What comes first: the story or the metaphor? Should a writer invent characters and scenario, then allow viewers to extract wider meanings and secret subtexts from the material? Or should the meaning come first, and the plot is something that is retroactively fitted around it?
For his new Disney animation Strange World, it appears that Don Hall (following up Moana and Raya and the Last Dragon) and his writer Qui Nguyen have opted for the latter, as this ripping yarn about subterranean exploration on an Earth-like planet goes extremely heavy on the environmental messaging at the expense of a dramatically credible storyline.
Alpha papa Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) is a roistering globetrotter who is adamant to traverse the snowy peaks that surround the technologically-primitive township of Avalonia. He brings with him his gawky, accident-prone son, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), who’s more interested in perusing the landscape’s strange flora and fauna.
One day, the crew happen across an odd plant that resembles a bush of Brussels sprouts. Except these sprouts (known as Pando) don’t give you gas – they’re charged with electricity. Searcher sees a revolutionary renewable energy source and a way to drag Avalonia out of the dark ages, while Jaeger is desperate to carry on and see what’s over the horizon. And so after a fiery argument, the pair part ways.
Twenty-five years later, and Searcher is Avalonia’s premiere Pando farmer along with his aviatrix wife, Meridian (Gabrielle Union), and 16-year-old son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), who in both occupation and sexual preference is very much not looking to follow in the footsteps of his old man. On the back of their discovery, the Clades have become local heroes, memorialised in bronze and thought of as scions of innovation. Yet something is happening to the Pando. It’s rotting from its centralised root and the electrical charge is no longer holding. So Searcher and family are packed off into an airship with town leader Callisto (Lucy Liu) and rag-tag crew to save this invaluable resource.
Hall has spoken of his love of 1950s adventure serials, and the gimcracking comic book derring do as seen in early Boy’s Own tales are very much a tonal and aesthetic influence in Strange World. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that Hall had been boning up on his Duck Tales or Rescue Rangers ahead of putting this one together. This voyage into the unknown takes our heroes to an alien terrain populated by sentient tubules, globules and tentacles, all of which are single-mindedly aggressive towards any outside invaders.
As an ecological fable about humanity’s masochistic relationship with fossil fuels, Strange World is very old hat. Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki told a similar, superior tale over 30 years ago with his Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and there have been many decent copycat films in the interim.
As such, there’s the nagging feeling that this one is very content to rake old ground rather than search for a new way to express these important, if rather boilerplate ideas. It’s laudable that these lessons are being passed on to a new generation, but it’s hardly new or exciting terrain for storytelling. Without giving anything away, the end of the film offers a far more intriguing starting point that the more obvious arc we have here.
What is revolutionary, however, is that the film contains Disney animations first mixed-race gay character in Ethan, and he is presented and developed in a way that isn’t just a completely superficial and consequence-free nod to his sexuality (hello MCU!). Strange World’s other key theme is one of acceptance and understanding when it comes to the choices of loved ones, whether a father wants to abandon his family due to his monomaniacal thirst for adventure, or a son who not only doesn’t want to inherit the family business, but wants to embrace a different family dynamic altogether. This is the first time a Disney family title such as this has really put its money where its mouth is in terms of bold, modern, progressive depictions of family, and here’s hoping that it whips up a performative moral frenzy with all the wrong people.
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ANTICIPATION.
Disney animation are doing more interesting things than stablemates Pixar at the moment. 4
ENJOYMENT.
A limp eco fable that boasts some great designs, characters and monsters. 3
IN RETROSPECT.
Morally and politically, some really worthwhile stuff here. The film just never quite comes together. 3
Directed by
Don Hall
Starring
Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Lucy Liu
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