Strange World

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Disney Duster
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Re: Strange World

Post by Disney Duster »

Haha Amy, touche. Smart move.

Sotiris, you're hella smart with all you know!
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Re: Strange World

Post by blackcauldron85 »

^ :bow:
Farerb wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 4:18 am Disney Balks At “Anti-Consumer” French Windows: Will Bypass Theatrical On ‘Strange World’ In Market, Evaluate Future Films On Rolling Basis
...
https://deadline.com/2022/06/disney-fre ... 235040493/
Disney+ Closer to Reaching Windowing Deal After Skipping “Strange World” Theatrical Release in France
https://www.laughingplace.com/w/news/20 ... in-france/
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Re: Strange World

Post by Mooky »

Having finally seen the movie on Disney+ (I wanted to see it in a theater but didn't, because America, why are your movie tickets so expensive?!), I can't say I really liked but I didn't hate it either. It was mostly just, well, there. It kind of promised more than it delivered and was hyped up to be more than it actually was. A super fun, pulpy, epic adventure it wasn't.

The characters were fine but I just couldn't relate to them -- this one may be on me because I noticed the same with any Disney movie featuring a large cast, because it often turns into a zaniness-fest of who gets the most screen-time and best jokes, and their actual personalities/arcs get lost in all that hodgepodge (see also Meet the Robinsons, Encanto, Raya). Humor was okay, if inoffensive.

Story-wise it was bit of a mess. I kind of found it funny that the Strange World of the title refers to the Turtle's organism, when the actual setting (Avalonia) itself feels like a strange world, quite a bit different from our own. I wouldn't mind spending more time there. How did they live before the introduction of Pando and why did everyone seem super chill with abandoning the Pando power source in the end? Knowing how real people behave, it would cause riots. In general, I'm not a fan of these semi-fictional settings that Disney seem to love these days because if underdeveloped, it opens the movie up to more questions and more criticism. Set the movie on a different planet with different humanoids, and boom -- you don't have to stick to real-life rules, history, physics, whatever; you invent your own. I think the worst thing you can judge a movie on is on what it could have been, instead of what it is, and unfortunately that's where Strange World also falls in. I have my own ideas of how I'd approach the setting, but won't bother you with that. I did like the environmentalism theme though I feel it could have been a bit more subtle.

Overall, I'd give it a 5.5. It's not actively bad or awful, but for a movie with so many living organisms, it just kind of felt lifeless.
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Re: Strange World

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Mooky wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 7:39 am I have my own ideas of how I'd approach the setting, but won't bother you with that
I'm curious, if you don't mind sharing!
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Re: Strange World

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Hi Amy :wave: No, of course I don't mind. It's not totally dissimilar to what's already in the movie, I just made some adjustments to make it more digestible to my personal tastes. My idea was to have the movie set on "our" version of Earth, but still have it take place within this small community of Avalonia, which would be somewhat secluded, not unlike the one in Encanto. Their crops are dying so Jaeger & Searcher (alone, no other team members*) go and look for a cure, and that's where they encounter the Pando plant. Jaeger wants to go onward and search for a more concrete cure, Searcher doesn't, and that's where they split. Same story follows on from there, except when they go down to the bottom of the Earth, the enormous living organism wouldn't turn out to be a turtle/continent/Earth itself, but some ancient benign being (mole, insect, lizard, plant). Now it would be up to the team to decide if they want to sacrifice the life of this being for the sake of their community and crops. It would mostly just be the question of showing empathy and kindness to other creatures of nature. So there would still be an environmentalist message, but not one concerning the state and future of an entire ecosystem.

*I said alone, because quite frankly, the way the rift between Jaeger and Searcher is currently presented in the movie, it comes off a bit silly. There were five team members, no reason two of them couldn't have returned to Avalonia with the plant, leaving the other three to go on a further quest.
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Re: Strange World

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:wave: Thank you! So the creature would be where they're exploring/where Pando is from, but not where they live, right?
Mooky wrote:There were five team members, no reason two of them couldn't have returned to Avalonia with the plant, leaving the other three to go on a further quest.
That is true... but then they'd be bringing back multiple people instead of just Jaeger...I think it is impressive that Jaeger survived all by himself, but absolutely they could have split the party... I don't know if part of it was the rest of the party agreed with Searcher and only Jaeger was like, no let's keep exploring.
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Re: Strange World

Post by DisneyFan09 »

Well, it`s remarkable how history has repeated itself twenty years after the failures of Atlantis and Treasure Planet: Another Sci-Fi Adventure from the studio who turned out to be a flop. And it`s a huge pity. But at least Strange World was better critically received than Atlantis (despite how I was one of the minorities who liked Atlantis), so at least it wasn`t shunned critically.
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Re: Strange World

