It only took thirty years, but Brad Bird is finally heading back to the future with Ray Gunn. A longtime passion project for the Oscar-winning director, the retro-future film noir follows the titular gumshoe (voice by Sam Rockwell) through a richly animated world of tomorrow that’s populated by femme fatales (Scarlett Johansson), aliens (Tom Waits), and, of course, ray guns.
“This one took way longer than I ever imagined it would,” Bird told Gold Derby recently. “I had given it up, too, and the fact that it came back to life and got realized [at Skydance Animation and Netflix] is amazing. It was a big bite and I had less experience, so it worked out.”
It’s Bird’s fifth ‘toon feature and the first one he’s made outside of Pixar since his much-loved debut, 1999’s The Iron Giant. But the film does involve a significant Pixar reunion; it was made for Netflix via Skydance Animation, which is currently overseen by that Disney-owned studio’s former head honcho, John Lasseter, who oversaw Bird’s two Oscar-winning animated features, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
Ray Gunn is also aiming to be in the Oscar contention at the 2027 ceremony, and had its world premiere at the London Film Festival on Saturday ahead of its limited theatrical release on Dec. 4 and streaming premiere on Dec. 18. Critics that attended pre-festival screenings have been filing their reviews in the wake of its premiere, and the mostly positive notices have boosted the film to a 90 percent Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, although it’s worth noting that a number of major outlets have yet to weigh in on the film. (Metacritic, too, hasn’t posted any Ray Gunn reviews.)
Here’s a sampling of what’s being said about Ray Gunn following its London premiere.
The good
Deadline‘s Pete Hammond clearly enjoyed his time spent in Bird’s latest tomorrowland. “[Ray Gunn] is the kind of smart, visually sumptuous and clever ‘toon that is ripe for the Best Animated Feature category,” he raves.
“Using vibrant CGI techniques to bring this world to life, Bird and his talented artisans manage to successfully merge two very different worlds, centuries apart in a cohesive and viable original universe that somehow seems right,” Hammond adds. “You don’t have to be a fan of noir and Dark City detective yarns to appreciate the story, and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t a sci-fi aficionado either. The human/alien blend blends and helps to make this Skydance Animation production an entertaining proposition for adults and even their kids who get dragged to see it, rather than the usual other way around for ‘toons.”
Writing in Mashable, Kristy Puchko credits Bird with aiming at older audiences with this particular film. “To be clear, Bird’s latest isn’t inappropriate for kids,” she notes. “Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, this animated movie with a film noir core could play to children and grown-ups alike. But it’ll be older audience members who can best appreciate the influences Bird is bringing into play in Ray Gunn.“
And over in The Wrap, Drew Taylor calls the film “a doozy” that was worth the three decade wait. “As zippy and imaginative and full of ideas as Bird’s very best work, a visually stunning, thematically rich masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of Western animation with wit and verve,” he writes. “For years, “Ray Gunn” existed only as a dream, a tantalizing what-if. Now that it’s here, it’s better than we could have possibly imagined.”
The bad
On the other hand, Variety‘s Guy Lodge found creative cracks in Bird’s vision. “It’s never quite as funny as it should be, while its characters… want for texture and soul,” he notes. “Audiences should happily speed along with them on their adventures, but after a fairly long two hours in their company, we don’t feel terribly attached to them.
“These aren’t fatal shortfalls,” Lodge cautions. “There are more than enough visual and sonic delights here to compensate. But they are surprising ones from Bird, whose animated work has been marked by zingy, non-snarky but adult-favoring wit and carefully seeded personal stakes.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Angie Han is more willing to say that Bird’s new film falls short. “Ray Gunn… is not special,” she writes. “It’s a blandly palatable jumble of sci-fi and neo-noir clichés, not so much awful as underwhelming. Lacking in both visual pop and emotional specificity, it’s a forgettable entry in an otherwise rich career that’s run the gamut from Ratatouille to The Incredibles to Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
“While the plot gestures at potentially rich themes like xenophobia, corporate corruption, the perils of celebrity and even the looming threat of artificial intelligence, Ray Gunn has not much to say about any of them beyond that they’re bad,” Han adds. “Bird has said he’s been trying to make this project happen since before The Iron Giant, which I suppose makes this a professional triumph for him if not a creative one. But I can’t decide if that explains its mediocrity — this feels very much like a first draft of a project — or makes it all the more baffling that with decades to mull it over, he hasn’t managed to make it more interesting.”
And The A.V. Club’s Siddhant Adlakha was equally unimpressed, writing: “Imaginative action meets confounding plotting and shallow metaphors in Ray Gunn … It’s all pretty cool to look at, and Michael Giacchino makes it fun to listen to with his jazzy compositions. However, these delights have a low ceiling, since the opaque plot never hints at why any of this really matters.”
