It was very appropriate, and most likely unknowingly so, that Disney set 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, in 1914. Indeed, in many ways it could not truly have been otherwise: the middle Victorian era saw the beginning of an explosion of interest in the lost continent that would not subside beneath the waves again until the 1960's. In the decade spanning 1895 to 1905, there were no less than 16 fiction novels, standing alongside countless ostensibly non-fiction pseudoscientific and spiritualist explorations, which solidified the Atlantis we know today: not as a holdover of ancient myth, but as an artifact of Victorian cultural anxieties.
Today's special post is part of the second annual So Bad It's Good Blogathon. Click on the banner above to see rousing defenses of other films, ranging from the unfairly maligned to the hilariously terrible.
One of the biggest challenges faced by Disney in the past decade was trying to recapture the magic of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and appeal to the young male demographics. 2010 saw Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tron: Legacy, both of which under-performed and under-impressed. Pirates of the Caribbean returned in 2011 with On Stranger Tides, an attempt at a second series that sputtered out. That was followed in 2017 by Dead Men Tell No Tales, which also went nowhere. Disney completely threw John Carter under the bus in 2012. The company's ineptitude at either creating big budget franchise tentpoles or marketing them properly eventually lead to them buying out Lucasfilm in 2012 for the guaranteed moneymaker of Star Wars... Only to drive that one into the ground too. After adjusting for inflation, The Force Awakens (2015) is the 11th highest grossing movie of all time, The Last Jedi (2017) is 44th, and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) is 94th. Their only consistent success has been Marvel Studios, purchased in 2009, which may have succeeded in spite of Disney rather than because of it.
Tucked into that decennium horribilis was 2013's The Lone Ranger. The Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator currently shows a critical approval rating of 31% and they immediately declared it a flop after it pulled in second to Despicable Me 2 on opening night. When it came to Disney summer adventure movies of the 2010's, critics seemed more zealous than usual to ordain themselves the gatekeepers of culture who can make or break a film with the tap of a keyboard. Mark Hughes of Forbes decried the media as "flop-hungry," and it is hard to disagree with him given the histrionics critics have engaged in. Gilbert Cruz of The Vulturedecrees that it "Represents Everything That's Wrong With Hollywood Blockbusters," San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle calls it "the biggest stinker of 2013" and Lou Lumenick of the New York Post audaciously declared it "the worst [Western] — and then some." On the contrary, The Lone Ranger was considerably better than most movies of 2013 and, far from being the worst Western ever made, it's not even the worst version of The Lone Ranger. I have worse Westerns in my own home video collection! Such insensible, immoderate, hysterical criticisms betray the fact that The Lone Ranger is actually a very enjoyable movie in the vein of 1990's costume adventure films like Tombstone (1993).
Perhaps critics were unprepared for the fact that it is predominately a comedy, or perhaps they were unprepared to have to think about it thematically. The Lone Ranger, drafted by the same creative team as Pirates of the Caribbean, pokes at the corniness of the original radio and television versions in addition to genuine attempts to reach out to the tastes of modern audiences. In doing so, it can become corny in its own right, with a wink and a nod, proving that it isn't poking at the original Ranger in a mean way. On the contrary, to fully understand the subtext to this film, it helps to have a working knowledge of the original.
Our story opens in a carnival in San Francisco in 1933, the same year that The Lone Ranger debuted on radio. A young boy, clad in Hollywood cowboy style complete with Lone Ranger mask enters a Wild West show, out of which pours the music of Gene Autry. The carnival barker promises that the exhibit will take visitors back to "the thrilling days of yesteryear," another recall to the introduction of the radio show. Inside are mostly static displays of buffalo and grizzly bears, dusty relics of a bygone past. One display, however, features a living "Noble Savage"... An aged and decrepit Tonto, who proceeds to tell the boy the true story of the Lone Ranger.
