Strange World | Review
Strange World is the first Disney film to use its 100 year anniversary logo, recognizing The Walt Disney Company’s century-long presence and its continuing legacy. Perhaps nothing more than Disney has been as influential to the art of animation. After all, Disney was the first to release a feature-length traditionally-animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first to release an animated film to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Beauty and the Beast, and the first to release a computer-animated feature film, Pixar’s Toy Story (technically Pixar wasn’t owned by Disney at that point, but Disney did distribute the film).
Disney animated films are remembered for their iconic characters, memorable music, signature scenes, and moving stories. It’s why Cinderella, Bambi, and The Jungle Book are still recognizable nearly 70 years after their release. Generation after generation grew up with their own popular Disney animated films. It’s the reason why we have Disney Adults! Disney is really good at what they do.
Avalonia
And that’s why, when Disney releases a new animated film that doesn’t live up to this legacy, it can’t help but feel like a massive disappointment. Strange World is that film.
Set in the land of Avalonia, a rural, pre-industrial community surrounded by an impenetrable mountain range, Strange World follows three generations of the Clade family: Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid), a fearless explorer; Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), Jaeger’s son who doesn’t share his father’s passion for exploration and prefers a life as a farmer; and Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White), Searcher’s son who doesn’t share his father’s passion for farming and discovers a love for adventure. Jaeger has been missing for 25 years after embarking on a journey to find a way through the Avalonian mountains, and since then Avalonia has gone through an industrial revolution, becoming a utopia with flying ships, all thanks to a plant Searcher discovered, dubbed Pando, that gives off energy. But when an Pando-related energy crisis occurs, Searcher is forced to embark on an adventure that leads him beyond the boundaries of Avalonia. Along for the ride are Ethan, Searcher’s wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union), and Avalonia’s president Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu).
Left to right: Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), Meridian (Gabrielle Union), Callisto (Lucy Liu), and Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White).
It’s safe to say the group finds itself in a “strange” world, one that looks alien, filled with eye-popping hues of blue, yellow, orange, and magenta, featuring faceless creatures of all shapes and sizes, from blobs, moving landscapes, to dinosaur-like figures. This hidden world of Strange World is inspired by pulp adventure stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the works of Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and films like King Kong. If the inspiration wasn’t clear, the film’s prologue and end credits lays out its pulp magazine influence by featuring a two-dimensional, comic book-like animation style. If only the entire film kept this style, that way I would at least have something positive to say about it.
The flora and fauna of ‘Strange World’
It’s hard for me to put into words specific examples of why Strange World doesn’t work. Maybe it’s because it’s not due to any one moment or any one creative decision. The entire film just never kicks into high gear. While the strange world is pretty to look at, the film itself lacks any depth, emotion, or fun. The film vocalizes its themes of environmentalism, legacy, and “Your dream isn’t my dream, dad” over and over again, as if it’s afraid of being too subtle. It’s worse when you realize these themes are already clearly laid out clearly for the audience in the film’s opening minutes, meaning we have to spend another 90 minutes hearing and seeing it on repeat.
With the exception of maybe Callisto, the entire Clade family have forgettable character designs. And it doesn’t help that all of the characters in Strange World are so two-dimensional they’re basically archetypes: Jaeger is the bold adventurer, Searcher is the reluctant hero, Ethan is… also an adventurer, Meridian is the pilot, and Callisto is the confident leader.
The strange world
There is a late reveal that makes the film a little bit more interesting, but it comes too late to make up for the film’s, I hate to say it, boring story and characters. Director Don Hall (Big Hero 6 and Raya and the Last Dragon) and co-director/writer Qui Nguyen (Raya and the Last Dragon) have both released much better, more entertaining, and more memorable films before. (The fact that their last film, Raya and the Last Dragon, was released just a year before Strange World—an unusually fast turnaround—makes me wonder how much time was spent on this film, considering the lengthy production period animated films typically have.)
There are so many reasons I wanted to like Strange World: it’s the first Disney Animation Studio film co-directed by a Vietnamese American filmmaker (Qui Nguyen), it features the studio’s first gay main character (Ethan), and because I’m fans of its diverse cast (Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, and Lucy Liu). (Although, I’m still not a fan of celebrity voice casting.) Strange World is far from an awful film. Worse, it’s bland.
