Progress City, U.S.A.

I first heard about The Muppet Man last December when it received a great deal of publicity due to its appearance at the top of the fabled “Black List.” The list, which has become something of a big deal, is an annual ranking of that year’s best unproduced scripts circulating around Hollywood. Making the list is now a badge of honor for screenwriters, and sometimes leads to high-profile pickups for scripts that are spotlighted.

The Muppet Man made news not only for its growing buzz as a screenplay, but for its content; it’s an unconventional biopic of Muppet creator Jim Henson, interspersing scenes from Henson’s life with vignettes from the Muppet world. Even stranger, it was written on spec by unknown young screenwriter Christopher Weekes without permission from the Henson family – pretty much guaranteeing that it would never be filmed unless it miraculously received the Hensons’ approval.

Oddly enough, the Henson company purchased rights to the script, but development remains at a standstill due to those ol’ “creative differences.” The problem is that Weekes wrote this biographical film without any knowledge whatsoever about Henson or his life save for what he could glean from Wikipedia and similar sources. It’s a biography rooted in speculation, so perhaps unsurprisingly the Henson family is reluctant to film a script that depicts their patriarch’s marriage and last days from such an uninformed perspective. According to the L.A. Times, the Hensons want to lighten the tone of the film and make it a more conventional Muppet tale. For now, the script remains unproduced.

It’s always risky to judge a film solely by the script; there can be a big difference between what’s on the page and what’s on the screen, and reading a script is simply a much different experience. I feel safe talking about The Muppet Man, though, because not only will it probably never actually be filmed, but it’s also so laden with cliche that no amount of visual whiz-bangery could enliven the more leaden elements of the screenplay.

I find myself despairing for Hollywood if The Muppet Man truly represents the best unproduced screenplay in town. At its core, it’s a very rote by-the-numbers biopic that’s straight out of “Misunderstood Creative Type” 101; you’ve already seen most of it a thousand times before. While there are elements of the story that provide a momentary spark or indicate interesting directions in which the film could go, these threads are quickly ignored or abandoned. In effect, the script reads like a checklist of Henson’s accomplishments and any interesting examination or introspection about the man is eschewed in favor of moving along to check another item off the list.

I’m an enormous fan of Henson and the Muppets, but I never knew anything about his private life or the creative process behind the development of the Muppet films and shows. This script certainly doesn’t shed much light on the man or his creations, a situation made worse when you realize that what vignettes that are shown are probably completely fabricated.

The script – the draft I read was dated August of 2008 – interweaves three basic storylines. The first follows Henson through the days before his death in 1990. These scenes serve to link a series of flashbacks that begin with Henson’s high school days in the 1950s and carry through to his successes as he builds his company in the 60s and 70s. A third storyline bookends the film, and takes place within the surreal Muppet world of “Moo York City.”

These Muppet sequences are, perhaps unsurprisingly, receiving the most attention for their “edgy” overtones. They follow a grizzled, middle-aged Kermit the Frog as he attempts to cope with Miss Piggy’s marriage to another. The sight-gag heavy world of Moo York is strongly reminiscent of Toontown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and we come to learn that Kermit and Piggy’s alienation is intended to mirror the real-world separation of Henson and his wife Jane.

But while these scenes might get the most press, the majority of the film is spent in the “real” world. The scenes from 1990 follow Henson as he becomes progressively more ill, rebuffing the constant efforts of his colleagues and family to have him see a doctor. We follow Henson from New York to Los Angeles, where he does an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show; his return to New York and subsequent trip to North Carolina, where Henson and his daughter Lisa visit his parents, follow an increasingly predictable pattern. Henson staggers around coughing, looking progressively more pale and drawn, and sleeps a lot. It’s about as entertaining as it sounds, too. Everyone he comes in contact with urges him to do two things – see a doctor, and call his wife. Despite the constant repetition of these exhortations, Henson does neither until it’s too late.