Not long into the film we come to understand that Tonto - who has traditionally been represented as a "Noble Savage" archetype - is an unreliable narrator, raising the question of how much of the true story of the Lone Ranger is really true. The boy himself tries to remind Tonto (or convince himself) that the Lone Ranger is just a made-up character. A key point in the film is that Tonto is emotionally scarred from the childhood trauma that connects directly to his desire for revenge on Butch Cavendish. Cherokee elders relate the story to John Reid, the Ranger's alter ego, believing that Tonto's mind is broken and that his perception of the world is skewed. At least it would explain why he keeps trying to feed the dead crow on his head, or why he wears one at all. Supernatural, "Weird West" elements are layered throughout The Lone Ranger, but these are all called into question. Are they real or imagined by Tonto? Is the Lone Ranger real or imaginary? For that matter, is Tonto even real or was he also imagined by the boy?
Consequently, the film calls our attention to the act of Western myth-making and sets about, in its own way, to deconstruct how cultures recollect and reinterpret their own history (including a self-deconstruction of the very act of making cinematic reboots, which is the sort of self-awareness I haven't seen since the South Park movie being a satire of the controversy the South Park movie would generate). The reality of western settlement in the United States has been layered over and over again by myth-making and faulty recollection, due exactly to film, television and radio. Not only them, but even the people who lived it, as with Buffalo Bill Cody's wild west shows, Ned Buntline's dime novels and the paintings of Charlie Russell. From Washington Irving to Walt Disney, the United States has always been a myth-making culture that reworks and retools its own history to communicate a certain ideal, however divorced that may be from fact. Everyone knows about the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere and Washington crossing the Delaware, but not about the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that was a proximate cause of the Revolution. The Royal Proclamation recognized Indigenous peoples as sovereign nations, thus forbidding the conquest of Native lands, instead requiring legal land surrender by treaty. Everyone remembers to remember the Alamo, but doesn't remember that Mexico was actually in the right in that conflict. Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, William Travis and the Texan settlers were essentially foreign insurgents whose motivations included maintaining a slave economy outlawed by Mexico. It is common knowledge that the Wild West was settled by the gun, less well-known that the average annual homicide rate per city during the period of western settlement was two, and that gun control was strictly enforced in towns. The Gunfight at the OK Corral was instigated by the Clantons and McLaurys flouting the ordinance not to carry firearms in Tombstone, and three people died. Illegally carrying firearms was the second most common cause of arrest after drunk and disorderly conduct.
Given this, The Lone Ranger did hold out the threat of imposing upon us that uniquely American version of the hero's journey, where the limp-wristed, educated intellectual must learn that the only way to decisively resolve conflict is with bloodshed. Theologian Walter Wink dubbed this story form the "Myth of Redemptive Violence," dating back at least as early as the Babylonian Enuma Elish of 1250BCE. In that classical myth, the god Marduk creates the cosmos by stretching out of the entrails of his slain foe, the dragon Tiamat. American history invites - almost requires - adherence to the moral framework of the Myth of Redemptive Violence, since the American Revolution is as concrete an historical realization of the myth of Tiamat and Marduk as is possible. The United States has a particular version of this myth which reinforces the ideal of the rugged, individualistic, gun-toting Republican type against the effete, intellectual, legalistic Democratic type. Our introduction to John Reid is his sitting on a train reading John Locke's Two Treatises on Government. During the first big train robbery action scene, we also find out that he eschews firearms and is a lawyer.
Thankfully the film retains its composure and adherence to the original character, whose ultimate goal was justice. Not justice taken into one's own hand, but the justice of due legal process. Though he grows into a more model American toughguy, the Lone Ranger still possesses the ethic that he is an agent of civilization, even when being so requires being an outlaw (which also fits in with the American fetish for the criminal class, from Old West outlaws to Depression-Era gangsters to easy riding bikers to inner city gangstas). This new version also hews closely enough to the established origin of the character, complete with that infamous ride of the Texas Rangers into the canyon and the silver mine which would furnish a near endless supply of silver bullets. The origin of Silver is distinctly different, as required by the ambiguous supernaturalism imparted by Tonto.
