PG and I'm just waiting to say what someone says about this movie. A lot of parents didn't take their kids to see this movie because it has an openly homosexual relationship in it. Normally, I don't include homosexuality in my MPAA section because my politics don't view this as offensive. But I know that it is the central contention point for a lot of people, so I'll confirm it. Yes, one of the major characters is gay and talks about being gay. But the thing that really scares kids is a big scary world where everything is trying to kill them. You know, Disney stuff.
DIRECTORS: Don Hall and Qui Nguyen Such a point of contention. Man alive, I would love to throw stones, but at a point in my life, I would have been close-minded enough to probably avoid this movie. Yeah, it's the movie where Disney finally stopped beating around the bush and made a character gay. Am I going to talk about representation in movies? Yeah. I really, really am. Does that mean that I liked Strange World. Unfortunately, no. I was told the movie wasn't that good. My son didn't care for it. He's eight. He doesn't like lots of good stuff, so I wouldn't take his advice alone. I really thought I would like it. I mean, I like when Disney goes into sci-fi territory. I saw the trailer for this and thought that it would be up my alley. From that first trailer, I thought it was going to be very Star Trek-y or something like Lost in Space. I mean, it's right there in the title. Just add "New" and you have the title of a really good Star Trek show in front of you. Now, I'm putting myself in the shoes of a Disney exec. A Disney exec attaches his name to this movie. Maybe her name. Not the point. A Disney exec needs for Strange World to not be an outright failure because there's the Disney brand to think of. And he or she is holding the cards to the movie that is going to crack Middle America and China. This is the movie that is going to be so good that the whole question of gay representation isn't going to be a conversation anymore. And then they see the final product. And it's not amazing. On paper, everything about Strange World should have been a slam dunk. I know that early drafts of Disney movies don't look anything like the final versions. I am specifically citing Frozen. Frozen crushed. It was one of those earth-shattering Disney movies. I know a lot of people love to hate that movie. They're allowed to, but I think it's a bunch of bandwagon nonsense. As a father to too many kids, Frozen's a pretty solid outing from Disney that has few notes from me. But the original drafts of Frozen were very different beasts. I mean, Elsa was the bad guy in the original Frozen movie. Now, everyone knows Elsa. Heck, it's been a really long time since that movie came out and they're still selling merch from that movie, even beyond the sequel stuff. I'm sure that the folks who make original Disney stories were looking at Strange World thinking that whatever rough edges were in the early drafts of Strange World and those things would be fixed by release dates. And they were. My biggest problem with Strange World is that none of it gels. Some problems don't just get solved because Disney puts its name on it. The biggest problem is that it needed to be amazing. I keep using Jackie Robinson as my example. Bear with me, because I'm more of a history guy than a sports guy. Jackie Robinson destroyed the color barrier in sports because he was amazing. He took a mundane game and made it better by his presence. It's a crime that it has to go that way, but it's true. When Jackie Robinson played ball, it showed that a group of people treated as inferior could elevate something so-so into the stratosphere. But on the other hand, when something is less than amazing that is supposed to change the game, it's evidence --inappropriately --that the old ways are the best. I'm talking about Ghostbusters: Answer the Call here. You know, the girl Ghostbusters movie. Answer the Call was supposed to prove that an almost all-female cast would not only prove marketable, but also dominate the summer blockbuster market. But that movie, for what goodness it had, paled in comparison to the all-male cast that Ghostbusters is known for. Because bigots are looking for ammo, they took away from Answer the Call that women aren't funny and it's all unfair. The same thing is true for Strange World. Strange World's gay son, Ethan, is front and center in this story. It's a sci-fi story of a different planet that ultimately ends up being a living creature. Cool. But the really revolutionary element of the story isn't that Ethan is gay. It's that it doesn't matter that Ethan's gay. It's never an issue. Even with the Boomer avatar in the story who tends to be pig-headed, Ethan's sexuality is never a point of concern for Jaeger. Finally, Disney made a movie to represent a demographic that has been criminally underrepresented in cinema. There are peopel who could look at Ethan and see themselves in the story. That's great. (Or it's not, for those out there. I really want to throw stones. Like, really really want to. But I also know that I lead a privileged life and that I may not have someone in my ear telling me the value of this moment without contention.) But when the rest of the movie is meh, what that simply does is give evidence that America, China, and the Middle East don't want to see movies about gay kids. They don't want to brainwash their kids into seeing this movie. The big argument I have heard is that Ethan