For decades, Disney has tried to make pulp happen, and we’re not talking about Orange Bird. With Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations Tarzan and John Carter as well as the 2001 adventure homage Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Disney has made multiple attempts to do for the early 20th-century genre what Marvel has successfully done for comic books. Results have varied, but the studio is trying again with its latest animated feature, Strange World. The teaser for the film is done in midcentury B-movie throwback style, with a narrator telling viewers to “prepare yourself for a journey beyond what is possible!†The disembodied voice is vague with the details, saying, “travel past space and time to a place of infinite mystery unlike anything you’ve ever seen!†The language is humorously generic, but the animation isn’t, conjuring images of intergalactic flora and fauna on a grand-seeming scale. Directed by Raya and the Last Dragon director Don Hall and starring Jake Gyllenhaal as reluctant explorer “Searcher Clade,†Strange World premieres November 23. Let’s hope it skews less Atlantis (no Phil Collins songs), more Tarzan (so many Phil Collins songs).
Disney’s Strange World Teaser Is One for the Atlantis Heads