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DisneyFan09 wrote: Fri Dec 30, 2022 2:50 pm Well, it`s remarkable how history has repeated itself twenty years after the failures of Atlantis and Treasure Planet: Another Sci-Fi Adventure from the studio who turned out to be a flop. And it`s a huge pity. But at least Strange World was better critically received than Atlantis (despite how I was one of the minorities who liked Atlantis), so at least it wasn`t shunned critically.
I'm not impressed. Critics had a much higher standards back then. Today anyone with a YouTube channel or enough followers on Twitter is considered a critic.
Personally, I wasn't a fan of Atlantis, but I prefer it to Strange World.
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Re: Strange World

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Sixth weekend box office update. The film remained at #10 at the domestic box office.
Strange World (Dis) 1,240 (-150) theaters, Fri $201K (+39%) Sat $157K Sun $180K Mon $209K 3-day $538K (+30%), 4-day $747K, Total $37.2M/Wk 6
Source: https://deadline.com/2022/12/avatar-the ... 235208802/


The film climbed to #6 at the UK box office.
Rounding off the top five was another Disney title “Strange World” with £280,777 in its sixth weekend for a total of £3.1 million.
Source: https://variety.com/2023/film/box-offic ... 235478511/
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Re: Strange World

Post by Nandor »

Yeah, Disney hung this out to dry.
The only version going to conemas here was the dubbed version, while we usually get a subbed version too. No sub means no adult audience. The movie, even if it were great, never stood a chance.
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Re: Strange World

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At least people at WDAS are aware that fans want villains back. I wish they also knew we want fairytale adaptations and love stories back.
Q: Can you talk about using those generational relationships as points of conflict rather than a traditional villain? I like the idea that everyone in every generation just refuses to believe that they’re wrong.

Don Hall: The story would be focused more on the generational conflicts, and that was by choice, because I felt if you frontloaded the environmental theme, it’s going to be off-putting or even predictable. I’ll use Callisto as an example. If Callisto was the CEO of Pando-corp, I’ve seen this movie a million times. It felt like we didn’t necessarily need a traditional villain. I hear the outcry from fans out there like, “When are the traditional villains coming back to Disney films?” But I think it’s all about story, right? And what does the story need? We had enough antagonism between Jaeger and Searcher certainly, and kind of a buried antagonism between Ethan and Searcher. It was already there and we didn’t need a traditional villain. Callisto does become a little bit more of an agitated antagonist towards the end of the movie, but it’s coming from a more noble place where she thinks she’s speaking for all of Avalonia. Cause that’s her charge, that’s her job as a president.
Source: https://deadline.com/2023/01/strange-wo ... 235211172/
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Re: Strange World

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And we want hand-drawn animation back. Personally, I want a hand-drawn gay musical fairy tale love story. Or several.
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Re: Strange World

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Strange World has become WDAS' biggest flop of all time at the domestic box office when adjusted for inflation.
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Re: Strange World

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I had a random thought about the situation with Strange World just now, as far as the why's of why they may have modeled it after former flops (Treasure Planet, Atlantis) and marketed so little as if they wanted it to bomb. There's been some criticism the past couple of years that all WDAS' films are female-lead "princess" films or whatever. Since they know their princess films are often more successful in general than their boy's films (WIR and BH6 being modest at best, Ralph Breaks the Internet a flop), I wonder if they sort of did the same thing they did with TP&TF in a way, as far as how they purposely sabotaged TP&TF with its release date and throwing off Alan Menken for Randy Newman?

What I mean is, with TP&TF, they wanted to take no chances hand-drawn animation could be justified after that film, they wanted it to flop to "prove" their point PR-wise, so they could then fire everyone and make everything 3D to imitate PIXAR. Here, if they know their female-lead films are the bigger moneymakers in general from the past decade and a half, and they've recently been getting criticism for making so many of them for that reason, perhaps they wanted the first "boy's film" they made to flop to justify themselves when they continue to make only female-lead films for the next 5-6 years or so? "Well, look at what happened with Strange World, WDAS thinks 'princess' films are a safer bet, blahblah." Especially if Wish is successful and it also features a LGBT protagonist (the main character, too, as compared to a secondary one like Ethan); most of the flawed rhetoric that the LGBT character is the problem--which was never going to be the true reason this film performed poorly anyway, imo--would be deflected away when/if Wish succeeds and makes the discussion in response to its success in the media more about how female-lead films are simply more successful for WDAS than male-lead films and that's why they need to stay on that track.

