tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post8651269354869741213..comments2023-10-11T11:11:52.953-04:00Comments on Pure Imagineering: The Hollywood Studios that never was, and always will be.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09028420225666536590noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post-39285327153529342552011-08-31T21:08:38.761-04:002011-08-31T21:08:38.761-04:00Your point about basing lands off living people is...Your point about basing lands off living people is well taken, my friend.<br /><br />As a reminder, here are my proposed lands:<br /><br />Burtontown<br />Lucas Ranch<br />Marvel Studio<br />Muppets Courtyard<br />Pixar Place<br />Studio Ghibli<br />Walt Disney Animation Studio<br /><br />So if we re-name it *Lucasfilm* Ranch, is Burtontown the only remaining issue? Because I’ll gladly lose it. It was a cynical addition.<br /><br />I figured Burton’s style would make a nifty theme park land.<br /><br />And the Nightmare Before Christmas would make a good dark ride.<br /><br />And it’s too easy to come up with Alice in Wonderland attractions. If we themed ‘em to the shitty live action, it would justify giving Burton a land, which would secure Nightmare its own real estate, which would keep it far removed from my precious, precious Haunted Mansion.<br /><br />But we might as well design *palatable* Alice attractions, themed to the 1951 cartoon. They could go into Wonderland, a Fantasyland suburb that'd replace Disneyland's Toontown. That'd probably segue nicely into Small World, too.<br /><br />And we can stick the Nightmare ride in the Disney Animation Studio.<br /><br />(Sighs.) Fiiiiine.<br /><br /><br />Also, I told you personally, but so that it’s publicly stated: your Studios is incredible. Yes. Let’s develop it.<br /><br />And I know it’s anachronistic, but we should think about a walk-through of Howard Hughes’ (bunker / screening room)!!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09028420225666536590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post-12274837183114639812011-08-22T05:21:42.201-04:002011-08-22T05:21:42.201-04:00Good points, all. I'll address them sloppily a...Good points, all. I'll address them sloppily and at random.<br /><br />First, I'm willing to amend my earlier comment about theming. While I maintain that preserving the inter-war Hollywood aesthetic throughout the lands would be cool, I see what you're going for. I don't think there's anything wrong with a park where modern studios get the focus. *But:*<br /><br />This is still a park about *Hollywood,* right? It's about movies *qua* movies. It's a celebration of *filmmaking.* If there's a Lucasfilm land, oughtn't it be about Lucasfilm *as a movie studio*? (Lucasfilm, of course, isn't a studio-- it's a production company-- but never mind.) If this is a land full of rides where Lucasfilms's characters are presumed to be real (as they are in, say, Indiana Jones), then the rides have nothing to do with filmmaking; in fact, they're specifically a *denial* of filmmaking; they're fantasy, and they belong in Magic Kingdom.<br /><br />To be clear, I don't know exactly how to fill a park with attractions dedicated to filmmaking and/or the Hollywood myth. The best thing I can come up with is something like this:<br /><br />You'd set it up like the World Showcase, with each of the 7 majors and mini-majors of Hollywood's Golden Age having a pavilion. At MGM, you could watch Judy Garland's screen test, see the Ruby Slippers, walk through a Wizard of Oz soundstage recreation, etc. And all the sound-based attractions would, of course, be re-located to Warner Bros., where you could also drink Bloody Marys (the drink was invented on the Warners lot by comedian George Jessel-- fact). At UA, they'd project Chaplin shorts, with live Wurlitzer accompaniment. Universal would have monster-makeup demonstrations. Et cetera. And for some reason, in this context, the idea of the studios having movie rides doesn't bother me-- perhaps because they'd seem more like *demonstrations* than fantasies.<br /><br />Bonus: Disney could get the other studios' to contribute to operating costs, in return for hellified publicity.<br /><br />*****<br /><br />Re: referring to the lands as studios rather than people. I think referring to brands that the company doesn't own is pretty much a non-starter. Marvel, ESPN, ABC, the Disney Channel, Pixar, Touchstone (ha!), Mirimax (haha!), and Dimension (hahaha!) are safe. Large corporations-- say, Paramount-- are also probably safe because huge old companies' reputations are both entrenched and carefully managed.