Silver, the horse, is a fantastic actor and frequently steals the show. Armie Hammer is adequate in a role more clearly written for Brendan Fraser circa The Mummy (1999), and Johnny Depp does much to act his way out of the fundamental ickiness of casting a white actor to play an Indigenous character. The ambivalence of his playing Tonto is, I think, handled as well as one can hope by how Tonto is written. Because he is emotionally traumatized and mentally broken, he is not intended to represent a typical "Indian Brave" or "Noble Savage." His being in the Wild West show's display as a specimen of the "Noble Savage" is lampshading how Tonto has traditionally been portrayed. He is allowed to break out of having to portray Native Americans as a whole and permitted simply to act the character. Between them, the Lone Ranger and Tonto have a fun and lively dynamic that chews more scenery than did a taciturn Ranger and a stoic Tonto.
Some legitimate criticism pointed out the gratuity of some crude humour and violence. It seems that simply killing someone is no longer quite bad enough in a cinema environment glutted with zombies, starship disasters, planet-destroying lasers, and literally snapping half of the universe into nonexistence. Now the cold-blooded killers have to eat their victim's remains just to prove that they're really bad guys. Despite being needless, the acts of cannibalism were written well into the plot and fitted with the film's supernaturalism and theme of nature being out of balance. I suspect more would have been made of nature's imbalance had not major parts of the script been excised when Disney brought down the fiscal hammer during production. Lost were genuine werewolves, necessitating the iconic silver bullets.
It would also have been too easy to play the Lone Ranger for laughs. As a product of a bygone age reinterpreted into an atmosphere of identity politics, it would have been seductive to make him the butt of a joke... That white men are stupid and old things are funny because they're not modern things. That is blessedly not the case, even though it is mostly a comedy with some very dumb moments. Any fun that is poked at the Lone Ranger or his race earns the climactic payoff when John Reid owns his masked identity, takes off on Silver's back, and Hans Zimmer's arrangement of the William Tell Overture hits the octane. It's an origin story after all. It has to end with the hero rising up to become the legend admired by our young boy in 1933.
The catastrophic reception of The Lone Ranger was unfair, but it wasn't as disastrous as, say, John Carter's. The box office failure of John Carter ended any conceivable plans to continue with the trilogy implied by Burroughs' books. While The Lone Ranger's failure does deny us any further adventures with this particular duo of Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp, the film itself acts as an origin story for all preceding versions of the characters. The boy in 1933 is clearly a fan of the radio show and film serials (1938 and 1939). Those begat the television show (1949-57), science fiction-inspired cartoon (1966-68), and other media. The purpose of this film is to highlight, lampshade, and deconstruct the origins of the character itself, to tell his "true story" after nearly a century of radio, television, cartoons, and film. As such, Disney's The Lone Ranger does stand alone, which works handily after the professional critic class were done with it.
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 andDiscovery 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.")
For whatever my opinion is worth, I think Fantasia could qualify not only as Disney's greatest film, and not only as the greatest animated film ever made, and not only as the greatest motion picture ever made, but even as the greatest single work of art of the 20th century. It is a bold claim, perhaps ridiculous on the face of it, but if we first accept that film was the artform of the 20th century - the artform that, despite being invented at the end of the 19th century, was refined in the 20th and which became its most popular and accessible type - then animation would be the artform of cinema. It is one thing to point a camera in the direction of a play and film it. It is another to understand and manipulate the very fabric of the medium itself. The first animators had the presence of mind to realize that each frame was a tiny picture that could be altered to produce the illusion of life. The film that could best exemplify animation would earn the title of the greatest artistic work of the 20th century, and I firmly believe that Fantasia fits that accolade.
Fantasia, released in 1940 as Disney's third animated feature, demonstrates everything an animated film can be. Across its seven distinct pieces, it proves that animation can be abstract (as in its Toccata and Fugue in D Minor segment) or narrative (as in The Sorcerer's Apprentice), mythological (Pastoral Symphony) or visualizations of scientific theories (Rite of Spring), comedy (Dance of the Hours) or horror (Night on Bald Mountain), anthropomorphism (Nutcracker Suite) or symbolism (Ave Maria). Married to the great compositions of classical music, it could also aspire to be high art. It is an incredibly rich, nuanced, and rewarding work, deeply rooted in the traditional fine arts... Far more than many would expect from a Disney film.
