Disneyland: The Movie - THE HAUNTED MANSION

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

THE HAUNTED MANSION
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy, Family, Mystery
Released 26 November 2003
Directed by Rob Minkoff
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Nathaniel Parker, Marsha Thomason, Jennifer Tilly, Wallace Shawn, Dina Waters, Marc John Jefferies, Aree Davis, Jim Doughan, Heather Juergensen, Jeremy Howard, Deep Roy, Clay Martinez
Rated PG for frightening images, thematic elements and language.
88 minutes

In all the dozens of iconic attractions that Disneyland has to offer, and has had to offer during its 60 years of operation, there's always been something special about the Haunted Mansion, which has captured the fascination of fans since several years before the attraction even opened to guests.  Its history is one of the most unusual, and its effects are among the park's most elaborate; over the decades, Haunted Mansion lore has built elaborate backstories for the many characters and details of the attraction that fans obsess over.
A haunted house attraction was in the cards for Disneyland from the beginning, appearing on the original concept art created by Disney artist Harper Goff in collaboration with Walt Disney prior to a pitch for potential investors.  With a rushed construction schedule and limited funds, the haunted house fell victim to higher priorities before the park first opened, but when plans for the new themed land "New Orleans Square" began, one of the priority attractions was that old haunted house.  As early as 1961, the Haunted Mansion was advertised to open in 1963, but even as the facade of an old Southern mansion went up, Disney's commitments to the 1964 New York World's Fair, redesigns and Walt Disney's death in 1967 meant that the house remained a perpetually coming attraction until nearly the end of the decade, when it finally opened (to the living) in August 1969.

Image via DoomBuggies.com

Guests enter the Southern plantation-style manor house through the courtyard, clean and kempt (as per Walt's specification that the outside, at least, be consistent with the park's standard of neatness) but populated with cheeky gravestones and exotic flora, and are greeted by the "Ghost Host" (voiced by iconic voice actor Paul Frees), a disembodied spirit who teases guests with the view of his still-hanging corpse in the rafters before narrating a tour of the mansion.  Guests pass through the famous "Stretching Room", where seemingly benign paintings stretch to reveal sinister perils to their portraits, and is in fact an elevator that takes guests from the house seen from outside into the much larger, hidden main section of the ride.  Boarding ride vehicles called "Doom Buggies", guests are taken through the hallways of the spooky house, home to "999 happy haunts" (not all of them are that happy).  The Haunted Mansion is noted for its two-part ride narrative split between the separate domineering visions of Imagineers Claude Coats and Marc Davis, with Coats envisioning an eerie and genuinely scary attraction, and Davis' being more kooky and gag-based.  The first half, primarily Coats', is stylishly creepy, including the Stretching Room, where little children in mouse ears hats are traumatized by the body in the rafters, then onto the "Corridor of Doors", with rattling doors, a corpse struggling to escape a coffin and a clock striking a 13th hour.  There's a seance room filled with flying musical instruments as "Madame Leota" (voiced by Eleanor Audley, recognizable as the voice of the Wicked Stepmother in Disney's 1950 animated classic CINDERELLA, and the wicked fairy Maleficent in Disney's 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY), a gypsy's head in a floating crystal ball, summons spirits from "somewhere beyond", and a grand ballroom hosts a party of waltzing ghosts.  Although lightened up somewhat by 50th anniversary additions in 2005, one of the most ominous segments of the ride is "The Attic", with a character formerly known simply as "The Bride", now known as "Constance", and the noted villain of the Haunted Mansion, resides.  Constance, dressed in a bridal gown, wields an ax, as the heads disappear from multiple grooms in multiple wedding photos of her.  As Constance swings her ax, the Doom Buggies fly through the attic window and "outside" into "The Graveyard", where the attraction takes on a distinctly sillier tone, as the widely varied spirits hold a jamboree while singing the attraction's theme song (written by Xavier "X" Atencio), "Grim Grinning Ghosts".  Full of gags and ghosts that include a mummy, a band and a quintet of singing busts, among others, as a quivering caretaker and his dog look on, the graveyard concludes with the famous "Hitchhiking Ghosts" (the Prisoner, aka "Gus", the Skeleton, aka "Ezra" and the Traveler, aka "Phineas") who guests see via a mirror riding alongside themselves in their Doom Buggies.  The Doom Buggies then bring guests to the exit through a crypt.
The Haunted Mansion is one of Disneyland's signature attractions, the kind that has fostered an entire surrounding mythos and lore, and is arguably more richly suited to cinematic adaptation than any other Disney Parks' attraction.  Unfortunately, Disney's 2003 film version of THE HAUNTED MANSION squanders that potential in a truly remarkable misfire.

Eddie Murphy stars as Jim Evers, a very successful real estate agent whose obsession with work has put a strain on his relationship to wife, Sara (Marsha Thomason), and kids, Michael (Marc John Jefferies) and Megan (Aree Davis).  As reconciliation for all the family events he's missed because of work recently, Jim plans a family trip, but at the last minute, the Evers get a call from a mysterious client looking to sell Gracey Manor, an historic mansion, and Jim can't pass that up.  So on the way to the family cabin for their trip, Jim drags the family along to meet with Master Edward Gracey (Nathaniel Parker), the owner of the estate, which turns out to be an imposing and decrepit estate in the Louisiana backwoods.  Catered to by the uptight and mysterious head butler, Ramsley (Terence Stamp), the Evers are forced to stay the night in Gracey Manor when a rainstorm floods the nearby river, and soon it becomes clear that the Evers have been called in on false pretenses.  The house is inhabited by ghosts from the 19th century, trapped in purgatory following the death of Master Gracey's fiance, Elizabeth Henshaw, many years ago, and Sara Evers is the exact image of Gracey's lost lady love, leading him and Ramsley to believe she is the reincarnation of Elizabeth and the key to freeing them from their curse.

If nothing else, THE HAUNTED MANSION is a handsome production, with beautiful set decoration and good special effects, as well as makeup designed by movie makeup legend Rick Baker.  Otherwise, there is very little to recommend in it, with a terrible script blamed on David Berenbaum (who had previously written the modern holiday classic ELF, but then went on to write the dreadful superhero kids movie ZOOM), a disingenuous cast led by Eddie Murphy, and the typically dull, family-friendly tone that defines the majority of director Rob Minkoff's work.
Minkoff's directorial debut was none other than Disney's THE LION KING, one of the biggest hit movies of all time and one of my all time favorites, but it would seem that Minkoff is a one-hit wonder.  Prior to THE LION KING, Minkoff directed a couple of excellent animated shorts based on the characters of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, Tummy Trouble and Roller Coaster Rabbit, but perhaps it's evidence of the high level of collaboration involved at Walt Disney Animation Studios, because he's since made the very middle-of-the-road family films STUART LITTLE and STUART LITTLE 2, the anti-climactic teaming-up of Jet Li and Jackie Chan in THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, and Minkoff's ho-hum return to animation in 2014's MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN.  While none of them rise above vanilla fare, the only one of Minkoff's films that can honestly be described as "bad" is THE HAUNTED MANSION.
The greatest of this film's many flaws is its incredible misreading, or perhaps disregarding, of the beloved and rich source material.  Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion is a haunted house, a Disneyland take on a haunted house, but a haunted house nonetheless, and making the movie a comedy was their first mistake.  The Haunted Mansion is a horror story with a thick comedic vein, but THE HAUNTED MANSION is a comedy with a thick vein of horror.  Their second mistake was making it an dreadfully unfunny comedy.
THE HAUNTED MANSION's story is actually fairly dark, and probably the most interesting thing about the movie, involving an Antebellum Southern aristocrat who fell in love with a black woman, and when she was murdered by a man attempting to preserve his master's status and made it look like a suicide, the aristocrat hanged himself.  There's a lot of potential there, but the execution of the story is weirdly family friendly, ignoring the obvious politics of the plot, and relying very heavily on sight gags that amount to little more than calling attention to the beloved source material.
For as out of step with the park attraction's tone as the movie it is, the subtlety and charm of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL's homages to its source material is traded out for an incredibly thick display of maladroit references to its theme park origins.

