Ray Gunn Trailer Promises Retrofuturistic Detective Noir Spectacle from Brad Bird

Even for the uninitiated, it shouldn’t take too long into the first full trailer for Netflix animated feature Ray Gunn to realize that this is a Brad Bird joint.

The acclaimed director of animated classics like The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and The Iron Giant (and the not-classic, but still pretty good live-action feature Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) has some, let’s say, distinctive visual and conceptual tics. And they all come to bear in this bracing two-minute preview of Ray Gunn. Give it a look below to see what we mean.

The trailer features, in no specific order, lush visual animation of an Art Deco city of the future (see: The Incredibles), realistically rendered yet satisfyingly cartoony human characters (see: Ratatouille), and… Tom Waits as a gravel-voiced alien detective? Ok, that one’s new. Of course, the whole thing is accompanied by music from Michael Giacchino, Bird’s longtime collaborator and a fellow appreciator of everything retorfuturistic.

The film, in many ways, appears to be the apotheosis of Bird’s distinct style, which makes sense given that he’s been fixated on the idea for years.

“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.