Just a thought I had, could turn out to be wrong. I honestly hope that is the case, because I do think their female-lead films in the Revival Era are better than the male-lead ones. It's not that male-lead films can't be good--we have films like Lion King, Aladdin, Hercules, Tarzan, Jungle Book, Peter Pan, etc. as proof that they can be. Just modern WDAS doesn't seem like they want to make a male-lead film that's serious, dramatic, colorful, musical, etc. like those films were anymore, they're caught up in stereotypes about how boys should be marketed to that never actually pan out.
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Re: Strange World

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‘Strange World’ filmmakers talk diversity, box office: “It will mean a lot to a lot of people in the future”
Strange World may be set in a weird land populated by bizarre creatures, but the Walt Disney Animation Studios comedy adventure has its roots firmly planted in the real world.

When he was first toying with ideas for his next project, director Don Hall was, he recalls, “thinking about what kind of world my kids are going to inherit environmentally, and what kind of world I inherited from my dad, who’s a farmer in Iowa”.

Hall, a Disney veteran whose previous projects include Oscar winner Big Hero 6, which he directed with Chris Williams, adds: “I wanted to tell an environmental story, but because it was inspired by my kids and my dad, the father-son element was already baked in. And it felt like a good emotional lens to tell this story, about the environment but also about fathers and sons, without it being preachy.”

To bring the themes together, Hall and writer/co-director Qui Nguyen came up with the story of a family of explorers from the isolated country of Avalonia, whose universal source of power — a plant called ‘pando’ — is under threat.

To save pando, explorer-turned-farmer Searcher Clade (voiced for the film by Jake Gyllenhaal), his teen son (Jaboukie Young-White) and his life partner (Gabrielle Union) set off by airship into an uncharted subterranean region — where they encounter treacherous creatures as well as Searcher’s long-lost adventurer dad (Dennis Quaid).

Hall and Nguyen found inspiration for the story in the vintage sci-fi of Jules Verne and HG Wells, adventure classics such as King Kong, French and Belgian comics, and pulp adventure magazines from the 1930s and 1940s.

But they also gave the story a contemporary diversity, making Searcher and his partner an inter­racial couple and creating, in Searcher’s son Ethan, what is believed to be the first openly gay teen character in a Disney animation feature.

Though the film was never intended, in Hall’s words, “to be a coming out story”, the diversity plays a significant role, according to Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American playwright whose first feature experience was as writer of Disney Animation’s Raya And The Last Dragon.

“The environment affects us all, it doesn’t matter what race we are, our sexuality, or anything like that,” Nguyen points out. “It was important that the world of Avalonia reflected the world we actually live in. The story wasn’t about diversity and inclusion, but the diversity and inclusion were integral to the metaphor that it is our world that is in danger, not just this made-up one.”
https://www.screendaily.com/features/st ... 85.article
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Re: Strange World

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Proboscis patterning was also a factor for character designer Jin Kim in crafting the characters for Disney’s Strange World, but in the opposite direction. “The [family characters] all have common noses … huge and round,” he says. “Even Legend the dog has a big nose.” Kim states that he drew inspiration for the designs from European comic books, notably Asterix. “Our director Don Hall really likes the French/Belgian comic-book style, especially by the artist Didier Conrad,” Kim states. “[Conrad] uses a lot of curves, so we made sure everything was soft and round.”

The most difficult character in Strange World from a design standpoint, though, was one with no nose at all … or any other facial feature. “The Splat was the most challenging,” Kim says of the film’s amorphous, tentacled blob. “It looks simple and easy, but characters that are simple are harder to design because they have to communicate to the audience somehow with no eyes, nose or mouth.” The designer studied the similarly featureless-yet-endearing character of the Flying Carpet in Aladdin for inspiration.
Source: https://www.animationmagazine.net/2023/ ... haracters/
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Re: Strange World

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It's interesting to get confirmation that Asterix was a big inspiration for the character designs. I don't remember if I mentioned it here or not, but I definitely thought Jaeger in particular seemed inspired by that style. I also saw some Tintin influences in the designs. As I've mentioned in the past, I love the Asterix films. They're some of my favorite non-Disney animated ones. And I usually love Jin Kim's work too. Maybe the problem is just that the combination of the two styles doesn't work too well.
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Re: Strange World

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I just don't understand why they thought that giving them the same nose as LeFou was a good idea, this nose doesn't translate well in CGI:
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It's especially distracting when they are standing next to characters with a normal looking nose:
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Re: Strange World

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Their noses look like tumors. Gross and ugly...

LeFou looks cute.
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Re: Strange World

Post by blackcauldron85 »

Both Strange World & Lightyear are nominated for Outstanding Film – Wide Release at the 34th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.

https://deadline.com/2023/01/2023-glaad ... 235224677/
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