Flipping the Script: Up Until This Point

They haven't been talking about it much, but from what I can tell, the Jungle Cruise movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” “Maui” Johnson is still going to be a thing. And that's pretty cool. There have been what, half a dozen Disney theme park attraction IPs adapted into movies at this point, of which only one has been financially successful (and boy howdy has it ever), yet they're still willing to tap this well for inspiration. That's actually...a bit heartening. It means the decision-makers actually recognize that a ride or attraction doesn't have to be based on a movie to be worthwhile in its own right. Here's hoping the Jungle Cruise flick is good enough to be enjoyable, but not so successful that they install a bunch of Dwayne Johnson animatronics in the actual Jungle.

But that gets me thinking...where to next for the ultimate trend in flipping the theme park script? What other attractions have decent film potential? Hence this new post category: Flipping the Script,* wherein I explore the possibilities! For this first installment, however, I'm going to briefly review the existing “theme park movies” and see if I can tease out a) Disney's methodology for producing them and b) patterns of success and failure in said methodology. How do ride concepts map onto things like film genre and themes? How much does the existing structure of a ride constrain its film adaptation? How much should it constrain it? And so on.

Tower of Terror (1997)

You read that date right—Disney has actually been doing this for twenty years at this point. If you wonder how you missed the release, don't worry—it was made for TV and never got a theatrical release. They were just testing the waters for this whole “make movies out of rides” concept.

Is it any good? You're asking the wrong person. I feel like I might have seen bits and pieces of this on the Disney Channel at some point, but in 1997, with Anaheim still six years away from getting its own Tower of Terror, there was nothing to draw me to the concept. Also, Disney Channel movies already had a reputation for being cheesy kiddie fare. Based on the film's TV Tropes page, it seems to have been a decent attempt at expanding the ride's vague concept into a proper narrative, but opinions of the movie itself seem lukewarm at best.

What can we learn? If you're going to make a movie based on a theme park ride, don't half-ass it. Go big or go home. The Tower of Terror—especially its Orlando incarnation—is a top-notch atmospheric thrill ride inspired by a seminal work of spec-fic television. This movie should have been given a full budget, a theatrical release, and made a much bigger impact than it did.

Mission to Mars (2000)

Now, this movie did get a theatrical release, and I specifically remember thinking “Wait, what? As in the Disneyland attraction?” For years I wasn't sure—it's not as if the phrase “mission to Mars” is proprietary, and it's got a nice rhythm and alliteration that makes for a good movie title. Anyone could have come up with it, in other words. But it was in fact a Touchstone Pictures flick, that being the label the company used for their PG-13 stuff before they got bolder about the content they would attach the Disney name to.

I didn't see it. Hardly anyone did, apparently. It flopped hard, as you might expect from a movie with an uninspiring sci-fi plot riffing on a theme park attraction that had been closed for nearly a decade and was nothing to write home about when it was open.

What can we learn? Since the main point of using theme park attractions as source material is the brand-name recognition, make sure you use one that people will, you know, recognize.

The Country Bears (2002)

Finally we get to one that people have actually heard of. The Country Bears was heavily promoted, and Disney made no bones about how yes, these are the characters from the animatronic show. But they completely fumbled the execution. This movie stunk hard,** and did so poorly that it nearly scuttled the entire concept of theme park-based movies. It probably didn't help that the attraction closed at Disneyland while the movie was in production. Way to alienate the western half of your potential audience, guys.

And then there's the fact that when you come right down to it, these are the Country Bears in name only. Marc Davis's cartoony designs were thrown out in favor of sort-of-but-not-really lifelike Muppet bear costumes, from what little I've seen the bears' personalities were heavily altered, and the movie doesn't even focus on them but on some new character who wants to join the band. Oh yeah, and it's a band rather than a troupe. And intelligent bears co-exist with humans in this world. And it portrayed the Country Bears as washed-up irrelevant entertainers, which is a terrible idea if your goal is synergistic promotion.