The physical storytelling in Fantasia is so accomplished that words were entirely unnecessary. No narrator was required to tell us that The Nutcracker Suite transitions through the seasons, and Mickey Mouse has no need to crack wise. What could Chernabog possibly say to make him more frightening? What could a David Attenborough add to Rite of Spring that we could not see for ourselves in all its violence and terror and power? Wisely, music scholar and radio personality Deems Taylor reserved his live-action annotations for between the animated sequences. His sonorous voice (now lost behind a dubbing over by Corey Burton) only gives us a few notes in the way of introduction to add to our enjoyment of the piece, like one may find in the program of an evening at the local philharmonic. Fantasia is a tour de force of pantomime, a lasting tribute to the skill of the animator who must draw every glance and gesture.
The Mississippi River is one of the great rivers of the world. Counting in its entire drainage basin, the Mississippi and its tributaries drain 31 states and the southernmost part of two Canadian provinces. It straddles the Rocky Mountains to the West and Appalachian Mountains to the East. It is the fourth longest and ninth largest river in the world. The Mississippi is the central artery of American industry, controlling it meant victory for the Union and defeat for the Confederates, it demarcates Country music from Western music, and the settlements along its ever advancing delta gave birth to Jazz. Sooner rather than later, the living river might bypass New Orleans and Baton Rouge altogether, rerouting its primary outflow to the Atchafalaya River. It already would be, if not for the engineering marvels placed by the US government attempting to bend nature to its will. Great industrial barges ply the urbanized riverscape today, but in Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and wherever Imagineers have transplanted the American frontier, the romance of the river's old steamboat days are perpetually rekindled.
On November 12th, the Walt Disney Company launched it new streaming service Disney+. Though limited in scope right now, the service has the potential to offer an incredible assortment of films and TV shows through the company's various brands: Disney, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Marvel, National Geographic, and 20th Century Fox. And in the mix are some classics of Retro-Victorian Scientific Romances, including some unexpected hidden gems.
The following is a guide to what Disney+ has available, with the apologies that I'm subscribed through the Canadian version of the service. It has already been made apparent that Disney+ is unable to break the geo-locked curse of Netflix.
Without further ado:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Of course, any Disney+ viewing list should be topped with this, one of the most important films in the company's history. When looking to produce their first epic, feature-length, live-action film at Disney's Burbank studio (a quartet of live-action films had been produced before this in England, using money tied up there during the Second World War), Walt looked no further than a classic adventure story of his youth, Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Distilled into a lively picture with action, music, and perhaps surprising drama, it became an instant hit whose echo still rings down in Disney's parks to this day. One hopes that with it now available on Disney+, new audiences will rediscover this classic.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). One of the many Jules Verne adaptations to come out in the wake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this adaptation now enters the Disney fold through the company's acquisition of 20th Century Fox. It is fitting, not only because it so-closely hews to the style laid out by Disney, but Disney has already made a Journey to the Center of the Earth theme park attraction in Tokyo DisneySea. Unfortunately the Disney film In Search of the Castaways and Fox film Five Weeks in a Balloon (both 1962) have yet to appear on Disney+, but these four films are significant examples of the Atomic Age revival of interest in Jules Verne and Victorian Sci-Fi.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003).Disney revisited the theme of submarines in their turn-of-the-century phase of Retro-Victorian Sci-Fi. Atlantis got something of a cult following for its faithful translation of the Lovecraftian, Pulp-styled work of comic artist and writer Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. The direct-to-video sequel was a compilation of three episodes for a failed Atlantis TV series. If one never bothered to get that DVD (and one would be blameless), Disney+ is a good opportunity to finally see it.
Treasure Planet (2002). Inexplicably maligned, Treasure Planet was certainly no worse than any other Disney animated film from the time period, and considerably better than most. It begins with the bones of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which is already good source material. Then it transplants that timeless story into a gorgeous post-Hubble outer space with a 70/30 mix of 18th century seafaring and futuristic Sci-Fi technologies. Hopefully Disney+ will lead to its reappraisal.
John Carter (2012). Speaking of reappraisals... Disney's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, directed by Andrew Stanton of Finding Nemo and Wall-E fame, with script by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, was actually quite good. Unfortunately it was lost in Disney's shuffle and the company threw it under the bus when it was barely out of the gate, depriving it of its best chance to gain a cultural foothold and its sequels Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars.
