Indiana Jones and the Disney Connection

IAdventurer01

Well-known member
While I'm personally a fan of Disney and see no problem with their current joint ventures, Disney acquiring Lucasfilm somehow just seems ... wrong. Love it or hate it, Star Wars and Indiana Jones have basically been Lucas' personal playthings, and seeing the properties come under the heavy sway of another source could be perhaps potentially gratifying for fans, but I feel that it would most likely be the opposite. :eek:
 

dr.jones1986

Active member
Stoo said:
Indeed, the sign is marked...but how 'clear' is it?:confused: Lucas' name looks rather small. How big is that sign and who is on hand to give the "quick five minute explanation"? The older parents/chaperones or the park employees?

Blue Sky Disney seems to be an expert on the subject and he states that "young boys" identify Star Wars/Indiana Jones characters with Disney!:eek:
At the risk of repeating myself, the Star Wars/Indy connection paved the way for this type of amalgamation. The "Twilight Zone" Tower of Terror is in the Hollywood Studios section, which is fine. Aerosmith (and Michael Jackson:sick:) are different animals because they are not ficitional characters.

The difference is that "Temple of the Forbidden Eye" and "Temple du Péril" are in the MAGIC KINGDOM...the heartland of Disney!:sick: Did Disney ever create/make films about Indiana Jones? No!
The commercial aspect is understood but, at its beginning, Universal Studios theme park was dedicated to Universal films...

At its start it did have mostly Universal Studios movies but over time they have added non Universal properties to make the park more appealing to a wider audience. Harry Potter/Marvel Comics/ The Simpsons all have huge followings and could draw greater crowds to the parks. Fans of those properties, who other wise might not be interested in going to a Theme park will be drawn because of their fandom. Same goes for Lucasfilm properties and Disney.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Henry W Jones said:
Also I have read the thread and still don't get your giant "hate on" you got for the association they have with one another.
There are many things you "don't get", Dubya. In my opening post, I used the words, "puzzling" & "bewilderment". Quite different from a "hate on" (which you wrongly describe).:rolleyes:
dr.jones1986 said:
At its start it did have mostly Universal Studios movies but over time they have added non Universal properties to make the park more appealing to a wider audience. Harry Potter/Marvel Comics/ The Simpsons all have huge followings and could draw greater crowds to the parks.
Yes, I know (as stated in my previous post). However, Disney got the ball rolling with "Star Tours" in 1986 and Universal must have followed the scheme. The floodgates became open to a hodge-podge of rides that have nothing to do with the flag names of the parks.

Here's a question: Does anyone know exactly when Universal Studios parks started building rides EXCLUSIVELY based on non-Universal properties? (King Kong on that tram ride during that late '70s & '80s doesn't count.;))
dr.jones1986 said:
Fans of those properties, who other wise might not be interested in going to a Theme park will be drawn because of their fandom. Same goes for Lucasfilm properties and Disney.
Like I said, I fully under$tand the reason$ WHY the attraction$ were built (the que$t for the almighty dollar) but the affiliation still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Personally, it's hard to determine which is more disappointing:

1) Disney proposing the idea to Lucas in the first place.
OR
2) Lucas agreeing to it.

In my opinion, Case #1 is the most disappointing. Imagine if McDonald's had a theme park and they had the idea to a base a ride on a Burger King Whopper or a Wendy's Baconator? Wouldn't you ask yourself, "What the f***?":confused:
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Stoo said:
Like I said, I fully under$tand the reason$ WHY the attraction$ were built (the que$t for the almighty dollar) but the affiliation still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

See, I still don't buy this. Yes, they are popular properties that could be quite lucrative in their inclusion. But both the Indiana Jones and Star Wars universes are enormously compelling ones and any sort of adventure-based ride that attempted to do a 1930s adventurer landscape, exploring hidden temples full of death traps and so forth, would have been seen as a direct rip-off of the Lucas property. (Now, I think that's less clear in the case of Star Tours, as there's a lot more space properties out there of quality.) I think both the Disney people and Lucas were looking to go for the gold standard - Disney in using Indy as the source material for that sort of adventure, and Lucas in working with the Disney people who were then, even if they may not be now, the best in the business.

