Brad Bird debuts animated film Ray Gunn

Filmmaker Brad Bird has debuted his latest animated feature, ‘Ray Gunn’, at the London Film Festival. The project represents a thirty-year creative journey for Bird, who noted that while the idea was not worked on continuously, it remained a persistent concept he eventually brought to life with the help of collaborators.

Set in the retro-futurist city of Metropia, the film follows private detective Ray Gunn, voiced by Sam Rockwell, as he becomes entangled in a conspiracy while protecting music superstar Venus Nova, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The setting features a 1940s-inspired vision of the future, complete with flying cars, aliens, and jet packs.

Bird cited several classic noir and detective films as stylistic influences for the movie, including ‘Chinatown’, ‘Blade Runner’, ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘L.A. Confidential’, ‘Out of the Past’, and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Killing’. He also mentioned ‘The Big Lebowski’ as a notable inclusion in the detective genre. The film aims to blend the striking light and shadow of traditional black-and-white noir with a vibrant, colorful world, while exploring dystopian themes regarding the intrusion of technology into personal lives.