Tarzan (1999), Tarzan and Jane (2002), and Tarzan II (2005). And now speaking of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Disney`s adaptation was probably the best since the original Johnny Weissmuller films of the 1930's. The original film - a straightforward action film with incidental soundtrack by Phil Collins, at the time a departure from the Broadway musical-style of the 1990's Disney animation renaissance - is excellent. It first sequel, Tarzan and Jane, was a compilation of three unaired episodes of the Legend of Tarzan TV series which has yet to appear on Disney+. The series itself, though suffering from terrible animation, made excellent use of Burroughs' concepts including Opar and Pellucidar. Tarzan II was another direct-to-video sequel exploring Tarzan's boyhood years.
Swiss Family Robinson (1940 and 1960). One of the biggest surprises hidden away in Disney+ was the original 1940 version of Swiss Family Robinson. When making their celebrated 1960 version, Disney bought up the rights to the previous 1940 RKO Pictures version. The last time it surfaced was in excerpts on the 2-disc "Vault Disney" edition of the 1960 version. Now both versions appear, in full, on the streaming service, both very very different and very compelling takes on the story in their own ways. One also hopes that the 1940 version is only the first in a rich back-catalogue of films from Hollywood's Golden Age that Disney acquired through 20th Century Fox.
The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Join Basil of Baker Street and Dawson as they attempt to foil the vile Ratigan's attempt to replace the Mouse Queen of 19th century London with a tinkerer's automaton in this charming homage to Sherlock Holmes. The Great Mouse Detective was actually the second Disney film I remember seeing in theatres, after a re-release of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and before a re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), after which I felt I got too old for Disney films right as the Disney Renaissance happened.
The Jungle Book (1967 and 2016). Both the original animated version and the recent live-action/CGI version are on Disney+ (as well as the 2003 animated sequel Jungle Book 2). The 1967 version is the final animated feature that Walt Disney was involved with, but is widely regarded to have suffered for the lack of his guiding hand in its homestretch. The 2016 version goes back to the source material by Rudyard Kipling to produce a driven, emotionally satisfying film with an actual story.
The Sign of Zorro (1960). Disney's iconic Zorro series (1957-59) is not on the streaming service yet, but one can find the 1960 feature film abridging the original 13-episode story arc. Though not Science Fiction, the masked avenger righting wrongs in Spanish California is a distinctly American take on the Scarlet Pimpernel-style of superhero and direct inspiration for Batman. Disney's version is also the unequivocally best version of him.
The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967). A comedy of the California Gold Rush, Bullwhip Griffin was one of the last remaining films that Walt Disney had worked on prior to his death in 1966. It is a slapstick comedy in the silent movie vein, with wonderful title cards by animator Ward Kimball reinforcing the film's dime novel, Vaudville aesthetic. It also ends with a charming, retro-futuristic vision of modern San Francisco.
Mickey Mouse: Wonders of the Deep (2015). This third season episode of the modern Mickey Mouse cartoons invokes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in both its film and theme park forms. The entire Mickey Mouse series is hilarious in its own right, with its copious Disney Easter eggs and return to Mickey's ribald roots during his black-and-white days (such as his first official cartoon, 1928's Steamboat Willie, which is also available on Disney+).
Around the World in 80 Days (2004). Despite departing significantly from the novel, the Walden Media produced (and Disney distributed) version of Around the World in 80 Days starring Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan still has much to recommend it. It's not as epic or classic as the 1956 version, but its still highly enjoyable and makes good use of Phileas Fogg's recasting as a mad inventor.
The Black Hole (1979). Disney's entry into the bleak field of languid 1970's Sci-Fi suffers for its time period and is otherwise a straightforward futuristic film. Yet the style of its ship is unmistakably Gothic in ways comparable to Treasure Planet or Event Horizon (1997).
Tall Tale (1995).A league of extraordinary characters from American fakelore - Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry - must unite to save Paradise Valley from a developer with a pretty awesome-looking steam engine. A largely forgotten film, it's worth another look if you've already got Disney+.
