Disneyland Paris' Discoveryland

When looking to breathe some life back into Disneyland's Frontierland in the late 1970's, legendary Imagineer Tony Baxter spearheaded a project dubbed "Discovery Bay". Placed along the Rivers of America, this was meant to mirror a San Francisco harbourfront out of Jules Verne, including a Nautilus restaurant and a ride based on the upcoming film Island at the Top of the World. Unfortunately, Island at the Top of the World failed at the box office and Discovery Bay was shelved, but the essential ideas developed for it resurfaced decades later when Baxter was put in charge of designing the new EuroDisney. Discovery Bay formed the backbone of the new park's version of Tomorrowland, dubbed Discoveryland.

All photos by Cory Gross unless otherwise noted.

One of the consistent problems with Tomorrowland at Disneyland USA in Anaheim, Walt Disney World in Orlando, and Tokyo Disneyland is that the future keeps coming. Walt Disney's original plans were extraordinarily ambitious: a permanent, constantly changing World's Exposition in which American industry could show off the latest technological developments in an entertaining format. That's also expensive, and the rate of technological progress is so rapid that an attraction may already be out of date before it has debuted. The last time that Disneyland developed a proper science-based attraction was Adventure Thru Inner Space in 1967, themed to a microscopic voyage through the atomic realm. The ride, sponsored by Monsanto and featuring a Monsanto showroom at its exit, closed in 1985 when it was replaced by Star Tours, a Star Wars-based attraction. The creation of Star Tours marked a major philosophical change at Walt Disney Imagineering by simply replacing a classic attraction with a new one based on a commercial intellectual property. 

Baxter and his team were given the opportunity with the EuroDisney project in the late Eighties and early Nineties to reimagine the entire Disneyland concept from the ground up. Their radical "blue sky" phase even questioned whether it was actually necessary to have a castle at the centre of a Disneyland park. The Tomorrowland problem was high on their list of concerns. One of the initial suggestions was to essentially abolish Tomorrowland completely and replace it with an entire land licensed to Star Wars. No idea at Imagineering is truly forgotten, and a Star Wars land has finally surfaced at both American theme parks. That plan for Disneyland Paris was ultimately rejected in favour of one that could kill two proverbial birds with one stone.

A challenge Disney faced with building a Disneyland park outside of Paris was France's cultural gatekeepers who saw the prospect as a gauche, kitsch incursion of American consumer culture into the very heart of European civilization. Appeasing those gatekeepers became a serious concern for Baxter's team, resulting in numerous lines of connection between Disney's IP and French and European culture. The French origins of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were emphasized, for example. Their new version of Adventureland drew more definitely from European colonial exploits and adventure tales like Swiss Family Robinson and Treasure Island. Phantom Manor, the reworked version of Haunted Mansion set to the American Wild West, found some inspiration in Gaston Leroux's immortal creation. An exhibit along Main Street USA celebrates France's gift of the Statue of Liberty. 

Rather than try to keep pace with the future or simply consign Tomorrowland to franchise IP, Baxter's team developed the retro-futuristic "Discoveryland" of Jules Verne's imagination. This version of the land consciously looked to the aspirations of the past to commemorate its ambitions for the future which we were now realizing, as well as celebrated the work of France's pioneers of Science Fiction and Disney's connections to them.

"Tout ce qui est dans la limite du possible, doit être et sera accompli." - Jules Verne
("All that is within the limit of possible, must be and will be accomplished.")

Red Dead Redemption's Weird Western World

The original Red Dead Redemption, released in 2010 by Rockstar Games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is considered by many to be a high-water mark in video gaming. Following the "open world" format of Rockstar's infamous Grand Theft Auto series, the mean streets of major modern metropoli were replaced with the Wild West of Italian cinema. Furthermore, the chain of events was given the compelling story of John Marston, a former outlaw who is forced to hunt down his old gang members across Mexico and the fictional State of New Austin after the government takes his family hostage. The game became a perfect example of the growing propensity for video games to transcend film as the art form of the 21st century. Beautifully rendered environments coupled with engaging storytelling and characters that literally involve the player for hours upon hours of entertainment. 

Red Dead Redemption release trailer.

Advances in technology have meant that no video game is truly complete. Indeed, the "day one update" phenomena has shown that most games aren't even fully debugged and ready to run when they are sold. But where there is extra money to make, downloadable content (DLC) is soon to follow. Picking up before Red Dead Redemption's epilogue, the Undead Nightmare DLC (2010) throws a supernatural curve into Marston's settled life. Just when he thought his family was safe, both his wife and son succumb to a zombie plague breaking out across the frontier. Naturally, it is up to the former outlaw to solve a mystery going back to ancient Aztec worship of the Sun. 

Along the way, Marston encounters even more strangeness. As the world is ripped asunder by a zombie apocalypse, the Four Horsemen's steeds roam the Earth. Marston has the option of taming War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, each with their own unique effects on the brain-eating hordes. Somewhere out there in the wilds is also a unicorn that trails a rainbow behind it as you ride. Joining him are jackalope and chupacabra, and a pathos-inspiring episode with Sasquatch. A new mythology for the zombies does not exactly utilize the creature's largely forgotten origins in Voodoo shamanism, but does draw the modern metaphor of cosmic nihilism and urban distress further back in that direction.  

Undead Nightmare trailer.