In fact, the gist of the film seems to be that everything would have just been OK had Henson called his wife. The flashbacks are filled with instances of people telling him to call Jane, which he never seems to do. Their marriage never seems to have any clear-cut conflict; he doesn’t fool around, he’s a good father, and his work demands aren’t portrayed as any more unreasonable than any other filmmaker. Yet throughout their marriage, Jane is by turns supportive and a flight risk; she cries – a lot – and tends to walk out on Henson with little provocation.

The bulk of the film takes place in flashbacks, which is unfortunate as those are the script’s weakest points. Young Henson is an affable oddball with a straightlaced father who just doesn’t understand Henson’s puppetry shenanigans. The whole setup is well-worn, to say the least – Henson gets pressured into dating a girl, takes out the pretty blonde who is initially put off by his social awkwardness, and he forces her to go see a monster movie while remaining completely unaware of her indifference. Later, when Henson meets his future wife at college, she’s dating – wait for it – a handsome jock! Even the means by which the flashbacks are introduced is creakily familiar; a character in the present day says something unexpected, Henson is shocked, and – surprise – we find out that the person who was speaking is now someone completely different, and we’re now in a flashback.

The cliches don’t end there. There are several scenes of Henson performing his early routines for skeptical executives or television crews, only to win them over immediately with his antics. There are cigar-chomping agents and businessmen, all of whom call Henson “kid” and “Jimbo” and speak in absurd showbiz patois. There’s the initial thrill of a first major success, followed immediately by a return home and – wait – are those police lights flashing in front of Henson’s house?

Weekes even uses, repeatedly, the oldest trick in the book for these biopics – the idea of “spontaneously” creating some famous idea/skit/character/song from random stimuli in the environment. The grouchy waiter at a dirty diner Henson visits is named Oscar? I bet we’ll be seeing that name again! Henson’s son is scared of monsters? What if this new character Grover is scared of monsters too? These vignettes might be true for all I know, but they’re all presented in such a gimmicky way that it stretches credibility.

Perhaps these cliches are so much more apparent because the Muppet films, especially The Muppets Take Manhattan, are themselves intentional spoofs of the “let’s put on a show!” tradition of corny old showbiz films. To take those same cigar-chomping cliches and repeat them creates some sort of feedback loop, as the script about Henson seems to rip off Henson’s own spoofs of hoary Hollywood tropes. There’s no deconstruction or synthesis in Weekes’s script, merely emulation.

But aside from the by-the-book personal tragedies and relationship difficulties, Henson’s professional rise is depicted as nothing less than meteoric. Everyone is immediately won over by his work; there are many scenes of studio crews reduced to hysterics and “rolling” with laughter as he performs. Even the Muppeteers themselves aren’t immune; any time we see the Muppets filming, Henson and his staff can barely keep themselves from cracking up at their own material. There are really no hindrances to his success; everything Henson wants to do, he pretty much gets to do. At times this makes him seem flighty, as we really get no reason for why he’ll suddenly want to do serious art or installation pieces, and then decide to go film children’s programming. There’s no insight; again, you just feel as if the screenwriter is ticking off accomplishments from a list without knowing why the decisions were ever made.

When Henson succeeds, though, he really succeeds – I don’t think there’s a single television set in the entire movie that isn’t tuned to one of his shows. At one point Henson looks out the window of his flat to see a number of other apartments, all full of children watching Sesame Street. In 1990, Henson awakes to find a television airing a 24-hour marathon of The Muppet Show. Trust me, if a television station in North Carolina had been airing 24-hour marathons of The Muppet Show in 1990 I would have known about it.

The most successful elements of the film are those where the human and Muppet worlds collide. In the start of the film, one worries that these moments will become irritating. They’re introduced as a series of Henson’s delusions, where a Muppet will come up to him and say something unexpected and – surprise! – he realizes it’s actually a member of his staff or one of his friends. Henson’s continued bewilderment in these moments makes them merely repetitious instead of interesting. Then, instead of using the Muppet interactions as a useful narrative conceit, the script proceeds to mostly forget about them for huge chunks of time.

