Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White) is the son of Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), a farmer famed for harvesting a strange plant, Pando, which has energy-generating properties that are used to bring electricity and all the luxuries that come with it to the mountain town of Avalonia. When the crops begin to fail, Searcher is brought on a mission to travel underground to the mother root, and while in this subterranean world, he is reunited with his father, Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), who had gone missing from an expedition years earlier. As the crew journeys deeper into the core of their planet, the Clade men grapple with their own misunderstandings of each other all the while trying to make sense of the wild world contained inside of their own. 

Filling the Thanksgiving Weekend Frame for Disney Animation, Strange World is a sci-fi adventure film directed by Don Hall from a script penned by Qui Nguyen. As seems to be the new trend with animated movies, even beyond the expanded Disney catalog, Strange World grapples with a fair bit of generational trauma, but the well seems to be running dry as it does not have the same heart about it as Pixar’s Turning Red (2022), and despite following a family of explorers, it is treading the same ground as Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon (2010). The film, notably not a Disney musical, pulls much of its visual language from the adventure films of old, evidenced in its use of classic fade effects reminiscent of the original Star Wars (1977), and a soundtrack that grows in its effectiveness by Henry Jackman that echos many iconic themes and motifs. It is unfortunate to say this, though, especially as Disney has become increasingly cautious about putting original projects into cinemas – a consequence of their own Box Office success stories with Marvel Studios which has crippled the viability for non-IP endeavors – but everything on screen seems stale: the plot follows all of the beats one would expect and has been workshopped so much that there is no depth to any of it. Further, the visuals are uninspired and do not create what feels like a fully realized and, more importantly, cohesive world. 

With “World” in the title, the subterranean locations and the creatures that inhabit them are a vital part of the film. This is a film that should be dense with world-building, but what lore that is present is surprisingly thin. The creature design is lazy and makes little sense in how they interact with the environment, what little of them we can even see. It feels almost sacrilegious to say it relies too heavily on its color pallets, but when much of the run time is spent in these fuchsia-forward locations, everything blends together and there is no visual definition which means there is nothing to inspire that wonder and awe we are supposed to be feeling with the characters. While Strange World does get some credit with a big reveal that adds some context to the overall design of the world and the creatures, Hall and Nguyen almost completely avoid these beasts, and by doing so it makes the film feel like it was not fully thought out. The creatures are treated more like a nuisance to the filmmakers than something rife for creative exploration, and once they are finished providing our heroes with narrative convenience, they are quickly cast aside. Without allowing them to share in the limelight, this world and the creatures become immediately forgettable; not what you want from an epic adventure. 

The one exception here is Splat, a glowing blue blob that befriends Ethan early in the expedition and the two begin to form a rudimentary way of communicating with each other. Splat fills the easy merchandising role, something the film even jokes about, but the humor Splat provides is too one note to really make it a memorable and engaging character as it can only make beeping and buzzing noises to communicate. Strangely enough, on a narrative level, it does not appear that there are any other of its species, either, something which Ethan should make note of as they journey deeper into sub-Avalonia, but it is a concept that is never explored or even mentioned. This dynamic of Ethan being more in-tune with the environment and the creatures that inhabit it sets the stage for the fundamental conflict in the film between the three Clade men – the explorer, the farmer, and the zoologist – but outside of Splat and the family pooch, Legend, the film does not allow Ethan to really flex his affinities. Even when the boy is playing a card game, Primal Outpost, with his father and grandfather, the goal of which is to create a harmonious environment with various creatures, the film is giving away its thematic end game yet when the time comes to fulfill that promise, it never actually follows through with it. The coda has a quick flash of Ethan working with a small team of his own in the subterranean world, but it is unclear what exactly he is doing and seems more akin to harvesting than anything like research into the creatures that live beneath the surface or creating that symbiosis he is seeking so desperately. 

When it comes to the human characters, they fare better on the design side of things than the creatures, but they do leave something to be desired. There is a clear familial relation between the Clades in their appearance, but despite some minor stylistic flares they are all dressed in the same drab, greens and browns that, like the fuchsia pallet, all blends together when they are aboard the equally green skyship. Beyond the similar styles, it is the movement that betrays the humans the most. It is very jerky and exaggerated as they gesticulate wildly in the wide shots, and in the closeups, the filmmakers seem almost afraid to let anything stay still as the character’s hair is constantly bobbing up and down even when nothing else in the frame is in motion. It is such a small yet distracting detail that, like shakycam, once it is noticed it becomes glaringly apparent in all of its instances. If the backgrounds were allowed to be brought into clearer focus, this movement could be incorporated as the breeze from the motion of the ship, but instead, the backgrounds are blurred to the point of undefinable stasis. 

Where the film does excel, though, is in the character development on the page. As a family unit, extended to include a poignant scene between Ethan and his mother (Gabrielle Union), the Clades are a jovial enough crew with which to spend the 102-minute runtime. Aided by strong voice acting by a core cast that seems to be having fun, it does help keep audiences engaged in the floundering narrative but also begs to question if this was the right approach for the film. There is a brief scene on the Clade’s Pando farm when Ethan’s friends come to visit and, notably, Ethan’s crush Diazo (Jonathan Melo) is introduced making it one of the most concrete gay relationships in Disney’s canon. It feels like a missed opportunity to not allow the friends a larger role in the course of the film, though, because Strange World handles the human dynamic part of the story quite well, but there just is not enough to explore without repeating itself when it is just the Clades on this adventure.

Giving credit where credit is due, Ethan’s inclusion in the film is a large stride in the right direction for the studio that has been threatened to “go woke, go broke” and it was refreshing to see that the marketing machine was not overly self-congratulatory in the lead up to this release as it was with Lightyear (2022) or Beauty and the Beast (2017) – rather, unfortunately, the marketing was virtually nonexistent for this title – but the real progress here beyond Ethan’s undeniable queerness is that Disney bypassed release in multiple eastern countries rather than alter the film to fit the cultural sensibilities. Coming off of Covid where relationships between artists and the studio have been fraught over issues of release strategies and editing down content, this is hopefully a sign that things are on the mend between the animation house and the board room. With Bob Iger back in charge, hopefully, artists will continue to be able to maintain stricter control over their ideas and their stories. 

Strange World is undoubtedly a personal project for the lead creatives, but the corporate masters clearly made their mark on the story as evidenced through the whiplash-inducing first act that reads like a bullet list of story points and undercooked setups included solely to put the minds of the suit-wearing notes-givers at ease. What results is a bloated story that somehow never feels like anything is happening because it is so quick to resolve the issues – or rather forget about them completely – after introducing them. Either that, or the complete opposite is true, and an early draft got pushed through into production to meet the holiday deadline. Whichever the case may be, Strange World is a film that teases at some interesting concepts and has a third-act reveal that should be far more exciting than it is actually played out to be, but it just cannot find its true voice and it feels about as hollow as the world on which Avalonia sits.