Brad Bird's Ray Gunn Preems at BFI London, Hits Theaters Dec. 4

Brad Bird's decades-in-the-making passion project "Ray Gunn" premiered at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival, with critics calling it a return to the inventive, joyous form of his first three animated features. The film opens in theaters on December 4 and arrives on Netflix on December 18.

The Film Stage's review, published from the festival, hails the private-detective adventure as "the year's best animated films" territory, placing it alongside "Coyote vs. Acme" as an heir to the spirit of Robert Zemeckis's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" — a family-friendly noir pastiche now itself a throwback.

What is Ray Gunn about?

The film is set in a retrofuturistic metropolis where humans and aliens co-exist, flying cars and "Blade Runner"-style holograms sit alongside Art Deco skyscrapers, and, per the review, "a stinging rebuke of our current age of tech hides in plain sight."

Sam Rockwell voices the titular private detective — one of the least-grizzled gumshoes ever to appear onscreen, racked with debts and averse to playing dirty. Tom Waits voices his only employee, the alien Eyera. The cast also includes:

• Bobby Cannavale as Arnold, the fourth husband of pop superstar Venus Nova
• Scarlett Johansson as Venus Nova
• Alan Tudyk as her manager, Barry Vogel
• Matt Berry as a kingpin in the alien underworld

The plot kicks off when Arnold hires Ray and Eyera over fears Nova is having an affair — a ruse to justify divorce on the eve of an album tracking to flop. Soon the detectives find Nova being blackmailed over a career-ruining secret, with people from her personal life winding up dead.

Does the film have flaws?

The review notes "some distracting narrative decisions" that undermine the intelligence of Bird's family audience. The most glaring: it takes an hour to reveal a character's dual identity that anyone can work out immediately from the shared, famous voice — staged as a grand reveal. The film also lacks the number of twists and double-crosses the most stereotypical noir would carry.

Otherwise, Bird and co-screenwriter Matthew Robbins — a veteran Steven Spielberg collaborator — have crafted what the review calls "an impeccable script," where every small world-building detail introduced pays off by the finale.

Is Bird answering his Ayn Rand critics?

The review argues "Ray Gunn" contains ammunition for those who see objectivist sympathies in Bird's work — but that Nova's character arc is "in direct conversation" with the criticism. Her fame has hidden her "true voice" from the public, and she already has a platform she doesn't want if it means maintaining inauthenticity. The film doesn't rebuke the Randian readings, the review says, but "does succeed in complicating them."

Later-stage allegories — a surveillance state weaponized for marketing, artists replaced by AI — align, the reviewer notes, with perhaps the only progressive ideas compatible with Rand's worldview. The closing "Produced by David Ellison" credit, the review adds, "makes it a little harder to give him the benefit of the doubt on the movie's political leanings."

The verdict: "rich and thorny ideas hidden beneath a joyously crowd-pleasing adventure," with the debate the film inspires unlikely "to overshadow just how much fun it is."