The Muppets – mostly Kermit – do show up randomly throughout Henson’s life, mainly serving to mirror significant moments in his relationship with Jane. There’s very little interaction between the human and Muppet characters, though; an entire musical number is staged around Henson after he successfully proposes to Jane, yet neither of them notice. The entire concept of Kermit as an avatar for Henson is limited to the Frog sitting at Jim’s side during these moments, while Jane is mirrored by Miss Piggy. This would be ok, and could be quite amusing, if it weren’t always just a bit too on-the-nose. It doesn’t help that most of these montages – and there are a lot of montages in this film – are set to various songs from the Muppet films. What’s more, they’re deliberately staged to mimic those specific scenes from the original films. The end effect of this, at least from reading the screenplay, is to make me want to put down the script and turn on one of the Muppet films. Callbacks and references are one thing, but this is often straight-up mimicry. The more successful Muppet moments are when the worlds blend together in a less referential and more surreal manner, such as when Henson and his wife are shown their new apartment in New York by a couple of Muppet realtors.

The best bits come towards the end of the script, which is probably no surprise since these scenes best match actual events. It’s obvious that Henson’s death would be poignant and affecting, and it seems so much more tragic due to its sheer unnecessary and preventable nature. In fact, I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to read a script or watch a film that focused on these events. After all, one could make a pretty fascinating biography of Walt Disney, but I wouldn’t want it to be based solely on those last few weeks of him skulking around the studio coughing loudly.

Strange, then, that while the film lingers too much on Henson’s declining days, it finally clicks as he’s nearing the end. The line between worlds finally breaks down, and the idea of Kermit acting as a sort of Jiminy Cricket figure for Henson finally pays off when the Frog appears at Henson’s bedside for an honest conversation between two old campaigners about mortality and their respective loves. After so much time spent on the cliched rehash of Henson’s life, this one scene shows the unexplored potential of the film. It’s good – and it make me re-think entirely the potential of making a film about Henson.

Henson’s death and the subsequent memorial are, as expected, incredibly affecting. This is most likely due to the fact that it was lifted wholecloth from the actual events – you can even find footage of the real service on YouTube, and the script copies it nearly verbatim. The whole thing wraps up with a postscript in the Muppet world – after all, as Kermit says, you can’t end the film on such a down note – but like so much else in the script a good idea is spoilt by a lack of focus. Kermit, inspired by Jim’s actions, wrenches Piggy from the arms of her self-absorbed new love; there’s a wedding, and the events culminate with a Muppet version of Jim Henson arriving to join them for a final number. This is almost the perfect way to end such a film – Muppet Henson and all his creations in a sort of puppety Valhalla – but there’s too much going on. There’s the wedding, and then Animal goes nuts and tears down the church, then they’re on a soundstage, and there’s rainbows and singing… it’s just too much, and it muddles the message.

That’s pretty much the problem with the entire film. What are we supposed to take away from this? See a doctor? Call your wife? Don’t be such a creative genius or your wife will leave you? Subjects float in the background but are never meaningfully addressed – Henson’s desire to simultaneously be a serious artist and a entertainer of the masses, the commercialization and corporatization of his productions, and the urge to innovate vs. the push to repeat past successes would all be fodder for an interesting screenplay. Other key events in Henson’s life, such as his plans to sell his company to Disney and increase his creative activities, are ignored completely. And, in the end, who was Henson? Aside from finding out that he was a quiet, nice guy who was really creative (which we already knew), there’s not a lot to walk away with.

The idea behind The Muppet Man is sound. Perhaps that’s why the Henson company wound up buying the script; a complete rewrite that retains the successful concepts of the current script could be quite enjoyable. What’s inexplicable, though, is how this script is receiving so much attention in Hollywood for being a dark and edgy look at Henson, when in fact its observations seem facile and one feels that it barely scratches the surface of what might have made the man so truly fascinating. That’s a script that I’d like to see.

