Hacker Cinema
Strange World
2022 · Film · 102 min
Directed by Don Hall
AnimationFamilyAdventureFantasyScience Fiction
A journey deep into an uncharted and treacherous land, where fantastical creatures await the legendary Clades—a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest, and by far most crucial, mission.
5 negative1 mixed6 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
There is not any significant DRM free digital movie marketplace, and the reality is that movies aren't fungible: if I want to watch Strange World or Doctor Who, I'm not going to just instead watch an indie arthouse film that happens to be available without DRM
I'm not sure I agree, but it would be worth studying empirically. The film Strange World, for instance, bombed, but has a 72% on RT and is certainly politically correct. It was quite poorly marketed.[0] While studios aren't in the habit of sharing marketing budgets, we can safely say the marketing expenditure was low.
This is a single datapoint, but my hypothesis is that political correctness does indeed account for a measurable (beyond noise) portion of a RT score. Marketing spend probably matters more, and genuinely excellent non-PC films (say, Oppenheimer) can succeed without PC, but PC does contribute.
[0]https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-until-last-week-disney-faces-backlash-for-negligible-marketing-for-strange-world-first-disney-animated-movie-with-lgbtq-lead/
Staggered how? They have averaged a movie a year for the last 40 years. The Disney live action movies have almost nothing to do with the release schedule of Disney Animation movies, nor have they impacted how many get made. They are completely different studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films
Their 3D movies in order are Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, Tangled, (Pooh), Wreck it Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, Raya, Encanto, Strange Worlds. That’s 15 movies in 17 years, and Princess and the Frog makes 16.
Bolt, Tangled, Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana was an excellent run. (Disney acquired Pixar during production of Meet the Robinsons, and about 60% of the movie was remade, every movie since was produced by Pixar descendants.)
And Tangled is better than Frozen, even if it didn’t have the zeitgeist. (Tangled is the highest rated of any movie I listed on Letterboxd, followed by Big Hero 6, Moana, and Zootopia, so I’m not unique in that opinion. Not sure what the Letterboxd community has against Bolt.) Outside of Chicken Little, there’s really not a bad movie on that list (I haven’t seen Strange World yet.)
If anything, acquiring Pixar doubled their animation output.
I don't really see how the story in Wall-E is any more subtle than the one in Strange World by your measure:
> The entire planet being covered in skyscrapers of toxic trash may have some parallels to the present, but those are just parallels.
They lived on the back of a creature that was dying as a result of an infection and they had unknowingly been using the result of the infection as their power source. It's exactly the same kind of parallel and solution in fantastic terms. Stripped down these movies have a very similar storyline and message (things are broken, we can't just fix it without transforming ourselves, and some force or people will oppose that transformation).
Now, I prefer Wall-E. I think the cinematics are better. The emptiness and stillness of Earth, the serenity of space, the scene where the spacecraft docks with the Aurora and is cleaned. Films of that era and before gave you some breathing space with the spectacle without so much shit going on constantly. That said, I think if Strange World came out at the time Wall-E did instead of it then it would have been better received, I personally feel like I'm pretty tired of the style.
Weird as it sounds, I would still describe the political message in Wall-E as more subtle than in Elemental, or even Strange World - another recent flop. Why is that?
Wall-E, although clearly and one sidedly in favor of environmentalist or conservationist causes, still describes the problem and the solution in fantastic terms. The entire planet being covered in skyscrapers of toxic trash may have some parallels to the present, but those are just parallels. The message you can take away from Wall-E is not a literal solution (planting plants to rejuvenate things ignores the complexity of real life ecosystems - just consider invasive species!). Instead, the message must be more abstract - something like "Care more about the environment."
The political situation in Elemental, by contrast, is barely abstract at all. There is a city, there are immigrants, and the elemental toothpaste commercial aesthetic is a thin veneer over real life racial and ethnic tensions. So any solution the movie suggests would be something that maps very closely to the real world.
I'm sure Disney was disappointed in Lightyear's performance given its marketing push and brand appeal, but I don't think you're listing the movies that are central to Disney's strategy anymore. Ever since COVID, Disney has pretty much banished Pixar to Disney+, not as "premium" releases that cost extra, but just included day one on the service. If they had theater runs, they were limited or international-only. That includes such films as Soul, Luca and Turning Red, whereas Encanto from their other animation company (Walt Disney Animation Studios) got a wide and successful theatrical run. Turning Red's box office returns are irrelevant because of this. However, due in part to people going back to theaters and (largely) to the film's brand recognition, Lightyear became the first Pixar film since 2019 to be given a real theatrical release. And the main reason it bombed was, I believe, because everyone and most importantly families had gotten used to being able to watch those movies on Disney+ for a lot cheaper. Even if that one waited two months to come to the service.
As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.
Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-adverse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.
So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.
Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".
> that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see
I can't completely discount what you're saying, since I have no interest in Lightyear (the toy from Toy Story, but it's not a toy? Why?) or Strange World (it looks fine, but their ads didn't make very clear anything about it).
But I will say that Turning Red was wonderful, and my family has happily watched that a number of times. Not surprised it flopped in the theater, though, given I didn't even know it was in the theaters. As far as I'm concerned it went straight to Disney+, like Pixar's previous 3 movies. It's been one of my favorite things about the service.
Turning Red was released on Disney+ instead of in theaters due to Omicron, so the fact that it still made $20m in theaters is actually quite an accomplishment. It apparently did quite well on Disney+; at the time of its release was the 2nd-most watched movie on [edit] streaming in general for 2022.
Disney didn't brag about the viewing numbers for either Strange World or Lightyear, so those films didn't appear to do well in theaters or streaming.
Yes, Turning Red's low revenue was primarily a cause of the film not being in theatres, rather than the quality of its story.
I personally liked the story of Turning Red very much (though I'm biased to like it because it's set in Toronto), but more objectively, the film is a step above Strange World and Lightyear in terms of ratings.
Turning Red's ratings: 95% on the Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes (RT), 7.0/10 on IMDb, and 3.7/5 on Letterboxd
Lightyear's ratings: 74% on RT, 6.1/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
Strange World's ratings: 72% on RT, 5.6/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
Their last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance.
Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.
It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.
They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.
You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)
Disney has produced a bunch of duds this year, Avatar and a marvel movie or two were the only two shining stars in a otherwise drab sky. Lets look at Lightyear, a real bomb considering every other Toy Story movie has been a smashing success($220M made against a $200M budget). Or Strange World which did even worse($73M made against a $135-170M budget). Black Panther Wakanda looks like it had a good box office, but when compared against the first movie it did half the returns of its predecessor.
There have been several times, generally during pride month where gay focused shows have been the top items displayed on my kids accounts when they login. Adult accounts are fine. They are animated and kid friendly shows so they encourage children to click on them. Really don't want my kids watching an animated show telling them how to come out.
Another is a large number of recent Disney movies feature LGBTQ main characters such as Strange World. This is fine I am not telling a company what to make but I generally try to limit my kids exposure to homosexuality and the main character in an animated movie being gay makes that difficult and leads to me having to tell my kids they can't watch something while being vague on the reason.
I'm not anti gay, I'm pro gay marriage and pro adults doing whatever they want. I just want to limit my kids exposure to it while they are young. Just a personal choice.