Strings Attached! David Fincher & Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock a Marionette Masterpiece in ‘Love, Death + Robots’ Season 4

Tim Miller’s wildly inventive animated anthology, Love, Death + Robots, has triumphantly returned for a fourth season, and by all accounts, it’s shaping up to be its most ambitious yet! A standout highlight? The season opener, masterminded by none other than acclaimed director David Fincher, featuring the iconic Red Hot Chili Peppers like you’ve never seen them before: as intricately detailed, motion-captured marionettes. And in a feat of audacious animation, the entire concert audience shares their stringed fate – a truly staggering undertaking.

In an exclusive behind-the-scenes featurette, Fincher, the visionary filmmaker behind The Social Network, shared his long-held desire to bring this unique concept to life. “I always wanted to do super marionation in CG,” he revealed. When he pitched the idea to series creator Tim Miller, the scale quickly became apparent. “He was like, ‘Yeah, it can be done. So it’s just the band members?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s also the crowd.’ He sort of looked at me and said, ‘How many people are in the crowd?’ And I said, ‘12, 13 thousand.’ And he said, ‘How many wires per person?’ And I said, ‘Five [or] six.’ And when he regained consciousness, we decided that was kind of the direction we were gonna go in.”

Fincher elaborated on the fascinating technical and artistic dance of motion-capturing performers to behave like puppets, a process where natural movement and marionette suspension are often at odds. “Everything in a marionette is suspension,” he explained, noting the challenge in deciding whether a hand movement should appear deliberate or simply a byproduct of the puppet’s manipulation. Crucially, the team leveraged the distinct, energetic stage presence of Chili Peppers members Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, and John Frusciante. “There’s a very specific way that they [the band] move and a very specific way that they interact,” Fincher noted, allowing this unique band chemistry to inform the puppetry.

For Fincher, who also produces the series, Love, Death + Robots provided the perfect, boundary-pushing playground for such a long-gestating, unique idea – one he’d harbored for 30 years. “Part of what’s attractive to me about Love, Death and Robots is the fact that it can be anything,” he affirmed.

The show, created by Miller, premiered on Netflix in March 2019 after an impressive 11-year journey through development, originally conceived as a reboot of the 1981 sci-fi animated film Heavy Metal before evolving into the celebrated anthology it is today.

Prepare to be amazed: Love, Death + Robots Volume 4, including Fincher’s string-pulling spectacle, is available to stream on Netflix now.