Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Nine Lives and the Shape of the End

I did not walk into a Shrek spin-off expecting a meditation on death. That's the kind of sentence that sounds made up until you've seen *Puss in Boots: The Last Wish*. On the surface it looks like a very late sequel about a vain little swordsman in adorable footwear. The movie knows you expect a few jokes, a little spectacle, and nothing too lasting. Instead, Joel Crawford uses the fairy-tale setup to stare straight at mortality and flinch less than most live-action dramas do.



You can see the shift immediately in the animation. This isn't early-2000s CG fussing over every hair and every texture until the image turns plasticky. Crawford goes painterly instead, with variable frame rates and surfaces that look brushed rather than polished. The movement can snap from soft to explosive in a beat. In the rock-giant fight, the movie slips into a more stylized, anime-inflected mode — Crawford has pointed to *Akira* as an influence, and the speed lines and exaggerated impacts make that easy to believe. The look is exciting on its own, but it also serves a purpose: Puss sees himself as a myth, and the world keeps pushing back with something harsher.

That harsher thing has a whistle. The bounty hunter who corners Puss in the bar isn't just some colorful thug; he's Death, a white wolf with twin sickles and no patience for swagger. That first confrontation is terrific because it stops behaving like a family-movie scuffle almost immediately. The Wolf moves like a slasher villain, calm and inevitable. When his blade opens that tiny cut on Puss's forehead, the room seems to lose oxygen. Wagner Moura's performance is a big part of why the character works. He keeps the voice low, rasped, and almost musical. That whistle is horrible in the best way. Peter Debruge was right in *Variety*: DreamWorks finally realized that "cartoon characters get a lot more interesting if they're not immortal."



What makes the movie resonate, though, is Antonio Banderas. He has played Puss for close to two decades, usually leaning into the joke of oversized ego in a tiny cat body. Here he lets the vanity crack. The fear underneath is unmistakable. Knowing Banderas went through a heart attack in 2017 makes the performance hit harder. He doesn't just perform fear as an acting exercise; he sounds like someone who understands what it is to suddenly feel time narrowing.

The Dark Forest scene brings that home. Hunted and overwhelmed, Puss spirals into a panic attack that feels startlingly true to life: the short breath, the racing heart, the sense that the whole world has tightened around him. Then Perrito, played by Harvey Guillén with exactly the right amount of sweetness, does the simplest possible thing. He lays his head on Puss's belly and stays there. No speech, no grand solution, just steady physical comfort until the panic ebbs. For a film this busy and funny, it's an unusually observant moment.



You can absolutely argue that I'm overthinking a movie with a villainous pie mogul voiced by John Mulaney. Fair enough. The film is still playful, and Salma Hayek Pinault is a delight as Kitty Softpaws. But the comedy lands harder because the movie keeps the edge of loss in view. *The Last Wish* doesn't magic away finitude. It accepts it. That may be a lot to smuggle into family entertainment, but to me it's the reason the whole thing feels so sharp and so alive.