. I think the challenge in animation -- and it's always dangerous to say this -- but the voice needs to be a little heightened to what you would deliver to a camera. Animation is a little bit of distillation, it's not a caricature, but everything is turned up a bit but it can't ever be turned up for the sake of being wacky and making noise. It has to be emotionally precise and yet the contrast is turned up a little bit.

For those guys, it was surprisingly easy, it just took some warmup time, just like when you act on stage. It's different than acting for a close-up shot [because] you need to project to the back of the theater. It's the exact same authenticity in the performance. All of those people are such talented actors and naturalistic characteristics to our characters. People forget how fucking funny John Cho is! He hasn't done a lot of funny stuff and he was drawn to the movie for its [themes] and the character arc of this dragon. He loved that the genie-type character wasn't a happy-go-lucky best friend. He loved that he's totally flawed and like Tony Stark -- kind of a mess. We mentioned all our favorite stuff from Harold & Kumar, and you could see a little lightbulb go off and he knew what to give us.

Jimmy, Constance, Natasha Liu Bordizzo -- Natasha basically lived the same life that her character experienced. She grew up a dork, in her own words, and has become this fashionista. When Jimmy visited me, we went to the mall and he took a picture of himself in front of a billboard of Natasha in a Reebok ad; and, that's literally from the movie. It was really loved to channel some of that into their characters and they're all great matches and just so talented.

Having gotten to the other side of this marathon in getting this movie done, do you see other stories in this world that you've created?

I hope so, yeah! There are some really exciting talks about a sequel and really cool ideas on where to take the characters next. I'm pretty sure there will be another chapter and what's interesting -- this happened to me in reverse -- growing up, I loved Miyazaki films and anime. And to have a set of characters you related to from another culture on the other side of the world, they became your pals -- it was like having cousins that lived in Japan. I love the idea that if we get an international audience that connects with these characters, we can bring them back and explore other parts of those characters and the interesting culture that they're from too. I had some amazing talent on the first film and I'd love one of these people to really lead a story with their own voice, maybe a Chinese talent, to co-direct something and empower those storytellers with these characters that they really shaped.

Directed by Chris Appelhans and co-written by Appelhans and Xiaocao Liu, Wish Dragon stars the voice talents of Jimmy Wong, John Cho, Constance Wu, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Will Yun Lee, Jimmy O. Yang, Aaron Yoo, Bobby Lee and Ronnie Chieng. The movie premieres June 11 on Netflix.

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