The Many, Many References to the Disney Theme Parks 
To be fair to THE HAUNTED MANSION, it's based on a theme park attraction that's a lot more specific to its setting and in at least a number of its characters than Pirates of the Caribbean was.  But more than half the film is comprised of putting familiar scenes from the attraction (and even some moments that pay tribute to other Disneyland attractions) on film in very direct translations:

• Opening Credits: Wasting no time, the movie opens with the words "Welcome, foolish mortals," the first lines of the Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion, performed in voice-over by Corey Burton, who plays the Ghost Host THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS-themed seasonal overlay, Haunted Mansion Holiday.  The opening credits sequence then features a floating candelabra, akin to the one in the "Endless Hallway", a montage including a ballroom dance, a la the grand ballroom party sequence in the ride, and the body of Master Gracey hanging in the rafters like the body of the Ghost Host in the Stretching Room.

  

  Image via toursdepartingdaily.com

• Master Gracey: The character of Master Gracey is taken from a gravestone that reads "Master Gracey laid to rest. No mourning please, at his request." and appears in the queue graveyard at the Walt Disney World version of the ride, and formerly at the Disneyland version.  The mansion in the film, referred to as Gracey Manor, also features an expansive graveyard in the back.
• Gracey Manor: The exterior of the "haunted mansion" as depicted in the film, Gracey Manor, is a combination of the architectural features of the Haunted Mansions at Disneyland and at Walt Disney World.  The film also takes place in Louisiana near the bayou, in reference to the Disneyland version's placement in the New Orleans Square themed area.
• Music: While an original musical score composed by Mark Mancina is used in the film, there are also portions of the attraction's own soundtrack, including the theme song, Grim Grinning Ghosts, sung by the "Singing Busts" who are voiced in the film by Disneyland's resident barbershop quartet, The Dapper Dans.
• The Hallway: When Jim Evers accidentally discovers a hidden passageway in Master Gracey's library (modeled after the library from the Walt Disney World version of the ride), it leads him down a hallway chock-full of theme park references, such as the changing portraits of a woman who transforms into a tiger and a man on a rearing horse (modeled after Napoleon in the movie) who both turn to skeletons, the "Watchful Busts" who turn and stare at him as he walks past, the "Breathing Door" that bulges at the center, and the raven.
• A Wedding: Michael and Megan go into the attic and find storage including the portrait of a woman and an old wedding dress, somewhat in reference to "Constance" the Bride, from the attic in the attraction, albeit more benign.  The climax of the film also involves a wedding, accompanied by a discordant wedding march.
• Madame Leota: Madame Leota, the gypsy psychic's head in a crystal ball, is portrayed in the film by Jennifer Tilly, and is introduced in a scene modeled after her scene in the attraction, in a wild seance with musical instruments whirling through the air.
• Ezra: One of the house servants, Ezra (portrayed by Wallace Shawn), is named for the popular apocryphal named of the skeletal Hitchhiking Ghost, and in assisting Jim to get to get outside of the house, quotes the Ghost Host from the attraction: "Well, there's always...my way." 
• The Graveyard: The graveyard sequence in the film is filled to the gills with characters and sight gags taken from the Grand Ballroom and the Graveyard sequences from the attraction, including but not limited to: the attraction's most famous characters, the Hitchhiking Ghosts (portrayed by Deep Roy, Jeremy Howard and Clay Martinez), the Duelists from the Grand Ballroom, the Tea Party Ghosts, the Caretaker and his Dog (depicted as flesh and blood characters in the attraction, but as ghosts in the film), the teeter-tottering Royalty, the Decapitated Knight and Executioner, and the aforementioned Singing Busts voiced by the Dapper Dans, all while Jim and the kids ride through in a ghostly carriage like the one displayed outside the Disneyland attraction.
• The Crypt: Jim and Megan look for a key in a crypt similar to the one that appears in the Haunted Mansion's queue, and one of the zombies emerges from a coffin similarly to the trapped corpse in the Conservatory.
• Tiki Bar: The tiki-themed drink spot where Jim meets to close a deal with some clients pays homage to the Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room animatronic musical show in Disney Parks.

THE HAUNTED MANSION was a very modest success, not nearly that of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, released four months earlier.  Seven years later, in 2007, Disney announced a planned remake, as it were, to be overseen by genuinely visionary creative talent and Haunted Mansion fanboy, Guillermo del Toro.  The prospect of an edgier del Toro-guided film version of the theme park attraction was very exciting at the time, but being spread so thin between his many projects, the developments have been very slow coming.  Occasionally, a minor update will crop up on the development of the new Haunted Mansion movie, but so far, production isn't starting anytime soon.

Top 3 of THE HAUNTED MANSION 

1. The Production -  The look and visual style of THE HAUNTED MANSION is fittingly gorgeous, rarely deviating from the theme park attraction, but appropriating the environments for the screen.
2. Zombies -  One of the few moments when the film actually ventures into real horror territory, the zombies in the crypt, makeup creations of movie makeup legend Rick Baker, are just the right level of creepy and kooky.
3. Wallace Shawn - As the houseman Ezra, Wallace Shawn finds unlikely humor in the terrible script, delivering lines with slightly self-aware, sardonic crankiness like, "Yes, sir, what a fool!" and "Trespassers don't get cookies!"

All images via Disney, unless otherwise noted.

Disneyland: The Movie: TOWER OF TERROR

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

TOWER OF TERROR
Genre: Family, Fantasy, Comedy, Mystery, Thriller
Originally Aired 26 October 1997
Directed by D.J. MacHale
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, Kirsten Dunst, Nia Peeples, Michael McShane, Amzie Strickland, Melora Hardin, Alastair Duncan, Lindsay Ridgeway, John Franklin, Wendy Worthington, Lela Ivey
Not Rated (PG-level; some scary images and mild peril).
89 minutes

