Unicorn Wars’ horrifying ending, explained by director Alberto Vázquez

Watching trailers or looking at images from Alberto Vázquez’s shockingly gruesome animated fable Unicorn WarsViewers may be humming an old tune, or singing it in their heads. This is the Care Bears TV theme. A resemblance is possible between fanatical and murderous Bears. Unicorn Wars and their kid-friendly counterparts, Vázquez tells Polygon, is entirely deliberate.

“It was a series I really liked when I was little, Care Bears,” the Spanish writer-director and graphic novelist says, speaking partly through an interpreter. “I like playing with animal iconography. Anthropomorphic animals don’t belong to a specific culture or time period. They sort of belong to everybody. They’re part of everyone’s childhood.”

It’s a guarantee that no one’s childhood up until now had Care Bears quite like the ones in Unicorn Wars. While Vázquez’s characters have the rounded, cutesy bodies, big eyes, and pastel colors of characters from children’s shows, they also have visible genitals and notable sex drives, foul mouths, bad tempers, and in some cases, deep-seated psychosis. Their war-focused culture leads to many of the characters being graphically mutilated and murdered as the story unfolds, and the film ends with a profoundly shocking sequence that seems designed to challenge audiences’ endurance.

[Ed. note: This interview features end spoilers for Unicorn Wars.]

None of it is intended to be an edgelord provocative or transgression. In laying out a horrific metaphor about the root causes of war, Vázquez wanted to lean on universal imagery to make sure viewers around the world would watch the film the same way, without seeing specific nationalist intent, or a specific country’s history.

“They’re iconic — and not just the icons of Care Bears specifically,” he says. As with the animated film he made before, Birdboy: Forgotten ChildrenHe wanted to use animated animals, as every country has its own version of the idea. “I like working with recognizable iconography. You can find out more at In BirdboyIt was actually mice and rabbits. That way, if you see this movie, you can’t really tell where it’s from — you can’t tell if it’s Spanish, American, Japanese, or French.”

The symbolism is in Unicorn Wars is similarly broad and straightforward: The bears’ culture is built around a military-industrial complex focused on demonizing unicorns, and maintaining an endless war against them. They have a holy bible that contains information about their ancestral lives in sacred forests, which is close to God. But the unicorns drove them out. As the movie progresses, it focuses in on two brother bears, Tubby and Bluey, who represent different sides in the war of attrition against the unicorns — and, fundamentally, against nature and the environment.

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By the film’s late stages, Tubby and Bluey have each become radicalized. Bluey leads a coup against his own faction’s leaders, murdering them and taking control of the bear army. Tubby returns back to nature and lives peacefully among the unicorns. He is far from the city. Bluey determined to show his superiority leads his army into a forest, burning it. Tubby is killed and all the unicorns are slaughtered in a bloody battle. A shapeless, devouring monster first seen in the film’s opening sequences rises up from the eviscerated corpses of unicorns and bears alike, and the collective ruin of the old world takes on a new form: what appears to be the first human.

For Vázquez, that story is about analyzing humanity’s darkest impulses, and the institutions that stoke and control those impulses in order to maintain power. “It’s a war movie, and war is very dark, and deals with the worst of human beings,” he says. “I really wanted to talk about the common origin of all wars. So while it seems like an imaginary kind of Vietnam War, to me, all wars are the same.”

That hungry, shapeless and grasping monster living in the forest is the element that feels the most universal in the film. Vázquez explains: “The monster in the film functions as a prologue and an epilogue. It’s serving as a metaphor for what what’s coming later. The monster for me is a God without a form, a God adored as a leader, but a God that’s still yet to evolve. At the end, God becomes flesh and fulfills the prophecy from the book of bears. It’s a magical, mysterious element that’s there to reinforce the concept [of what violence does to a society].”

But ultimately, the movie is less about the monster, and more about the message — specifically, about the powermongers who benefit from wars, and the tools they use to keep themselves in power. “The bears have a very religious and militaristic culture and that controls public opinion,” Vázquez says. “Whoever controls discourse and information, controls the war. The way they speak about fanaticism — religion is a form of control. A war with ideology is much more dangerous than a war without.”

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WhichBirdboyEnds with at most a hint or hope. Unicorn WarsThe film robs the characters of any possibility for hope and recovery. And it’s infinitely cynical about what humanity is made of, as well. Vázquez says that’s no coincidence, either. “The movie is all playing with contrasts,” he says. “At the beginning, it feels like a humorous movie, but then it becomes a more dramatic and sad film. And by the end, it’s a horror film. I like to provoke the audience, but I also like to provoke emotion — and something impactful and shocking provokes emotion.”

He sees it as the end, however. Unicorn Warsand its nihilistic message are realistic. It is not transgression. “I want to be very radical with the message in my stories,” he explains. “I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. It’s a very bellicose and violent film, and I think the ending is appropriate for the theme. Although it might not be comfortable for some audiences, I enjoy when they feel uncomfortable. It is my goal for them to be moved. I like movies where even if they’re not perfect, they leave a memory behind.”

Unicorn Wars is now playing in select theaters — see the movie’s website for details — and is available for rental on Amazon, VuduOther digital platforms.