SPOILER WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the Disney movie Strange World (2022). Please refrain from reading this post if you do not want elements of the special (plot, themes, etc.) to be spoiled for you.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Disney movies and their way of crafting stories to tell beautiful messages about life and the people living it. However, when Strange World opened with a scene straight out of the “it’s not my dream, Dad, it’s yours” trope, I inwardly groaned. Not another Troy Bolton, please. Disney, along with other major movie studios, has already done enough of those—I didn’t need another preaching of the same message.
Set in the village of Avalonia, Strange World features a story of generational difference and familial love. 25 years after a fight about the protagonist Searcher’s ambitions that ultimately drove his father Jaeger away, the young farmer revolutionizes Avalonia with an electric plant dubbed Pando. Together with his wife Meridian, he raises his own son Ethan to eventually become a farmer too. When Pando fields start dying without explanation, the Clades set off on an adventure to find out what is wrong and discover an ecosystem entirely different underneath Avalonia.
The official trailer for Strange World (2022).
Source: YouTube.com
In terms of worldbuilding, Strange World does live up to its name: the world they find is strange unlike anything we’ve seen before, with colorful living globs–the main glob, Splat, is extremely cute–and faceless dinosaurs roaming a vast, pink landscape with strange structures. The revelation that they are living on a colossal turtle, and that Pando is actually a fatal sickness, surprised me with its novelty. I appreciated that aspect of the plot even more when a friend informed me of its parallel to an Indigenous creation story.
While I admired the uniqueness of the strange world, that didn’t save the movie’s story from its corniness. In a historical repeat I saw coming from a mile away, Ethan doesn’t dream of inheriting the Pando farm like Searcher wants him to—he wants to explore what the world has to offer outside of the farm. Again, “it’s not my dream, Dad, it’s yours” goes in for a second blow in the next generation of Clades. At its core, Strange World is a father-son cliche that’s been rehashed over and over again with a different coat of paint—this one a sickeningly sweet cotton candy pink.
Now, is it really such a bad thing to retell a cliche? As much as I’ve been harping on it, in Strange World’s case, not entirely. I was still able to enjoy the movie to a degree, thanks to the unique worldbuilding and endearing characters. I found myself smiling during the movie, and that already counts for something good in my book. But in comparison to Disney’s other movies, it’s not a story I’m going to remember for a long time after this week.
"Go Woke, Go Broke.”
Of course, after the movie, there was one question still plaguing my mind: why hadn’t I heard about this movie anywhere when it was released? I found out why through a quick search: it had totally bombed in theaters, Disney failed to really sell the movie to their audience in marketing campaigns, and Jake Gyllenhall’s role as Searcher definitely didn’t help their popularity.
Some hate towards the movie comes from a place of homophobia. As Disney’s first ever gay lead, Ethan Clade was met with backlash thanks to his crush on another boy, Dazio. The phrase “go woke, go broke” appeared more often in Disney’s Instagram comments than I wanted to see them. This brand of hate is where I disagree with the masses. For me, the way Disney handled Ethan’s crush on Dazio felt sincere with how it’s a natural part of his character. It’s just what it is: a high school boy’s crush, and no one in the movie cares. It’s refreshing. Disney is clearly trying to respond to the need for more LGBTQ+ and POC representation in the entertainment industry, and I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Ethan and Diazo in Strange World.
Source: tumblr.com
I just wish Strange World took more time to flesh out an original storyline for their diverse characters to live in. When a movie has everything from beautiful worldbuilding to a quirky cast but reduces its story to a trope it’s already told before, it feels empty of substance. That’s when “go woke, go broke” comments crop up—when people interpret the movie as nothing beyond a thoughtless attempt at LGBTQ+ representation.
While Strange World ended up as a flop for me story-wise, I’m sincerely ecstatic that Disney has finally come out with their first openly gay lead character. I hope Disney takes this movie as a learning experience, as some dead horses just no longer need to be beat. From here, I want to see if Disney takes the next essential step in producing great LGBTQ+ representation for their audience: crafting a well-thought out, unique storyline that does its characters justice and shows the world that, yes, we can have sincere LGBTQ+ representation without anyone “going broke.”
Author Bio
Linda Tran is an English major with a minor in Professional Writing. She loves talking anything Disney and Pixar, as well as anime and video games. Her favorite Disney character is Baymax. In her free time, you’ll most likely spot her binging an anime, listening to music on her headphones, or furiously typing on her laptop doing God knows what. While she has many things she wants to do, Linda hopes to find a professional writing or marketing career in the entertainment industry. You can find more of her written work on College Magazine.
Comments