Is Star Wars Even “Disney” Enough?

Sorry about the clickbait-y title up there. What with the opening of Galaxy's Edge mere weeks away and May the Fourth having just been with us recently, I've been thinking about Star Wars a little more than usual. I've never made any secret of my misgivings about the union of the Lucasfilm franchise and Disneyland, but only recently have I started to put my finger on the cause(s) of them.

I just don't think Star Wars is very “Disney.” Not that the company hasn't done right by the franchise—for the most part, the new films are quite good—but it doesn't sit well alongside what you might call Disney's more traditional fare.* The Platonic ideal of “a Disney movie” is an animated fairy tale, or maybe an adventure story with animal characters. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions, but that's the baseline most people think of.

And that is not Star Wars. It may be a fantasy, but it's no fairy tale. The main difference is one of size. Disney fairy tales (and fairy tales in general) tend to be pretty small. The stakes are low, with the protagonists trying to save themselves, or their families, or at most a small kingdom (and not necessarily from something as dire as literal destruction). Their actions have little to no effect on the larger world and the larger world does not intrude upon their stories. Moreover, for most of them, the main plot takes place within a relatively small area and/or a compressed timeframe. And finally, they are self-contained stories. You start the movie, and 90 minutes or so later, they all live happily ever after, The End. What happened next is left to the realm of justly loathed direct-to-video sequels. Or fanfiction.**

None of this describes the Star Wars saga, a claim which can be handily proved by the fact that you aren't questioning my use of the word saga. The scale of it is huge—it's a story that spans generations and star systems, that's been being told for over forty years, via ten theatrical movies (and counting!), several TV series, and an inestimable number of novels, comic books, video games, and other supplemental media.

I mean, that is nuts. Do you have any idea how nuts that is?

My point is that Star Wars is vast. They could give it its own entire Epcot-sized theme park, and still only have room to explore a fraction of what makes it so compelling to audiences of all ages. And they decided the best thing to do with it is stick it on the back end of Frontierland? I'm sure Galaxy's Edge is going to be monstrously popular and remain so for the foreseeable future. I am also sure that it represents missed opportunities. A remote corner of Disneyland Park, Anaheim, CA is not the optimal location for this sort of concept.

From the point of view of the park as a whole, Galaxy's Edge represents a major departure from the kinds of themes that have historically been assigned to lands. (Note here that I am talking about lands, not individual attractions. Nor am I talking about any other parks.) Better bloggers than I have spent hours and pages trying to pin down the overall theme of Disneyland Park, but however you choose to phrase it, there has always been a sense that no matter how wacky and wonderful the environment was, you can get there from here. This is our history, our future, our shared imagination, our world.

Star Wars is decidedly not our world. Does it take place a long time ago from where we sit, or from the perspective of someone even farther in the future? The answer is that it doesn't matter, because it takes place in a galaxy far, far away. We, ourselves, are entirely out of the picture. Earth might not even exist in the Star Wars setting, and the “human” characters might actually be aliens that look indistinguishable from humans à la Superman.

Is it just me, or is there something inherently...askew about this? Disneyland has always been about the best aspects of the world we know. The tropics are full of adventure! The Wild West was a time of heroes! Fairy tales can come true, and so can cartoons! The future is bright! Spinning Star Wars into its own land kind of feels like...giving up. Like saying “Actually, the world sucks and always has. Our history is full of irredeemable villains, our mythology is pointless, and it's only going to get worse from here no matter what we do. Our only possible comfort is in the prospect of running away to another universe entirely.”

And isn't that uncharacteristically bleak for the company that gave us “it's a small world”, the Carousel of Progress, and all those Happily Ever Afters?

Just some things to think about.

* The same is true of the MCU, for similar reasons. This is not meant as a knock against either film franchise in and of itself.

** This is why I feel that even though the trailer looks okay, Frozen 2 may be a mistake.

Movie Screens

Pretty short one this time. I've had this idea knocking around for a while and I want to try putting it into words to see if it holds up when stated plainly.

