Brad Bird Was Tired of Dystopian Sci-Fi, So RAY GUNN Takes a Very Different Approach to the Future
Apparently, the future doesn’t have to suck. Sci-fi movies have spent decades giving us futures filled with oppressive governments, crumbling cities, corporate nightmares, environmental disasters, and generally miserable places to live. Brad Bird wanted Ray Gunn to go somewhere else.
I recently attended a screening of Ray Gunn in Los Angeles, and during a Q&A afterward, Bird talked about creating the futuristic city of Metropia and why he wanted to ditch the usual dystopian approach.
The look of the city was heavily influenced by architects, futurists, and industrial designers from the 1920s through the 1940s, including Hugh Ferriss, Norman Bel Geddes, and Raymond Loewy.
Bird explained: “Well, there are some architects and futurists, really, from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. And those were our influences. There's Hugh Ferriss, who did enormous buildings that were several blocks long and really tall.
“They're industrial designers like Norman Bel Geddes and Raymond Loewy, who did magnificent designs that made you want to be in use those things and be in those places. And we kind of filled it in from there. You know, you're looking at the future through the eyes of the past, and there's a certain charm to that.”
That idea of seeing the future through the eyes of the past is all over Ray Gunn. Instead of trying to predict what tomorrow might actually look like, Bird and his team pulled from an era when artists and designers were imagining massive cities, sleek machines, and a future that actually looked pretty cool.
Bird also wanted to get away from something that has become a sci-fi default… dystopia. He continued: “I think that a central idea that helped us was that I didn't want to do dystopia, that we've seen that to death. That seems to be the only way people visualize the future these days. And that's fine. A lot of my favorite movies are have dystopia. But I didn't want to do that.
“I wanted to do a utopia and still show that people are corrupt and, you know, double dealing and all of the problems are there, just nicer surroundings. And, but I thought it would be funny to juxtapose those two and kind of comment on it in a weird way.”
That’s where Ray Gunn has some fun with the idea of a utopia. Bird isn’t imagining a future where humanity finally gets its act together. The city may be gorgeous and the technology may be fantastic, but people are still people.
They lie. They cheat. They double-cross each other. They make a mess of things. The future got better. Humanity still has a long way to go.
It’s a great fit for a sci-fi noir detective story. Noir has always been populated by crooked characters, shady deals, secrets, and people making questionable decisions. Ray Gunn simply drops those characters into a beautiful futuristic city instead of another rain-soaked hellscape where everything has gone to crap.
After so many bleak visions of tomorrow, it’s refreshing to see Bird flip the formula and build a future that you might actually want to visit.
Just keep an eye on the people who live there.