Because Indy is unique, I would argue, in having <I>become</I> the adventure genre since its inception, while Star Wars is not the ultimate space movie and The Godfather does not contain everything that exemplifies the gangster movie and no individual slasher movie encapsulates that genre either. But, today, if you're talking about jungle or desert landscapes with nefarious traps and creepy crawlies, you're talking about Indiana Jones. Post-Indiana Jones material along those lines lives in his shadow, even if individual pieces might supplant him in given ways. He's cornered the market. It would be quite possible to do a Prohibition-era mobsters based ride without basing it on any one property, because that's an idea much bigger than Public Enemy or Hawk's Scarface or The Godfather (which would inevitably have an influence, despite its later time frame). That's true of Pirates of the Caribbean, it's true of things set in a Western mode, and its true of many of the earlier space-based attractions.

So here's the thing: pre-1981, an attraction of the sort like the Indiana Jones Adventure rides would have been possible, without question. (The technology obviously would have been different, but I'm talking about the setting and the genre.) <I>Maybe</I> even prior to 1984. But once you hit Indiana Jones's reality as a franchise, you can't unring that bell.
 

mattzilla2010

New member
Stoo said:
In my opinion, Case #1 is the most disappointing. Imagine if McDonald's had a theme park and they had the idea to a base a ride on a Burger King Whopper or a Wendy's Baconator? Wouldn't you ask yourself, "What the f***?":confused:
If Burger King and Wendy's did not have their own theme parks I'd be fine with McDonald's serving as an all-encompassing representative of fast food based theme park joy.

You know, when I woke up this morning and thought about what I might be doing today, talking about hypothetical fast food theme parks was not high on the list. Oh Stoo, you're just a big magic bag filled with all kinds of glorious surprises. :hat:

Stoo said:
@Matzilla: I've been meaning to reply to your post from 3 months ago but keep getting distracted. Sorry!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmS_VDvMY

P.S. My name has two T's in it... matzilla makes me think of a monstrously mutated rectangular pad thing that people wipe their feet on before entering a room.
 
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dr.jones1986

Active member
Stoo said:
There are many things you "don't get", Dubya. In my opening post, I used the words, "puzzling" & "bewilderment". Quite different from a "hate on" (which you wrongly describe).:rolleyes:
Yes, I know (as stated in my previous post). However, Disney got the ball rolling with "Star Tours" in 1986 and Universal must have followed the scheme. The floodgates became open to a hodge-podge of rides that have nothing to do with the flag names of the parks.

Here's a question: Does anyone know exactly when Universal Studios parks started building rides EXCLUSIVELY based on non-Universal properties? (King Kong on that tram ride during that late '70s & '80s doesn't count.;))
Like I said, I fully under$tand the reason$ WHY the attraction$ were built (the que$t for the almighty dollar) but the affiliation still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Personally, it's hard to determine which is more disappointing:

1) Disney proposing the idea to Lucas in the first place.
OR
2) Lucas agreeing to it.

In my opinion, Case #1 is the most disappointing. Imagine if McDonald's had a theme park and they had the idea to a base a ride on a Burger King Whopper or a Wendy's Baconator? Wouldn't you ask yourself, "What the f***?":confused:
I don't see Lucasfilm competing with Disney in the same way McDonalds, BK and Wendy's compete with each other. I think Lucasfilm's movies tend to appeal to a more mature audience than Disney films (though kids do enjoy them as well). They cover a different niche in the market.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
dr.jones1986 said:
I don't see Lucasfilm competing with Disney in the same way McDonalds, BK and Wendy's compete with each other. I think Lucasfilm's movies tend to appeal to a more mature audience than Disney films (though kids do enjoy them as well). They cover a different niche in the market.

Well, that's not really so much the case because Disney is not merely Disney, but also Touchstone and Miramax, among others. The big point is that Lucasfilm is tiny, relative to other film production companies - you can't even call it a studio - and so it does not have the reach to really branch out that much into the major sort of development that a theme park would require. We can more or less assume this on the basis of the information provided in the initial post of this thread, as Baxter notes that Lucas could not afford his own theme park. (What sort of direction the creative development such a park would have taken is a tantalizing question, which properly belongs in the linked-to thread.)

So this offers a further elaboration to my point above: Disney was dependent on Lucas because Indiana Jones had become the standard for that sort of narrative environment. Lucas was dependent on Disney because they had the context, the means, and the expertise to bring his fictional universes into physical reality.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
The big point is that Lucasfilm is tiny, relative to other film production companies - you can't even call it a studio - and so it does not have the reach to really branch out that much into the major sort of development that a theme park would require.