Special thanks to you-know-who-you-are…

Donald seems concerned…

A saw a story yesterday that made me realize that there have been a lot of little bits and pieces of news trickling out lately about new attractions that are coming to some of the less-covered Disney parks overseas. These developments don’t tend to get the coverage that new American attractions receive, so I thought that I’d summarize them here.

Now, I know I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately, what with all the disappointing shenanigans at Feature Animation and Parks & Resorts, but I’m afraid that won’t be turned around by these projects. One can pretty much guarantee that any new project at Tokyo Disneyland will be top notch due to the incredibly high levels of quality and service that the Oriental Land Company manages to achieve, but even they’re getting stuck with some new attractions that are less than… inspiring. But let’s take a look:

Concept art for Fantasmic! at Tokyo DisneySea (Disney)

The most recent announcement came a couple of days ago when the Oriental Land Company announced that it would be replacing its current night-time water show BraviSEAmo! with the similarly punctuated Fantasmic! The new show will debut in April 2011 as part of the celebrations surrounding Tokyo DisneySea’s 10th Anniversary, which is on September 4th of that year.

This might seem underwhelming to Disney fans, who might already have seen Fantasmic! in either California (where it’s played since 1992) or Florida (where it debuted in 1998). Thankfully we can hope for a little of that OLC magic (and their roughly $33.5 million investment) to update the twenty-minute show, as the announcement promises scenes from Aladdin, Cinderella and Finding Nemo. One can expect some new staging, too, on the waters of the park’s Mediterranean Harbor area. The concept art above shows Mickey atop some kind of ziggurat rising out of the water, and it seems apparent that the setup of the show will accommodate the larger lagoon.

BraviSEAmo! will perform its last show on November 13th, 2010, and preparation for Fantasmic! will begin soon after. While it might seem sacrilegious in Disney circles, I really am not a fan of Fantasmic!. In fact, I kinda hate it; it’s just not my thing (save for the giant MechaMaleficent). But hopefully the OLC will pull out all the stops to make it worthwhile. After all, their live shows typically tend to blow the offerings in the American parks completely out of the water.

Of course, DisneySea has been paying the price lately for its decade of awesomeness by receiving a string of cast-offs from other parks. Last year they got Turtle Talk with Crush, which fits beautifully with the 1930s ambiance of the American Waterfront area and the stylish S.S. Columbia. The American Waterfront will be the site of DisneySea’s next expansion, arriving in 2012. We’ve talked about this one before – behold:

Eeeeeehh… (Disney)

Toy Story Mania! (what’s up with all the exclamation points?) will be added to the New York area of the American Waterfront. Hopefully its budget of $129 million will lead to a little plussing.

Now.

Over at Tokyo Disneyland proper, there are a few new attractions on the way. The park, of course, has recently received the massively popular Monsters, Inc. dark ride. While unannounced, it also seems certain that the park will be receiving the upgrades to Star Tours that are on the way to parks stateside. In 2011, Mickey’s Philharmagic will be added in Fantasyland. While that’s perfectly reasonable, it naturally makes me sad because it necessitated the loss of the legendary Mickey Mouse Revue which I will now never be able to see in person. Between the Revue and Meet the World, replaced itself by Monsters, Inc., Tokyo Disneyland was a haven for attractions that should exist at Walt Disney World and I always hoped to see them myself.

Anyway.

Another attraction I’d always wanted to see at Tokyo Disneyland was the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a walkthrough attraction that took guests through the bowels of the park’s iconic castle. This attraction has to be one of the most truly bizarre in Disney park history, leading guests through a series of encounters with various villains to a final confrontation with the Horned King from The Black Cauldron as he tries to raise an army of the damned.

So, yeah. I kinda hated to miss that one. It sounded insane, it was the sole attraction ever to reference The Black Cauldron, and it furthered my inferiority complex about the Magic Kingdom having the only one of the first four Disney castles to not have an attraction of its own. But the Mystery Tour closed in 2006, without replacement. Until now.

