We rate Johane Matte’s contribution to Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia: its creatures are engaging company even when the storytelling thins. The work is shared, but it gives us reason to follow her directing.
Fi1m perspective
The troll mentors in Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016) remain interesting to look at while they talk. Their designs have enough personality to survive the first impression, so the pleasure does not depend on another action scene arriving. We grew fond of them because their humour and warmth made the familiar fantasy easy to settle into. Johane Matte helped direct a programme whose creatures are its strongest attraction, and which earns our recommendation for family viewing.
Matte’s earlier feature work was in story and storyboarding, with credits on How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Rise of the Guardians (2012). The move into directing came on Trollhunters, where she directed eight episodes and served as story supervisor on 26. Those overlapping jobs make her a substantial contributor to the programme, although they do not let us assign every successful visual choice to her personally.
Guillermo del Toro created the series, and Rodrigo Blaas and Elaine Bogan are also among its directors. The team’s achievement is to give the creatures enough character that they need not be doing something spectacular to justify our attention. The engaging voice cast helps, but the storytelling remains familiar and sometimes thin; good company cannot make every stretch equally satisfying. We like the programme without needing to pretend that its warmth resolves those weaknesses.
Matte went on to direct episodes of 3Below: Tales of Arcadia (2018) and Wizards: Tales of Arcadia (2020), and to co-direct the feature Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021). Her directing work across those titles shows a sustained involvement in this shared fantasy, rather than a single visit to it. That continuity is worth noting, but our recommendation rests on the original programme’s appealing creatures and easy humour. Start there for the troll mentors, with a little patience for the plotting.
Biography
Johane Matte is a Canadian animation director and former storyboard artist. She directed episodes of the Netflix series Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016–2018), 3Below: Tales of Arcadia (2018–2019) and Wizards: Tales of Arcadia (2020), as well as the feature film Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021).
Born in 1971 in Amos, Québec, Matte attended Algonquin College from 1989 to 1991, initially studying graphic design before switching to television animation. She worked as a storyboard artist on several DreamWorks Animation features, including Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Rise of the Guardians (2012) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022). She won an Annie Award in 2013 for her storyboarding on Rise of the Guardians.
Matte has also worked as a comic book artist and writer, contributing to titles such as the Avatar Legends comics.
