How Planet Money’s TikTok Inspired a Brilliant Animated Movie
▼ Summary
– Boys Go to Jupiter is an animated sci-fi film about a gig worker in Florida, exploring characters’ dysfunctional relationships with money and the gig economy’s impact on their lives.
– Director Julian Glander intended the film to focus on lost social connections since the pandemic, not as an anti-capitalist statement, despite its thematic elements about capitalism.
– The movie evolved from a fantastical story to one centered on work and economics, influenced by Planet Money’s Jack Corbett, who stars and brought personal delivery experience to his role.
– Glander critiques generative AI for undermining artistic learning and worker power, while championing Blender as a truly democratizing open-source tool for creativity.
– The film uses characters like Mr. Moolah to satirize contemporary hustle culture and its metaphysical, often unrealistic, beliefs about wealth and success.
Julian Glander’s animated sci-fi feature Boys Go to Jupiter follows a young Florida gig worker named Billy 5000, voiced by Planet Money’s Jack Corbett, as he hoverboards through life with a singular obsession: earning $5,000 by delivering food. At first glance, Billy’s relentless hustle appears inspired by a streamer’s motivational content, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that every character wrestles with their own complicated and often dysfunctional relationship with money.
The film carries the same playful, toy-like aesthetic and musical sensibility found in much of Glander’s previous work, from shorts like Tennis Ball on His Day Off to games like Art Sqool. Yet thematically, Boys Go to Jupiter stands apart, offering a sharp critique of how the gig economy distorts human connection and value. In moments where the narrative focuses on food delivery platforms dehumanizing workers, it’s easy to assume Glander intended an anti-capitalist statement. But the director insists his true aim was to explore the frayed social bonds exposed and deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Glander’s inspiration came partly from what he describes as a kind of “national hysteria” during the pandemic’s early years, particularly through interactions with delivery workers. He expresses disappointment that, as a society, “we haven’t learned any lessons.” Rituals like contactless delivery remain, creating what he calls a “frictionless” but deeply impersonal experience. While convenient, this system strips away one of the most human elements of sharing a meal: connection to those who prepare and deliver it.
The evolution of Boys Go to Jupiter surprised even its creator. Initial reviews labeled it anti-capitalist, a tag Glander didn’t anticipate. “It just has capitalism in it,” he explains. “It’s about life under capitalism.” What began as a fantastical story about a boy and an alien gradually morphed into a narrative centered on work, a subject that felt urgent, personal, and broadly relevant.
A major influence came from Jack Corbett’s Planet Money TikToks, which reshaped how Glander viewed economics, not as dry theory, but as a cultural and almost religious force. Each character in the film embodies a different “denomination” of wealth belief, whether through lottery luck, grinding hustle, inheritance, or sheer magic. This mindset, Glander suggests, is distinctly and universally American.
Corbett’s performance as Billy feels authentically aligned with his online persona. There are sequences that play like extended Planet Money segments, including one where Billy reads from obscure 19th-century economic texts. Corbett also infused the role with personal history, revealing he’d been a pizza delivery driver in high school, a coincidence that made the collaboration feel fated.
Another standout character, Mr. Moolah, serves as a warped embodiment of YouTube hustle culture. Originally conceived as a radio DJ narrator in the style of Do the Right Thing, he was reimagined to reflect contemporary digital reality. Mr. Moolah peddles a metaphysical vision of wealth, suggesting that people are “destined” for a certain financial tier, a notion Glander acknowledges has some basis in economic reality, if not in magic. Far from a predatory empire-builder, Mr. Moolah is small-time, desperate, and tragically relatable.
When asked about generative AI’s impact on creativity, Glander doesn’t hold back. He sees it not as a democratizing tool, but as a threat to artistic growth and labor rights. By bypassing the struggle to learn and create, he argues, AI denies young artists the chance to develop their own voice. More alarmingly, it’s being weaponized to suppress wages and weaken worker power, even before it reliably delivers quality results.
In contrast, Glander champions Blender, the free open-source software used to create Boys Go to Jupiter. For him, true democratization means community-driven tools that empower rather than replace artists. His long-standing commitment to the platform stems from its collaborative ethos, responsive development, and extensive learning resources. When another Blender-made film, Flow, won Best Animated Feature, it felt like a victory for the entire ecosystem.
Reflecting on broader cultural moods, Glander imagines the current national vibe as a “spiky shape”, full of tension and instability. The internet, by 2025, feels to him like a “smooth rock,” polished to a frictionless, almost charmless finish. He wonders aloud whether the web is losing its magic, becoming just another controlled, one-directional medium like cable TV.
Through it all, Boys Go to Jupiter remains a work deeply invested in the texture of modern life, not as polemic, but as portrait. It’s a film about what we believe, what we value, and what we’ve lost along the way.
(Source: The Verge)