There are two Imagineering trends that we hardcore Disney theme park fans tend to criticize: 1) the abandonment of original ideas in favor of attractions that lean on film IP for their ideas, and 2) the over-reliance on screens and projections at the expense of three-dimensional sets and complex animatronic figures. The object of both is, naturally, maximizing revenue (luring in guests with already-popular films and characters) while cutting costs (screens take up less space and are easier to construct, maintain, and adjust than three-dimensional infrastructure).

But I'm starting to think the two trends are connected in another way. A way that speaks volumes about the company's artistic philosophy in this day and age.

First, let's backtrack a few decades. I think I'm just old enough to remember when Disney theme parks openly lauded their technology as technology...not just to the theme park buffs but to mainstream audiences. “Come see this cool thing we built,” advertisements would say.* They freely admitted that they were creating sophisticated illusions and invited people to be impressed by the ingenuity on display. Disneyland took on the role of a stage magician, wearing top hat and tails and wowing audiences with sleight-of-hand tricks that had us all wondering “How did they do that?” but never for a moment doubting that it was a trick.

I'm not sure when that started changing, but the transition is certainly complete by now. The goal these days appears to be total suspension of disbelief. Disney doesn't want guests to be awed by how lifelike the animatronics are...because they don't want people thinking about them being animatronics. They want them to be bowled over by the prospect of being in the presence of the characters, in a kind of imposed celebrity worship. I don't know why they went in this direction—surely they don't expect anyone over the age of about six to actually be fooled, and surely popular characters have the same draw whether we're mutually pretending they're real or not, but it is what it is. The magician has traded their tuxedo for a purple robe sprinkled with stars and a pointy hat, and insists we play along with the notion that the otherworldly spirit in the summoning circle is real, and evince awe that the wizard can call up that spirit, as opposed to the less fashionable spirits at the command of other wizards.

The upshot is that the more Disney de-emphasizes the craft on display in their parks, the less reason there is to put a lot of effort into that craft. Imagineers used to advance their tech for its own sake as well as for the entertainment value, but now, with the sole benchmark being “How well does this convince the kiddies that they are meeting their heroes?”, all that matters is that it looks right. Building an animatronic that really looks and moves like a beloved character is hard. Creating a movie that really looks and moves like the character is...well, it's automatic, since these characters came from movies to begin with.

TL;DR: The increased use of screens on rides isn't just for economic reasons; it's also because Disney has become so fixated on getting people to play along with the delusion that the characters are real that the company has forgotten how to be proud of invention for its own sake.

I dunno. Just a thought I had.

* Not in those exact words.

Armchair Imagineering: A Proper “Studios” Park

There seems to be a broad consensus among theme park fans that Disney's worst results come about when it tries to poach Universal's fanbase by creating parks (and sometimes sections of parks) where the “theme” is: movies. The main reason for this consistent failure is, I think, that Disney is too wedded to the concept of “magic.” The thing that makes Universal Studios Hollywood unique is not which IPs it can lay claim to, but that it is entwined with a working film studio, and its centerpiece attraction (as well as various others over the years) is all about showing its guests, in some detail, how filmmaking works, how the illusions are created. Other Universal parks don't have this going for them, but some of the mojo rubs off on the brand.

But Disney won't do that, because for some reason the company hates admitting that what it does is artifice. Maybe the decision-makers actually don't think much of guests' imaginations,* so they assume they have to trick us into believing it's all really truly reeeeaaaaaaaaal or we can't be counted on to purchase Princess costumes and toy lightsabers. Whatever the reason, the “Studios” parks end up being dumping grounds for rides based on movies that don't fit the themes of a Kingdom-style park or Epcot or DisneySea, but they're still movies, so they totally work in a park where the theme is movies, right?

Right?

Does it even need to be said at this point that I disagree?