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is one of my favorite attractions at Disneyland Resort and probably my favorite altogether of Disney's California Adventure Park (part of Disneyland Resort), but before it came to California, it opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida in 1994.  Based on the classic CBS horror/fantasy anthology series The Twilight Zone which originally ran from 1959-1964, the Tower of Terror makes for a most prominent landmark in the four Disney Parks where one resides.  In the ride's storyline, the tower is the "Hollywood Tower Hotel", a dilapidated hotel from the Golden Age of Hollywood, when it was the finest hotel in California where the creme de la creme met for the finest parties.  One fateful night in 1939, Halloween night by chance, lightning struck the Hollywood Tower hotel with disastrous consequences, causing an entire wing to vanish and resulting in a particularly peculiar fate for four hotel guests and a bellhop who seemingly evaporated as their elevator took them into another dimension.  Now, guests are invited to relive the events of that night, entering the hotel's dusty, cobweb-laced lobby and into the library where the mood is so marvelously set by a raging thunderstorm showing through the windows as an old television set comes on.  On the screen is a message from none other than The Twilight Zone series creator/host, Rod Serling: "Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize is a maintenance elevator, still in operation, waiting for you. We invite you, if you dare, to step aboard, because in tonight's episode, you are the star. And this elevator travels directly to...the Twilight Zone."  Guests board one of three elevator ride vehicles which then rise to the top of the attraction structure and into an unnerving starry view as lightning appears to strike and guests see their ghostly silhouettes reflected before the elevator plunges into a faster-than-gravity free fall.
"The next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you just what kind of vacancy you're filling, or you might just find yourself a permanent resident of...the Twilight Zone."
In 1997, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror became the first Disney Parks attraction to be adapted into a feature film, simply TOWER OF TERROR, made for TV and aired as a special presentation of ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney.  In contrast to the theme park attraction, TOWER OF TERROR has no connection to the The Twilight Zone series and brand; also the movie sucks.  It was made for TV, and nobody ought to mistake it for otherwise.  It's cheap and childish and not much fun at all.
On Halloween Night 1939, as a raging party took place in the lobby of the ritzy Hollywood Tower Hotel, five people boarded an elevator.  Among them were a singer, her boyfriend, a bellhop, and the most famous child star of the time, Sally Shine (Lindsay Ridgeway), along with her nanny.  As the elevator reached the top floor, lightning strikes the hotel, seemingly vaporizing the five persons.  58 years later, tabloid photographer/journalist Buzzy Crocker (Steve Guttenberg) is approached by septuagenarian Abigail Gregory (Amzie Strickland), a woman who was at the Hollywood Tower Hotel on Halloween 1939, and reveals that the events that night were the result of a spell cast by Sally Shine's nanny, Emiline Partridge (Wendy Worthington), a secret witch who loathed Sally.  The Hollywood Tower Hotel has been closed ever since the accident, but Buzzy arranges with the building's owner Chris 'Q' Todd (Michael McShane) to make a visit.  Bringing along his niece, Anna (Kirsten Dunst), to pose for photos as Sally Shine's ghost, they naturally discover that the hotel is actually haunted.  Returning on Halloween with hopes of reversing the spell that placed the elevator's passengers in a ghostly limbo, Buzzy and Anna meet the ghosts, including Ms. Partridge, who they discover is actually innocent and the spell was cast by Abigail Gregory, Sally Shine's envious sister.  Now, with Abigail hoping to finish the spell she botched decades ago, putting Sally and the elevator passengers in limbo instead of to a grimmer fate, Buzzy and Anna hurry to stop her and send the ghosts into the next world.
It's fairly dark material, but the movie certainly doesn't seem to realize it.  TOWER OF TERROR looks and feels like a sub-par Disney Channel production, and is incompetent in almost every respect.  Unlike the Haunted Mansion, which is mostly horror with a thick comedic vein and was misguidedly adapted into a comedy with a thick horror vein, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a horror-thriller straight up, and the movie does away with the atmosphere almost entirely, casting b-grade comedic actor Steve Guttenberg in the lead role and throwing in a few obligatory spooky moments that would be too tame for the Haunted Mansion.  The acting is cheesy, the sparse effects are cartoonish and the whole thing feels like an insult.  Disney diehards may, at best, be able to tolerate it, but the average person over the age of six will find themselves drowning in the mediocrity.
So How Much is Taken From the Ride? 
The theming of CBS' The Twilight Zone around which the attraction revolves is entirely absent, but the basic background of the hotel's haunting, five guests in an elevator struck by lightning, is taken directly from the attraction's storyline and elaborated upon.
With a meager TV movie budget, the Hollywood Tower Hotel exterior and much of the interior is filmed on location at The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Orlando, Florida at Disney's Hollywood Studios in the Walt Disney World Resort.

Disneyland: The Movie - POTC: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
Genre: Action-Adventure, Fantasy
Released 7 July 2006
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Kevin R. McNally, David Bailie, Stellan Skarsgard, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris, Martin Klebba, David Schofield
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images.
151 minutes

A latecomer to the Hollywood franchise game, The Walt Disney Company was all too eager to stay in it following the success of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, a movie that became the highest-grossing live action production Disney had ever released.  The studio quickly greenlit two sequels to be shot back-to-back in a manner similar to the simultaneous three-film shoot of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, an economical option that allowed more exclusive use of the cast and crew and maximized location efficiency.  After the studio had been so reluctant to greenlight the first film's budget of $140 million, the combined budget approved for the two POTC sequels was a massive $450 million, $225 million a piece, making the films a couple of the most expensive ever produced even before going over-budget, which they certainly did.  However, if THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL had been a surprise smash hit, then it's follow-up, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST, proved that the series was a full-blown phenomenon.  Despite divisive response from critics, DEAD MAN'S CHEST became the third movie to ever gross over $1 billion worldwide, and was the 6th highest-grossing film of all time at the domestic box office as of 2006.

But the POTC sequels are weird.  Not just in their visuals and humor, which they assuredly are, but in the very way they respond to the original.  Rather than going with stand alone adventures like the Indiana Jones and James Bond series, screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio made the strange decision to retroactively turn the series into a cohesive trilogy saga.  While not necessarily a good thing, it doesn't necessarily turn out to be a bad thing; it just works out to be a weird thing.
DEAD MAN'S CHEST returns to the story of the blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and aristocratic Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) on the day of that would be their wedding if not for arrest charges brought against them by the King's agent and chairman of the East India Trading Company, Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), for freeing the known pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).  Beckett makes a deal with Will to obtain Jack Sparrow's enchanted compass, initially thought to point only to Isla de Muerta, but in fact which points at what the person holding desires most, and which Beckett hopes to use to find the "Dead Man's Chest" and control the seas.  It turns out when Will finds him however, that Jack, returned to his captaincy on the Black Pearl, is already on the hunt for the Dead Man's Chest, which legend says contains the still-beating heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), the devil of the seas who offers dying sailors a chance to postpone their final judgement by serving 100 years years on his mystical ship, The Flying Dutchman.  Jack made a deal with Jones years earlier to serve on the Dutchman in exchange for Jones raising the sunken Black Pearl, and the time to pay has come, so Jack's only hope is to find the Dead Man's Chest, the leverage to stave off Jones' claim.  When Will discovers that his father, "Bootstrap" Bill Turner (Stellan Skargard) is cursed to eternal servitude on The Flying Dutchman, he wants the chest for himself in order to free his father, and the now-disgraced James Norrington (Jack Davenport) hopes to retrieve the chest for Lord Beckett and reclaim his status, and a mad dash for the Dead Man's Chest begins.

Of the trilogy of POTC films (excluding the separate fourth film), DEAD MAN'S CHEST is the weakest, playing the part of "dark sequel" in what really makes most sense as a lighthearted swashbuckling adventure series.  It's bloated, occasionally gross, and even has a bit of a mean streak.  But for those already inclined toward big swashbuckling action and fantasy, like myself, it's still a lot of fun.  Who can turn down a mega-sized squid (Kraken) ripping apart sailing ships?  Despite the strange illusions of myth and weightiness, DEAD MAN'S CHEST thrives on its pulpier moments.
Returning director Gore Verbinski ups the intensity quotient significantly, with some excellent horror/creature action in the form of not one, but two major Kraken attacks.  Huge tentacles swarm about the decks of ships and grabbing sailors and dragging them away to gruesome fates, while sailors slash, hack and shoot at the appendages in futility, and in one spectacular moment of destruction, totally destroys a ship.  The destruction was filmed practically, with massive weights dropped on top of an actual ship, splitting it in half at the middle, with the weights then replaced with digital tentacles.

Nearly a decade later, the digital effects still hold up magnificently, and the physical improbability notwithstanding, it's understandable that some critics at the time mistakenly believed Davy Jones was created with practical makeup.  The rendering of the tentacle-bearded demon has an improbably tactile appearance, complimented by Nighy's colorful performance, acted out on location with the rest of the actors with revolutionary motion-capture technology, as opposed to the skeleton pirates in the first film, which had to be filmed separately from the non-CGI characters.
Davy Jones hasn't received the recognition he deserves as a screen villain, a masterpiece of creature design inspired by the literature of H.P. Lovecraft, with an array of tentacles falling from his face in the semblance of a large beard, and which he uses to play a huge organ in fits of rage.  One hand has been replaced by a great, big crustacean pincer, the opposite leg is that of an over-sized crab, resembling a peg leg, and his tricorn hat opens at the front like devil horns, himself being the "Devil of the Seas".  He's a tragic and angry character, once a man who fell in love with the goddess of the sea and agreed to ferry the souls of those who died at sea into the afterlife and one day every ten years he could return to land to be with the woman he loved.  When she did not show, he carved out his heart and locked it away in chest, abandoning his duties while he and his crew slowly transformed into sea monsters.  Unable to adopt a Dutch accent befitting the captain of The Flying Dutchman, English actor Bill Nighy opted for an authoritative Scottish tone, and plays the character with shifty and rhythmic mannerisms.

