Freely borrowing from past films including ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,’ ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ this Netflix outing impresses technically, but it’s short on laughs and heart.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Skydance Animation/Netflix “Welcome to the future,” we hear several times in “Ray Gunn” — not that the brave new world it presents is all that welcoming. Or, for that matter, particularly brave or new. The good news is we finally have flying cars and superpowered jetpacks; in other respects, though, we haven’t come a long way at all. Co-existence with extraterrestrials has seen humans revert to old habits of prejudice and apartheid; crime and corruption are rampant as ever; pop-up ads now irksomely manifest as holograms in your personal space. Still, at least the future looks good. The fifth animated feature from Brad Bird is a handsome return to the retro-futurism he previously practiced in “The Incredibles” and his live-action oddity “Tomorrowland”: in this case, a vision of an impossible 21st-century metropolis as might have been dreamed in 1939.
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