<br /><br />But given how much shit Disney has gone through due to their trivial connection to Michael Jackson, they'd be fools to base an *entire land* on an individual or his company. I mean, just think how glad they are that they scrapped their Polanskiland plans in the 1970s!<br /><br />*****<br /><br />I think it'd be *amazing* to re-theme Downtown Disney to old Hollywood glamour! Big bands!-- dancing!-- streamers in the air! And you could have those weird old "oriental" clubs run by corpulent Asians called "the fat man" who are always up to no good!<br /><br />Oh-- and you could recreate the Sunset Strip and invite real bands to play!<br /><br />And you could have someone murdered on a yacht every night by William Randolph Hearst! (Too soon?)Andrewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post-46671632180964913712011-08-21T18:33:23.340-04:002011-08-21T18:33:23.340-04:00Touche, O Mighty Andrew.
In the idealistic-yet-u...Touche, O Mighty Andrew.<br /><br /><br />In the idealistic-yet-unfeasible tone of this blog, most of the movie rides in other parks will be relocated to Studios.<br /><br />Ultimately, my vision of Studios IS a dumping ground, but a classy one. It will host the synergized rides so the other parks won’t have to. And it’ll only use the major brands, the brands that the park-going public expects, and the brands that I think will be good for the park-going public (because I am vain and powerful).<br /><br /><br />Essentially, yes, the lands are based upon franchises, but branding them by their (studio / auteur) is a more efficient way to group them.<br /><br />For example, the park currently has a Star Wars attraction and an Indiana Jones attraction. The two franchises have distinct settings, stories, and--I think you’ll agree--qualities, but it seems wasteful to give them distinct lands.<br /><br />They’re united by Lucas’ authorial voice...a tone of “sophisticated pulp.” If we make several lands based upon Lucas franchises...well...it seems semantic not to group them together and identify them as one single land of Lucas franchises.<br /><br />Let me ask, if we refer to the lands as studios, and not living, scandal-prone people, will that make the difference? If George Lucas get outed as a serial killer, will Lucas land be any more disgraced than Lucasfilm land?<br /><br /><br />You raise an excellent point about a clash of theming between the Hollywood That Never Was, and Always Will Be and the studio lands.<br /><br />The answer is a simple one: the lands are movie studios. We expect to see clashing sets on movie studios. It creates intrigue. The lands beckon us over to see what all the visual ruckus is about.<br /><br />Islands of Adventure uses this principle:<br /><br />http://ronin.roguecc.edu/Orlando2011/WDW2011-1154p.JPG<br /><br />I suspect that (clashing / anachronistic) lands are permissible, so long as they’re motivated by the unifying theme...and in our Dream Factory of a park, they are. But we have to be careful: a land’s theme should not overwhelm its park’s theme.<br /><br />The tricky part, as you note, is keeping these disparate lands submissive to the Hollywood That Never Was, and Always Will Be. <br /><br />For this reason, I have NO intention of removing Los Angeles geography from the park. I don’t like they layout of Sunset Boulevard--it’s a tundra-length runway with all the attractions at the far end--but aesthetically, it’s one of my favorite sections of in all of Disney.<br /><br />No, I want MORE LA geography! We’ll have a Hollywood sign, those elephants on top of the columns, an Umami Burger dark ride...you name it! Every spare inch will be the Hollywood That Never Was, and Always Will Be.<br /><br />I just don’t want them to be lands, because I think a land should dictate its attractions, and I don’t know how to make Los Angeles-themed attractions. Or period movie-themed attractions. And I’ve got some strong ideas for filmmaking attractions, but at the moment, there are only enough to fill a land.<br /><br />A park that features these things would be incredible. If you have ideas, I’d love to collaborate with you, or if you write something yourself, I’ll gladly post it up here.<br /><br />And if they’re anything like your ideas for parades and clubs, do so with haste! We have a park to fix, damn it!