The Science Fueling Disney's 'Strange World'

Short Wave

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🗓️ 16 February 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In Disney's new animated feature 'Strange World,' a band of multigenerational explorers journeys to the center of their fantastical homeland. Along the way, they fend off, make friends with, and unearth secrets about the curious creatures who call this place home. There's the filterlopes, six-legged deer-forms with fan-like antennae. Or scouts, squishy blue balls with 12 elastic limbs. But as fantastical as these creatures sound, each one is grounded in the physics and biology of its real-world counterpart.

Enter married couple Elizabeth Rega and Stuart Sumida, professors of anatomy and paleontology, respectively. They've worked as science consultants on more than 70 films, from 'Ratatouille' to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' Film crews bring the duo onboard as biology experts, to help animators figure out how their animal creations — and sometimes their imaginary beasts — should look and move. But 'Strange World' may be their biggest undertaking yet; Elizabeth and Stuart entered at the earliest stages of production to help envision the kinds of creatures that would fill this world with science and wonder.

Short Wave's Aaron Scott talks to Elizabeth Rega and Stuart Sumida about their experiences as science consultants on film sets, and the science fueling Disney's imagined new world.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.9	Since his Valentine's Week, let's start with a love story.
0:08.8	Elizabeth Riga and Stuart Sameta met over a cadaver.
0:12.5	I met Stuart at the University of Chicago.
0:16.1	We shook hands over a cadaver in the medical school.
0:20.0	Our meet cute is a scientific meet cute.
0:22.8	They went on to get married and moved to the LA area where Stuart's now a professor of
0:26.8	paleontology and Elizabeth is a professor of anatomy.
0:30.4	And you know that whole cliche that everyone in LA is connected to Hollywood?
0:34.8	Yeah, that applies to scientists too.
0:37.8	The very first project ever worked on was Beauty and the Beast because of a colleague of mine
0:42.8	at UCLA named Charles Solomon who knew a lot of people in the entertainment industry.
0:47.4	And then Beth came in very, very nearly after that when we were working on Lion King.
0:52.3	And since then, between the two of us, I think we've worked on over 70 films.
0:56.6	Everything from Ratatouille to Haditrain your Dragon to Guardians of the Galaxy.
1:01.6	Filmmakers bring them in to ground the movies in science.
1:05.0	Most often that means helping animators figure out how real animals look and move.
1:10.4	And it's often because artists get a lot of life drawing training on humans,
1:15.1	but not on like a platypus or a wildebeest or a pangolin.
1:20.4	Sometimes their job is to figure out the science behind sheer make believe.
1:25.1	That kind of what if story, you know, we know that dinosaurs can't talk.
1:30.1	But if they did, how would their facial muscles be arranged?
	...

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