(courtesy Baobab Studios)
SNAPSHOT
From the director of Madagascar, INVASION!, and ASTEROIDS! comes Baobab Studios’ latest visionary VR animation. The carefree forest animals imagine spring will last forever. However, winter comes and the animals soon realize that their lives are in danger. What they need is a hero; what they need is Crow: The Legend.Crow: The Legend is the most celebrated and critically acclaimed VR experience from the interactive studio of wonder, Baobab Studios. As the flagship Indigenous Worldview Animation based on a Native American legend, Crow won 4 Emmy® Awards including the linear animated short film and the Interactive VR Experience in 2019, receiving the most awards of any animated program or series, traditional and/or interactive. Crow: The Legend also won the first-ever Annie Award for Best Virtual Reality Production and helped John Legend secure the second ever EGOAT award milestone (Emmy®, Grammy, Oscar, Annie and Tony award-winner).
Crow: The Legend features a diverse star-studded cast including John Legend, Oprah Winfrey, Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One), Diego Luna (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, NARCOS: Mexico), and Liza Koshy. Created by the director and writer of Madagascar and Antz! and Executive produced by Baobab Studios, Get Lifted, and Native Americans in Philanthropy. Includes an original song from John Legend, “When You Can Fly.” (courtesy and (c) Baobab Studios)
This is a truly remarkable piece of animation.
Gorgeously animated with colour and depth and a real eye for beauty, and filled with characters who come to form a family in the midst of the greatest challenge they have ever faced – when endless summer gives way to winter, something they have never experience before, everyone struggles to adapt to the new chilly reality – Crow: The Legend, released in November 2018 in honour of Native American History Month is one of those standout animated stories that you captures your attention wholly as you watch it and stays with you long after the spiritedly upbeat song that closes it (courtesy of John Legend who voices the titular character; meet the rest of the cast).
Based on treasured Native American legend, Crow: The Legend is full of the scariness of a tremendous life-altering challenge but also the joy that comes from self-sacrifice, care for others before your self and the majesty and nurturing goodness of the natural world.
It is a joy to watch and it will fill you with the kind of reverence not simply for the world above and around us but for the strength and wonder of true friendship and connection and how putting our own concerns aside doesn’t just change the lives of those around you but can change you too.
Granted, this reviewer is five years late to the party but stories this transcendently beautiful and innately meaningful – to find out why, watch the behind the scenes video below – have an almost everlasting quality to them that stands the test of time and which can truly affect you no matter when you watch them as Crow: The Legend so wonderfully proves.