DEAD MAN'S CHEST is a somewhat nastier film than others in the series, where many bystanders meet gruesome fates and the heroes are all more than a little amoral.  A bird plucks a man's eyeball from its socket, a man's throat is slashed and his body thrown overboard, and Norrington, the noblest character from the first film, returns as a disgraced alcoholic.  Everyone is a little darker this time around, including Jack, whose antics have been up-sized live action Looney Tunes proportions (including a scene in which Jack, tied to a post impaled with assorted squash and melons like a giant shish kabob, falls into a ravine and through multiple rope bridges), but displays notably muddier ethics in order to evade Jones' wrath.  Then there's the issues of lust between Jack and Elizabeth, that come to a pretty good conclusion as Elizabeth lays a super aggressive kiss on Jack to distract him while she's double-crossing, but doesn't make a great deal of sense within the context of the larger story.  The narrative is a bit clunky, but designs, performances and direction are all working smartly in spite of that.
DEAD MAN'S CHEST is an obvious example of a "dark sequel", made in the mold of the king daddy of dark sequels, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  Jack's past catches up with him, and the film wraps up on a down note, with Jack taken down to Davy Jones' Locker, Cutler Beckett in possession of the Heart of Davy Jones, and our heroes preparing to go in for another round.  In a doozy of a cliffhanger (which Elliot and Rossio believed was good relief from the overwhelming darkness of the final scenes, but may have just teased audiences a little too hard), Jack Sparrow's old nemesis, Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), descends down the stairs of Tia Dalma's cabin, resurrected and ready to lead Will, Elizabeth and Jack's crew on a voyage to the end of the world.

Less An Adaptation of a Theme Park Ride Than the First, But Still...
Even after responding to studio efforts to distance THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, the filmmakers had used up most of their homages to Pirates of the Caribbean -the theme park attraction - and what's more, the film property had proved its own appeal, so DEAD MAN'S CHEST is much scanter in the area of references to the ride, but they're not altogether gone, among those included:

• Traveling Upriver: The scene in which Jack, Will and the crew of the Black Pearl travel upriver to visit the obeah witch Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) directly pays homage to opening of the Disneyland ride in a Louisiana bayou with fireflies in a cypress forest and sleepy swamp shacks.
• Return to Tortuga: Footage shot for but cut from the first film in the series appear as establishing shots in the second when Jack and his crew return to Tortuga to recruit new men, directly referencing the vignette from the ride in which pirates dunk a man in a well then pull him up as he spits water.

But it All Returns to the Parks 

To promote the film at its release, and then to promote the third film, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END, a year later, alterations and additions have been made to attractions at the Disneyland Park in reference to DEAD MAN'S CHEST, and not only to Pirates of the Caribbean, but also to Tom Sawyer Island, newly revamped as Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island as of 2007:

• Davy Jones: Davy Jones, played by Bill Nighy, now appears in Pirates of the Caribbean giving a monologue to guests via projection onto a mist screen that creates the illusion of a waterfall as guests then pass through.
• Bone Cages: The grisly cages made of human bones used to imprison the Black Pearl crew have been reconstructed on Tom Sawyer Island as a photo opportunity spot.
• Dead Man's Grotto: Formerly "Injun Joe's Cave", the interactive Dead Man's Grotto on Tom Sawyer Island features a replication of the Dead Man's Chest fixed atop a barrel, and when guests touch the chest, the beating of Davy Jones' heart can be heard as an unseen Jones speaks words of warning.

Top 5 of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST 

1. Davy Jones - From the design and rendering to Bill Nighy's commanding but quirky performance, Davy Jones is an exceptional screen villain and a landmark in performance-based visual effects.
2. The Kraken - The POTC series makes a habit of taking the best tropes from old b-movies and realizing them with big budget modern special effects, best exemplified by the Kraken, a modern movie monster in the spirit of the work of Ray Harryhausen rendered as a supercharged digital terror.  In short, there aren't enough movies with giant tentacle-based monsters these days.
3. Liar's Dice - In a game for the key to the Dead Man's Chest, Davy Jones, Will Turner and Bootstrap Bill cast cups of dice and build their wagers until one is forced to bluff and called on it.  It's a different sort of action scene with a moment for character repartee and enhances the world of the film.
4. Toe Necklace - When cannibals make you their chief and give you a necklace made out of severed toes, it's a good idea to nibble on one of the toenails, but if you decide to spit it out, be discreet.
5. Hero Shots - Verbinski and his crew include a couple of well-manicured, iconic "hero shots" for Jack Sparrow, neither of which makes a great deal of sense in context, but they really are beautiful.  First is Sparrow shooting the powder kegs during the Kraken's attack on the Black Pearl, Sparrow standing in the mayhem with musket rifle aimed, a beautiful glare from the sun and Elizabeth (out of character, frankly) clinging to his leg.  Then you get the "Hello, Beastie" moment as Sparrow, reunited with his hat, shirt open at the optimum amount, and swinging down his sword in attack against the massive, gaping jaws of the Kraken.

All images via Disney, unless otherwise noted.

Disneyland: The Movie - THE COUNTRY BEARS

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

THE COUNTRY BEARS
Genre: Musical, Family, Comedy
Released 26 July 2002
Directed by Peter Hastings
Starring: Haley Joel Osment (voice), Diedrich Baker, Christopher Walken, Candy Ford (voice), James Gammon (voice), Brad Garrett (voice), Toby Huss (voice), Kevin Michael Richardson (voice), Stephen Root (voice), Stephen Toblowsky, Daryl "Chill" Mitchell
Rated G
88 minutes

The Country Bear Jamboree audio-animatronic stage show originally opened at Walt Disney World in 1971 before it opened in Disneyland five months later in 1972, but while Walt Disney World's Country Bear Jamboree continues operating today, it closed at Disneyland in 2001.
Conceptually similar to Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, guests at the Country Bear Jamboree were treated to a musical stage show by the Country Bear Band and other musical groups of audio-animatronic bears who sing a series of short country songs.  An entire new themed area was created around the attraction when it opened in 1972, replacing the "Indian Village" with "Bear Country", renamed "Critter Country" when a new major attraction, Splash Mountain, was opened nearby.  The attraction has been often referenced and parodied in pop culture, including in 1995, when Disney's animated feature film A GOOFY MOVIE (not produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios that makes the studio's main theatrically-released animated films, but by DisneyToon Studios, a division that primarily focuses on lower-budgeted direct-to-video fare) parodied the Country Bear Jamboree with a defunct audio-animatronic show called "Lester's Possum Park".

I've never been to the attraction myself, not terribly interested during my childhood before it closed at Disneyland in 2001.  Before then, back in 1986, the Country Bear Jamboree had become the Country Bear Playhouse, featuring the Country Bear Vacation Hoedown, but after closing in 2001, it was replaced by The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a simple, small children-friendly dark ride based on Disney Animation's classic Winnie the Pooh animated shorts from the 1960s and '70s (later assembled into a feature film, THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH, released in 1977).  In tribute to the Country Bear Jamboree, three memorable side characters from the show; Max, a mounted deer head, Buff, a mounted bison head, and Melvin, a mounted moose head; make a cameo in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, hidden above the doorway behind riders as they enter the "Hunny Heaven" scene.  Other elements of the Country Bear legacy are still interwoven throughout today's Critter Country, including the popular Hungry Bear Restaurant and the overall rustic theme of the area.

