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 “Glad Xmas (Battle Is Over),” the 1971 protest music by his dad and mom, 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 odd residents that peace might be achieved “if you’d like it.”

However Lennon, 48, was not desirous about making a easy video. That “felt pointless” for such a well known observe, he mentioned in a current interview. What intrigued him extra was the potential for increasing the music’s message by a story movie. After about two years of labor, that undertaking grew to become “Battle Is Over! Impressed by the Music of John & Yoko,” directed by Dave Mullins, which was nominated for an Academy Award for finest animated brief movie.

The 11-minute image is ready in a World Battle I-like battle zone the place two troopers on opposing sides participate in a secret chess recreation, speaking their strikes by way of a homing pigeon that dodges bombs over a snowy No Man’s Land. Within 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 that is Christmas/And what have you ever finished?”

For Sean Lennon, who in recent times has steadily taken on the accountability of managing his dad and mom’ inventive 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’s properly conscious that even a Beatle’s traditional can fade away with out tending.

“It’s not about mining the previous,” Lennon mentioned by cellphone. “You’re competing with generations of people that haven’t grown up with the identical tradition and artwork that most individuals my age and older take with no consideration. So, for me, it’s essential that the message of peace and love, which can be a trope, will not be forgotten.”

“What I don’t need,” he added, “is for my mom and father’s work to vanish 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; “Battle 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 linked to Mullins by a mutual pal, and in an preliminary assembly they got here up with the essential idea of the struggle setting, the chess recreation 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 not too long ago gotten to know the director Peter Jackson by “The Beatles: Get Again,” his three-part, practically eight-hour odyssey in regards to the band’s troubled recording classes in early 1969, and Lennon requested him for recommendation on “Battle 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 cellphone emitting a little bit whistle as every message was despatched. “My coronary heart was simply beating a mile a minute,” Mullins recalled. “Like, oh my God, Peter Jackson’s bought our script!”

Jackson’s visible results firm, Weta FX, dealt with the animation for “Battle 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 performed a tiny half in bringing it to life,” Jackson mentioned. “It’s entertaining and charming — and celebrates humanity with out 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 pc animation later.

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

Manufacturing on “Battle Is Over” started earlier than the Ukraine struggle broke out, and Hamas attacked Israel simply as they had been wrapping the undertaking. However Lennon mentioned the aim was at all times to make the story extra common. “We tried to summary the aesthetic of World Battle I right into a kind of parallel dimension that wasn’t that struggle particularly,” he mentioned.

Within 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 dialog that he didn’t need the film set in an identifiable struggle,” Jackson recalled. “He needed the message from the music to be the main target, and never muddy it by having British combating Germans, or Individuals combating Vietnamese.”

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

It was, maybe, an early instance of a guerrilla media marketing campaign, utilizing celeb energy to transmit a subversive message. “I believe you might argue,” Sean Lennon mentioned, “that my mother and pa invented memes earlier than that time period even existed.”

“Battle Is Over” is the most recent Beatle-related undertaking that he has been concerned with. He was a degree of contact for Jackson on “Get Again” and on the discharge of “Now and Then,” the reworked Seventies John Lennon demo that was launched in November as “the final Beatles music.”

For greater than a decade, the Beatles, and every particular person member, have been the topic of a collection of reissues, repackagings and re-examinations of varied varieties — and it isn’t over. Final 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 “Battle Is Over” because the sort of undertaking that allowed him to honor his dad and mom’ legacies, a chance his mom offered.

“I’m simply grateful that she’s given me the liberty to attempt to do bizarre issues like this,” Lennon mentioned. “You understand, she’s nonetheless the queen of the household.”