Return to Oz (1985) and Oz, The Great and Powerful (2013). These Disney-made sequels and prequels to the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz are controversial, red-headed step-children. Oz, The Great and Powerful was a vain attempt to dig up a revisionist fairy tale in the wake of the Broadway smash hit Wicked, and it shows. Return to Oz is a more feverish, even nightmarish, film that still haunts me some 35 years later. But it is also very inventive in its imagery, and stands up very well as an adaptation of the Oz stories in its own rights, if one can divorce it from comparison to the 1939 musical.
La Luna (2012). Not Science Fiction per se, this Pixar short has all the romance and charm of a Georges Méliès film. A young boy must find his own way in the family business, which happens to be sweeping the Moon of fallen stars.
Disney+ has much more to offer than Retro-Victorian Scientific Romances, of course. Nearly every Disney animated classic is on there, many of the True-Life Adventures nature documentaries (my favourite being The Vanishing Prairie), Disney Afternoon cartoons, and much vintage content (the US version has the first five episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club, for example). My only complaint is that it needs more vintage content from the Disney vaults, especially those original episodes of the Walt Disney's Disneyland/Wonderful World of Color/Wonderful World of Disney TV series, and that they need to break the geo-lock so everything on the US version is available in Canada. The service also features several National Geographic documentaries (including two on two of my most favourite places in the world, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon national parks). The future will undoubtedly bring more films in the genre, such as In Search of the Castaways and Island at the Top of the World (1974). For now though, that's a pretty good list to keep one going.
P.S.: No, Disney didn't pay me for this, though I certainly wouldn't have turned it down.
Written in 1820 before Halloween as we know it even existed, the best known and loved of Washington Irving's stories has become a Halloween classic... Perhaps even the Halloween classic. This status is no doubt due as much to Walt Disney's classic animated version appearing on televisions throughout the United States and Canada as to the qualities of Irving's writing itself. Nevertheless, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving taps into a primal vein. Published alongside his other most famous story Rip Van Winkle in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Irving adapts an archetypal European myth into the colonial milieu, itself a period of primal myth-making for American culture. Against the backdrop of autumn in New York and the American Revolution comes this potent story of ghostly pursuit. You have George Washington, Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross... and the Headless Horseman.
Many North American tall tales have their roots in European legends and ghost stories. A particularly horrific one is known as the "Wild Hunt": those dark, moonlit nights when a phantasmagorical troupe of spectral huntsmen charge through forest roads astride their night-mares, cursing, killing or carrying off any mortal in their path. A popular modern American version of it is the song "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend," written by Stan Jones while he worked for the US National Parks Service in Death Valley. The better-known American take on the Wild Hunt is, of course, TheLegend of Sleepy Hollow.
The Headless Horseman pursuing Ichabod Crane by John Quidor, 1858.
Though employed full-time as a banker and sadly shadowed in posterity, Ellis Parker Butler was one of the most prolific and popular American humourists of the early 20th century. His most famous story, Pigs is Pigs, was even adapted into a Disney animated short in 1954.
An Experiment in Gyro-Hats was originally published in the June 1910 edition of Hampton's Magazine, illustrated by Albert Leavering. In it, an inventive hat-maker takes very seriously his profession's sacred calling to improve the conditions of men and the world at large. Specifically, creating a hat designed to steady the tipsy and staggering.
As in most cases of humourist writing, like Darius Green and his Flying Machine before it, there is less point in talking about how funny it is than in letting it speak for itself. The complete text of An Experiment in Gyro-Hats follows.
The character of Peter Pan was first developed by J.M. Barrie in his 1902 adult novel The Little White Bird. In this semi-autobiographical tale, the narrator tells his young ward David about a week-old infant named Peter who overhears his parents discussing their future hopes for his adult life. This all sounds rather dreadful to him, so Peter absconds to Kensington Gardens where he encounters the various fairy folk who make this London park their home. These few chapters in The Little White Bird inspired Barrie to write a full theatrical play entitled Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up in 1904. The chapters in Little White Bird were slightly rewritten and published as the book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906.
Though published to capitalize on the success of the play, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is not a prequel to Peter Pan. Rather, it is a first draft of sorts. Barrie would revisit many of the themes and situations in that short story, not the least of which being the flying boy who refuses to grow up. Kensington Gardens would become Neverland, though Peter does allude to having spent some time in the Gardens when he first decided not to age. Maimie, the girl who develops an affection for Peter, becomes Wendy. Finally, in 1911, Barrie rewrote his play as a novel. Peter and Wendy became the definitive literary version of the story that has inspired countless adaptations on stage and screen since.
