Ray Gunn Is The Exact Movie We Need Right Now
It took 30 years for Brad Bird to deliver his magnum opus. The wait was well worth it.
Animated movies take a notoriously long time to make, but it’s been hard going through life without a new Brad Bird picture to look forward to. If you came of age during Pixar’s heyday, you absolutely came away with one of his films on your favorites list; not for nothing, he also directed Tom Cruise in what’s probably the greatest Mission: Impossible stunt of all time. If I sound biased, I apologize — there’s just something in the way Bird balances taut, hard-boiled wit with the whimsy of an improbable situation. For my money, The Incredibles is Pixar’s best movie ever, which is a blessing and a curse because that was also like, 20 years ago.
The studio really could have used something like Ray Gunn. Bird’s latest is a triumph 30-odd years in the making, but shockingly, he never pitched it to Pixar, hoping to court an older audience than the crowd the Disney subsidiary usually pulls. Seeing the film in all its glory (Bird found a home for Ray Gunn at Netflix, but see it in theaters if you can), that instinct makes a lot of sense. Like The Incredibles, it tests the very limits of a PG rating, wielding its retrofuturist world with an eye for both its wonder and its hidden depths.
If Ray Gunn is a tad messier than the work we’re used to seeing from Bird, it’s only because it’s all the more ambitious. The filmmaker has spent decades laboring to get this baby off the ground, and though it’s got a little baggage, this big, beautiful film is exactly the kind of adventure we need more of.
From general xenophobia and the battle against AI-created art, to the vicious scrutiny we subject our pop stars to, Bird has a lot to say with Ray Gunn — fortunately, he filters it all through the experiences of his goodhearted leading man (voiced capably by Sam Rockwell). Even in a cosmopolis modeled after Post-War America, Raymond Gunn is considered a relic. Nobody in Metropia uses private detectives when drones and pry-bots can do double the work twice as fast, and fewer still would be caught working side-by-side with an alien. (This might be a utopia, but Bird replaces the generic prejudice of the ‘30s with a timely aversion to offworlders.)
Still, Ray likes things the old-fashioned way: he moves through the world thinking that justice and decency will eventually prevail over corruption, even if it costs him the kind of payday that could help him buy back his apartment and keep his only employee, Eye-Ra (a delightful Tom Waits), from walking out the door.
A hopeless romantic in a hard-boiled world, Ray is the perfect hero to root for.
Bird deftly weaves our own dystopian plight (tech replacing human artists! Annoying ads that seem to be listening to your conversations!) onto the well-trod fabric of a classic noir. Ray thinks he’s found salvation when a new client, Arnold Dom (Bobby Cannavale), darkens his doorway. He’s the third-or-fourth husband of Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson), Metropia’s answer to Taylor Swift or peak-meltdown Britney Spears. He’s got access to the comical pile of money she’s amassed after releasing pop hit after pop hit, but her volcanic personality makes it all more trouble than it’s worth — we’re talking assault charges, lawsuits, and constant harassment in the tabloids.
Arnold fears Venus is stepping out on him. He hires Ray to investigate, a mission any private eye could do in his sleep. The thing is, Ray’s not just any private eye, nor is this all that straightforward. Bird finds every opportunity to scuttle Ray’s best-laid plans, from Venus’ overprotective manager (Alan Tudyk) to the rise of a serial murderer. It’s all terrible for Venus’ business — without giving up the myriad twists at play, she’s not actually guilty of what Arnold accuses her of — but this scandal will almost certainly ruin her reputation anyway. With her latest (and most expensive) album, “Welcome to the Future,” hanging in the balance, Ray somehow stumbles into another, much more lucrative job: protection detail.
Ray Gunn takes its time painting a complex picture.
While Ray works to keep Venus out of trouble, Bird packs yet more layers into the mystery around them. Who’s murdering the vultures in Venus’ inner circle if not Venus herself? What made the pop star so volatile, and does it have anything to do with the mysterious substance she keeps in a bespoke inhaler? Ray Gunn comes dangerously close to buckling under the zig-zagging weight of this mystery, but if anything were to ground it, it’d be the fast-blooming romance between Ray and Venus. Not only does each character serve as a grounding point for the film’s many plot threads, but their chemistry feels realer than any of the year’s releases aiming for equal authenticity.
Ray Gunn’s influences are easy to spot — a little L.A. Confidential here, a pinch of Raiders of the Lost Ark there — and more than welcome with such stunning animation bringing it all to life. Ray Gunn is a lot of movie, but at least it all looks incredible. From the character design (which delivers one alien species after the next in delicious, loving caricature) to the scope of Metropia (a perfect counterpart to Star Wars planet Coruscant), there’s always something to marvel at.
Bird also lets loose in a handful of completely wacky set pieces that seem made to please an older crowd. One particular sequence involving two alien goons and a blaster that rearranges its victim’s atoms might become nightmare fuel for anyone younger than 12, but it’s the blindsiding kind of fun you’d expect from someone in Bird’s position. There are parts of Ray Gunn that seem to suffer under the filmmaker’s oscillating focus; it’s not until later that you see how fiercely these plot points connect. The ride’s a little bumpy, maybe a little messy — but that’s a small price to pay for another outing with one of the greatest storytellers of his generation.
