It indisputable: Brad Bird is one of the GOATs, particularly in the animation game. This, after all, is the director of The Iron Giant, The Incredibles (and its sequel), and Ratatouille. But even so, his latest animated movie, Ray Gunn, is a long, long time in the making. Bird first had the idea for it – a sci-fi noir movie, mashing up something like Chinatown with a retro-futurist world packed with aliens and oddities – way back in 1989. For all his success, nobody was quite ready to take a punt on his passion project. Until now.
“The reaction was that it was strange. People were kinda frightened by it,” Bird tells Empire of the original Ray Gunn script. Simply put, it’s not the kind of movie that mainstream Hollywood animation studios were making at that time. “The money men were like, ‘Where are the fuzzy bunnies?’” recalls Bird. “It’s a movie I’ve always wanted to see. But if I’d chosen to wait for someone else to make it, I would have died waiting.”
Now, though, Ray Gunn is real, and coming soon to cinemas and Netflix – and Bird is ready to unleash his latest vision. Expect another dazzling world from the man who delivered The Incredibles’ nostalgic ‘60s-inspired superhero universe, and Ratatouille’s sensory dream of Paris. “The future we always have [in movies is] a declining post-apocalyptic landscape. But what if World War II didn’t happen and the optimism of the 1930s kept going?” he teases of Ray Gunn’s universe. “What if Art Deco kept going and the entire world became [styled] like the Golden Gate Bridge? What if we had a utopian rather than a dystopian version of the future, but still had corruption and weasels and lies?” Finally, our world is ready.
Read Empire's full Ray Gunn feature in the Dune: Part Three issue – on sale Thursday October 22. Pre-order a copy online here. Ray Gunn comes to cinemas from December 4, and on Netflix from December 18.