doesn't need to be gay. Why make him gay? I'm about the be the culprit of whataboutism, so just be aware that I recognize it. Disney has always had romantic subplots. It's something that Disney does. Why I like Disney is that it humanizes its characters in a lot of cases. People's problems aren't one thing. Sure, Searcher, Ethan, and Jaeger all have a very concrete external conflict: they need to survive the land underneath the mountains. But that doesn't stop them from being human. It's the moments where people talk about their problems that remind us that there is a sense of normality to return to. This conflict is temporary. My problems out there are what I desperately want to return to. Now, here's the whataboutism. Disney's told Ethan's story before and no one made a fuss, ever. Do you know who Ethan is in Strange World? He's Violet from The Incredibles. Violet's crush on the guy at school plays absolutely no part in the overall narrative. It's her internal conflict. The external conflict is keeping her from really exploring her inner conflict. Thus, she must help solve the external conflict to give proper attention to the internal conflict. Ethan and Violet are the same characters. Yet, no one seems to have a problem with Violet. So what makes Strange World not great? I'm going to steal Henson's analysis first before talking about my own: It's too many relationships. The story is about Daddy-issues. I should be on the floor, weeping openly with snot running everywhere. I'm not. The father issues did nothing to me. The reason being is that I didn't know on which family issue to tackle. It's cool that Ethan has the same problem that Searcher has with his dad. I like it. But both relationships are watered down. I don't really get an in-depth look at what makes each relationship tick. Instead, we get an obvious parallel that Ethan takes after Jaeger and Searcher feels left out. But even that is muddy. Ethan yells that he doesn't want to be like either one of them and it's pretty obvious that he wants to be like Jaeger. Pick a lane. (I'm going to start devolving into my own thoughts here, so don't yell at Henson from this point on.) Also, Ethan's...wrong a lot? Maybe that's me as Dad coming into the story, but he does some wildly irresponsible things in the name of being the protagonist of the piece. (You can also think that Searcher is the main character, but Searcher seems helpless throughout.) When Ethan goes off to find his dad, he risks everyone else's lives, including his mom's. That's not fair. She wouldn't even be there if he listened to his dad. But there aren't any come-to-Jesus moments about his lack of listening skills. He almost got so many people killed and he's the one we're supposed to be celebrating. I mean, it is against the odds that Splat would have made that soulful change about treating Ethan like a friend. So it's weird to come down on Searcher for the way he acts around either Jaeger or Ethan. Searcher deserves to be a little standoffish against both these people. But the really rough edge is about the film's message. There's this card game motif that ties directly into the film's theme. The film keeps coming back to this card game over and over (and with a heavy hand, if I do say so). Ethan's obsessed with this card game and, in a moment of family bonding, sits down to play the game with his dad and reunited grandfather. Now, the outcome of the game is to ensure total harmony in this fictional world. Ethan makes it very clear that this isn't about murdering creatures or anything. The two adults can't wrap their heads around this notion, even Searcher whose motivations and lack of clarity don't really make sense in this moment. But both Jaeger and Searcher end up losing the game for the group because of their naturally violent tendencies towards obstacles. Ethan then yells at both of them, stating that it everything needs to live for the society to function and that, by removing one creature, other more dominant creatures destroy the homeostasis. Cool! I love this message. But what happens at the end? Once Searcher and Ethan discover that their planet is a living creature and that the source of energy that they've been exploiting is killing the creature (there's another message, but it seems more preachy than organic, despite the fact that I kind of agree with it), they forget the message of the card game. They decide to wipe out the creature that is attacking the heart of the planet. (The green stuff is called Pando. I don't know why I have to state that now.) Wasn't the point that you can't kill one thing to save the rest of society? You lost your own message trying to do a little bit of everything. I know that the card game is important to the character arcs of the three generations, but the metaphor really got in the way of the point of the film. It's just so...meh. I hate meh. I want things to be good or bad. Good or bad I can work with. Meh is forgettable. Like The Rise of Skywalker, Disney can't get away with stuff like Strange World. A strong opinion means that there's probably someone out there to defend this movie and maybe that the movie wasn't for me. Meh means that more time was needed. I get the vibe that someone just said, "Dump it and we'll move on." It's a bummer because this movie needed to be good and it really isn't.
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Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
April 2024
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