If Disney really wants to duke it out with Universal, it has to be willing to go all-in—to say not only “Aren't our movies awesome?” but also “And here's how we make them so.”

And then it has to do its rival one better by focusing on not just the most popular movies under its already vast and still-expanding umbrella, but those movies that best demonstrate “movie magic”—the ones that advance the artform in some significant way, the ones that enjoy not just box-office success but critical acclaim. By the same token, the company needs to be willing to highlight the differences in how the various studios it has absorbed tell their stories, instead of just blithely subsuming them under the homogenized banner of Disney-ness and pretending that Elsa, Spider-Man, Chewbacca, and Dory are all natural companions to each other.

This Armchair Imagineering post offers a rough idea of how they might do that in a hypothetical “studios” park.

In addition to this bold premise, I continue to champion the idea that there is a broad middle ground between the biggest bestest most elaborate thrill rides on one hand, and the humble character meet-and-greets on the other, and Disney needs to get back to offering more of that middle ground.

Intrigued yet?

Imagineering Theory: But I WANT To Design a Tie-In Ride!

You may have noticed that I tend to come down pretty hard on IP-based attractions around here, especially the newer ones. And maybe you've found that a little...distressing. The great majority of Armchair Imagineering efforts probably take inspiration from Disney films and TV series. It's hard not to go that way when there's so much material to draw on and we have so many examples already in the parks. I know I can come across pretty strong in my opinions, and maybe I've given you cause to wonder if I might be preemptively dismissing your own ideas as unworthy.

Sorry if I did give that impression. I didn't mean to. It would be pretty hypocritical of me, given that most of the items under my own Armchair Imagineering tag use Disney properties as inspiration. Moreover, it would be pointless to discourage the Armchair Imagineers of the world from sowing their seeds of creativity in such fertile soil.* Everyone expects Disney IPs to be adapted as rides in Disney theme parks. It's a legit tradition. It's not gonna stop.

The point of this post is not to tell you not to design tie-in rides. It's to tell you how you can design tie-in rides that are interesting, unique, and even artistic on their own merits. To that end, I've got some Do's and Don't's to offer you. Actually, make that Don't's and Do's—each Don't followed by one or more Do's as alternatives.

Now, if only I could get WDI to take my advice...

Armchair Imagineering: Make Mine Marvel

The construction walls have been up at California Adventure for several months at this point, as “a bug's land” is torn out and replaced with...I hesitate to say a Marvel land, since I don't know yet what all will be there. Let's go with Marvel stuff. “a bug's land” is being torn out and replaced with Marvel stuff. WDI is being pretty tight-lipped about the details, but apparently we have an Avengers attraction and a Spider-Man attraction on the way, which in combination with the Guardians Tower of Galactic Terror—Mission: Breaktime! Breakneck! Breakout! amounts to...one heck of a missed opportunity.

There are two problems with IP-mania, as I see it. There's the simple fact of it, the trend of attractions and entire lands based on popular film properties completely overtaking original concepts. I've been over the reasons this is a problem on multiple occasions, so I won't go into it now. The second problem is that IP-based attractions are rarely executed in a way that does justice to either the source material or the larger themes of the park/land where they are placed. We see a lot of “book report” rides, as well as attractions that literally just put character images on otherwise unexceptional rides.* There tends to be too much emphasis on popular characters, rather than on making guests feel like part of an exciting world.

And that's what I'm worried about with the new Marvel stuff. Mission: Brakepads! is already a subpar execution, because they forced it to occupy infrastructure designed for another ride entirely. There's almost certainly a good Guardians of the Galaxy ride out there in the realm of possibility, but deciding to make one where the premise is that the Collector literally took a traveling exhibit of his stuff to the literal California Adventure, simply because there was a convenient tower there to squeeze it into...well, it's not what I would have done. (For the record, this is what I would have done.) A GotG attraction should take advantage of the exotic interplanetary setting and make us feel as if we, like young Peter Quill, have been abducted by aliens and introduced into this hyper-advanced, multi-species society. To the extent that a Guardians of the Galaxy ride needs to focus on its wacky stars, we should at least get to see them guarding the freaking Galaxy, yeah?