Agreed. Despite the prime piece of real estate in San Francisco's Presidio, Lucasfilm is still a production company. Lucas has considerable resources to be sure, but he's only able to marshal them at one project at a time. While ILM & Skywalker Sound may be considered "in-house," their lifeblood is contract work.

Attila the Professor said:
Because Indy is unique, I would argue, in having become the adventure genre since its inception, while Star Wars is not the ultimate space movie and The Godfather does not contain everything that exemplifies the gangster movie and no individual slasher movie encapsulates that genre either. But, today, if you're talking about jungle or desert landscapes with nefarious traps and creepy crawlies, you're talking about Indiana Jones. Post-Indiana Jones material along those lines lives in his shadow, even if individual pieces might supplant him in given ways. He's cornered the market.

I second this. I would add: Tomorrowland is in something of a flux. Yes, it's still futuristic. But it's no longer about "tomorrow," it's more about science-fiction with the emphasis on the fiction. Add up all the attractions in the area and Star Wars has a small footprint with Star Tours and the Jedi Training Academy. Had they rethemed the entire place to Star Wars, I might agree about it being all about the Benjamin$.

(The makeover I would have loved would have taken it's inspiration from the Verne-esque Atlantis: The Lost Empire except the movie tanked at the box office. Which, coincidentally, is as Indy-like as Disney has ever gotten in-house.)

Adventureland, however, was essentially Tiki on a grand scale. Despite the pan-arboreal nature of the Jungle Cruise, all the attractions were South Pacific in nature. See: The Enchanted Tiki Room, The Tahitian Terrace, and the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. Yesterland informs us that that the Tahitian Terrace closed in '92, so there goes a quarter of your theme.

Aside: I don't remember the Tahitian Terrace being around so late in Disneyland's life, but that's a good thing. I came of age in Hawai'i, and don't think I could stomach yet another fake luau.

Is it really 0445? I'll need to finish this later.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
So I confess that I'm not sure it's possible to not find this odd:

tumblr_lqkhx0jOoY1qla11zo1_1280.jpg
 
Attila the Professor said:
So I confess that I'm not sure it's possible to not find this odd:

tumblr_lqkhx0jOoY1qla11zo1_1280.jpg
What a sad state of affairs...without the MGM backdrop you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could find that connective tissue.

On the bright side, Ariel has some kickin boobs!:eek:
 
How Disney decides where to draw the line when it comes to restoring its classic films


How does a well-intentioned restoration wind up being thought of as a desecration of a once-popular motion picture?

That's what Steven Spielberg seemed to be wondering earlier this week at the 30th anniversary screening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." During the Q & A session following this Los Angeles Times-sponsored screening, the topic of "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial" 's 2002 release on DVD came up. And Spielberg publicly admitted that he now regrets some of the changes that were made to that version of this much-beloved movie (i.e. editing out Elliot's "***** breath" line, digitally altering the guns that the Feds were carrying in the film so that they now appeared to be walkie-talkies).

In hindsight, Steven now feels that he shouldn't have listened to all those parents groups who complained about the original 1982 version of this Amblin Entertainment production. And that - by making the changes that he did - Spielberg somehow managed to " ... rob the people who love E.T. of their memory of the film." Which is a mistake that this Academy Award-winning director seems eager not to ever make again.
"And here's a fun piece of trivia for all you animation history buffs out there," Dave Bossert chimed in at this particular point in the WebEx Online conference. "Chuck Jones actually got his start in the business by working as a cell washer for a little while here at Disney. Chuck got his start here."
 

Crack that whip

New member
I feel compelled to point out Lucasfilm / Disney "crossovers" go back to at least 1979, when "the stars of Star Wars made a guest appearance on an episode of The Muppet Show that ended with the Star Wars and Muppet characters singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" in front of a backdrop of Cinderella's castle - most interesting as it foreshadowed not only the arrival of Lucasfilm properties in the parks, but also Disney's acquisition of the Muppets.

Beyond that, enough people have drawn comparisons between Lucas / Spielberg and Disney over the years that logic of putting Star Wars and Indiana Jones attractions in Disney parks was clearly apparent to someone, and I do think there are indeed some simpatico tendencies between the two.

and
Attila the Professor said:
To be honest, I don't get the whole economic/networks of production approach that you fellows have been taking to this (it strikes me as irrelevant; the notion of the ability of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars universes to fit into the place-making of the Disney theme parks is what's interesting to me), but if we really want to talk about the associations at work here, Captain Eo, executive produced by Lucas, come on the scene in September of '86.

