How Sean Ono Lennon Helped His Parents Send a Message

Three years in the past, Sean Ono Lennon was requested to develop a music video for the fiftieth anniversary of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” the 1971 protest music by his mother and father, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which has change into a uncommon kind of perennial — a warmhearted Christmas tune that doubles as an antiwar problem, telling peculiar residents that peace could be achieved “if you want it.”

But Lennon, 48, was not focused on making a easy video. That “felt unnecessary” for such a well known monitor, he mentioned in a current interview. What intrigued him extra was the opportunity of increasing the music’s message via a story movie. After about two years of labor, that undertaking turned “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko,” directed by Dave Mullins, which was nominated for an Academy Award for greatest animated quick movie.

The 11-minute image is about in a World War I-like battle zone the place two troopers on opposing sides participate in a secret chess sport, speaking their strikes by way of a homing pigeon that dodges bombs over a snowy No Man’s Land. In the story’s climax, each armies are ordered into bloody hand-to-hand fight whereas the opening strains of John and Yoko’s music ring out: “So this is Christmas/And what have you done?”

For Sean Lennon, who in recent times has steadily taken on the duty of managing his mother and father’ creative legacies — his mom, 91, has formally retired — the movie is a part of a continuous course of to maintain that work related for youthful generations. He is effectively conscious that even a Beatle’s basic can fade away with out tending.

“It’s not about mining the past,” Lennon mentioned by telephone. “You’re competing with generations of people who have not grown up with the same culture and art that most people my age and older take for granted. So, for me, it’s very important that the message of peace and love, which may be a trope, are not forgotten.”

“What I don’t want,” he added, “is for my mother and father’s work to disappear with the sands of time.”

The movie was made with the assistance of some substantial forces. Mullins was a longtime animator at Pixar, and in 2021 he joined Brad Booker, the movie’s producer, in a brand new manufacturing firm, ElectroLeague; “War Is Over” is its first accomplished undertaking. The rating is by Thomas Newman, the Oscar-nominated composer whose credit embrace “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Wall-E.” Lennon and Ono are among the many govt producers.

Lennon was related to Mullins via a mutual buddy, and in an preliminary assembly they got here up with the essential idea of the struggle setting, the chess sport and the messenger pigeon. Mullins mentioned he wrote the complete script instantly afterward. (Lennon and Mullins are credited with the movie’s story, and Mullins has sole writing credit score.)

Lennon had lately gotten to know the director Peter Jackson via “The Beatles: Get Back,” his three-part, almost eight-hour odyssey concerning the band’s troubled recording periods in early 1969, and Lennon requested him for recommendation on “War Is Over.” Mullins recalled that at a dinner assembly with Lennon in March 2022, he watched in surprised silence as Lennon texted with Jackson, his telephone emitting slightly whistle as every message was despatched. “My heart was just beating a mile a minute,” Mullins recalled. “Like, oh my God, Peter Jackson’s got our script!”

Jackson’s visible results firm, Weta FX, dealt with the animation for “War Is Over,” although Jackson himself was uninvolved. In an e mail, he mentioned he solely noticed the movie as soon as it was accomplished.

“I’m genuinely proud to have played a tiny part in bringing it to life,” Jackson mentioned. “It’s entertaining and charming — and celebrates humanity without preaching.”

The movie was created with Unreal Engine, a platform that was initially developed for video video games by the corporate behind Fortnite. The animation course of concerned efficiency seize — taking pictures actual actors, whose actions change into the uncooked materials for laptop animation later.

Extensive work went into crafting the look of the animation, which, regardless of being computer-generated, has a hand-drawn type, with outlines that may resemble charcoal sketches.

Production on “War Is Over” started earlier than the Ukraine struggle broke out, and Hamas attacked Israel simply as they had been wrapping the undertaking. But Lennon mentioned the aim was all the time to make the story extra common. “We tried to abstract the aesthetic of World War I into a sort of parallel dimension that wasn’t that war specifically,” he mentioned.

In the movie, the 2 armies put on insignia with opposing geometric designs: one facet’s symbols are rounded, the opposite’s angular. The battle scenes present troopers of a number of races and ethnicities, representing all humanity.

“Sean was adamant in our first conversation that he didn’t want the movie set in an identifiable war,” Jackson recalled. “He wanted the message from the song to be the focus, and not muddy it by having British fighting Germans, or Americans fighting Vietnamese.”

That message, and the way it was delivered, was key to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s work. Before “War Is Over” was a music, it was a part of a sequence of peace protests that the couple enacted in numerous varieties all through 1969, together with “bed-ins.” That December, they posted black-and-white billboards in 12 main cities world wide displaying variations of: “War Is Over! If You Want It — Happy Christmas From John & Yoko.”

It was, maybe, an early instance of a guerrilla media marketing campaign, utilizing movie star energy to transmit a subversive message. “I think you could argue,” Sean Lennon mentioned, “that my mom and dad invented memes before that term even existed.”

“War Is Over” is the newest Beatle-related undertaking that he has been concerned with. He was a degree of contact for Jackson on “Get Back” and on the discharge of “Now and Then,” the reworked Nineteen Seventies John Lennon demo that was launched in November as “the last Beatles song.”

For greater than a decade, the Beatles, and every particular person member, have been the topic of a sequence of reissues, repackagings and re-examinations of varied sorts — and it isn’t over. Last month, it was introduced that the director Sam Mendes would make 4 biopics, one for every Beatle, that are anticipated in 2027.

Lennon, who stays an lively musician — he launched his newest album, “Asterisms,” final month — mentioned he considered “War Is Over” because the form of undertaking that allowed him to honor his mother and father’ legacies, a possibility his mom offered.

“I’m just grateful that she’s given me the freedom to try to do weird things like this,” Lennon mentioned. “You know, she’s still the queen of the family.”