Getting back to the upcoming additions...I don't have high hopes. The Avengers and Spider-Man are certainly fun characters, but their “standard” adventures take place in...ordinary cities in the real, modern world. You don't watch an Avengers movie to see what fantastic realm they're going to visit, because they (generally) won't. You do it to see what sort of over-the-top baddie they have to face this time, and how they'll use their over-the-top powers to win the day.

I don't know about you, but I live in an ordinary city in the real, modern world, and it's boring as hell. Which is why I go to theme parks.

The sad irony is that there are several MCU properties that could provide that sense of wonder and participatory adventure that the Avengers and Spider-Man are (probably) not quite up to. Let me throw out some ideas.

(Just as a note before we begin, I haven't actually seen all of the Marvel movies. I should probably get around to it one of these days, but it would be something like 40+ hours of cinema to sit through. So I'm going off what I have seen.)

Armchair Imagineering: Walt Disney Animation Holiday

We can definitely start thinking about Christmas music now.

Disney sure loves its holiday overlays. Between Halloween and Christmas, and counting parades and fireworks shows, there are no fewer than eleven holiday-specific attractions in the Disneyland Resort.* Likewise, quite a few music loops throughout the resort are seasonally replaced with Christmas-y versions.

However, there is one—attraction? sort of? let's call it an attraction-esque feature—wherein the music is much of the point, yet it has never been given this sort of temporary reskin. And this despite the fact that the feature in question is so modular that creating and executing a special version for the winter holiday season would be a snap. I am referring, of course, to the lobby area of Walt Disney Animation in California Adventure.

I've gushed about this spot before. It's just such a pleasant place to pass a half-hour or so until the display loops around. Given the extent to which my personal enjoyment of the Christmas season relies on the holiday's unique atmosphere, I can't help but feel this would only be enhanced if the lobby lined up with the holidays. The only snag is...is there enough material?

It's not that Disney never makes anything specifically for Christmas. Consider Mickey's Christmas Carol, or Prep and Landing, or even Beauty and the Beast: Enchanted Christmas. The problem from our point of view is that Walt Disney Animation focuses exclusively on theatrical features, on the output of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar. And given that the point is to toot Disney's horn about its best offerings, things should probably stay that way. So where are we supposed to come up with a 30-minute loop's worth of Christmas footage when not a single entry in the Disney Animated Canon or the Pixar filmography counts as a Christmas movie?

Well, there are a few things we can do. The main one is that instead of celebrating an entire movie at a time, we can zero in on particular scenes, sequences and songs that are Christmas-related. Another is that we can then broaden our standards to include general winter imagery, which in American culture is associated almost exclusively with Christmas. I'll go ahead and say we can venture a little outside the WDAS/Pixar dyad, as long as we stay within the realm of theatrical feature animation. And finally...as a holiday special, maybe this loop doesn't have to be as long as the standard one. 15-20 minutes should suffice.

So what have we got to play with?

After Action Report: Window Shopping

It’s certainly possible to experience Disneyland without walking down Main Street, USA, but a) it’s non-intuitive, b) it’s not recommended, and c) I hope you like trains. I doubt if one guest in a million even thinks to try it. I think we can safely say that within an acceptable margin of error, everyone who visits the Happiest Place on Earth gets to take a gander at one of its most unique features: the Main Street Emporium window displays.

In principle, the Emporium windows are as straightforward a case of synergy as you can get—scenes from Disney films converted into animated dioramas for cross-promotional purposes. In practice, it’s a rather odd choice—that’s a lot of effort to go to for what amounts to a film trailer. And why the Emporium rather than, I don’t know, a dedicated exhibit space? And why did they keep on doing it? And why do we, the guests, find these miniaturized movie moments so goshdarn compelling?