Now, I understand the closing of the old attraction and I understand the desire to make the new walk-through, which opens in 2011, focus specifically on Cinderella. After all, it’s her castle. And if we’re embarking on a brave new world of endless princess meet-and-greet interactive experiences, this would be a reasonable place for one. But I want you to take a moment and absorb the piece of concept art that was released to accompany the press release announcing this attraction. This wasn’t released as part of a sequence of renderings, or to emphasize one specific aspect of the project. This was, and as far as I can tell still is, the only piece of artwork that has been released to promote this new attraction. Can you tell I’m really wanting to build this up? So much that I’m going to put a page break below to make you click through to see?

Drum roll, please – gentlemen, behold!

Read the rest of this entry »

About a week ago, Matt Hochberg at the Studios Central site posted a thoughtful counterpoint to my “top ten” article about fixing the Hollywood Studios park. It’s understandable that our viewpoints differ on the matter of the Studios; obviously I have a number of significant problems with the way the park has developed, while Matt is not only the creator of Studios Central but also RocknRollerCoaster.com and TowerOfTerror.org. I wanted to reply sooner, but wanted to wait until I could give the subject the attention it deserved. I posted my response earlier today in the comments thread under the original article, but thought I’d crosspost them here too. So, to quote Samuel L. Jackson, allow me to retort!

First, I appreciate the thoughtful analysis, even if it’s dissenting from my post. On most of my trips to WDW, I don’t even bother with the Studios anymore. This hasn’t always been the case, as I used to be really fond of the park. And there are obviously still parts with which I find a lot of merit – I think the front of the park, with Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, is one of the most beautifully themed areas in any Disney park. As a fan of film, and especially classic Hollywood films from the 30s and 40s, the park should be a home run for me. In fact, I think a lot of the problems I have with the Studios come from how much real potential it has to astound, and how it’s fallen short of that goal so far.

I’ll follow the model in their reply, and respond point by point. Their quotes are in italics:

“Each of the four parks has been the victim of grandiose ideas followed by cost-cutting slashes to projects that resulted in a watered down result. Look no further than the original plans for Animal Kingdom (Beastly Kingdom), Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland or Epcot (World Showcase countries, World showcase attractions, Seas pavilion) as starting points. Every park has big dreams and then reality sets in.”

This is true, but I think it hurts the Studios more than the others for a couple of reasons. Most glaring is the fact that Studios was created with the express purpose of being a working production facility. There have been a lot of prominent broken promises at all of the parks, but it’s most noticeable at the Studios because the production facility was such a huge part of the park’s original roster. EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom have had a lot of canceled projects, but they have many many other attractions to make up the difference. If the MK had opened with just 3-4 attractions, and the promise of Western River Expedition, it would have been far more glaring when that attraction didn’t materialize.

A more apt comparison is definitely Animal Kingdom, with its unbuilt Beastly Kingdom, but I think that even that park holds together better despite its overall lack of attractions. In a way, its walking trails are a version of the old Studio Tour, as they can easily soak up a few hours for the guests that are interested in that sort of thing.

The fact that the Studios started off so small, and had a major part of its function wither away, made it that much more of a problem when they didn’t add all the new lands and attractions that were conceived for the Disney Decade.

“If you want to talk about a theme park that started out one idea and became a very different park with a different purpose, Epcot is about as grandiose an example as one can find. Epcot was Walt’s idea for the perfect city of the future and if you look at those plans and look at Epcot today (or even in 1982), they are about as close in similarity as a Ferrari is to a Ford Taurus.”

While that’s true, and it’s also true that EPCOT’s mission has changed since 1982 from education to… whatever… the actual physical purpose of the park remains the same. The pavilions might have changed their content, but there’s still the giant figure-8 layout of pavilions around a central core. Studios has changed its purpose in a much greater fashion – half of the park, formerly closed to guest traffic, was a working studio. Now it’s a theme park. So while the function has changed, the form really hasn’t. That, for me, is why it’s a mess. The new guest areas simply weren’t designed to function that way, and so they don’t have the same effect that traditionally themed areas do.

