Thanks for sharing your thoughts, JK!

To me, Borrowed Time was definitely visually appealing. I like the character designs and the overall style. What didn’t work for me was the story. It felt extremely forced, and pandering to emotion. I did not feel any truth in it. It very much seemed to be set up to make the audience feel certain things, and I can’t stand when films do that.

It also made very little sense. We have no idea why they were being chased (there is no good motivation to chase a Sheriff that I can think of (the Sheriff chases the bad guy, not the other way around), and if you wanted him dead the better plan would be pull up alongside and just shoot them both). Or why they would willingly head for a huge cliff. Look at how the action plays out when the wheel breaks. They would have had to already be going off that cliff for the crash to cause that. Physics indicates that they would be dead either way there, even if they had tried to turn at the last minute at such speeds. Also guns tend to have safeties to prevent such accidents, and the Sheriff fired more shots than the weapon held anyway. The gun that he was just firing was on his back at the end. How? Why? His child falls off the wagon and he calmly returns the gun to his back instead of shoving it aside and going to help his son? Doesn’t add up. And what happened to the bad guy? Surely if the accident happened, that villain would have rode up and quickly killed them both, leaving zero witnesses. Was he killed? If so, why were they still running? You don’t have to tell all these details, but it has to make sense if you choose not to. You have to know as the storyteller why these things. This story lacked sincerity and truth. It consisted of scenes (interesting scenes, don’t get me wrong) crafted for the sole purpose of bringing about an emotional response, and any emotional response based on manipulation isn’t real or honest.

“Borrowed Time is a beautiful and mature story about loss and finding the strength to move on.”

I see a similar sentiment elsewhere online. This isn’t actually correct, though. He has clearly not moved on, even after decades. And then he is going to commit suicide! He hasn’t moved on at all! We have no idea what happens after fade to black, as well. Finding a watch is not going to make up for a lifetime of suffering. If anything, the memento of the event would push such an unstable character further into darkness. As someone who has suffered from depression, you don’t just “get over it” especially when it has haunted you for decades. Even if we make the assumption that he regains his will to live from a watch (unlikely) the story itself as it is told is not about finding the strength to move on. Literally he was just one fortunate glance away from killing himself, so there’s no reason to suspect that magically changed. That’s not how humans work. The story, as it is told, is about being crushed by one event of your childhood to the point of suicide, and harboring suffering for decades. Any future-story that is assumed by the audience is literally assumed by the audience, not by the storyteller. We need to look at the story told, not the story assumed once credits are rolling. We end on a battered and broken man kneeling at the edge of a cliff he came to throw himself off. If he had gotten up and walked away, then maybe we could make the assumption. Maybe. (Even then I’m not sure it’s a fair assumption, because of the rest of the story, and human nature.)

I’m glad you and so many others enjoyed Borrowed Time, and I simultaneously think it’s up to us as filmmakers to see where it succeeds and where it falls far short. We need to make honest films, not ones engineered to produce a certain emotional response. Tell the truth; let the appropriate emotions come about. There is no reason a story can’t be told that brings about emotion. However if the goal is getting that emotion to definitely happen in the viewer, the film is dishonest. Borrowed Time was beautifully made, but the story made no actual sense and was not truthful. Above all, it was not about finding strength to move on. It told the story of a man devastated his entire life and ready to end it all willingly. That is not strength or moving on. He harbored anguish for decades. (Take out ten seconds of him stumbling towards the cliff at the start and put it at the end so he stands and turns around to go back to living, and maybe there’s an argument for it being about moving on.)

It seems like from the brief glimpse of the original concept, the original idea was much more honest. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/100733/187281621?autoplay=1 But listen to how often they talk about wanting to make a film that wasn’t for kids. I think, honestly, that may have gotten in the way here. It took what was a sincere thing and made the focus something else. It became about challenging an audience’s perceptions instead of telling a truthful story. Animation always needs to be about an honest story first. The audience’s response will follow.

Anyways, my thoughts on it. No doubt it was an absolutely beautifully crafted piece of animation, regardless.