Armchair Imagineering: Five Disney Movies That Absolutely Should Have Been Tapped For Rides By Now, So Why Haven't They?

I think the title about says it all.

Okay, fine, I'll write a proper intro.

It can be instructive to examine which Disney films get tie-in rides (or other major attractions, as opposed to character meet-and-greets, parade units, etc.) and which ones don't. Quite some time ago, I grumped about how the Pixar movies get the gold star treatment in the parks, while the films of the Disney Renaissance that actually pulled the animation studio back to the prominence it has enjoyed for a solid generation are largely ignored. The so-called Golden and Silver Ages are well-represented, naturally, while the less-ambitious projects of the Sixties and Seventies are mostly sidelined. Lately, the high-profile live-action IPs Disney has bought are getting the lion's share of the attention from WDI.

The facts are what they are, but I'm sure we can all think of movies that we wish had been turned into rides, but which have been rather inexplicably skipped so far. Here are five of mine, in no particular order.

Okay, fine, in chronological order of release.

Flipping the Script: The Matterhorn

 THIS NEVER POSTED? WTF, BLOGSPOT?

It occurred to me the other day that I've probably attracted some new readers with my Tumblr cross-blogging...so assuming you're out there, welcome aboard! You'll get the hang of things around here pretty quickly, but to assist the process, here's a “cheat sheet” for the major kinds of posts I am in the habit of making.

When you see the After-Action Report tag, I'm reviewing and/or commenting on a current attraction—you could theoretically drop in on the Anaheim resort the next day to fact-check me. Sentimental Paleontology, by contrast, is for my thoughts on extinct attractions. (Get it? Extinct...paleontology? Get it? Dangit, I explained the joke. Never explain the joke.)

Armchair Imagineering is where I stash my detailed ideas for things that could be added to the park, in a parallel timeline if not this one. It is distinct from Imagineering Theory, which is more about the principles of attraction design.

With Unauthorized Fun, I offer potential ways to enjoy Disneyland that you won't find in any brochure. And then there's Kidnap the Magic, wherein I offer potential ways to take Disneyland home with you...that you won't find in any brochure. (This is how I label the posts regarding my themed parties, of which there are embarrassingly many, and my craft projects, of which there are embarrassingly few.)

In Source Materials posts, I examine how things and concepts from the real world are used to great effect inside the parks. On the other hand, there are also Beyond Blue Sky posts, where I pull out all the stops on my wildest fantasies, and the topic is often how things and concepts from the parks could be used elsewhere.

Huh, I never realized before how many matched pairs of topic categories I was setting up.

The last few post categories don't line up so neatly, however. The Second Sense is a tag I put on any post dealing primarily with in-park music (especially area music) and other audio. It Came From the Fandom is something I pull out when I run short of time and ideas—I bang out a quick post promoting a Disneyland-related thing from elsewhere on the internet. (We just had a nice example last week.)

And finally, the newest post category, introduced right near the end of 2017: Flipping the Script, wherein I propose a rough outline—more than an elevator pitch, but less than a full treatment—for a film based on an attraction that doesn't have one yet.

And that's what this week's post is! What luck!

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.

The Second Sense: A Disneyland Playlist, Part 3

The playlist project continues! (Just checking in? First check out Part 1 and Part 2!) Fantasyland is so rich in attractions, and the song choices are so obvious, that it gets an installment all to itself.

Now, “obvious” doesn't mean “automatic.” The dark rides tend to sample pretty liberally from their source materials' soundtracks, and in limiting myself to one song per attraction, I have to do some heavy pruning to pick the best one.

