‘Fantastic Planet’ at 50: Revisiting René Laloux’s Cult Classic

Simple yet complex, fantastical but real, savage and gentle — René Laloux’s award-winning films remain a huge inspiration within the field of animation. La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet), which was released on December 6, 1973 (after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival earlier that year), not only showcases a decade’s worth of artistic exploration and refinement but is a definitive masterwork. Aside from the hugely influential Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) magazine that would hit newsstands the next year, such hallucinogenic and effervescent concepts have only been hinted at since then in the universes of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; the biopunk concepts of Image Comics’ Prophet and Prism Stalker; and the 2019 animated short Scavengers, which spawned a new series, Scavengers Reign, on Max… read more >