Strange World

Apparently, in the lead-up to 2022 releases, the writers at Disney were deeply worried about their relationships with their families. This is the second movie we’ve done for the column in a row that delves into the relationships between generations. In fact, both involve a teenager who is figuring out their own place in the world, knowing that they are not the person a parent wants them to be and not knowing how to explain that to the parent. Meanwhile, a grandparent will appear who makes it plain that this is not a struggle unknown to the parent from the other side. Also, there is the other parent, who is more supportive but can’t fix the situation.

In this case, we have Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White). He is the grandson of the great Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid). Jaeger, now missing for twenty-five years, is a legendary explorer. He was determined to see what was on the other side of the mountains from their home of Avalonia. His final expedition had been battling storms when his son, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), discovered a plant that produced energy. Now, Searcher grows the plant, called Pando, on the family farm with his wife, Meridian (Gabrielle Union). He just knows Ethan will follow in his footsteps. Ethan is less sure. Worse, President Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu) comes to the farm one night. Pando is dying, and she needs Searcher to come along on an expedition to find out why and save their society’s power source.

This new expedition goes underground, searching for the heart of Pando. The world inside their world is, as per title, strange, full of mysterious creatures and peculiar environments. Initially, Searcher has agreed to come along to save his legacy; he has forbidden Ethan to come along. But Ethan stowed away, along with their three-legged dog, Legend (himself). Meridian has followed along to deal with her son. What with one thing and another, Searcher finds himself off the ship; he encounters a mysterious man who’s mysterious for about thirty-five seconds before he turns out to be Jaeger.

I don’t think Ethan knows what he wants from life, but hot take—he doesn’t have to. Yes, all right, he’s the same age as a lot of Disney princesses, but in our world, he’d still be in high school. He’s allowed to have difficulty talking to his crush/boyfriend/friend Diazo (Jonathan Melo); my son is a handful of years younger than they are and identifies his sexuality as “I’m eleven.” That’s fine. I don’t know what he currently thinks he wants to do when he grows up, and I’m not sure he does, either. He used to respond by saying he wanted to be a ninja chef, though we were unclear if this was a chef for ninjas or a chef who wanted to be a ninja. And that was about as long ago as he is separated from Ethan.

That may be part of the problem, though. I don’t doubt that Searcher and Jaeger felt callings earlier than Ethan. Ethan is able to find himself. He is able to develop who he is. He has friends, and he has a boyfriend, and he’s aware he doesn’t want to be a farmer. Maybe he wants to be an explorer like his grandfather. But then he meets his grandfather and decides that, if he wants to be an explorer, it’s not like his grandfather. This makes it feel as though both his father and his grandfather get to be disappointed in him!

In a way, Ethan is a combination of the pair. He is more adventurous than his father but more empathetic than his grandfather. He takes after his mom a lot, really. His father explicitly doesn’t talk much about his own father. Everything Ethan knows about him, he’s picked up on from other people. It seems likely to me that Meridian had never met Jaeger and couldn’t tell Ethan anything about him, and it further seems likely that Searcher doesn’t have anyone in his life from the days he spent being forced to follow his father on expeditions except his mother, and who knows how much she talks about the husband she’s clearly had declared dead.

This movie flopped. Hard. And I feel kind of bad about that, because it’s not a terrible movie. Now, I still haven’t seen Wish, so I can’t speak to the movies’ relative merits. But this isn’t a terrible movie. Honestly I like it better than I like The Fox and the Hound, for one. I don’t plan to watch it often, but there are Disney movies (that I’ve seen) that I’d be less likely to watch for pure enjoyment. And if the parents’ relationship is less awkward and distant than Ethan and Diazo’s, well, it’s clear that Ethan is trying to figure out how to change that. But again, sixteen.

I do think that part of my fondness for the movie stems from my fondness for the better of its sort of High Science Fiction Adventure silliness. It has an airship, for pity’s sake. It’s also true that I’m disappointed that the failure of the movie makes it likely that we’re never going to get a proper release of the game Ethan and his friends play. It looks like a cooperative collectible card game, which is an interesting concept. I’m a little surprised that the elder Clades even put up with things enough to play the game with Ethan at all. My mother certainly never did that with me.