India, Feb. 7 -- Think of your favourite imagined world.

Maybe it's Tolkien's Middle Earth or Rowling's magic-infused London. The endlessly warring realms of Star Wars or Dune. Or the endlessly whimsical planets that make up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Within these worlds are languages that exist nowhere else; intricate maps and laws of physics; distinctive weaponry; architecture, math, even red tape.

World-building isn't just a realm with an internal logic whose rules always hold. "It is also a world in which characters are shaped by these environments," says film critic Baradwaj Rangan. "This is true whether the setting spans galaxies (as in Star Wars) or sits within a single neighbourhood (as in Gojira and Tokyo)."

Disney...