In Defense of Disney's Strange Solarpunk World

Disney’s Strange World is a colorful,
sometimes silly

adventure through an exotic
alien landscape

It's definitely a movie that feels geared
towards a younger audience

but that doesn't mean its message is
childish or shallow

To explain why, let’s jump to
the halfway point in the story where

we find our heroes have paused their journey
to play a board game called Primal Outpost

Ethan: A little Primal Outpost?

It’s sort of a mashup of Magic The Gathering
and Settlers of Catan

but the goal isn’t to defeat monsters
or expand territory

Ethan: A daemon spider!
Jaeger: Kill it!

Ethan: Ah ah the point is not to kill it.

instead the players are supposed to
cooperate to build a better world

Ethan: The objective of Primal Outpost is
to live harmoniously with your environment

That goal is also a distillation of
the larger message of the movie

There is no Disney villain to defeat.
Instead the heroes must convince their society

to abandon the fuel source that powers the
comforts and conveniences of their daily lives

before it destroys their world

As far as ecological parables go
that’s a surprisingly radical one.

Strange World's visuals are borrowed
from old pulp adventure magazines

but its theme has much more in common
with solar punk narratives.

Solar punk is a relatively recent artistic,
literary, and media trend

that uses science fiction as a lens to tell
stories about regenerating ecosystems,

futuristic permaculture farming, mutual
aid networks, and sustainable urban living.

The idyllic themes and visuals are evocative
of and often inspired by Studio Ghibli films

that predate the term by decades,

especially Castle In the Sky, Princess
Mononoke, and Nausicaa of the

Valley of the Wind.

At the moment, solar punk is less of a full
fledged genre in its own right, and

more of an aspirational idea of a genre. But
it's growing rapidly to now include video games.

Game narrator: Use toxin scrubbers to cleanse
the soil and sea. Pumps and irrigators

get clean water everywhere it needs to go,
allowing the natural greenery to grow.

My favorite example of works explicitly
written as part of the solar punk trend

are a pair of novellas by Becky Chambers
published as the Monk & Robot series.

At its core solar punk is an optimistic
reaction to the cynical dystopian narratives

that saturate much of popular culture
wherein hyper-capitalism has thoroughly

ruined the world in one terrible way
or another.

At this point most of us have seen so many
spectacular global catastrophes that the

end of the world can start to feel both
mundane and inevitable.

Robot: You've seen one post-apocalyptic
city, you've seen them all.

You might have run across a paraphrased version
of this oft quoted passage by author

Fredric Jameson from his 1994 book,
The Seeds of Time.

"It seems to be easier for us today to imagine
the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth

and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism..."

"...perhaps that is due to some weakness
in our imagination."

I'd argue that failure of imagination is,
at least in part, the fault of an entertainment

industry that keeps churning out stories
set in neon-infused corporate dystopias

and devastated post-apocalyptic landscapes,

where the fate of the natural world has
already been sealed.

At their best dystopian stories can serve as
warnings about the trajectory of our own world.

Ad Announcement: A new life awaits you in
the off-world colony. The chance to begin

again in a golden land of opportunity...

But bleak visions of the future have
become so ubiquitous

and so defanged of socioeconomic critique,
that much of the genre

has been reduced to a series of
stylistic choices and narrative cliches.

From time to time, we do see fleeting glimpses
of possible better futures momentarily peeking

through in otherwise dystopian settings...

Vi: Is that a real tree?

Ekko: Pretty cool huh? When I first saw it
I knew this was the place.

Ekko: If a single seed can male it down
here, so could we.

But even those brief visions of ecological
sustainability only seem to exist as part of

an impossibly distant future, in some alternate
universe, or inside of a virtual simulation

Strange World offers a refreshing
break from that pattern

because although the environment
is in great peril,

there’s still time to save it.

In the opening scenes we learn Avalonia has
progressed from a pre-industrial village society

to a techno-futuristic one thanks to a newly
discovered energy source called Pando.

Though grown and harvested like vegetables,
Pando is set up as a clear metaphor for fossil fuels.

Searcher: Hmm, Pando battery is dead.

Meridian: That doesn't make any sense,
I picked those pods an hour ago.

When Pando begins to mysteriously fail,
The Avalonians embark on an expedition

to save their way of life.

Callisto: Our mission is to follow these
roots until we reach the heart of Pando...

Callisto: ...and stop whatever's harming it!

They're determined to find a way to keep
their fuel flowing.

Even if that means going to war and
exterminating an entire alien species.

Since this is an on-the-nose allegory for
climate change, it turns out that

Pando is a parasite, which is very literally
killing the world.

Ethan: This place is alive. It's a living thing!

Searcher: So, all this time we've been
living on the back of this giant creature?

Ethan is the first to make the connection
and understand the severity of their situation.

Ethan: And Pando is killing it.

And after convincing his family to join
the cause, they all demand change.

Ethan & Searcher: A giant creature!
Others: What? A giant creature? You can't be serious.

Searcher: Okay, listen, this place, this world
that we live on is a living thing

and Pando is killing it. If we wanna
survive Pando has to go.

Others: What?
Callisto: You want us to Pando?

Jaeger: They don't know what they saw
out there!

But their leaders are dead set on maintaining
the status quo, and deny the truth of

what's happening to their ecosystem.

Searcher: Callisto?

Ethan: Dad!
Meridian: Get your hands off me!

Callisto: Emotions are running really
high right now, and I don't know

what you think you saw, but we came down
here to save Pando. That plan hasn't changed.

Searcher: You have no idea what you're doing!

