YMMV / The Boxtrolls

• Accidental Aesop: The boxtrolls coming out of their boxes could be seen as a subtle lesson that you shouldn't let anxiety, timidity, or idiosyncrasies be an excuse to keep you from doing what needs to be done. Sometimes, you've got to think outside the box.
  • As Archibald demonstrates, sometimes what you want isn't what's best for you.
• Accidental Innuendo: Archibald Snatcher. Yes, it's a reference to how he "snatches" things, but still...
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Archibald Snatcher just a man driven to gain power and respect at all costs, or is he really just looking for comradery and to be accepted by high society? In the end, where he gets everything he wants (in the tasting room, surrounded by — who he believes are — his fellow white hats, and about to eat the most delicious piece of cheese in their collection), he seems to have a look of utter horror on his face, like he believes he has to do this.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In the film, the "tastiest cheese known to man" is aged for centuries from the milk of the male lactating fruit bat. Cheese aged for centuries from bat milk is not a thing (yet, at least), but two species of fruit bats are in fact the only male mammals known to naturally lactate.
• Broken Base: The Boxtrolls is often the most controversial of Laika's films. There's a consensus that this film's got great animation, but in terms of story, plot, and characters, the film isn't as out of the box or good as Laika's other films. Whether this means the film is good but weaker than the previous and later films or if Boxtrolls itself is just a creative misfire on Laika's part depends on the person.
• Complete Monster: Archibald Snatcher is a self-styled boxtroll exterminator who, while initially appearing to be eccentric and goofy, reveals himself to be far more unhinged as the story runs its course. Envying the lifestyles of the elite "White Hats", the ruling council of Cheesebridge, Snatcher cooks up a campaign to eliminate every boxtroll in Cheesebridge to motivate the White Hats into letting him join higher society. Ten years prior to the main plot, Snatcher is shown attempting to extort the father of the-then infant Eggs by threatening the baby's life; when Eggs's father refuses to cooperate with his demands, Snatcher apparently kills him with a wrench, but in actuality keeps the man under locks for ten years until he's Driven to Madness. Snatcher later obliterates the boxtrolls' home and gleefully attempts to crush them en masse while forcing Eggs to watch, and shortly after dresses the boy as a boxtroll and then attempts to burn him alive in his attempt to endear himself to the White Hats. As a self-concerned megalomaniac who willingly and gleefully attempts to kill children to further his goals, Snatcher really stands out in such a lighthearted movie.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some characters' antics do this, such as Lord Portley-Rind using his funds to buy a cheese wheel instead of a children's hospital.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Snatcher surprisingly has a fan following who believe him to be a Jerkass Woobie who has good justification to act the way he does and gets a raw deal in the end. They generally go by the second, more favorable Alternative Character Interpretation listed above.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Snatcher's Big, Thin, Short Trio henchmen are some of the movie's more colorful and consistently popular characters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Elle Fanning voices a character in a stop-motion film by Laika... just like her sister did a few years prior in Coraline. Additionally, this is the second time Elle has played a redhead, the first time being in Ginger and Rosa.
  • For some viewers, it's hard not to watch a movie where a character obsesses over trading hats in an attempt to rise in the social ranks without being reminded of the world's greatest hat-trading simulator.
• Hype Backlash: The movie amassed a pretty big following when it was first released and got mostly-positive reactions, but others felt that it was not good enough, or at least fell short compared to Paranorman.
• Love to Hate: Snatcher may be a megalomaniac, but he's so entertaining that you can hardly fault him for it.
• Moe: Eggs, both as a baby and a pre-teen.
• Moral Event Horizon: Archibald Snatcher doesn't seem that nasty of a villain and rather a goofy one at best, until a flashback reveals that he's kept Eggs' biological father captive for ten years, driving him to insanity, and in that flashback he intended to to murder him with a wrench. Even worse, he knows the whole time that the boxtrolls are harmless, but lied to the whole town simply so he could be a part of the White Hats. These actions alone are enough to make him irredeemable, but near the end he forces Eggs to watch his adopted family get murdered (they escape just in time, but still), and dresses Eggs up as the last boxtroll and tries to kill him in a furnace. Archibald then rampages through the square and endangers everyone before abducting Winnie.
• Nausea Fuel: Snatcher's cheese allergies are nasty, and the more cheese he's exposed to, the worse they get. Said allergies even cause him to EXPLODE at the end of the film.
• Toy Ship: Eggs and Winnie, especially when they dance in the party scene.
• Ugly Cute: The boxtrolls themselves. They're little, dirty, gray creatures who wear boxes and only come out at night. They have grubby fingers, large teeth, and eyes that glow in the dark. They are also terribly timid, have very innocent motivations, and have the cutest little voices.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Snatcher's Mecha-Drill is a five-foot-tall behemoth of a prop, and was the largest stop-motion animated puppet produced for any film ever (well, until Laika broke their own record with the Gashadokuro in Kubo and the Two Strings).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The Boxtrolls appears to not know who it's aimed for. It has a little girl obsessed with blood and guts and wanting the boxtrolls to eat the flesh off of her skin, and a little boy almost gets burned to death and is knocked unconscious by the villains. That's not even to mention that it has one of the most sinister villains to ever appear in an animated film, who is not only played completely seriously but also whose death is anything but family-friendly.
• The Woobie: Eggs can never catch a break, from being separated to his father when he was just a baby to the absolute Trauma Conga Line that is most of the events of the film for him. Winnie also counts because she is constantly neglected by her parents.

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