Image via Yesterland.com

Ironically, even while the attraction closed against the fervent protests of many fans, Disney was already in production on a film based on the attraction, coincidentally in which the Bears and their fans fight to keep the Country Bear Hall from being closed forever.  Beary Barrington (a Jim Henson Creature Shop creation as with the other bears of the film; voiced by Haley Joel Osment) is a young bear with a human family, but he's beginning to wonder if he may be adopted.  Positively obsessed with The Country Bears, an all-bear country music band that broke up ten years ago after years of popularity, Beary runs away and heads for Country Bear Hall, only to discover the long empty music hall is set for demolition by a bear-hating banker (Christopher Walken) unless the hall's caretaker Big Al (voiced by Jame Gammon) and the band's old manager, Henry (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson), can pay off their debts.  So Beary persuades Henry to join him in getting the band back together for a show to save Country Bear Hall, and they head out on a road trip to find the far flung band members including harmonica-player Fred Bedderhead (voiced by Brad Garrett), now working as a security guard, fiddler Zeb Zoober (voiced by Stephen Root), now a burnt-out honey addict, guitarist Tennessee O'Neal (voiced by Toby Huss), now a heartbroken marriage counselor, Tennessee's ex-girlfriend, singer Trixie St. Claire (voiced by Candy Ford), and Fred's brother Ted Bedderhead (voiced by Diedrich Baker, sounding very much like his character "Rex Kwan Do" from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE), now an uppity wedding singer who wants nothing more to do with the Country Bears.
In short, THE COUNTRY BEARS is a very bad movie, and the very fact that such a movie was even made is downright bewildering.  It's not 100% without merit, as the screenplay by Mark Perez has the occasional good laugh, most of them involving Beary's family, including Beary's dad played by the always wonderful Stephen Tobolowsky, and there is at least a little self-awareness to the kooky concept.  But what were studio executives thinking when they greenlit a $35 million movie based on a past-its-prime theme park musical attraction with a cast of animatronic bears?  It's just not good sense.

At times, it becomes the sort of movie that is so bewilderingly dumb, weird and altogether bad that you want to share it with others for the amusement of their reactions.  The bear characters are "Five Nights at Freddy's" creepy and ages 3-4 television annoying, while most of the film is comprised of uncomfortably weird music video-style segments with an abundance of musician cameos. 
As any reasonable person might have expected, THE COUNTRY BEARS crashed and burned at the box office, only grossing $18 million worldwide against its fairly modest $35 million.  The failure of THE COUNTRY BEARS caused Disney to grow apprehensive about their upcoming big budget production, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, typical of Hollywood's tendency to take the wrong message from a failure, associating THE COUNTRY BEARS' failure with its theme park source material rather than its hopeless inanity and inherent stupidity.  Put frankly, there's not a lot to recommend about THE COUNTRY BEARS, so I'm not going to try.

Disneyland: The Movie - MISSION TO MARS

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

MISSION TO MARS
Genre: Sci-Fi, Adventure, Thriller
Released 10 March 2000
Directed by Brian De Palma
Starring: Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O'Connell, Peter Outerbridge, Kavan Smith, Jill Teed, Elise Neal, Kim Delaney
Rated PG for sci-fi violence and mild language.
114 minutes

Officially, MISSION TO MARS is not specifically based on the now-closed Disneyland attraction, Mission to Mars.  However, it is a Disney production that shares a name with a Disneyland attraction, and it's an opportunity to talk about this weird film.
Mission to Mars, the attraction, was closed at Disneyland in 1992, but used to stand where Redd Rocket's Pizza Port replaced it in 1998 with the newly redesigned "New Tomorrowland", and a characteristically tail-finned rocket ship associated with the old attraction still stands in front of the Pizza Port.  Even before it was Mission to Mars, the attraction was among the very first to open with the Disneyland Park in 1955, when it was called Rocket to the Moon, a then scientifically-inspired simulation of how human astronauts would travel to the Moon, 14 years before the Apollo 11 mission would in fact land the first human on the Moon.  The attraction was refurbished as Flight to the Moon in 1967, but by 1975, the Moon was an outdated destination.  The attraction was redesigned in collaboration with NASA as Mission to Mars, a simulation of how human astronauts might travel to Mars, simulating G-forces and screens displaying the views "outside" the spacecraft.  When the attraction closed in 1992, it was initially planned to be redesigned as ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, an attraction geared toward older park guests in which a teleportation experiment accidentally materializes a monstrous alien.  The lights would go out and a "technician" would be heard being killed by the beasts, followed by liquid spraying into guests' faces (like blood), and the loose alien could be felt breathing behind them.  Finally, technicians would drive it back into the teleporter, where it explodes.  Perhaps it was for the best that ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter didn't open in Disneyland, because it did open in Walt Disney World, where it was controversial for being tonally inconsistent with the family-friendly Disney Parks.  In Walt Disney World, it was closed after 8 years of operation, and replaced by the similar but much more benign Stitch's Great Escape! in 2003.

Image via Yesterdayland.com

Although the Mission to Mars attraction is not a cited source of material for the 2000 film MISSION TO MARS, the film is basically what an actual adaptation of the ride would be- it's pretty much all there in the title.  Directed by Brian De Palma, it takes place in the year 2020, as the first manned mission to the planet Mars is about to launch, led by Luke Graham (Don Cheadle), who, with his Earthbound friends, Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) and Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), has fantasized about this mission ever since childhood.  McConnell had been the frontrunner to lead the mission, but discontinued his training when his wife became terminally ill, so now he is left to watch his friend realize their lifelong dreams without him.  Once on Mars, however, Graham and his team are attacked by a mysterious force in the form of a swirling vortex, ending the mission with catastrophic results.  A rescue mission is launched with Blake in command, who insists they be joined by McConnell, and together they go to find their friend on Mars, and find him they do.  Graham has been left marooned on Mars, but during his time there, he's made significant discoveries with implications for mankind's understanding of their place in the universe.

There are some interesting ideas in MISSION TO MARS, but it fails in most respects.  There's a cliche in Hollywood that movies centered around the planet Mars are box office poison, a notion that Disney is largely responsible for thanks to big budget bombs like MISSION TO MARS, MARS NEEDS MOMS and JOHN CARTER, although the another standout Mars-based box office failure is Warner Bros.' RED PLANET, a thriller released the same year a MISSION TO MARS only eight months later.  Directed by Brian De Palma, the New Hollywood auteur noted for voyeuristic and lurid thrillers like CARRIE, SCARFACE and THE UNTOUCHABLES, MISSION TO MARS is his largest film to date, estimated to cost $100 million.  In turn, it only grossed $110 million worldwide (considering for approximately half the gross being taken for exhibitors, then accounting for production, marketing and distribution costs, a movie costing $100 million ought to bring in at least around $250 million).
It borrows from other space travel movies, most notably APOLLO 13 and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but the plot itself is fairly thin, with much of the film made up of the perilous action involved with landing on Mars, and then the perilous action involved with being on Mars.  Don Cheadle, whose career was on the rise thanks to his work with directors like Steven Soderbergh and Paul Thomas Anderson, is Luke Graham, who it is noted has been reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island with his son before going into space, finds his experience marooned on Mars paralleled by Ben Gunn's marooning in the book, but despite planting the idea early in the film, the payoff is comically halfhearted.  When the rescue mission arrives on Mars, he's crazed at first and attacks his friends, but after a brief scuffle followed by a shave, Graham is back to his regular old self, explaining what he's learned from the Martians.  Wouldn't it have made more sense and been more fun to have a severely mentally frayed Don Cheadle talking about Martians and living on Mars without cheese for years?  Robert Louis Stevenson did it better.

Tim Robbins is doing his best Bill Paxton impression, which is waste of a good Tim Robbins, and Jerry O'Connell is basically a more annoying version of Kevin Bacon's character from APOLLO 13.  Gary Sinise is fine, although the script (shared between Jim Thomas, John Thomas and Graham Yost) doesn't do him many favors.  The whole thing comes to a great big WTF conclusion when a very dated special effect reveals the origins of life on Earth, and it's not as interesting as it is dumb.
Some of the action is good, mainly the big Mars sandstorm that attacks astronauts in the manner of THE MUMMY, but the emotional stakes aren't there when they ought to be, and the characters are often aggravating.