Ethan and his family are even arrested and
briefly imprisoned for pointing out

the scientific reality.

Searcher: You're making a big mistake!
You can't do this!! You have to listen to me!

The conflict is short-lived and the deniers
are soon convinced.

Meridian: Now do you see what we're
dealing with? That's a heart.

But the scenario mirrors our own struggles
over the environment here in the real world.

Ethan: ---aaaand, times up!
Okay, fine. It's dead. See. You killed it.

Jaeger: That's what I'm talking about!

Just like we saw during that game of Primal
Outpost, the goal of ecological sustainability

is self-evident to younger people.

Ethan: For the 27th time, there are no bad
guys. The objective isn't to kill or destroy

monsters. You're just supposed to build a
working civilization utilizing the environment

around you.

But the older generations express confusion
and frustration at the idea.

Jaeger: Uh-huh, yeah, I don't get this game.
Searcher: Ptth! Me neither.

Ethan: Oh come on! It is not that complicated!

Searcher: No bad guys? What kind of game
has no bad guys?

Jaeger: That's just poor storytelling.

Ethan: Okay, you know what? You want bad
guys? Fine! You two are the bad guys!

They're stuck in their ways, comfortable in
their lifestyle, and they can't fathom making

the sacrifices necessary to solve the crisis.

The real villain in this story isn't a person.

It is instead a rigid worldview that
refuses to accept the need for change.

In the end the people of this strange world
are convinced to destroy Pando and

give up the creature comforts that it
provides in order to save their world.

On one level, this is exactly the type of
happy ending we've come to expect in

animated movies--the revelation that the
planet and everything living on it

are all interconnected is something
we've seen before.

What's different here are the messages
about our future and how we get there.

Meridian: Alright, next stop no power,
cold coffee, and angry masses!

Meridian: Who's ready to go home?

In most family-friendly movies with
environmental themes, saving the earth--

Linda: There are rare birds living around
here! You can't cut down these trees!

--is framed in terms of conservation
rather than systemic change.

Ted: And we can start by planting this!

And the solution almost always involves
promoting some small, personal action

like picking up litter, turning off the
lights, or planting a few trees.

Planeteers: Go Planet!

Captain Planet: The Planeteers want you to join
them in keeping our planet clean, healthy, and beautiful.

Wheeler: Don't litter!
It's completely uncool.

Captain Planet: The power is yours!

This type of message is designed to shift
the onus for change away from the large

institutions who are actually at fault and
onto individual people.

What makes Strange World so different is
that the environment isn't saved as a

result of a bunch of personal choices. It's
saved by fundamentally transforming

the way an entire society operates.

They must quit Pando cold-turkey.

The allegory for us in the real world is pointed.
We must follow the example of the Avalonians

and stop extracting and burning fossil fuels.

And we can't do it slowly over ten, twenty,
or thirty years. The transition to green energy

needs to be immediate.

Contrary to what big energy companies want
us to believe, there's no quick technological

fix just around the corner that will stave
off climate collapse.

Husband: Smells so clean!
Wife: Mm-hm!

Coal Rep: Is regular clean clean enough for
your family?

False solutions like clean coal, carbon
capture, or hydrogen fuel are just

smoke-and-mirrors greenwashing campaigns
meant to distract the public from our

continued investment in dirty energy.

Coal Rep: Clean coal is supported by the
coal industry--the most trusted name in coal.

If we really want to save planet Earth, we
simply cannot keep producing and consuming

in the wildly unsustainable ways that
we do now.

Now of course reorganizing an entire society
that's been dependent on harmful energy

will require enduring an uncomfortable
inconvenient period of readjustment.

But eras of great transformation can also
spark creativity and innovation.

The Avalonians in Strange World don't need
to permanently return to an agrarian way of life.

They work through a period of hardship,
with no power, and cold coffee, but they do

it together as a community, and eventually
start inventing renewable, wind-powered

technology to get the lights back on and
the airships flying again.

The optimistic message that ecological
harmony is in fact achievable puts

Strange World squarely in the solar punk
camp, despite the lack of solar panels

in the story. It is a little ironic that a
story about radical environmental

sustainability comes from the Walt
Disney company,

though it's not the first time filmmakers
have snuck calls for systemic change

into a piece of corporate media.

These clips of a beautifully animated
futuristic farm, for example, are part of

a yogurt commercial of all things.

Brands have long tried to associate
themselves with visions of the future,

and we can appreciate the rare positive
message while also recognizing that

in a truly better world there is simply
no place for the corporate structures

and systems that have brought our planet
to the brink of annihilation.

When Strange World was released in theaters
it faced calls for boycotts from reactionary

pundits who were angry about its diversity
and its storyline, where being gay is

framed as a completely normal thing
that's no big deal.

Ethan: That's really sweet!

The film's choice to center characters of
color is reflective of another critical

element in solar punk world building
because it acknowledges that many of

the ideas surrounding sustainable ecology
aren't drawn from far-future science fiction

but are instead rooted in African and
Indigenous traditions developed

well before Europeans colonized the planet.

Lyla June: By tapping into preexisting
natural systems, Native farmers have

been able to cultivate the same plots of
land for centuries without ever depleting the soil.

The rise of solar punk media underscores
an important truth--

Computer: Mega-restricted area.

--while it is necessary to understand the
severity of the climate crisis that we face

grim proclamations of our impending doom
aren't enough to spur people to mass action.

Stories that instead helps us envision the
kind of future we actually want can be

motivating, inspirational, and, critically,
make that better future feel like it's

within our grasp.

Thanks so much for watching!

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