Imagineering Theory: The Pixar Problem, Part 2

Last week, I identified the problem: Audiences love Pixar movies and therefore so does Disney's upper management, but the most easily marketable ones don't have a natural place to belong in the Disneyland Resort. There is serious tension between the profit motive and artistic integrity, and in the current business climate of the parks, artistic integrity gets kicked to the curb. Pixar IPs are slung into the Resort willy-nilly, and we're lucky if a flimsy justification is included.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to get the average guest to realize this is a problem. “So what?” they might say. “The kids like it.” An entire generation has come of age in the post-Pressler era, with no memory of what Disneyland was like before the synergitis metastasized. Those who are aware of the mismatch—fans of the art of theme park design—tend to have trouble coming up with a tidy solution.

You see, it's not just that individual Pixar movies don't gel with Disney's traditional theme park areas...the entire studio's storytelling style is a bit askew from its parent company's. This is in no way an indictment of Pixar, whose commitment to quality is so great that we even get excited about their sequels. However, people who think that because their movies are animated and have a castle logo at the beginning, Pixar = Disney...well, let's just say they're obviously not film students.

I am not a film student either, but if today I awoke from a ten-year coma and all I had to watch during my tedious physical therapy was Disney and Pixar's respect animated outputs from that past decade, with the studio bumpers removed, I'm pretty sure I could sort them correctly...not even counting the blatantly obvious ones like Winnie The Pooh and Toy Story 3.* Perhaps because I am not a film student, I have a hard time pinning down the essential Disney-ness and Pixar-ness that make it so easy to tell the two apart, but I know it when I see it, and it might be the key thing keeping Pixar IPs from meshing well with Disney theme parks. Said parks are designed from the ground up to capitalize on and explore Disney-ness, even in the case of non-branded attractions.

Some of the aforementioned theme park fans recognize this—or are at least aware that merely having a Disney label doesn't make something “True Disney”—and try to come up with a solution to the Pixar Problem that involves sequestering the Pixar stuff off in its own little area away from everything else. “What we really need,” they'll say, “is a dedicated land/park for the Pixar stuff,” perhaps followed by some elaboration of the concept.

It's an idea with its heart in the right place, but I'm going to be the jerk here and say that a themed land or a full park just for rides based on Pixar movies—a Pixarland, if you will—would not be...very...good.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 5

Wow, would you look at the date today? Happy birthday, Disneyland! 61 already, and you don't look a day...over...

Anyway.

Here we go! The final eleven movies in the Disney Animated Canon released to date, and the themed areas in the Disneyland Resort I think would suit them best!

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 4

Is everyone ready to just dive right in? Let's do this.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 3

I'm recovering nicely, thanks for asking.

But I'm still doing the rest of these movies.

Before I forget, Happy (Slightly Belated) Canada Day to my Canadian readers and Happy Independence Day to the Americans!

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 2

Hi there. In case you weren't here last week, I'm taking a look at all 55 (soon to be 56) films in the Disney Animated Canon and assigning each one a themed area in the Disneyland Resort.

That's enough preamble.

Imagineering Theory: The Disney Animated Canon And Area Themes, Part 1

It's a major challenge keeping up a weekly posting schedule (nearly 18 months now, go me!) and from time to time I run low on inspiration. This is one of those times.* So for the next few weeks, I'll be doing something...straightforward. Please don't be disappointed if there are no astonishing insights or beautifully written passages for a while; I need to go on some sort of auto-pilot. Consider it a necessary compromise between my usual practices and putting the blog on hiatus.

The Disney Renaissance vs. the Pixar Revolution

WARNING: Grumpiness, Next 1,000+ Words.

Yeah...I'm one of those people. The ones who think Pixar movies are great and all, but they really don't belong in our Disney parks...at least not to the extent they have come to dominate the landscape. I could give you all the usual reasons—the movies are Disney-adjacent rather than “true” Disney, the attractions don't really fit the area themes, we often lose better (or at least more original) stuff to make room—but I recently put my finger on another reason the Pixar proliferation bugs me:

This didn't happen with the Disney Renaissance.

Imagineering Theory: Zootopia and Theme Flexibility

I cannot say enough good things about Disney's latest animated feature, Zootopia, now showing in a theater near you! But this is not a film blog. This is a theme park blog; hence my observations will mostly be limited to discussing the potential and actual impact of this completely excellent movie on the Disneyland Resort.