Image via Yesterdayland.com

Officially, MISSION TO MARS is not connected to Disneyland's Mission to Mars, but there is a brief moment with a necklace that closely resembles the spaceship design of the Disneyland attraction.  Also, they go to Mars, so there's that.
Top 3 of MISSION TO MARS 

1. Cyclone on Mars- The concept is stolen from THE MUMMY, but it's pretty cool anyway, plus an astronaut gets spun around so fast that his limbs rip off right onscreen before his body flies away in pieces.  I have absolutely no idea why this movie is rated PG with some of the gore it shows.
2. Floating Blood- More gore, when a pebble-sized meteorite goes through Jerry O'Connell's hand, out of which floats gobs of CGI blood in the zero-gravity environment.  It's kind of cool and gross.
3. Crazy Don Cheadle- It doesn't last nearly long enough, but a wild-eyed Don Cheadle with a scraggly beard and wielding a rock pick does a body good.

All images via The Walt Disney Company, unless otherwise noted.

Review: TOMORROWLAND

TOMORROWLAND  (SCI-FI/ADVENTURE)
3 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Brad Bird
Starring: Britt Robertson, George Clooney, Raffey Cassidy, Hugh Laurie, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Chris Bauer, Thomas Robinson, Pierce Gagnon, Matthew MacCaull, Judy Greer
Rated PG for sequences of sci-fi action violence and peril, thematic elements, and language.
130 minutes
Verdict: Exciting, funny and refreshingly optimistic, TOMORROWLAND should satisfy most audiences, but those looking for something on par with Brad Bird's previous directorial efforts may be disappointed.
YOU MAY ENJOY TOMORROWLAND IF YOU LIKED:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL  (2011)
THE INCREDIBLES  (2004)
INTERSTELLAR  (2014)
STAR WARS  (1977)
STAR TREK  (2009)

"A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man's achievements...a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.  Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideas: the Atomic Age, the challenge of outer space, and the hope for a peaceful and unified world."
Walt Disney spoke those words at the dedication of the themed land "Tomorrowland" on the opening day of Disneyland Park on July 17, 1955 - sixty years ago come July.  Tomorrowland was the last area of the theme park finished for the opening day, and due to the rushed schedule and budget restraints, was not yet completed as envisioned.  In many cases, its attractions were essentially corporate showcases of new products and budding technologies, but was also arguably the most educational land in the park.  One of the opening day attractions that remains in operation to this day was Autopia, in which park guests drive miniature automobiles through a track representative of the multi-lane Interstate Highway System on the American horizon, approved in legislation in 1956.  Other attractions included the short-lived Flying Saucers, a hovercraft bumper cars attraction that lasted from 1961-1966, Flight to the Moon, a simulation speculating on how mankind might travel to the Moon, opening in 1955 and re-opened in 1975 as Mission to Mars, and a "House of the Future" constructed primarily of plastic and furnished with state-of-the-art technologies, including a microwave oven back in 1957.  When the House of the Future was finally removed, an almost comical series of demolition tools were exhausted before it had to be taken apart piece by piece.
When Disneyland opened sixty years ago, Tomorrowland officially represented a then-realistic possibility for the year 1986.  Today, it mostly represents a consciously fantastical vision of the future, inspired by the concepts of Jules Verne and steampunk designs, with its most popular attractions being the Star Wars-themed Star Tours: The Adventures Continue and the dark roller coaster Space Mountain.  Nothing against Star Wars or Space Mountain, which are unarguably awesome, but what changed?

Disney's new film, TOMORROWLAND, explores the what ifs and whys of what happened to our grandparents' visions of the "great, big, beautiful tomorrow", to borrow a phrase from the catchy Sherman Brother's song featured in the Disney Parks and now the film.  What happened to the dreams of jet packs, pristine, towering cities, interplanetary travel and world community?
Early in the film, young and idealistic eleven-year-old boy genius Frank Walker (played as a boy by Thomas Robinson) arrives at the 1964 New York World's Fair to submit his homemade jet pack in an invention competition and is noticed by a strange girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who gives him a pin and beckons him to follow her and her friends on the It's a Small World ride at the UNICEF pavilion.  Doing so, he discovers that the pin gives him access to a secret passageway, transporting him to another dimension where the best and brightest minds have come together to construct a futuristic utopia for mankind.  But then something went wrong.
In the present day, Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is a highly optimistic and brilliant teen troubled by the endless stream of doomsayers in the world around her, while she spends her nights sabotaging the demolition equipment scheduled to remove a NASA launching pad at Cape Canaveral.  One day, she comes into possession of a pin that she's never seen before, but which teleports her into the same futuristic utopia Frank was taken to years before the moment she touches it.  The experience is short-lived however, and searching for more information about the pin and the place it took her to, Casey winds up on the doorstep of Frank Walker (George Clooney), now a curmudgeonly man overwhelmed by the dark future for mankind that he sees and reluctant to tell Casey what she wants to know.  Frank's actions in the other world are now beginning to spill over into ours however, and Casey, it seems, is the key to reversing the collision course the humanity is on.  And the only way to do that is to return to Tomorrowland.

TOMORROWLAND, written by Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof and director Brad Bird, is a fascinating and refreshing response to the dystopia-obsessed pop culture landscape today where young adult dystopian fiction and zombies rule the zeitgeist.  Are we a society that has become obsessed with our own demise, and does that obsession feed into self-destructive tendencies?  Also, aren't jet packs and world unity way more enticing?  It's an idea film, but unlike last year's slightly similarly themed INTERSTELLAR, it's a lot more fun and more convincing in its arguments for mankind's potential.  Unfortunately, like INTERSTELLAR, it falls short of its potential, primarily due to a script that is only half-baked in some crucial areas.
Brad Bird is one of the greatest directors of his generation, with previous films including THE IRON GIANT (1999), THE INCREDIBLES (2004), RATATOUILLE (2007) and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (the first three which he wrote or co-wrote), all of which are essentially "perfect" films.  He's a master storyteller who combines pop art, deep emotion and high thrills in energetic and idealistic films, and he does the same here; TOMORROWLAND is a beautiful, exciting and inspiring product; but when it all comes to a head in the third act, the substance deflates in a scattershot finale.  It's not a dint in the action of the finale, which is inventive and thrilling, but all the ideas that have been building to something find themselves without satisfactory cohesion.
Britt Robertson, who was a highlight in the otherwise ridiculous recent Nicholas Sparks' film adaptation, THE LONGEST RIDE, gets material better suited to her talents here, as the spunky and bewildered young heroine Casey, and is a good foil to George Clooney's crabby and disillusioned Frank.  It may sound creepy, but some of the film's best comedy and Clooney's best moments involve Frank's bickering with an old crush that didn't grow old, ergo, a little girl.
Most audiences will find a lot to like here; exciting and creative action sequences, humor and spectacular visuals matched by spectacular energy and optimism (however, parents of very young children be cautioned, the intense action sometimes pushes the limits of the PG rating).  Even if it doesn't come together neatly like it should, it's hard not to be inspired by its optimistic vision of human potential once old and now made new again.

Disneyland: The Movie - POTC: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

In recognition of Walt Disney Pictures' new film, TOMORROWLAND, more or less "based" on the futuristic themed land in Disney theme parks, I'm taking a look back at the films based on or inspired by Disneyland attractions.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
Genre: Action-Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Released 9 July 2003
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Kevin R. McNally, Zoe Saldana, Damian O'Hare, Giles New, Angus Barnett, David Bailie, Isaac C. Singleton Jr.
Rated PG-13 for action/adventure violence.
143 minutes

Pirates of the Caribbean, opened in March 1967 at Disneyland Park, three months The Walt Disney Company co-founder Walter Elias Disney had died due to complications related to lung cancer.  It was the last Disneyland attraction in which Walt himself participated in designing, and began test runs the day he passed.  Originally conceptualized as a "wax museum" walk-through exhibit, it was ultimately realized as a "dark ride", a common form of attraction at Disney Parks, in which vehicles on a track carry riders through an enclosed environment past illuminated scenes with typically animated characters and theatrical effects.  Pirates of the Caribbean, coming after the simplistic Fantasyland dark rides such as Snow White's Scary Adventures, Peter Pan's Flight and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (which all opened with the park in 1955; on a side note, Pinocchio's Daring Journey was a late addition accompanying the remodeling of Fantasyland in 1983), but before the opening of the more advanced The Haunted Mansion, is one of the groundbreaking achievements in the history of theme park attractions and a perennial favorite across generations.