What can we learn? Don't do any of this. Honestly? This should have been an origin story: how the original core group of bears came together and founded a music-hall show.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

I'm only going to tackle the first Pirates movie here; we all know what went wrong with the franchise after that, but this first one is a rare example—maybe the only example so far—of a theme park IP movie done right. The reason the sequels keep stumbling along making enough money to justify the next one is that the film crews and audiences alike keep hoping to catch that lightning in a bottle one more time. I think Pearl succeeds largely because it's based on a really well-done and successful ride, but isn't trying to be the ride in movie form. It uses the premise of Pirates of the Caribbean*** as a starting point for telling a unique and original story, and then making that story as good as it can be...while still sprinkling enough direct references to the ride in there to both justify the branding and satisfy the theme park fans.

What can we learn? It's probably easier to create a successful movie out of an attraction that doesn't have a strong cast of existing characters or a distinct plot (or the perception of one) than one that does, because you can invent your own and have more creative freedom. For the best point of contrast I can offer, read on...

The Haunted Mansion (2003)

If The Country Bears turned out laughably, uncomfortably inept because it wasn't enough like its source material, The Haunted Mansion turned out what I can only call aggressively mediocre because it was too much like its source material. Make no mistake, Eddie Murphy was the wrong person to headline such a project, but ultimately the real problem with the film is that fanservice is about the only thing it has going for it.

This is not entirely the movie's fault. The Haunted Mansion has the most fervent fanbase of probably any theme park attraction in history, and unlike the more freeform Pirates of the Caribbean, it at least appears to have a narrative throughline, as well as unique named characters. That's not even getting into the extensive body of “fanon” that has grown up around the ride. There is no official backstory to the Haunted Mansion, but so many fans think they know what it is about, and would respond poorly if their illusion were not reflected in the movie.

So there had to be a Madam Leota. There had to be a Master Gracey. There had to be a tragic bride (remember, this was before Constance) and Singing Busts in the graveyard and transforming paintings and a ballroom full of ghostly dancers and a cluttered attic and no more than five minutes of runtime could pass without a quote taken directly from the ride script. And these things had to be more central and more obvious than the Easter eggs in Curse of the Black Pearl, because the Mansion feels so much more “definite” than Pirates. Unfortunately, this left little room for developing a strong unique story that the movie could own. It couldn't compete with its own inspiration.

What can we learn? With a property this popular, there is a razor's edge to walk between the too-familiar and the not-familiar-enough. It takes an especially deft hand to make it work. (So let's hope Guillermo del Toro is up to the task.)

Tomorrowland (2015)

It's hard to put my finger on just what went wrong with this one. The most common complaint seems to be that the movie spends too much time on the “getting to Tomorrowland” part and not enough on the “being in Tomorrowland” part, and then when they do get there it's dismal and broken-down instead of the shiny Utopia of their visions...but surely that was the point? “The journey is more important than the destination, which won't live up to your expectations anyway” is a tried-and-true story theme, and one that is singularly appropriate in a movie about taking control of the way the world is going and making it a better one. I have no complaints with that aspect.

Nonetheless, it can't be denied that Tomorrowland falls far short of its lofty ideals and on-point message. If I had to sum up the issue in two words, I guess I'd go with “tone problem”—it's too often wacky when it needs to be serious and serious when it needs to be inspirational, and it's just damn creepy to have implied romance between George Clooney and a robot that looks like a little girl.

What can we learn? It's not enough to have a nifty idea about turning something from a theme park into a movie. Execution is everything...and the bigger the idea (it doesn't get much bigger than an entire themed land), the harder said execution is going to be. I don't know how I would have re-written Tomorrowland, but it obviously needed a few more re-writes before shooting.

Join me next time—hopefully next week—when I'll properly lauch Flipping the Script with a modest proposal of my own for a movie based on a Disney theme park attraction!

* It has a double meaning. See if you can figure out both!

** So I understand. I didn't see it. I wasn't, and still am not, about to pay good money to see something that garbles the legacy of a beloved theme park show so badly.

*** Pirates. In the Caribbean. Let me know if I'm going too fast.