“That’s a problem if you’re looking to make the park size larger to match the scale of Animal Kingdom or Epcot. I think the mistake is look outside the Studios’ gates when there’s is room inside. Let’s not forget that the Backlot Tour and the former animation areas take up a great deal of space. Now, you can sign me up for bulldozing the Backlot Tour since it’s a shell of it’s former self and I won’t sit here and defend it. In addition, you have plenty of space in the facilities that were built for the animation and production business that never came to the Studios. Instead, those bugalows and offices are used by park management as offices. I’m sure park management can be relocated elsewhere while this area is re utilized for the park.”

I totally agree with this – the Studios has plenty of room to expand within its own borders. There’s a lot of unused or underused real estate remaining from the park’s original setup. My main concern for the future is where to stick large show buildings for attractions, and where to put back-of-house offices without cramming up against the freeway like Disneyland. It’s not a major issue, but it should be kept in mind when planning future expansion.

“I beg to differ regarding the difficulty of navigating the park. It’s by no means perfect (Aside from perhaps Epcot, none of the parks are easily navigated by the average guest) and I think the walkways in Asia and Africa at Animal Kingdom are far worse in terms of getting from point A to point B. Most of the walkways in the backlot area of the park are wider than many walkways in the Magic Kingdom or Animal Kingdom, which makes it far easier to move around without being stalled by slow moving guests ahead of you.”

Again, I’ll agree that Animal Kingdom has some huge issues involving guest flow and traffic routes. That’s one reason I really frowned on that park for a long time, and it’s still an issue in a lot of respects. The problem with Studios, again, is that many areas that are onstage now were never intended to be guest areas. This means that while they may be efficient in handling traffic, they’re also straight featureless corridors. When you add theming to the buildings, like in the current Pixar Place, it squeezes the space available for foot traffic. And since most of these corridors are the only optimal way of getting from one area to the other, all traffic must go that way.

Again, it’s because those “backlot” areas weren’t meant for guests. Those soundstages are laid out on a grid pattern instead of the hub-and-spoke arrangement that seems to be more efficient for theme parks. Guests were never meant to have to walk around the huge Great Movie Ride show building, etc. That’s what I meant by the need to bulldoze – everything north of Echo Lake/Chinese Theater/Sunset Blvd needs to get knocked down and rebuilt to the standards (aesthetic and practical) of other parks. It’d be better show, and it would be better flow. See, it rhymes! That must mean it’s a good idea!

One last example: The park’s most popular, most visited attractions are both at the end of Sunset Boulevard (three, if they’re showing Fantasmic!). There’s only one way in, and one way out of that area, and it’s a real traffic disaster on even moderately busy days. I can’t fathom why they’ve never opened up a corridor from Sunset Market to the Animation Courtyard. That would so much improve the experience there, and make it much more convenient to get around.

“Outside of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards or Echo Lake, many people do not understand the theme the Backlot area. Like a real movie Studio, the Backlot area of the Studios is set as if you are looking through the viewfinder of a movie camera. … The attractions are set up like movie sets and just like a movie set, you don’t need to have some “overarching theme” between the two beyond the movie studio stuff we see between (guard stations, archways, billboards, etc). Hollywood Studios’ Backlot is designed to be the way it is not out of cheapness or lack of vision, but because it’s modeled after Hollywood movie studios.”

I have to disagree here, and say that it’s completely out of cheapness. the Disney-MGM Studios park was built in an extremely short time on a small budget, to beat Universal to the punch, and I see these “soundstage” elements as an easy cop-out to save some money. I have no problem with the idea of a “live set” on the New York Street or what used to be the backlot; when there was the pretense of actual filming it was fun to see how perspective worked with the city backgrounds or the residential street false-fronts. But it doesn’t work, for me, with the “theme park” side of things. Setting Star Tours on a soundstage, for instance, is an enormous cop-out. I thought so the first time I went as a kid – I didn’t know what they were going for, with C-3PO’s coffee break area and bulletin board off to the side. Are we going to Endor, or are we watching people make a movie about people going to Endor? Introducing the “working set” idea creates a whole extra layer of stuff to get between the guest and the experience. Cramming all these big-box attraction buildings in back to back makes it look like Universal, and robs the properties of the rich areas they deserve. Indy deserves an area of its own. Star Wars deserves an area of its own. Not a set, or a big warehouse building, but a fully-themed area.