In Disneyland's New Orleans Square, patrons enter a building with a facade resembling the architectural designs of the actual New Orleans, Louisiana's French Quarter, and board boats that lead them through the sleepy Louisiana bayou before plunging down a waterfall and past eerie scenery of presumably cursed pirate skeletons washed up on a beach, still clutching the helm of a ship or frozen in the place of their merrymaking in a treasure trove.  Passing the cursed pirates, riders find themselves in the midst of a battle between a pirate ship and a Spanish fort, with cannonballs exploding in the water, and then into a town ransacked by pirates now auctioning off the local women (all in good fun, I guess) and dunking the mayor to extract the location of the town treasury.  Eventually things get a little hairier as the whole town appears to be ablaze and about to blow with barrels of gunpowder littered about much too close to the flickering flames just when the boats are pulled to safety, up a "waterfall" and back to the dry land from whence they came in.
The film more-or-less "based" on the attraction, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, with subtitle added at the urging of studio executives hoping to distance the movie from its peculiar source material and perhaps foster franchise ambitions, broke in multiple respects itself, at least within the realm of the Disney Company, and did kick off Disney's most successful franchise released under their own company banner.  As would be expected from a movie based on a theme park attraction, it's loosely based on its source material, and had a dramatic and tumultuous journey to the screen.
With a story credit shared between Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert, with Elliot and Rossio credited for the screenplay, PIRATES... indeed takes place in the Caribbean, in the early 18th century.  Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), a sun-baked and nearly mad pirate with a reputation, arrives in Port Royal, Jamaica with plans to steal a ship, but following an encounter with a stiff-necked blacksmith's apprentice by the name of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Sparrow is apprehended by local authorities and locked away to await the hangman's noose.  That night, the legendary Black Pearl, Sparrow's ship before his treacherous first mate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) led a mutiny against him and stole command, attacks Port Royal and makes off with Governor Swann's beautiful daughter Elizabeth (Keira Knightley).  A longtime secret admirer of Miss Swann, Will makes a deal with Sparrow to spring him out of jail in exchange for his assistance in bringing Elizabeth back, while the Royal Navy, led by Elizabeth's noble but pompous suitor, Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport), aimlessly arranges a rescue mission.  As they'll all soon found out though, the crew of the Black Pearl and their captain, Barbossa, are cursed to be undead by a chest of ancient Aztec gold, revealed in the moonlight as ragged skeletons.  It is for this reason that Elizabeth has been kidnapped with the gold piece in her possession, as the Black Pearl crew painstakingly returns each piece of gold stolen with an offering off blood from each who took.  Jack knows more than he lets on, including the fact that Will is the only son of the pirate "Bootstrap" Bill Turner who Barbossa killed for protesting the mutiny against Jack, and now the last thing keeping Barbossa and his crew from freeing themselves of the curse is the blood of William Turner.
The convoluted plot line is packed with interesting and fun ideas, but what it really comes down to is old-fashioned swashbuckling with a spooky twist.  Skeleton pirates with tattered clothing and decaying pieces of flesh and hair in a moonlight battle with Royal Marines, sailing vessels that pull up alongside each other and blow the smithereens out of one another with cannon fire, a swordfight between skeletons, dashing heroes, snarling villains and a roguish trickster; it all screams "Saturday matinee" fun.

Director Gore Verbinski, whose previous directing credits included the dark comedy MOUSEHUNT in 1997 and the horror-thriller THE RING in 2002, and his creative team defy the stereotypes in creating their pirates, making them almost cartoonishly filthy, informed by the characters of Sergio Leone's classic westerns.  The cast is populated by interesting faces, most of them sun-tanned and dirty, and rotten teeth abound throughout.  Depp's performance is of course the film's most famous aspect, as one of the most significant new characters of this century on film, the wily pirate Jack Sparrow, which film critic Roger Ebert noted "is original in its every atom".  While a known name, Depp was best known at the time for edgy, offbeat films of a much smaller sort, like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, and PIRATES... vastly amplified his star power.  Jack Sparrow is arguably Depp's best role, collaborating with costume designer Penny Rose to create the design of a whole new kind of pirate, with his signature red bandanna over an array of dreadlocks into which are woven souvenirs as varied as beads and a deer bone, a leather tricorne hat and eyeliner.  Traipsing drunkenly throughout the scenery, Disney executives were confused over whether Sparrow was intended to be drunk or gay, and many of Depp's choices were met with resistance by executives.  With Verbinksi to rein him in when necessary, such as when Depp went out and had several teeth fitted with gold caps (they let him keep most of them) or when Depp suggested that the character might have had his nose cut off with only a hole remaining after first being offered the role, Depp was ultimately vindicated in his choices and even earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, a true rarity for a summer blockbuster.  Although this was largely changed with following installments of the franchise, this first film brilliantly used Sparrow as a character who wanders in and out of someone else's story (in this case, Will and Elizabeth) and steals the show, playing off everyone else in comical fashion.  He seems silly, but he actually knows better what's going on than anyone else, all but breaking the fourth wall as he manipulates the goings-on around him.  Sparrow is too much to carry a film, as we'll find out with ON STRANGER TIDES, but his straight man, Bloom's Will Turner, is bland nothingness without Sparrow.
Most underrated of the cast is Geoffrey Rush as the villainous pirate Captain Barbossa, who, while Depp was inventing an all new kind of pirate, was resurrecting the traditional pirate with delightfully scenery-chewing villainy of a Shakespearean sort.  Few other actors working today could get away with loosing an "Aarrrrr!" in classic piratical fashion, and he makes an excellent counterpoint to Depp's New Age scoundrel.
With a $140 million budget, it was a significantly larger film than Disney was accustomed to producing when it was released in 2003, but the landscape of mainstream film had changed without Disney, shifting to an emphasis on franchise filmmaking, building up recognized and highly marketable brands with multiple-film potential.  PIRATES... had a tumultuous journey to the screen, initially intended as a more straightforward swashbuckler for direct-to-video release, and when it was picked up by producer Jerry Bruckheimer (whose previous credits with Disney included ARMAGEDDON and PEARL HARBOR), Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner was reluctant to approve the proposed $140 million budget and freaked out when he saw footage of Depp as Jack Sparrow, reportedly exclaiming, "He's ruining the film!"

It was also notably the first film released as a Walt Disney Pictures production with a PG-13 rating.  While Walt Disney Studios had been producing and distributing films geared toward teen and adult audiences, including films with PG-13 and R ratings, for the previous 20 years, they were always released under a separate label, usually Touchstone Pictures, and sometimes Hollywood Pictures.  Bruckheimer insisted that the film needed to be more intense than a PG rating would allow, but being based on a Disneyland attraction, it wouldn't be fitting to release it as a Touchstone Pictures production.  PIRATES... has a darker and more violent bent than most earlier Disney films, but very much in an adventure genre context with a family audience appeal.  Frankly, if its been a while since you've been on the ride its based on, you might be surprised at how edgy the attraction itself is.
Despite apprehensions at The Walt Disney Studios, the spectacular failure the few pirate movies attempted by Hollywood during the past several decades, and all the joking that, "I thought they were supposed to based the theme park rides after the movies," PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL was a massive and unexpected success.  With $654.2 million worldwide, it was the highest-grossing live action film out of Disney up until that time, and the sequels would make even more.  POTC redefined the way Disney makes movies, and not necessarily for the better, constructing over-sized fantasy/action-adventure tent-pole films with varying degrees of financial success, from the highs of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, to the moderate success of TRON: LEGACY, to the outright belly flops that are JOHN CARTER, THE LONE RANGER and PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME.  I think Disney is aiming in the right direction with a lot of these films.  Swashbuckling adventures are too great a rarity in Hollywood today, even with the immense success of each of the four POTC films to date, but they do have a tendency to grind them out like product and forget the heart.  PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL comes from a more uncertain time at Disney, where the risk provides the opportunity for something special, like a movie based on a theme park attraction that entered the cultural zeitgeist to become as widely beloved as its origins at the Happiest Place on Earth.