Undead Nightmare was criticized from some quarters upon its release, as a number of fans of the original game felt that it undermined Red Dead Redemption's realism to jump on the zombie bandwagon. On the one hand, this realism is overstated: the West was not nearly as wild and bloodthirsty as cinema has made it out to be. Red Dead is an interactive Western movie, pulling tropes and archetypes from Hollywood's gunslingers. A truly realistic Western game would involve an unrelenting tedium of plowing land, driving cattle, and months-long bounty hunts. Violent and gritty does not equate to realistic, and it's surprising to learn that anyone has thought that way since the 1990's. Rockstar already sacrificed realism for an entertaining product.

Apparently those critics were a minor voice, because the more recently released prequel Red Dead Redemption II (2018) for Xbox One and Playstation 4 goes much further in integrating elements of the Weird Western into their otherwise more realistic game. In this installment set in 1899, 13 years before Red Dead Redemption, you play Arthur Morgan, the enforcer of John Martson's old gang. After a robbery gone wrong, the gang is on the lam and trekking across the American landscape to avoid Pinkertons and bounty hunters. We see the gang both at the height of its power and through its fall into madness, despair, and death. 

Red Dead Redemption II release trailer.

The game pushes beyond the tropes of the Spaghetti Western to be a much more realistic take on true Western life. Opportunities for fastpaced, bloodthirsty gunplay are further between and resource management becomes a much more significant part of the game. You have to watch out for the well-being of the camp, your horse, and your character, meaning there is more hunting, crafting, bathing, feeding, and brushing going on. The world of Red Dead Redemption II is much more fully and beautifully realized as well. Its sprawling map is a microcosom of the United States, with regions identifiable to actual parts of the country. The city of Saint Denis is a stand-in for New Orleans, surrounded by bayous and neighbouring the red earth of the post-Civil War American South. North is "Roanoke", replicating the Appalachians and Hudson Valley. To the West are ranges of mountains reflecting the Sierra Nevadas and Canadian Rocky Mountains. Tucked in the midst of the mountains is a small tribute to the geyser basins of Yellowstone. In the middle of the map is the eerily accurate "Heartlands" that look exactly like what one would see driving through the grasslands and badlands of the prairies. New Austin returns as the equivalent of Texas.

Throughout this immense world are a plethora of sights and strangers that get weirder and weirder as the game progresses. The original game had its share of odd characters, eccentrics mostly. The only clearly supernatural figure in Red Dead Redemption was the mysterious Stranger, an unkillable, top-hatted gentleman who appears to know everything about John Marston's past... and future. It was a statement by him that provided the seed for Red Dead Redemption II's precipitating incident. Yet he is poorly defined and there is much speculation as to whether he is God, or Satan, or something else entirely. Much like the stranger in the Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter (1973), there are hints as to who this Stranger could be, but overall he is an encounter with the Unknown beyond human ken.

Compilation of scenes with the Stranger.

By contrast,  Red Dead Redemption II goes balls to the wall nuts at times. Extraterrestrial visitors appear at least three times in the sky, first above the ruined shack of a Heaven's Gate-style suicide cult. A ghost in the swamps outside Saint Denis eternally relives her tragic tale of lost love and suicide. Speaking of Saint Denis, what would a proxy of New Orleans be without a vampire? Sasquatch bones can be sighted in a mountain cave, a horrific Moreauesque experiment can be found in a deserted house, high in the hills is a witch's hovel with a cauldron brewing, and human sacrifices by pagan cults dot the landscape, as do ancient fossils, Viking burials, pirate wrecks, and crashed flying machines. A side mission has you searching for mysterious rock carvings of Zeppelins and atomic bomb explosions for a man who looks and talks like he is from the 1920's. Another mission has you performing tasks for a Tesla-like genius, culminating in the discovery of an automaton that looks like a cross between Boilerplate and Bender. 
The following videos by LegacyKillaHD showcase some the various Easter eggs and where to find them, though (more) spoilers ahead for those waiting to find them for themselves...

Alienation, Modernity, and Nostalgia in The Twilight Zone and Somewhere in Time

Today's special post is part of the Time Travel Blogathon hosted by Wide Screen World and Silver Screenings. Click on the banner above to see more excellent time-tossed movie reviews.

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  A recurring theme in The Twilight Zone is the existential angst of the modern male. Its canon of episodes is replete with middle-age guys who just can't catch a break, who just can't keep up with the pace of life in the jet age. The most famous is Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith in the classic Time Enough at Last (1959), a henpecked bookworm who just wants to curl up with a good story. A well-timed outbreak of nuclear war does a fine job of taking care of distractions, but as you can imagine, there is always a catch in... The Twilight Zone.

Rejection of the modern day for the allure of the past was a recurring exploration of this theme. It was played comically in Once Upon a Time (1961), starring Buster Keaton as a man from the silent film era who trades places with an inventor from the 1960's, both discovering that the grass is not always greener on the other side. A more serious, and heartbreaking, exploration of the idea came with A Stop at Willoughby (1960), penned by Rod Serling himself. It was later adapted as a television film, For All Time (2000) starring Mark Harmon and Mary McDonnell. Richard Matheson, writer of many Twilight Zone episodes including Once Upon a Time and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1963), delivered his take on it for a 1975 novel Bid Time Return. That was, in turn, adapted to cinemas as Somewhere in Time (1980) starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In both For All Time and Somewhere in Time, the alienated modern man seeks love and fulfillment in the Gay Nineties, with varying degrees of success as lovers and as films.