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Review: Disney's "Strange World"
Jan. 2nd, 2023 10:14 am- The worldbuilding of this is movie very weird. I thought while watching, "is this 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'?", and to an extent, apparently it is. (As well as about 10 other things.) But somehow this totally isolated society manages to basically parallel-develop 1940s tech and aesthetics. Jaeger Clade is an explorer, but this city-state is entirely isolated from the rest of humanity. What's he exploring?
- Is there a 'rest' of humanity? Is this a colony on an alien planet that's forgotten Earth, Pern-style? And despite this isolation since ?, the city has discrete and distinct racial groups (but no evident cultural differences that would discourage intermingling, and an interracial protagonist). How did this native American woman, this white guy and this black woman all happen? It's the weird 'colour without race' thing movies are doing right now, where screen-level diversity is encouraged but story-level diversity is discouraged. Everyone is written white (and often by white people), then drawn or played diversely. Then we act like that's doing PoC some favour, as though it's an act of largesse to extend 'just like us' whiteness to people of various ethnicities. I can't really say 'backgrounds' there, because these characters don't get them. Representation, baybee.
- We're in a sealed community with a key family responsible for introducing and maintaining a magical-SFnal Macguffin. That's fundamentally similar to "Encanto". I's interesting that Disney might be struggling to set projects in the contemporary world or in history in this moment.
- The timing of the climax is a bit wonky. They have to save Great A'tuin this instant, for some reason. Why? How do they know that?
- We also don't really know enough about what they should do. They come to save one vast organism, pando, and then kill pando to save this other vast organism because that one has an eye. (Arguably a biosphere is also dependent on it, so it's More Lives Saved, but that's worth clarifying in the text.) How do they know that the consequences of liberating Great A'tuin will be good for them, if pando has been limiting its life-force for--how long? Longer than their own period of usage, at least.
- If pando is decaying quickly with the source plant in trouble, how do they know that they'll be able to get home if they kill the root? How much pando do they even have left after all the crop dusting and combat? It'd be one thing for the characters to accept this risk, but the story kind of forgets about it. Arguably if it's parasitic, pando would have been in trouble after it finished throttling the organism. But do they know that? What's the life-cycle of pando, anyway? Does it finish up with one giant turtle and somehow pass spores to another? How does this plant work?
- Kind of dark for a Disney movie that the pilot just dies there are the start of the descent.
- It's odd to undercut Searcher's feeling that his father was kind of abusive in favour of healing and unity--slightly gas-lighty 'reconcile with your family, they're not as bad as you remember! You can make it work!' Because it's an adventure movie the story can't give much weight to Searcher's valid point that he's different from his own father because while Jaeger risked Searcher's safety on many occasions, he is unwilling to do that to his son.
- (How do they have the German word for 'hunter' as a name in a world without Germans? Anyway--)
- To make the climax function we have to cast giant hippie Searcher as 'not aware of/into collaborative land stewardship'. This doesn't make a lot of sense for his character.
- The gay element was fine. I would not watch this for that, as it was fairly negligible.
- I guess Settlers of Catan truly has made it if it's basically in movies now.
- I didn't dislike this movie, and the "Fantastic Voyage" visuals were interesting. But I don't know that I particularly liked it, either? I thought the President was an interesting character and the visuals of the farm etc. were nice, with a good colour palate.
- Is there a 'rest' of humanity? Is this a colony on an alien planet that's forgotten Earth, Pern-style? And despite this isolation since ?, the city has discrete and distinct racial groups (but no evident cultural differences that would discourage intermingling, and an interracial protagonist). How did this native American woman, this white guy and this black woman all happen? It's the weird 'colour without race' thing movies are doing right now, where screen-level diversity is encouraged but story-level diversity is discouraged. Everyone is written white (and often by white people), then drawn or played diversely. Then we act like that's doing PoC some favour, as though it's an act of largesse to extend 'just like us' whiteness to people of various ethnicities. I can't really say 'backgrounds' there, because these characters don't get them. Representation, baybee.
- We're in a sealed community with a key family responsible for introducing and maintaining a magical-SFnal Macguffin. That's fundamentally similar to "Encanto". I's interesting that Disney might be struggling to set projects in the contemporary world or in history in this moment.
- The timing of the climax is a bit wonky. They have to save Great A'tuin this instant, for some reason. Why? How do they know that?
- We also don't really know enough about what they should do. They come to save one vast organism, pando, and then kill pando to save this other vast organism because that one has an eye. (Arguably a biosphere is also dependent on it, so it's More Lives Saved, but that's worth clarifying in the text.) How do they know that the consequences of liberating Great A'tuin will be good for them, if pando has been limiting its life-force for--how long? Longer than their own period of usage, at least.
- If pando is decaying quickly with the source plant in trouble, how do they know that they'll be able to get home if they kill the root? How much pando do they even have left after all the crop dusting and combat? It'd be one thing for the characters to accept this risk, but the story kind of forgets about it. Arguably if it's parasitic, pando would have been in trouble after it finished throttling the organism. But do they know that? What's the life-cycle of pando, anyway? Does it finish up with one giant turtle and somehow pass spores to another? How does this plant work?
- Kind of dark for a Disney movie that the pilot just dies there are the start of the descent.
- It's odd to undercut Searcher's feeling that his father was kind of abusive in favour of healing and unity--slightly gas-lighty 'reconcile with your family, they're not as bad as you remember! You can make it work!' Because it's an adventure movie the story can't give much weight to Searcher's valid point that he's different from his own father because while Jaeger risked Searcher's safety on many occasions, he is unwilling to do that to his son.
- (How do they have the German word for 'hunter' as a name in a world without Germans? Anyway--)
- To make the climax function we have to cast giant hippie Searcher as 'not aware of/into collaborative land stewardship'. This doesn't make a lot of sense for his character.
- The gay element was fine. I would not watch this for that, as it was fairly negligible.
- I guess Settlers of Catan truly has made it if it's basically in movies now.
- I didn't dislike this movie, and the "Fantastic Voyage" visuals were interesting. But I don't know that I particularly liked it, either? I thought the President was an interesting character and the visuals of the farm etc. were nice, with a good colour palate.