But if you try to argue from any associations Lucas and Spielberg have with Universal - wouldn't you expect the attractions to be over in those parks, as ET and Back to the Future are/were? As Stoo suggests, playing Six Degrees of Association produces plenty of potential connections that don't necessarily amount to much.

On a fundamental level, it's not just about money. If it were, Disney could easily just get the talent and resources together to build the most spectacular roller coaster possible. The "Disney Connection" is interesting not because of what it reveals about the behind-the-scenes processes, but because it is, as Stoo and others are right to point out, something that does enact some uneasy tensions that confront, above all, one's sense of what these different works and different forms do when they come together. Maybe I'm too quick to throw some of these arguments overboard, but the difference between Mark Twain's inability to approve a Tom Sawyer-themed island and Lucas's and Spielberg's ability to approve the use of their work in various theme parks is not a meaningful one; if anything, it suggests that they themselves perceive their works and Disney to be simpatico.

Edited to add: one interesting avenue for this conversation might be why Disney's acquisition of Marvel is one that truly gives me pause as to the potential future inclusion of such intellectual property in theme parks. Like Stoo, but perhaps for different reasons, it's not a form of storytelling that I find compelling, and the sort of urbanity and particular sort of high octane action and kinetics that would be associated does not fit with either the nostalgic, deep world creations of most of Disney's history-based output (I'd include Indy in this, and perhaps Star Tours too - it's all about place-making - but Frontierland, Main Street, Adventureland, the nations of World Showcase at Epcot are what are exemplified here) nor with the old forward-looking attractions represented by most of the Future World at Epcot product, or an old show like If You Had Wings, that used to exist in Florida - these were presentational, generally not story or place-based. Marvel seems like a dead end, creatively, and one that just doesn't fit. Indy's form of adventure does, though, I still contend.

Quite true, and I understand among Disney park fans the Marvel acquisition is a point of some controversy and debate; lots of people think the distinctive character of the parks would be fundamentally changed by the presence of Spider-Man, the Hulk, etc. wandering around in a way that they're not by the presence of a few Lucasfilm-inspired attractions, and I think I get that myself - at least, at the various Disneylands and most of Walt Disney World, though somehow I think I could see it working at Disney's Hollywood Studios. It may be a moot point, though, since Marvel has longstanding agreements with other theme park operators that put Marvel characters in those parks, and acquisition or not, Disney can't just usurp those exclusivity contracts.

Some have speculated that sometime down the road, when the other parks' Marvel licenses end, Disney might try to launch a whole new park specifically for Marvel stuff, but who knows...
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
First Lucasfilm, now James Cameron

Disney does Avatar

September 20th, 2011, 11:42 am · 4 Comments · posted by EUGENE W. FIELDS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
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The Happiest Place on Earth is going to Pandora and beyond.

But not to Disneyland or Disney California Adventure, at least right now.

The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it had formed a partnership with Academy Award-winning director James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox to develop themed lands based on the blockbuster movie ?Avatar? in Disney parks.

At a press conference at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the first ?Avatar Land? is scheduled to be built in Animal Kingdom Park in Walt Disney World in Florida....

So the race is on...first Lucasfilm, then Marvel, and now Cameron. How do you like them apples everyone? Does it change the tone of the thread? Should I even make an ADA reference in here?
 

Forbidden Eye

Well-known member
In a way Stoo has won.

Because while I've always been supportive of Disney using outside sources for theme parks attractions, this has gone too far. ;)
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Forbidden Eye said:
In a way Stoo has won.

Because while I've always been supportive of Disney using outside sources for theme parks attractions, this has gone too far. ;)

It might not be so bad were it not bringing another planet into a park themed to the animal life of this planet. They also can't put anything else along with the Avatar themed material, in the fashion that, say, an Indiana Jones themed attraction allows things that thematically match him to feature alongside of him. Avatar is just Avatar.
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
Attila the Professor said:
It might not be so bad were it not bringing another planet into a park themed to the animal life of this planet...

Wheel chairs (for the parapalegic) and Virtual Glasses (for the 3D). Call Wall*E World be far behind?

wall-e-axiom-passengers.jpg
 
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