Now other areas can play by other rules. The Muppets, which you mention, are essentially running their own “studio” so that type of theming makes sense. It also makes sense within the confines of their humor, which is very meta and self-referential. I’ve no problem with that – but I do think that Muppets deserve to have their area all to themselves, and another attraction to boot!

The point of my rant is that I don’t think Disney has done well in the post-”working studio” era of combining those old facilities with the existing theme park. I love movies, and the process of making movies, so these are all concepts that should appeal to me, but they’re so haphazard and poorly defined in the park now, it’s hard to see where they’ve committed to any single idea. The idea of not knowing what’s around the next corner is appealing in a way, but not when what’s around the corner is the Lights, Motors, Action marquee and state fair grandstand or the weird old Hunchback theater building. Hence, again, the need for the bulldozers. Give Lucas and the Muppets their own areas. Either remove the eyesore that is the Sounds Dangerous/SuperStar Television building or re-theme it extensively to match the period look of Echo Lake and the Chinese Theater. Clear out the muck. Add layers of activity, and add water! The backlot is like the Sonora desert.

“I’d love to see the trolley cars come to Hollywood Studios, although that may be easier said than done given some of the challenges, but it’d be nice to see one on Sunset Boulevard, similar to how you can ride the vehicles in the Magic Kingdom from the train station to the hub. Otherwise, I won’t argue against adding more touches, but I do think it has it’s fair share of them (Coke bottle? Singing in the Rain umbrella? The well near Indiana Jones?)”

The Red Car would be hard to add now, with traffic being so bad on Sunset, but if you open up other pedestrian corridors it could work. Imagine a trolley from the entrance, to the Tower of Terror, to the Chinese Theater. Cool.

“I don’t disagree, because I wont sit here and say randomness is the way to go. Rather, I think budgets need to match the dreams that Imagineers have for the Studios, or any park. How many times have we heard about what the Imagineers really wanted to do at a given attraction, only to be curtailed by the necessities of a budget? Any perceived “random attractions” are the result of someone watering down an idea presented to them until it meets whatever budgets they have.”

True, but I’m thinking more of the fact that the attractions now get inserted to any thought or reason why they should be there. Of course, I’m mainly grousing about Midway Mania, because while it’s a fun attraction it has absolutely no connection to the theme of the park. It makes perfect sense in California Adventure, but no sense at the Studios. Why not, instead, a ride like Tokyo’s Monsters, Inc. ride where instead of flashlights you’re trying to film the monsters with movie cameras? That would at least make sense. If you’re going to theme an area to represent a movie studio, like Pixar Place attempts to, that needs to tie in with the attraction. It’s not good enough just to have random rides based on movies put into brick or stucco buildings. I’m not asking them to bend over backwards, just to think a little bit about what they’re doing before they do it.

The article mentions American Idol, but as much as I hate that show I have to admit that at least that attraction has some connection to the theme of the park. Although, for the life of me, I’ll never understand why they haven’t brought back SuperStar Television. With Disney’s obsession for synergy, it would be the PERFECT way to plug ABC shows. And guests would love to get put into Lost, or V, or Desperate Housewives, or whatever is the new hotness. That just seems like an obvious pick, but that’s another story altogether.

Anyway, thanks again to Studios Central for the comments and for reading. I appreciate the dialogue. Again, my main beef with the Studios is that it could possibly be my favorite park if the promise of the entrance plaza held up throughout. My brain lives somewhere between 1928 & 1945, so there were times when those areas along Sunset Boulevard could have been my favorite place in any Disney park. They just need to think about what they want to do with the park, and speak with one voice.

