The Strange World Director Don Hall and Producer Roy Conli on Using “Generational Gaps” in Place of the Traditional Villain

After working through Moana, director Don Hall continued to reflect on the world he is leaving to his children. This thought gave birth strange world, an adventure story with an environmental theme. The film follows the legendary Clade family as they explore the unknown regions of Avalonia. Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) are three generations of the family, each with different opinions that clash and threaten their latest mission. Producer Roy Conli was drawn to the story of a generational conflict between three generations of one family.

DEADLINE: Where did the idea come from? strange world come from

DON HALL: The idea came up around 2017, I just got rid of it Moiana and think about the next movie and what I was thinking about at the time. I thought about my children and the world they are inheriting in terms of the environment, as opposed to the world I inherited from my father who happens to be a farmer. That was number one on my mind, and I wanted to tell a story that spoke philosophically about it. But because I was also thinking about my sons and my father, I thought it would just be emotionally interesting to tell a story with three generations. Very often we don’t really get to see it. We see father-son, but I thought the idea of ​​actually having it speak to three generations would be an emotionally interesting approach. And I love adventure films, I just love them, and that’s kind of the vehicle for this environmental film. I thought this idea of ​​explorers finding a hidden world would be great in animation.

DEADLINE: Roy, what did you think of the story when you walked in?

ROY CONLEY: Well, I was hooked on the father-son story because I’ve always had a soft spot for father-son stories. But then I thought the idea of ​​three generations was great. I am so proud of the emotional journey and visual splendor of this film, but it was also the themes that caught my attention early on. I knew we could make a beautiful film, but we could also talk about an incredibly loving family and we could talk about an incredibly important idea of ​​what we leave to the next generation, which I think really speaks volumes today.

DEADLINE: Can you talk about using these generational relationships as points of conflict instead of a traditional villain? I like the idea that everyone in every generation just refuses to believe that they are wrong.

HALL: The story will focus more on the generation gaps, which was a decision because I felt if you brought up the environmental issue, it would become chilling or even predictable. I will take Callisto as an example. If Callisto was the CEO of Pando-corp, I would have seen this movie a million times. It felt like we didn’t really need a traditional villain.

I can hear the clamor of fans saying, “When are traditional villains coming back to Disney movies?” But I guess it’s all about the story, right? And what does the story need? We definitely had a lot of antagonism between Jaeger and Searcher and a sort of hidden antagonism between Ethan and Searcher. It was already there and we didn’t need a traditional villain. Callisto becomes a bit more of an uppity adversary towards the end of the film, but it comes from a more noble place where she believes she speaks for all of Avalonia. Because that’s her job, that’s her job as President.

CONLI: I think that’s what Don and Qui (Nguyen) did to structure the story. I’m going to go a little crazy here about the structure of the story, you know – man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself – all three of those things work in this story. I’m so proud of the Ethan character because Ethan really carries the compassion and brings them together, and that’s the great thing about the story. I think Qui and Don brought that concept of Jaeger as a conqueror and a seeker as a controller and Ethan as a conservationist, knowing that all three of those elements are present in everyone. I think each of these characters reflects something in each of us.

DEADLINE: What was the research process like to create all the creatures?

HALL: We’ve done a lot of research in microbiology and electron micrographs of the body and we’re like, ‘Oh, cilia can look like grass and bronchial stems can look like trees’ and stuff like that. Then we really encouraged all these great artists to just play, know the function of the area, the function of immune system beings, and then really let your imagination run wild.

DEADLINE: And then there’s Splat who’s just great as a character who doesn’t speak but is still very expressive.

CONLI: This is Don’s power. He challenges his animators. He really does. I mean if you think about it great hero 6 and Baymax, that big white balloon with two eyes, this time he went even further. He gave you a creature with eight tentacles whose front and back you don’t know. And the animators just stepped up to the plate and did great things with this creature. You know exactly what Splat is thinking all the time and he is such a huge force in the movie. I think that’s a testament not only to our animators, but also to our character designers and our lighting guys and just the whole team.

HALL: And it’s just pure animation, right? That’s why I love working in this medium. It’s all I ever really wanted to do. We kept talking about the carpet in it Aladdin, and look what they did. See what amazing animators can do with a rectangle and some tassels, you know? And CG is now at the point where you can really do anything. We did some 2D hand-drawn iterations of Splat to learn more about his locomotion, and then they were able to translate that to the CG.

CONLI: What I love about what’s happening with Disney Animation, especially in the CG space, is that you can feel the DNA of the hand drawn. I think in this film the emphasis was on visiting an older style, a much broader style. And the great thing about CG is that you can do that, but then you can get these incredibly intimate scenes where the emotions play out so specifically and tightly. It’s nice.