imagineNATIVE 26 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! The perfect blueprint on how to make the ultimate blockbuster can be found in the unbelievably epic animated short Wolverine & Little Thunder: An Eel Hunting Adventure, written and directed by Alan Syliboy. Adapted from Syliboy’s book, it opens with a seated lodge vision of a giant eel rising from the lake, the Mi’kmaw tribe’s fish. Little Thunder, who is a very young hunter, heads down to the lake with his animal spirit friend Wolverine.
They row out to the middle of the lake and start spearing eels to eat. Wolverine keeps impatiently thrusting his spear in the water over and over, catching very little. Little Thunder, however, is taking his time and keeps pulling eel after eel in. Frustrated, Wolverine plunges his spear deep into the depths, finally catching something. As he struggles to bring it in, the giant eel in the vision rises from the lake, Wolverine’s spear sticking out of its back…
“Alan Syliboy delivers pure visual storytelling without narration or dialogue.”
Wolverine & Little Thunder: An Eel Hunting Adventure is cinematic perfection, unspooling a massive big-screen story in less than 10 minutes. The visuals are spectacular, with stunning colors and intriguing character designs based on older traditions. Like the eels, your eyeballs will be caught and dragged away on the back of a giant eel. Syliboy immediately accelerates his work to the stratosphere by making the choice of having no narration or dialogue at all. This is pure visual storytelling, letting the vocabulary of the imagery draw the viewer in deeper than any exposition can.
It is Syliboy’s letting the work speak for itself method that can be used to rehabilitate the concept of the blockbuster. The path Syliboy has discovered can lead us back to the great tentpoles of your. Imagine how fresh a Star Wars movie would come off with no legible dialogue, no subtitles, and no opening scroll. Sand People and Wookies don’t speak any known language anyway, so it will roll out smoothly. It is this showing instead of telling that has been missing from the theaters, and it only took a visionary animated short to act as a signpost to find the way to get it back. Wolverine & Little Thunder: An Eel Hunting Adventure is not just for children, as this short shows why cinema remains the highest art.
Wolverine & Little Thunder: An Eel Hunting Adventure screened at the 2026 imagineNATIVE Film Festival.
"…cinematic perfection, unspooling a massive big screen story in less than 10 minutes."
