The story skews much darker in “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” than it ever did in the scrappy, pop-culture-referencing “Shrek” films the title character sprang from, yet the visuals look like Puss took a Day-Glo Cheetos shower and then shot himself into the Spider-Verse.

“My pitch to the studio was, ‘This is awesome to pick up the next chapter of Puss in Boots and bring back the nostalgia of this character after 11 years, but we can go somewhere brand-new — tonally, visually,’” said the director Joel Crawford.

Puss’s latest adventure, with Januel Mercado as co-director, became a surprise box office hit when it arrived in theaters in December — more than a decade after the first spinoff film — and was nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature. It begins on a somber note: After the swashbuckling cat, voiced by Antonio Banderas, is fatally crushed by a bell after awakening a giant, he resurrects only to be informed by a doctor that he is now on the last of his nine lives. Determined not to give up his mission of battling bad guys, Puss reteams with his old friend and former flame Kitty Softpaws (voiced by Salma Hayek Pinault) on a quest to find a magical Wishing Star that will grant a single wish — if he doesn’t lose his final life in the process. (The villain, a menacing, black-hooded wolf voiced by Wagner Moura, is a manifestation of death, one of the darkest DreamWorks baddies to date.)

In a video interview earlier this month from his office in Glendale, Calif., Crawford, 42, discussed the film’s eclectic array of influences, among them spaghetti westerns, “The Incredibles” and the samurai films of the director Akira Kurosawa.

Sergio Leone

Leone’s 1966 classic spaghetti western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” about three gunslingers searching for hidden Confederate gold, inspired the narrative structure of “The Last Wish,” with several characters — including Goldilocks — competing with Puss to find the Wishing Star. “For us, instead of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it’s the Good, the Bad and the Goldi,” said Crawford, who referenced Leone’s film in his initial pitch to the studio. “Just as the Ugly was a misunderstood character, when Goldi and the Bears come onscreen, you think they’re going to be villains, but then you find out there’s this deeper side to them.”

Leone’s work also influenced visual moments in “The Last Wish,” including an extreme close-up of Puss’s eyes that evokes Clint Eastwood’s iconic stare, and even its sonic palette. The Wolf whistling an ominous tune at his first meeting with Puss in a cantina is an homage to the character of Harmonica in “Once Upon a Time in the West,” whose every appearance was accompanied by a discordant, apocalyptic melody. “We gave that challenge to the composer, Heitor Pereira,” Crawford said. “We wanted a whistle that was not creepy at the beginning, but then, once you meet the Wolf and knew what it meant, would not only cause Puss’s hair to stand up, but also the audience’s hair to stand up on their arms every time they heard it.”

‘Yojimbo’

Crawford loves the samurai films of the director Akira Kurosawa, particularly “Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo.” “In ‘Seven Samurai,’ you enter into it going, ‘This is going to be an action movie,’” he said. “And what surprises you is the depth and the humanity.”

In the first meeting between the Wolf and Puss, the graphic lighting echoes that of “Yojimbo,” when Toshiro Mifune is walking alone through the dust. And the characters’ final showdown is based in a code of honor that recalls that of a samurai. “The Wolf is an antagonist to Puss in Boots, but he’s not the villain,” Crawford said. “In a way, Puss is his own villain, with his cavalier disregard for life. We ended up in this Kurosawa-esque samurai moment where it’s a staredown, and the Wolf essentially has this moral code where he can’t kill Puss in Boots now because Puss actually appreciates life and thereby respects death.”

‘The Incredibles’

Crawford was struck by a specific moment in Brad Bird’s 2004 animated superhero film: when Mr. Incredible is buried under a barrage of sticky black balls. The cutting pattern of that sequence served as a model for the bar fight scene between Puss and the Wolf in “The Last Wish”: The film’s earlier tracking shots are replaced with fast, jarring cuts that overwhelm the viewer. “When Puss pulls out his sword, you don’t even see the Wolf knock it out of his hand,” Crawford said. “You just see Puss’s reaction, and you cut to it stuck in a barrel. From there on, the cuts are quick and jarring — Puss is on the back foot, and the audience is, too.”

Steven Spielberg

Spielberg’s films, Crawford said, are a masterly mixture of character development and emotional journeys layered beneath big, fun cinematic elements. “In ‘E.T.,’ the kids are grounded in real emotion,” Crawford said. “They’re not candy-coated — there’s an edge to them.”

One Spielberg trademark that made its way into “The Last Wish” is his penchant for long takes. In the scene in which the nefarious pastry chef Jack Horner is shooting at Puss with his unicorn-horn crossbow in the middle of a confetti-drenched melee, the focus stays on Puss as he hears the Wolf’s whistle, wrapping around to show the Wolf standing behind him. “It’s one of those moments that, by having a Spielberg-esque oner, you allow the audience to feel the change from bright, colorful chaos into controlled fear,” Crawford said. 

‘Akira’

The vibrant animation style of “The Last Wish,” which resembles storybook illustrations, is an ode to the painterly look of “Akira,” the 1988 cyberpunk adult anime film from the director Katsuhiro Otomo, which was one of the first anime films Crawford watched. “When Puss is fighting a giant at the beginning, he looks like he’s been dropped into a fairy-tale painting, with the action animated in a style that leans toward anime,” he said.

But the film slips into traditional animation in its more grounded, subtle moments, like when Puss discovers he is on his last life. “He’s feeling panic and anxiety, and we juxtapose the two different animation styles so the audience can feel that ride,” Crawford said.

Judd Apatow

Crawford said the comedian and director’s characters are some of the most alive he has seen onscreen. “They’re all grounded in drama; the execution is just comedy,” he said. “That was really important for us, too, as we’re bringing the audience into a fairy-tale world — for them to feel like the characters may be animated, but they’re not cartoons. That they’re real. That they’re experiencing these emotions.”

He also admires Apatow’s openness to improvisation by his actors, a freedom to play that Crawford tried to cultivate among the cast of “The Last Wish.” One ad-libbed moment made it into the final film: Hayek Pinault suggested the line “I wish I had my quinceañera here!” for when her character first sees the magical forest. “It’s so wonderful sitting in an audience and seeing how many families, girls, really connect to that moment that Salma improvised,” Crawford said.