- Released: November 23, 2022
- Directed by: Don Hall, Qui Nguyen
- Running time: 1h 42 min
- Rating 3.5/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
I've seen people compare this one to Treasure Planet and I honestly just don't really get the comparison. Like, yeah, there's a mix of old and modern technology and a focus on father-son relationships but that's really it. This one gave me much more Atlantis: The Lost Empire or Journey to the Center of the Earth vibes.
The plot follows the Clades, a family of that once were brave explorers but after the vanishing of dedicated patriarch Jeager Clade instead turned to farming when Jaeger's son, Searcher, discovered a new power source, revolutionizing technology in the land of Avalonia. 25 years down the line, the energy-crops of the Clades start to fail, and Searcher's son Ethan is feeling dissatisfied with the farmer life. In order to save the crops, named Pando, the Clades and some old friends of Jaeger's travel to the center through their world to save it at the source. Here they come across many conflicts, and also none other than a now-old Jaeger Clade. The family is re-united, but still have to work out a lot of interpersonal issues between one another, all the while looking for the heart of Pando and having to find a way to save it.
I've seen people call this movie mediocre and honestly I do not really see why. It's far from perfect, but I genuinely had a good time watching it. It was inventive, colorful, had a neat look to it, and I liked the focus on the interpersonal relationships between Jaeger, Searcher and Ethan, with all of them not being the perfect grandfather/father/son/grandson to the other. But the male Clades aren't the only fun characters, I also quite liked the others, such as Splat the nonverbal organism, tough Callisto and Meridian, a loving wife and great mother to Searcher and Ethan respectively.
Honestly, the only character I didn't really get is the dog, Legend. He...pretty much contributes nothing other than being the generic cute animal sidekick you see in so many Disney movies. Like Pua in Moana. I'm sure there's maybe one or two moments where he was mildly helpful, but he's mostly just there to act cute and provide some comedy relief. Believe me, writing the dog out of the movie would've been super easy because he contributes so little. And please keep in mind that I do not mind the cute animal sidekick characters in (Disney) movies, but to me they have to have at least some kind of point, especially if they're featured quite a lot in the film. Legend just doesn't really have that. There's one moment where it looks like he's going to be actually helpful and contribute by freeing the Clades, but then in the end Splat is the one who has to do all the work.
I did like about the movie that there aren't really any villains. Sure, characters like Jaeger and Callisto have moments where they're antagonistic, but that's more so because of their character flaws or because they're misguided than because of them actually being downright villains. And all of them do make up in the end regardless of their differences throughout the movie. I was kind of cringing at the moment when Callisto looked to be yet another poorly written Disney twist villain, but in the end her arc as an antagonist was really brief, she came around quickly and also still had pure motivations in wanting to help her people retain Pando as an energy source.
Another thing I was quite fond of was how Primal Outpost, a card game Ethan likes to play, ties back into the story itself. A major theme of Primal Outpost is that there is no villains and you just have to build a society with the materials you're granted. And that very much turns out to be the case in this strange world and Avalonia in the end. Pando as an energy source has to stop existing, and the people are forced to go back to more traditional means of technology while trying to make do with what they've been given. And, like in Ethan's game, there are no true villains. Not Jaeger, not Callisto, not the many seemingly murderous-creatures in the strange world hunting down our heroes. If anything, Pando was the "villain", though it's not a person or a creature but rather just something along the lines of a giant parasite.
Now, for some (minor) flaws and things I did not like about the movie. First, the final reveal. The strange world they explore turn out to actually be the insides of a giant creature, with Pando slowly killing it from the inside. Okay, cool concept and I do for the most part like the execution, and the fact that we're never shown the entire creature, just small parts of its outside. But then in the final shot it's revealed that it looks like, and it comes down to just being another giant turtle with a landmass on its back. Which is just...not all that inspired. Not bad per se, but the trope of a giant turtle-like creature carrying an island on its back is pretty tired and done by now, don't you think? Especially when the rest of the movie is chock-full of unique creature designs. I feel like they could've gone with a more creative design for the creature.
I'm also not a huge fan of the character design style here. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, but the characters (particularly the male humans) have a very cartoon-y style going on that doesn't work that well for me. It feels just a little bit off sometimes, particularly the eyes being so round and close together. The fact that all female characters have the more traditional slightly more realistic-looking Disney style (like in Raya and the Last Dragon, for example) plays a factor in this, too. It makes them feel like they don't really belong in the same film. I think they either should've gone all-out cartoon-y and fixed the eyes a bit, or stayed closer to their original style because this doesn't really mesh well together.
Another thing: the transitions. I don't know what it is, but they are very awkward as heck. They look like standard Windows Movie Makers traditions and their placement just didn't work for me. They don't feel natural and took me out of the movie, and at one point I even heard rest of the audience in the cinema react to a rather abrupt one as well.
Finally, something that I'm pretty sure is just a small plothole: how did the giant airship of our heroes exactly escape the strange world, AKA the insides of the turtle, in the end? Remember, this takes place after all of Pando, including its heart (basically what powered it) has been destroyed. Pando is what has been fueling the airship throughout the entire film. Yet somehow, despite all this, the airship can still fly and leave the strange world? By all logic it should've lost all its power by now and they'd have to escape another way.
Heck, this could've worked even because by now they've befriended the creatures from the strange world and some of them can fly, so some of those could've flown them (at least) to the "exit" (a nostril or something like that) of the giant turtle. But nope, they just somehow use the ship despite logic dictating that this literally shouldn't be possible. Pando is gone. Destroyed. Kaput. Even if they had some Pando left behind on the ship as fuel, the power source giving Pando its energy (basically the giant cluster of vines surrounding the creature's heart) is gone and all the remaining Pando crumbled into dust with the destruction said cluster.
So overall, while not perfect and I do have a few minor issues with it, I did really enjoy this movie. I liked the characters, the fantastical strange world, and the fact that there's no real villains in the story. I honestly liked the one quite a bit more than Disney's last outing, Encanto. That one wasn't bad but I just had a hard time fully getting into the movie, mostly because of how many characters it was trying to balance. This one is also about a family, but we really only have a central focus on three characters in it, so it doesn't have the same trouble staying focused as much.
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