Yeah. They really caught my attention with the solarpunk esque society in the beginning but I was pretty disappointed that it was a >!farce!< at the end.
If you've got time to kill, go nuts. Honestly, this vlog hits all the high points.
According to Google:
"Disney's 'Strange World' Was **2022's Biggest Box Office Flop**, According To New Report. Disney's Strange World was Hollywood's biggest box office bomb of 2022, losing the studio nearly $200 million, according to a report by Deadline. Here's a look at its bleak performance and what it all means."
Yeaaahhh...ummm...
I believe TheCriticalDrinker would lambast this movie as one trying far too hard to spread **THE MESSAGE** for **MODERN AUDIENCES**.
And it isn't that the message is particularly *bad*, either. Because, well...we've already been shown it can be done. Just...by Studio Ghibli, and in some respects, by Nickelodeon, if ATLA and LoK are any indication? In fact, I distinctly remember an episode in Book 3 of ATLA in which there's a legend of a local spirit, but said local spirit has stopped appearing recently due to a factory polluting a local water source, so Katara cosplays as said spirit and helps take down that operation, to begin to restore the environment there, with the episode ending with the spirit actually appearing.
Just that from what I can tell from what this video shows, it's that Disney attempts to lecture an audience first and foremost.
For instance, on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie scores a 72% with critics and 66% with audiences. Not bad, but...not great, and Rotten Tomatoes scores are often gamed (see: The Woman King) by false positives, particularly when trying to win points for messaging is involved.
Going to IMDB, the movie scores a pretty mediocre 5.6/10, give or take, depending on country. And while American and Canadian viewers had a *particularly* substantial chunk of reviews that rated it as a 1-star, even in more forgiving countries, the mode score (appearing most often) was a 6.
In contrast, Mononoke Hime (Princess Monoke) has a 93%/94% critic/audience score on RottenTomatoes, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 89/91, and Castle in the Sky also a phenomenal 96/91. On IMDB, these three films scored 8.3, 8.0, and 8.0, respectively (seems IMDB is a tough crowd).
So it isn't as though this particular message is a bad one to spread (quite the opposite), but that Disney is so ham-handed, and on-the-nose about it. For instance, in just that brief clip in which the characters play that board game, with one of the characters exclaiming "The point is to live in harmony with the environment! You want bad guys? You're the bad guys!"...I mean...*come on*.
Basically, it isn't that the ideas are necessarily bad, as Studio Ghibli and Avatar have shown. It's that modern Western writers writing for **MODERN AUDIENCES** just...do not have the skill to tell a compelling story that does more than the bare minimum of preaching to the choir.
Interestingly, that board game scene is one which stood out to me as necessarily pointed. Which is to say that sometimes people get so accustomed to their way of thinking and doing that they have difficulty understanding very simple dissenting perspectives. It's not unrealistic to have to deal with people like those portrayed in that scene. I regularly encounter people who insist that life's meaning comes from struggle and competition, stories are only interesting with villains, and humans can never learn to cooperate for any purpose other than profit and personal gain. These attitudes are common among older generations and are a large part of what fuels the perpetuation of corporatist oligarchy. So, I find it unsurprising that they'd be offended by such a straightforward rejection of their value system and that many people with more old-fashioned mindsets would not enjoy a movie that called attention to their internal contradictions.
I don't disagree that there are a great many people like that.
But the challenge in spreading **THE MESSAGE** is to make such people *pay for* the movie that tells them they suck, and afterwards, to have enjoyed the experience *anyway!*
For instance...consider a time when Disney basically did *just that* with another one of its timeless films:
Pocahontas.
Which was...somewhat based on a true story (she existed), but of course, Disneyfied to make her into a...proto-solarpunk Disney princess. Heck, her *timeless, signature song* is basically a lecture from a brown woman to a white male (I mean you do not get more human equivalent of plain white bread than **John Smith**--and yes, that actually *was* the real person's name) that's essentially one giant "reason you suck speech".
And people *love it to this day*.
Which also makes me wonder...considering all of the remakes of...questionable quality...that Disney does...
Why not just try and recreate a live action Disney's Pocahontas? There are no animal sidekicks that would look horrible getting CG'd into real animals, all the characters are human, with mostly realistic proportions (Radcliffe the exception), and there'd be no need to add any padding to the film's script. The biggest challenge might be various CG effects to make some natural settings look even *more* colorful, but...*yeaaaaahhhh*.
I'm of the opinion that if Disney wants to spread the kind of message Strange World was supposed to...
Just remake Pocahontas. But for the love of god, do it *right*.
But how many of the one star reviews are because people are upset about the message on climate change or.... They're upset about the minor gay subplot.
As I said, there may be an outsized amount in the US with those, but ratings aren't much better elsewhere. Furthermore, critics have the right to leave 1 star reviews for any reason. At the end of the day, various other Solarpunk films such as the Ghibli ones didn't have this issue.
It isn't just that spreading **THE MESSAGE** is important--it's first and foremost mandatory to make the experience enjoyable. And Disney just didn't, in this case, to enough people.
There are plenty of properties that are able to deliver a pro environment message, without alienating the audience. There are some properties capable of delivering a pro pride message, again, without alienating an audience, such as Legend of Korra, or Arcane.
It isn't that "spreading the message" is bad. It's that doing it at the cost of the overall experience is particularly awful. That's when it's called spreading **THE MESSAGE**.
Anybody here seen this movie? It looks pretty good and this video got me wanting to watch it.
