“People are surprised that I could stay interested in an idea that long. But if something is interesting, I always find it interesting,” Bird told Den of Geek during San Diego Comic-Con.
Ray Gunn is set in Metropia, a gigantic city in an alternate future as seen from 1939, and follows private eye Raymond Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell) as he’s drawn into a case involving aliens, murder, and a multimedia star named Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson). The aforementioned Waits is Ray’s cyclopean alien partner Eye-Ra. Also in the cast are: Alan Tudyk, Matt Berry, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Chernus, Kether Donohue, Michelle Rodriguez, Aasif Mandvi, Matt Jones, Kathryn Hunter, John Ratzenberger, Justin Peck, and Patton Oswalt.
The real star of the trailer, however, might be Metropia itself. The fictional megalopolis is pristine enough to suggest an optimistic alternative future-past but dirty enough to justify hardboiled detective noir lines like “It’s hard being the only honest players in a crooked game.” It’s also very, very Art Deco.
“Art Deco is kind of a utopian thing,” Bird said. “There’s something romantic about it and I just think that it’s time was too short. Ray Gunn is asking ‘What if World War II didn’t happen and Art Deco just kept going? Buildings got to be a mile high, cars could fly, and jetpacks were something everyone had.’ I thought it would be interesting to have utopia and still have desperate characters and an underbelly with corruption. Those two ideas were rubbing up against each other in a good way.”
Audiences will get to see Metropia come to life when Ray Gunn premieres in select theaters on 70mm screens on December 4 and then arrives to Netflix on December 18.
