Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles) describes his next movie, Ray Gunn, as The Maltese Falcon meets Buck Rogers. He’s spent nearly 30 years trying to make this unusual mashup of hard-boiled detective story and pulp science fiction.
“I like the contradiction of things that are considered very modern and futuristic, but having it look like a person 70 years ago imagined the future,” Bird told Polygon during an interview at the Annecy Film Festival.
That alternate future involves jetpacks, flying cars, aliens, and Art Deco skyscrapers. Machines now handle most detective work, but Ray Gunn (Sam Rockwell) is still working as a private investigator in the massive city of Metropia. His latest case involves helping the pop star Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson) deal with a scandal that endangers her career and even her life. It’s edgier than Bird’s Pixar work, driven by a deep love for noir and its themes, which he says will “never go out of style.”
If you want to see some of his inspirations, here are five films Bird recommends watching before Ray Gunn premieres on Netflix on Dec. 18.
The Killing (1956)
Streaming: Prime Video
2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining director Stanley Kubrick made his Hollywood debut with The Killing, a classic noir that helped inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Fresh out of prison, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) pulls together a crew for an elaborate heist to steal $2 million from a thoroughbred racetrack. Everything goes wrong along the way in this dark story featuring plenty of odd characters.
Chinatown (1974)
Streaming: MGM Plus
Bird says Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is “practically a perfect movie.” Set in 1937, this extremely dark film follows Los Angeles PI Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) as what seems like a routine case involving tailing a cheating husband leads him to investigate a far more sinister plot. A scheme involving a drought, property purchases, and murder is a perfect example of noir’s tendency to draw attention to greedy oligarchs taking advantage of the vulnerable without facing real justice.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Streaming: Prime Video
Curtis Hanson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel assembles a star-studded cast to play very different members of the LAPD. Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce) has an extremely strong sense of justice shaped by his father’s unsolved murder. The seedy Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) has a lucrative partnership with the tabloid journalist Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), while Bud White (Russell Crowe) is a thug who violently enforces order at the behest of Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell). The movie is a twisty, stylish, and often brutal examination of the darkest parts of the City of Angels.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Streaming: Pluto TV
Joel and Ethan Coen were inspired by legendary detective fiction author Raymond Chandler when they wrote The Big Lebowski, which Bird says is “completely absurd and, in my estimation, one of the funniest movies ever made.” Stoner Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), also known as The Dude, becomes an unlikely detective after he’s attacked in a case of mistaken identity. The zany story is filled with hilarious dialogue, philosophical arguments, bowling fantasies, blackmail, and kidnapping. A deep cast of bizarre characters played by John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and John Turturro help make this one of the Coen Brothers’ best films.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Streaming: Paramount Plus
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner helped establish the cyberpunk genre with its hybrid of sci-fi and noir, but Bird recommends Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, which he says is “a superior sequel.” In a future L.A., the bioengineered human K (Ryan Gosling) discovers evidence that replicants are capable of biological reproduction. His search for answers leads him to question his own memories as he uncovers secrets that could cause a war. The stunning visuals, including giant holograms, clearly inform some of the imagery in Ray Gunn’s retro-futuristic setting.