How Do You Adapt a Theme Park Attraction into a Movie?
The short answer is that you don't.  You make up a story that fits the basic concept of the attraction (pirate ride = pirate movie), then fill the movie up with homages and references to the attraction:

• "Yo Ho (A Pirates Life for Me): The theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean, with lyrics by legendary Disney Imagineer Xavier "X" Atencio and music by Disney composer George Bruns, is featured prominently in THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL as an old sea shanty that Elizabeth learned as a child, opening the film as young Elizabeth (Lucinda Dryzek) sings it to herself, later as a drunken Elizabeth and Jack sing it while marooned by Barbossa, and lastly by Jack just as he reclaims the Black Pearl and the credits roll.
• "The dog is never going to move.": Probably the most direct visual reference the film makes to the ride is the scene in which a group of condemned men locked in a prison cell offer a bone to the dog holding the prison keys in its mouth at a distance outside their reach.  In a sly meta reference to the ever-continuing cycle of the theme park attraction, Jack Sparrow, in the neighboring cell, chides them, saying, "You can keep doing that forever, the dog is never going to move."

• Pirate Attack on the Fort: The scene in which the Black Pearl fires on the fort at Port Royal resembles the scene from the ride in which a pirate ship referred to as the Wicked Wench fires across over passenger boats at a Spanish fort.
• Tortuga: Scenes taking place in the pirate port of Tortuga in the film are inspired by the "Burning Town" scene in the ride where the pirates ransack an unnamed town.  Specific references include the redheaded prostitute Scarlett, who slaps Jack and resembles the "redhead" from the auction scene in the ride; pirates drunkenly firing flintlock pistols; and Mr. Gibbs is found sleeping in the mud with pigs, similarly to the ride character apocryphally known as the "Scalawag", who wallows drunken with pigs.  Specific references such as the dunking in the well and one captive with notably quivering legs, and a fat woman chasing a skinny pirate appear in deleted footage on the DVD, and other footage shot for this sequence was later used in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST.
• Wine: Barbossa, revealed in the moonlight as a skeleton, throws back red wine that is visible pouring through his ribcage, akin to a skeleton guzzling wine on top of a bar counter in the "Grotto" scene of the ride.
• "Dead Men Tell No Tales!": Mr. Cotton's parrot speaks this line as the HMS Interceptor sails into the flotsam-filled waters around Isla de Muerta, a repeated line in the attraction.
• Isla de Muerta: The pirates' treasure trove on the island Isla de Muerta resembles in the treasure trove in the 'Grotto" sequence of the ride.  In addition to the piles of treasure inside the damp cave, as Jack and Will row into the cavern, Will notices a beached skeleton with a sword in its back and crabs scuttling about, directly referring to a vignette in the ride.  Initially, it was intended that Jack and Will would go down a flume to enter the cave, in reference to early in the ride when the boats plunge into the Grotto, but the scene was removed at the request of Michael Eisner, who wanted to distance the movie from its theme park origins.
• "Strike yer colors, ya blooming cockroaches!": Barbossa's dialogue as the crew of the Black Pearl fire on then board the HMS Interceptor borrows from the captain of the Wicked Wench in the ride.
• Cannonballs: In the climactic battle, as Commodore Norrington and Royal Marines row boats toward the under-siege HMS Dauntless, pirates on the ship fire cannons at the boat, splashing down in the water like the splashing cannonballs in Spanish Fort scene from the ride.

Following the success of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL and to promote the sequel, DEAD MAN'S CHEST, Disneyland made a number of alterations and additions to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that tied into the movie franchise that had been inspired by the attraction:

• 3 Jack Sparrows: Much of the dialogue throughout the attraction has been reworked to involve various characters pursuing Captain Jack Sparrow, with Sparrow himself making three separate audio-animatronic appearances; first, when the mayor, Carlos, is being dunked in the well by pirates who now want to know the whereabouts of Sparrow (as opposed to previously seeking the town treasure) while he hides behind a tailor's supplies dumped on the street; second, Jack pokes his head out of a barrel, spying on the character known as the "Pooped Pirate", who holds a treasure map.  [The Pooped Pirate changes are probably the most welcome, as the original Pooped Pirate, shown in a 1967 Disneyland TV special included on the DVD of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, originally was chasing a "shy little wench" who he presumably wants to rape, and the young girl pokes her head out of the barrel behind him.  That was fairly disturbing, but when it was given a PC makeover in 1997, the Pooped Pirate was made to be merely in search of food, with a cat in the barrel, which Disney Imagineer X Atencio, who wrote the script for the ride, criticized as "Boy Scouts of the Caribbean".  With Jack, it's safe to assume there's no rape (well, [ahem], let's hope), but it makes more sense than food.]  Finally, Jack shows up as the boats are taken up the waterfall at the end, rocking back in a chair and surrounded by loot.  At the ride queue, where various famous pirates are painted on the walls, Jack Sparrow and Barbossa have also been included.
• Barbossa: An audio-animatronic of Barbossa, in search of Sparrow, has replaced the captain of the Wicked Wench in the scene of the ship attacking the Spanish fort.
• Aztec Treasure: At the conclusion of the Grotto sequence filled with piles of treasure, the actual Aztec treasure chest prop from the film production makes an appearance, illuminated by an eerie blue light.

• Soundtrack: The now-practically iconic main theme, "He's a Pirate", by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer, has been integrated into the attraction's musical score.
• Tom Sawyer Island: In 2007, coinciding with the release of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END, the separate Disneyland attraction Tom Sawyer's Island was reopened as Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island with interactive exhibits that includes a an animatronic of a cursed Pintel (Lee Arenberg) that pops up and scares guests, and Ragetti's (Mackenzie Crook) skeletal hand that reaches down, holding his wooden eye.

Top 5 of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL 

1. Johnny Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow - 12 years and three movies later, Jack Sparrow is still Johnny Depp's masterpiece and the highlight of THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL.  He is better utilized in THE CURSE... than in any other movie in the series, less of an active protagonist or antagonist than he is a meandering force, manipulating all other parties in pursuit of his own objective.  He seems crazy, but he happens to know better than anyone else how to play the game.
2. "You best start believing in ghost stories..." - In a masterwork of exposition delivery, Captain Barbossa explains to a skeptical Elizabeth about the Aztec curse.  It's straightforward expository dialogue, but Elliot and Rossio's florid dialogue matched with Rush's commanding delivery and Verbinski's direction make it the most electrifying scene in the film.  "For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth," he says as he reaches a skeletal hand out into the moonlight at Elizabeth, "of a woman's flesh."  Emerging fully into the moonlight to reveal his undead state, Barbossa continues, "You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!"  In reference to the moment from the theme park ride, Barbossa then pulls the cork out of a bottle of wine with his teeth and throws it back down his throat, letting it spill out his ribcage.
3. Geoffrey Rush is Captain Barbossa - In the shadow of Depp's thoroughly original Jack Sparrow, Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, the old familiar pirate given new life, is unfortunately too often overlooked.  Rush chews the scenery as Barbossa, and few other actors could likely get away with shouting "Aaarrrrrrr!"
4. Two Immortals Locked in Epic Battle - A swordfight between skeletons?  Yes, please!  "So what now, Jack Sparrow? Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle until Judgement Day and trumpets sound?" 
5. Crossing Blades With a Pirate - Probably the series' most noteworthy swordfight, doubling as the first meeting of the franchise's two main heroes, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, the duel in the blacksmith's shop is a rollicking and energetic sequence that even gets up into the rafters, with a no-holds-barred choreography.

All images via The Walt Disney Company, unless otherwise noted.