<br /><br /><br />As a side note, I wonder if your view of the Hollywood myth doesn’t suit a re-theming of Downtown Disney. Or maybe we can make our refurbished Studios become an “adult” park with late hours.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09028420225666536590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post-83675921803242260102011-08-21T16:27:21.806-04:002011-08-21T16:27:21.806-04:00Predictably well-written and well-argued-- but I&#...Predictably well-written and well-argued-- but I'm not sure, for once, that I totally agree with your premise.<br /><br />It seems to me that there are other Disney parks devoted to "riding the movies." For example, all of them. Magic Kingdom, DHS, DCA, and Disneyland all have "based-on-a-movie" rides, and even DAK and EPCOT have Disney movie tie-ins. Making DHS the park where there are Even More Rides Based on Movies seems to preserve its current status as a dumping ground.<br /><br />If this is indeed a park about *Hollywood*-- its myth, its aesthetic, its workings-- oughtn't the entire thing be your eighth land? Shouldn't "movie-making" be the focus of more-or-less the entire park?<br /><br />(Practically speaking, of course, some of the lands you suggest would be non-starters anyway, for the obvious reason that Disney doesn't control the brands. I know this blog is devoted to utopian thinking, and that the ugly fact that the parks' main purpose is cross-promotion has no place in a pretty village such as this-- But even putting that aside, if Disney can't guarantee that, say, Tim Burton won't make a series of kiddie pornos next, then they *really* can't spend a billion dollars promoting him at their parks. The lands could hypothetically be based on *franchises* (Star Wars, etc.) because those are licensable, but they can't be based on living people. Which leads me to another parenthetical:)<br /><br />(Don't these lands rub against the theming you describe? Your DHS is, you say, based on inter-war Hollywood-- but its attractions are based on Pixar movies? I sense a rather troubling tension there.*)<br /><br />[*FN: You can, of course, make the argument that to have lands based on period movies, however awesome, would be unpopular with guests, which, to some extent, is probably true. That being said, any possible land will be more popular (in America) than a Studio Ghibli land. So I sense that driving traffic isn't your top priority here.]<br /><br />Also, I wonder if you're not too dismissive of the importance of geographical Los Angeles-- not because I'm trying to deflate the park's focus on "the idea of Hollywood" into some prosaic fixation on the "corporeality of Hollywood," but because the geography of L.A. is inextricably linked to its mythology. People who have never set foot in Los Angeles (and maybe *only* they) are stirred and transported by names like "Sunset Boulevard" and "Beverly Hills"; to keep that stuff out of the park only weakens its ability to embody the Myth of Hollywood. For the sake of theming, then, I'll take more of that and less, say, "Marvel Studios."<br /><br />If you've been reading carefully, you'll note that I have a lot of big opinions about what *shouldn't* be in the park without many helpful suggestions as to what DHS should *include.* It is indeed perplexing. I think the behind-the-scenes stuff currently in the park is correct in concept if not execution. I think having, say, the Brown Derby is a nice touch, and I'd push for more 30s-era-nightclubs, a la The Cocoanut Grove, which seems like the correct form of nighttime entertainment in DHS (fireworks spectaculars having exactly nothing to do with Hollywood). The "parades," if they're not already, should be premieres, complete with big stars and flashing lights and singing boys and dancing girls. Other than that, all I know is that there should be champagne.<br /><br />Which leads me to my uber-reservation: I'm not 100% sure the park should exist at all, the Hollywood myth being manifestly inappropriate for children and most of the park's proper function having been folded into DCA long ago. Frankly, the fact that Pure Imagineering believes in DHS so passionately may be the strongest argument I can think of in its favor.Andrewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505979215835041890.post-69137106249166290052011-08-21T00:54:17.260-04:002011-08-21T00:54:17.260-04:00A Studio Ghibli land at DHS?! I think Luke's ...A Studio Ghibli land at DHS?! I think Luke's head just exploded . . .L.Johttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00112837564293475244noreply@blogger.com