So far, Zootopia has been brought to the parks in the laziest and most predictable way possible: by situating fuzzies of the two main characters in Hollywood Land for photos and autographs. The motivation? To sell park-hopper tickets. The justification? Well, it's a movie, isn't it?

Please.

Apart from a blink-and-you-miss-it* joke about the pronunciation of “Tujunga,” there is nothing whatsoever tying Zootopia to California. But neither does it fit comfortably into any of the themed lands of Disneyland Park...or does it? This post is going to be a thought experiment on the flexibility of area themes and the need for creative solutions to potential mismatches. “Theme dilution” is a common pet peeve among Disney theme park fans, but the area themes have never been 100% pure, and as Disney's cinematic palette expands, it's only going to be more challenging for the Imagineers to successfully integrate movie-based attractions** with the limited selection of themed areas available.

To be clear, this entire post is completely speculative. I do not expect a permanent attraction based on Zootopia to be built in any park. (Actually, the film's setting would make for a fantastic basis for a theme park all on its own, but that's another topic.) The point of the exercise is that we have a wonderful movie, tearing up box-office records, taking place in a fantastic world that would be a blast to visit...and there's no obvious place to put it in Disney's parks.

So what about the non-obvious places?

After-Action Report: Indiana Jones Adventure

FIRST, AN ASIDE:
I try not to dwell on news items here at the Disneyland Dilettante, but seeing as it's Adventureland month and all, I couldn't ignore the announcement that Disney is finally going ahead with a movie based on the Jungle Cruise, an idea the studio has been toying with for the past decade. So far the only details released are a) it will be a period piece and b) it will star Dwayne Johnson. The second bit amuses me because of his role in the upcoming animated film Moana—are they just making him their Adventureland mascot or what? I'll have to hold off on forming specific opinions until I know more about the project, but for now I am cautiously optimistic. Even before I knew they were thinking about doing it, I thought the Jungle Cruise would be a decent enough candidate for a ride-turned-movie. It has the same big strength as Pirates of the Caribbean: a strongly defined mood and setting without much in the way of an established plot to shackle the writers...which I believe is where the 2003 Haunted Mansion movie went wrong. (Well, that and letting Eddie Murphy stomp all over it.)
END OF ASIDE. ON WITH THE MAIN POST.

This is where I reveal that I am an enormous hypocrite.

I have multiple posts on this blog where I denounce Star Tours—and the whole phenomenon of Star Wars in Disneyland—for various reasons. Chief among them is that it began as, basically, an intruder—an outside property that wasn't quite a thematic fit with the area where it was placed, but which subsequently took over said area to an extent, imposing its aesthetic on the non-IP-based attractions that had been there all along. Another is that it's too focused on recapping famous scenes from its source material to add much to its canon.

Um.

In the interest of basic human decency, I have to admit that the Indiana Jones Adventure is guilty of these same sins...yet for some reason, I have no objections. I love this ride. Its existence feels as natural to me as the existence of Star Tours feels forced. I can accept this as another wacky installment in the serialized adventures of everyone's favorite fedora-wearing archaeologist, even if it bears suspicious resemblances to many of his other adventures.

Part of it, of course, is that I just plain like the Indiana Jones franchise better than I like Star Wars.* Just knowing that it's there in the Happiest Place Where Dreams Come True on Earth doesn't automatically make me roll my eyes. And maybe that's hypocritical in itself—I tend to look down my nose at people who get all excited about the prospect of Marvel superheroes and MOAR STAR WARS in Disneyland because they love the movies. I don't think that stuff is a natural fit for the park, so I disdain the fan loyalty that causes people to like the idea. But is Indiana Jones really any more appropriate for Adventureland than Lucas's other, bigger baby or Stan Lee's portfolio is for Tomorrowland?

Actually...I would argue that it is.