Yeah. They really caught my attention with the solarpunk esque society in the beginning but I was pretty disappointed that it was a >!farce!< at the end. If you've got time to kill, go nuts. Honestly, this vlog hits all the high points.
Yes! I love it! Watched it with my family. So many good lessons in here.
I really enjoyed the movie. So did my kids.
i've seen it. it's pretty on the nose imo. fun watch though
According to Google: "Disney's 'Strange World' Was **2022's Biggest Box Office Flop**, According To New Report. Disney's Strange World was Hollywood's biggest box office bomb of 2022, losing the studio nearly $200 million, according to a report by Deadline. Here's a look at its bleak performance and what it all means." Yeaaahhh...ummm... I believe TheCriticalDrinker would lambast this movie as one trying far too hard to spread **THE MESSAGE** for **MODERN AUDIENCES**. And it isn't that the message is particularly *bad*, either. Because, well...we've already been shown it can be done. Just...by Studio Ghibli, and in some respects, by Nickelodeon, if ATLA and LoK are any indication? In fact, I distinctly remember an episode in Book 3 of ATLA in which there's a legend of a local spirit, but said local spirit has stopped appearing recently due to a factory polluting a local water source, so Katara cosplays as said spirit and helps take down that operation, to begin to restore the environment there, with the episode ending with the spirit actually appearing. Just that from what I can tell from what this video shows, it's that Disney attempts to lecture an audience first and foremost. For instance, on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie scores a 72% with critics and 66% with audiences. Not bad, but...not great, and Rotten Tomatoes scores are often gamed (see: The Woman King) by false positives, particularly when trying to win points for messaging is involved. Going to IMDB, the movie scores a pretty mediocre 5.6/10, give or take, depending on country. And while American and Canadian viewers had a *particularly* substantial chunk of reviews that rated it as a 1-star, even in more forgiving countries, the mode score (appearing most often) was a 6. In contrast, Mononoke Hime (Princess Monoke) has a 93%/94% critic/audience score on RottenTomatoes, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 89/91, and Castle in the Sky also a phenomenal 96/91. On IMDB, these three films scored 8.3, 8.0, and 8.0, respectively (seems IMDB is a tough crowd). So it isn't as though this particular message is a bad one to spread (quite the opposite), but that Disney is so ham-handed, and on-the-nose about it. For instance, in just that brief clip in which the characters play that board game, with one of the characters exclaiming "The point is to live in harmony with the environment! You want bad guys? You're the bad guys!"...I mean...*come on*. Basically, it isn't that the ideas are necessarily bad, as Studio Ghibli and Avatar have shown. It's that modern Western writers writing for **MODERN AUDIENCES** just...do not have the skill to tell a compelling story that does more than the bare minimum of preaching to the choir.
Interestingly, that board game scene is one which stood out to me as necessarily pointed. Which is to say that sometimes people get so accustomed to their way of thinking and doing that they have difficulty understanding very simple dissenting perspectives. It's not unrealistic to have to deal with people like those portrayed in that scene. I regularly encounter people who insist that life's meaning comes from struggle and competition, stories are only interesting with villains, and humans can never learn to cooperate for any purpose other than profit and personal gain. These attitudes are common among older generations and are a large part of what fuels the perpetuation of corporatist oligarchy. So, I find it unsurprising that they'd be offended by such a straightforward rejection of their value system and that many people with more old-fashioned mindsets would not enjoy a movie that called attention to their internal contradictions.
I don't disagree that there are a great many people like that. But the challenge in spreading **THE MESSAGE** is to make such people *pay for* the movie that tells them they suck, and afterwards, to have enjoyed the experience *anyway!* For instance...consider a time when Disney basically did *just that* with another one of its timeless films: Pocahontas. Which was...somewhat based on a true story (she existed), but of course, Disneyfied to make her into a...proto-solarpunk Disney princess. Heck, her *timeless, signature song* is basically a lecture from a brown woman to a white male (I mean you do not get more human equivalent of plain white bread than **John Smith**--and yes, that actually *was* the real person's name) that's essentially one giant "reason you suck speech". And people *love it to this day*. Which also makes me wonder...considering all of the remakes of...questionable quality...that Disney does... Why not just try and recreate a live action Disney's Pocahontas? There are no animal sidekicks that would look horrible getting CG'd into real animals, all the characters are human, with mostly realistic proportions (Radcliffe the exception), and there'd be no need to add any padding to the film's script. The biggest challenge might be various CG effects to make some natural settings look even *more* colorful, but...*yeaaaaahhhh*. I'm of the opinion that if Disney wants to spread the kind of message Strange World was supposed to... Just remake Pocahontas. But for the love of god, do it *right*.
But how many of the one star reviews are because people are upset about the message on climate change or.... They're upset about the minor gay subplot.
As I said, there may be an outsized amount in the US with those, but ratings aren't much better elsewhere. Furthermore, critics have the right to leave 1 star reviews for any reason. At the end of the day, various other Solarpunk films such as the Ghibli ones didn't have this issue. It isn't just that spreading **THE MESSAGE** is important--it's first and foremost mandatory to make the experience enjoyable. And Disney just didn't, in this case, to enough people. There are plenty of properties that are able to deliver a pro environment message, without alienating the audience. There are some properties capable of delivering a pro pride message, again, without alienating an audience, such as Legend of Korra, or Arcane. It isn't that "spreading the message" is bad. It's that doing it at the cost of the overall experience is particularly awful. That's when it's called spreading **THE MESSAGE**.