Strange World

I clearly remember sitting in a nearly empty theater on a Tuesday afternoon, having just accidentally spilled an entire Sprite into my own lap, staring at a screen that looked like a lava lamp had mutated and started eating a 1930s comic book. That was my introduction to Strange World, a movie that has the dubious honor of being one of the biggest box office disasters in Disney history. It’s a film that cost $180 million to make and vanished from the cultural conversation faster than a Snapchat message.

Yet, as I sat there shivering in my damp jeans, I couldn't help but feel like I was watching something that deserved better than the "death by silence" Disney gave it. It’s a pulp-inspired sci-fi adventure that trades the usual princess-and-power-ballad formula for a story about soil health, generational trauma, and a giant gelatinous blob named Splat. It’s weird, it’s messy, and it’s arguably the most "contemporary" film the studio has released in a decade.

A Pulp Novel with a Family Therapy Problem

The story follows the Clade family, living in the isolated land of Avalonia. Jake Gyllenhaal (who I still think of as the guy from Donnie Darko even when he's playing a cartoon farmer) voices Searcher Clade. Searcher is the son of Jaeger Clade, a legendary explorer voiced by Dennis Quaid (channeling a mix of Indiana Jones and a very loud gym teacher). While Jaeger wanted to conquer the mountains surrounding their world, Searcher just wanted to grow Pando—a glowing plant that provides electricity to their civilization.

When the Pando starts dying, Searcher is drafted into a mission to the center of the earth to save it. Joining him are his pilot wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union, bringing much-needed grounded energy), his son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), and the leader of Avalonia, Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu, who previously worked with director Don Hall on Big Hero 6).

The dynamic is pure sci-fi trope-subversion. We have three generations of men who all have vastly different ideas of what "saving the world" looks like. It’s a movie about how our parents' shadows can be so long they block out the sun, which is a heavy theme for a movie that also features a three-legged dog. The script reads like a family therapy session conducted inside a giant organism.

Building a World Without a Map

What really grabbed me—and what makes this a genuine science fiction curiosity—is the world-building. The subterranean world the Clades discover is genuinely alien. The design team made a conscious choice to avoid the color green entirely in the underworld, which creates a disorienting, psychedelic palette of pinks, oranges, and purples. It feels less like Avatar and more like the cover of a 1950s Amazing Stories magazine.

The creatures aren't just "animals with extra legs." They are bizarre, undulating shapes that defy easy categorization. There are "transports" that look like giant flying lungs and predators that resemble aggressive origami. This is where Don Hall and writer Qui Nguyen (the duo behind Raya and the Last Dragon) really shine. They’ve built a speculative ecosystem that follows its own internal logic, even if that logic involves walking on giant, floating membranes.

The sci-fi "What If?" at the heart of the film is actually quite profound: What if the resource your entire civilization is built on is actually killing the planet? It’s a blatant metaphor for fossil fuels and climate anxiety, fitting perfectly into our current era of "eco-conscious" storytelling. It doesn't hide its message; it wears it like a neon sign.

The Invisible Disney Bomb

So, why did nobody see this? In the contemporary landscape, Strange World became a victim of the "Disney+ Effect." Released in late 2022, audiences had already been trained to wait six weeks for animated films to hit streaming. Disney’s marketing was also strangely muted—it felt like the studio was trying to hide the movie under a rug before it even premiered.

There was also the "discourse." Strange World features Ethan Clade, Disney’s first openly gay lead character. Unlike previous "blink-and-you-miss-it" moments in Lightyear or Beauty and the Beast, Ethan’s crush on a boy is just a normal, accepted part of his character. In our polarized social media age, this led to predictable review-bombing and political posturing, which likely scared off some of the middle-of-the-road family audience Disney usually relies on.

Interestingly, the film’s failure might also be due to its lack of a "toyetic" hook. There are no cute sidekicks that scream "Buy me at Target" (though Splat tries his best), and the ending—which features a massive, paradigm-shifting twist about the nature of their world—is more "Whoa, that's heady" than "I want to see the sequel."

Strange World is a fascinating failure. It’s a high-concept, beautifully animated sci-fi epic that cares more about soil science and fathers apologizing to their sons than it does about catchy songs or merchandise. It’s an oddity from an era where Disney was throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what stuck in a post-pandemic market. It’s not a masterpiece—the pacing is a bit frantic and the dialogue can be a bit too "modern teenager" for its own good—but it’s an imaginative journey that I suspect will be rediscovered by sci-fi nerds in ten years as a "forgotten gem."

Watching it now, removed from the box office drama, you can appreciate the craft that went into those weird pink forests. It’s a reminder that even when a studio as big as Disney misses the mark commercially, they can still produce something that feels uniquely personal and visually daring. Just maybe don't watch it with a full Sprite in your lap.