When you’re the parent of small child, you might have been half awake on the sofa and pondered: Who would win in a fight between the creatures of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and The Care Bears? Even though your kid might be an expert, you might not want them to contemplate the cute teddy bears impaled on Twilight Sparkle’s unicorn horn. You’re just giving them an excuse to start screaming at 3 a.m. from a nightmare. You kept it to yourself. One person shared his vision of this cute and cuddly mayhem. I don’t know if Writer-Director Alberto Vázquez watched My Little Pony and Care Bears in his native Spain, but he gives us the struggle. He co-wrote and co-directed Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. Unicorn Wars pits teddy bears against unicorns in an animated work of sheer beauty that will traumatize a four-year-old.
Once upon a time in a magical forest, unicorns and bears lived peacefully with other woodland creatures. The bears uncovered a book that allowed them to form their own way of life and transform into cuddly teddy bears. The new form of bears wants to tame nature including knocking down the trees in the forest. This leads to them being exiled by the unicorns. The Teddy Bears plot their revenge on both the forest and the unicorns. They’ve been raising their young in military schools. They generals and the clergy train them to hate and kill unicorns. The new troops in training includes the twins Gordi and Azulín. Turns out one of these siblings have a dark secret and a vengeful nature. The rookies are sent into the woods on a mission to find a squad that’s gone missing. This mission goes completely bonkers when the Teddy Bears eat something native to the forest that turns out to be a hallucinogenic. Madness strikes for the messed-up Teddy Bears when they encounter Unicorns.
Unicorn Wars is brilliantly weird. This could have just been a lame MTV Celebrity Death Match. Alberto Vázquez gives us a deep and entertaining story that also delivers on the violence. He doesn’t hold back when the Teddy Bears and the Unicorns tear into each other. There’s a dazzling and disturbed nature to what goes down in the magical forest. The story of what happened to Gordi and Azulín’s family adds to the narrative. If you’re the parent of a kid (or kids) that’s now in high school that you used to watch Hub, Nick Jr. and Disney Jr with them, you owe it to them to show them Unicorn Wars. They can handle the hard truth of what happened to their cute character that dominated the toy box. And if you’re kinda grown up looking for a freaky summer sleepover film, Unicorn Wars is perfect.
The video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The transfer gives us all the details of the gruesome fight between such cute creatures. The audio is Spanish 5.1 DTS-HD MA. You’ll be able to hear the final battle all around your living room. The subtitles are in English and French.
Interview with the Director (2:33) has Alberto Vázquez explain how it was originally a comic book about teddy bears hunting unicorns and turned into a short watercolor animation.
Working in Blender (2:08) goes into using the 3D animation production. This goes into how Blender lets you create 2D animation with 3D capabilities. They could go from rough drawings to the finished film in the animation program.
Feature-Length Animatic (80:08) takes you through the film with varying stages of completion and final audio.
Trailers (3:52) includes the US Trailer and International Trailer.
GKIDS and Shout! Factory present Unicorn Wars. Directed by Alberto Vázquez. Screenplay by Alberto Vázquez. Starring the Voices of Jon Goiri as Azulín, Jaione Insausti, Ramón Barea, Txema Regalado, Maribel Legarreta & Itxaso Quintana. Running Time: 93 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: May 9, 2023.
