It’s getting to the point where Disney’s animated films seem almost perfunctory compared to their titanic dominance over the film market in just about every other area, from their ownership of 20th Century Fox, to Marvel movies swallowing entire release schedules whole every time they come out. This film is projected to cost Disney somewhere around $147 million, although with the impending release of Avatar: The Way Of Water, I’m sure the profit there will balance things out again. Ain’t it nice to be a corporate monolith?
Yeah, I’m being snarky here, because I wasn’t really expecting much from this. The last couple Disney Animated films were decent, but nothing all that special compared to the studio’s pedigree, and I’ve come to associate director Don Hall with mid-tier Disney, between Raya And The Last Dragon and Big Hero 6. And on top of that, as much as I kinda like the antagonist-less approach Disney has been taking with their stories for the last few years, the reliance on generational trauma to fill in the gaps is starting to wear thin (they hit their peak with that in Frozen 2, for the record). But, thankfully, I can safely say that this film turned out pretty well, in spite of its obstacles. Although it should be said that ‘safely’ is the operative word here.
Disney have had their animation style dialled for so many decades by this point that saying it looks good feels redundant, but credit to this film for looking good in a different way than the last handful of releases. It’s a sci-fi adventure that pulls inspiration from old-school staples of the genre, from Jules Verne to Fantastic Voyage, and the locales and creatures in this benefit a lot from that idea pool. The main characters’ home of Avalonia is like a Disney take on a Final Fantasy setting, like a more panoramic Radiant Garden, and the titular Strange World looks… well, alien. As in the locations don’t just look like exaggerations of Earth places, nor does the wildlife just look like hybrids of two or more Earth animals is as often the case. There are admittedly some showings of that here as well, like with the creatures that look like a cross between a pufferfish and an octopus, but even that looks Eldritch enough to be given a pass. It taps into the sensation of wanting to explore these places for one’s self, even in spite of the potential dangers, which I don’t often get from animated films nowadays.
The characters are fairly standard fare for a Disney film at this point, with multiple generations of the same family getting into bizarre adventures for one reason or another, but to its credit, it’s at least delivered well. The individual actors are good, from Jake Gyllenhaal as farmer Searcher, to Dennis Quaid in a rare late-period respectable role as adventurer Jaeger, to Gabrielle Union as Searcher’s wife Meridian, to Jaboukie Young-White as their son Ethan. Ethan marks the first Disney Animated character to be openly gay which… hurray, you’re late to the party, what do you want, a cookie? As I’ve said before, I’ve grown tired of Disney’s sheepishness about LGBTQ representation, so forgive me if I don’t care all that much about this decision. Other studios have had our backs for a while now, and they’re not so afraid of losing box office receipts from China to show it either.
Okay, okay, dialling back on the harshness for a bit, I will reiterate that I do like these characters. Their banter in particular feels very natural (the bit where Meridian says that she has a right to embarrass her son was quite cute), and while it does reuse the generational trauma thing, the way it’s expressed is… mostly good. Some of Jaeger’s dialogue can be a bit much in how much he doesn’t respect his son’s love for botany and putting down roots, but the overall arc for Searcher trying not to repeat his father’s mistakes still works. Bonus points for generally being quite balanced in showing Jaeger’s want to explore vs. Searcher’s want to settle, with both having their good and bad points with Ethan finding the happy medium.
It's honestly a bit of a shame that this specific film might end up being in the red, since I got a lot more entertainment out of this than Raya And The Last Dragon. The characters and dialogue are fun, I love the design aesthetic for the film’s world, its Queer representation (if quite late) is handled alright, and the central environmental message benefits from the gigantic visuals and world-building. Not gonna lie, if this became a TV show at some point, I would totally check it out, and I rarely get around to watching series these days. It’s not all that special, but in the midst of Disney’s more recent animated efforts, it’s still one of the stronger ones.
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