Strange World

On the data. One film, and it is the clearest failure Disney animation has had this century. It looks like nothing else the studio has made. The design is taken from pulp adventure magazines of the 1930s, all flat colour and strange silhouettes, and the creature design is deliberately unfamiliar rather than cute. Don Hall, who had made Big Hero 6 and co-directed Moana and Raya, directed it. It was barely marketed. Disney spent far less on promotion than it normally does, released it over the American Thanksgiving holiday against a crowded field, and gave it a short cinema run. It took about seventy-three million dollars worldwide against a budget around a hundred and eighty. Trade estimates put the loss at well over a hundred million, and Bob Iger said publicly afterwards that the company had made too much content too fast. It also has a gay teenage lead character, treated as ordinary and unremarked, which is a first for a Disney animated feature. It was banned or withdrawn in several countries for that reason, and a number of commentators argued the thin marketing was related. Disney has not said so. The film itself divides people. Its admirers point at the design and at the fact that it is actually about something, specifically three generations of men failing to understand each other. Its critics say it is flat and that the environmental message is delivered rather than dramatised. Both readings are defensible and the audience never really got the chance to decide.

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