Last December, we pointed out that on the announcement of the 2010 slate from Walt Disney Pictures, the upcoming animated feature Rapunzel was listed as a “working title.” This squared with a couple of comments I had seen on animation-related blogs; most noticeably, the comments section of the Animation Guild’s blog featured speculation that the new film would have a name change before release. I was never able to firm up any of these rumors – after all, who would change the name of such a prominent film right before it was to hit theaters?

Well, apparently Disney would. The Stitch Kingdom news site pointed out today that Disney had secured a number of different domain names relating to two specific titles: The Thief and the Tower and The Hidden Tower. These names have popped up before; an anonymous comment on the Animation Guild blog from early in January said that they hoped the new title would be “nothing dumb like The Thief and the Tower.” The Hidden Tower was also mentioned in a recent thread.

The reason for this abrupt name change on a film that’s been in development for a decade comes, as most terrible ideas do, straight from marketing. The Princess and the Frog, while successful, did not turn out to be a mega-hit as Disney had hoped. All of a sudden Disney execs seem to be in a panic, and are blaming Frog’s under-performance on its “princess” aspects.

This is both hilarious and tragic. Those who have seen The Princess and the Frog will know that it’s far from a traditional “princess” tale. In fact, much of the film’s storyline is a direct slam on the creepy princessploitation mythos Disney marketing has been pushing on young girls for a few years now; after all, the character made to look the most ridiculous throughout the whole picture is the one who most longs to become a princess. One doubts the film’s heroine would ever be caught dead in the Bibbiti Bobbiti Boutique, which makes it all the more ironic that Disney tried to market the film that way.

Marketing which, of course, failed… which means blame the movie, right?

What a lot of people seem to not understand is that Princess and the Frog’s problems had little to do with the film itself and a lot to do with the product that preceded it. Disney, in their attempts to wrench as much money as possible from young girls and their parents, infantilized their animated classics to an obscene degree and created the view in the public’s eyes that Disney films – and fairy tales in particular – are just for little kids. They’re doing the same thing to parks these days – you can see it in almost every ad. Princess and the Frog might have had some story issues, but the fact that it was a fairy tale wasn’t one of them. Princess and the Frog didn’t bring itself down, this did. Now Disney is tasked with reversing a decade of marketing and trying to convince people that, wait, maybe these films aren’t just fodder for babysitting your toddlers, and that maybe there is a difference between classic Disney features and Cinderella III.

It’ll be hard, and it will probably take a few solid films to turn around public expectations. I’m not sure Winnie-the-Pooh is the way to go about that, but what do I know?

The point is, it looks like the clever folks in the executive suite are, instead of acknowledging the real problems, going to make a purely cosmetic change that will not address underlying issues but instead merely confuse the target audience. Rapunzel is one of the best known fairy tales of all time – do you actually think that The Thief and the Tower is going to send people running for the cineplex? I guess UP was such a hit because people just love that direction. Think how much money it would have made if they’d called it Old Guy and the Flying House? Box office gold!!

All you have to do is read the (admittedly anonymous) comments on the TAG blog to get a hint at the toxic atmosphere that still pervades Disney’s feature animation department. Sure, there will always be cranks and naysayers, and most of those people commenting probably don’t work at Disney anyway, but these are stories that get told time and time again and it makes one wonder if any meaningful changes have actually been made since the Pixar merger. I think that obviously things are better, but there’s a long way to go. If an idea as stupefying as this name change can get any traction at all, it just goes to show that we’ve got a long hard road ahead.

For what it’s worth, I’ll also point out the hilarity of Disney’s animation marketing department fleeing in panic from anything princess-related (awful rumors on the TAG blog suggest that The Snow Queen is now shelved), thinking that well is now dry, while the parks division in Florida has broken ground on a very expensive expansion that is 100% princess. Left hand, meet right hand.