![]() Without a clear antagonist, we’re just left with characters and drama that have become rote and predictable. Ironically, Strange World ends up lacking depth because of its repetitive story. ![]() It makes fun of stories that have antagonists, framing them as being simple and basic and lacking complexity. Strange World is yet another example to add to the list. It’s a shame that virtually every Disney movie afterwards has attempted this exact same message. That was a pretty great message in the film and is one of the main reasons why Frozen resonates to this day, because the external and internal conflicts matched. It’s a message that Disney has been pushing since 2013’s Frozen where the conflict was less about saving the kingdom from an eternal winter and more about mending the bond between sisters Elsa and Anna. The problem with Strange World is that the film is nothing but character drama with the main plot the world’s energy source dying becomes second to healing the family’s fractured dynamic. All of Disney’s conflicts now are interpersonal dramas. Ethan then walks off frustrated, yelling at the two of them for being the problem because they don’t want to listen to him about anything.Īnd that there is the problem. Searcher and Jaeger laugh this off, saying that it’s not entertaining unless there’s a villain or monster to fight. Ethan tries to tell them that it’s a game about coexistence and that there’s no need for any conflict or fighting. The two of them don’t fully understand it, trying to choose violent answers to encounters with creatures and enemies. The son, Ethan, is trying to teach his dad, Searcher, and grandpa, Jaeger, how to play it. In the scene, the main characters are all sitting around and playing what I can only describe as a sci-fi version of Settlers of Catan. There’s a scene in Strange World that really brings home the core problem of modern-day Disney storytelling. No one talked about it when it came out in November, only after its streaming release. Yet Encanto blew up in the public consciousness in January thanks to its Disney+ release and the music from the film becoming all the rage on social media. For perspective, the last movie to make less than Encanto’s box office during the same holiday period was 2002’s Treasure Planet. The film had a modest theatrical haul, making a little north of $250 million, which is fine but pales in comparison to every other Disney movie released during that same time period. Last year’s Encanto is emblematic of that business mindset. When you combine all of that together, Disney has repeatedly sent out the message that Disney+ is where you should watch its movies, not in theaters. Plus, Disney has weakened the theatrical window to the point where it can premiere its movies 45 days after the theatrical release on its streaming service. Then Disney released three Pixar movies ( Soul, Luca, and Turning Red) for free on Disney+ exclusively. We’ve seen this from Disney’s “Premier Access” program, where audiences had to pay $30 to access a movie for three months until it became free to everyone. Sometimes, a basic story works for audiences, especially if the film is aimed at children who have never seen a story like that before. Hell, you could make the argument that Avatar tells one of the most conventional and safe stories in existence, but it’s the highest-grossing movie of all time. It doesn’t do anything new or exciting, but being conventional has never stopped a movie from making a killing at the box office. The animation is nice, the characters are decent, and the adventure is exciting when it needs to be. While it would be easy to just point at Strange World and say that it failed because it’s a bad movie, that isn’t the case. Disney’s animated library needs a massive overhaul, or else future films will end up like Strange World and leave audiences unimpressed and Disney with more financial failures. Disney is in a situation now where it needs to change how it makes animated films and what it wants audiences to get out of the experience, because as it is right now, its animation division is in trouble. It’s coming across as an omen for things to come. But the failure of Strange World doesn’t just seem like a one-and-done failure. This is a strange turn of events for a studio that has been seen as the gold standard for animation for nearly a century.
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