Strange World is a fitting title for Disney’s latest big-screen adventure. The globally renowned studio will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2023, a landmark occasion that speaks to the enduring appeal of its wildly popular movies, Disney Plus shows, and other entertainment fare.
Upon founding their multimedia empire in October 1923, brothers Walt and Roy Disney couldn’t have imagined how different the world would look, feel, and operate today. To paraphrase Strange World itself, present-day Earth would’ve been a very surreal place for the pair to work in, considering how animation technology has advanced in the past century.
There’s more to Strange World than its apt name, though. It’s a film that celebrates the very best of Disney’s legacy, simultaneously saluting the company’s legendary status as an animation innovator, its position as a family-friendly-first studio, and its core thematic staples covering family, legacy, and heroism.
“We don’t really do message films,” Strange World producer Roy Conli tells TechRadar. “But we do theme films and I love the themes of this one, which works on multiple levels. What do we give to our children and the generations beyond us? It’s analogous to our world but it’s couched in this amazing, funny adventure that’s wonderfully entertaining. That’s what Disney does extraordinarily well.”
Strange World stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Searcher Clade, a lowly farmer who refused to follow in the footsteps of his father, legendary explorer Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), years prior to the movie’s primary plot. This led to the duo becoming estranged, Jaeger setting off in search of adventure alone, and the Clade family’s patriarch disappearing, seemingly lost to the annals of time.
When a problem arises with pando – a plant-based power source Searcher discovered, which fuels the Clades’ homeworld of Avalonia – a reluctant Searcher and his family, including teenage son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) and wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) venture to the planet’s fantastical but dangerous subterranean world to find out why pando crops are failing. Complicating matters is a fraught reunion between Searcher and Jaeger, who has lived in this underground world for decades. However, if Avalonia is to survive, Searcher, Jaeger, and Ethan must put their differences aside and cooperate for the greater good.
Strange World places a big emphasis on this exploration of paternal relationships. With multiple generations of the Clade family marooned in a singularly vast location, Strange World has the opportunity to explore intergenerational dynamics in a way previous Disney movies haven’t. As Conli notes, that’s a vital component of what makes the movie’s narrative and thematic examination work so well, particularly when they’re infused with the creative team’s real-world examples of fathership and manhood.
“It’s very seldom you get three generations – usually, it’s two – in a Disney film,” he says. “That’s an interesting concept as, ordinarily, grandfathers and grandsons have different relationships to fathers and sons. One of my first memories is of my grandfather playing with me as a toddler and my dad started crying because his father had never done that with him. In Strange World, Searcher really adores Ethan and wants him to continue his farming legacy, whereas Jaeger just wants to get to know his grandson. You also have the frosty relationship between Searcher and Jaeger because of what they’ve been through, so it makes for a great, three-pronged dynamic.”