The creation of background music for a theme park is a fine art unto itself. Most visitors to one of Disney's worldwide theme parks tend to fixate firstly, and most enduringly, on the rides themselves. This may be followed most closely by the visual dynamics of the parks, placing the most emphasis on the work of Imagineers and set designers. Yet Disney's parks famously (or infamously) strive to affect all the senses. It is a poorly kept secret that scents are pumped through vents throughout Disneyland to accent the areas guests pass through. The enticing aromas of candy-making, for example, do not derive from within the candy shoppes on Main Street USA, but from hidden vents across the storefronts.
Concept art for Main St. USA. Image: Disney.
Music is another important aspect of themed design. Of course, Disney's relationship with music is longstanding: it was the innovation of synchronized sound with the animated cartoon that propelled Mickey Mouse and his creators into stardom, and it would be impossible to imagine a Disney film without its Academy Award winning songs. The same holds true of the rides in the world's various Disney parks, and not just the rides. Streetscapes and area music requires just the right playlist to immerse guests into the places and times they are meant to represent. Theme parks are not designed to merely replicate reality, but to craft an environment of heightened reality. Main Street USA does not mimic an actual turn of the century American community, but the romantic ideal of the Gay Nineties owing most to cinematic representations. Like cinema, Main Street USA needs a soundtrack.
The following are some choice background music loops from Disneyland and other Disney parks that are invaluable for aficionados of Victorian and Edwardian music. Each is carefully compiled, often by legends like Jack Wagner, to evoke the romantic ideal of the time period. Sometimes that means straying from actual period pieces to choice excerpts from Hollywood and Broadway, not to mention medleys of Disney's own tunes. Nevertheless, they are perfect background music for Scientific Romances in a bygone age. These links carry you to YouTube, which is an invaluable resources for Disney park music. The Google-savvy individual should have no problem finding means of making mp3 copies, if they are so inclined.
The Disneyland Emporium - Piano renditions of era staples from in and around Main St. USA's main shoppe, the Disneyland Emporium.
Plaza Inn - One of Disneyland's best eateries is the Plaza Inn, off the hub at the end of Main Street USA, with more elegant music to match its somewhat more elegant decor.
Main Street Station - This track records the functioning Nelson-Wiggen Orchestrion that once graced the halls of the Disneyland Railroad's Main St. Station.
New Orleans Square - Ragtime standards are jazzed up for Disneyland's homage to the Crescent City.
Port Orleans - French Quarter - Jazzier yet is the music for Walt Disney World's Port Orleans -French Quarter Resort (where my wife and I stayed on our honeymoon, in fact!).
Frontierland - For something a little more down home, the Frontierland background loops offers banjo, harmonica, and the fiddle.
Splash Mountain - Even further down home and down south is the queue loop for Splash Mountain, which includes selections from the film Song of the South.
Aunt Polly's Refreshments Area - Tom Sawyer's Island at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World accented its theme with a one-time counter service restaurant set to Aunt Polly's house. The counter service is now gone, but the house and its bluegrass music remain.
The Disneyland Gallery - For Disney lovers, elegant stringed versions of classic Disney film soundtracks.
Paradise Pier - This final music loop from Disney's California Adventure park (before the area was converted to "Pixar Pier") is meant to capture the jaunty feeling of a Victorian seaside amusement park.
Paradise Park - Across the water from Paradise Pier is Paradise Park, a more genteel space with a more genteel soundtrack (that borrows liberally from Main Street USA's).
Hall of Presidents - For those Americans feeling somewhat more patriotic, the lobby background music for this celebration of America's presidents might fit the bill.
Disneyland Paris' Main Street USA Morning and Evening - Disney park music changes throughout the day to capture different moods, in this case along Main Street in Disneyland Paris.
Liberty and Discovery Arcade Loop - Due to the fact that it can snow in France in winter, Disneyland Paris' Main Street is flanked by two enclosed walkways, one themed to technological invention and the other to France's gift of the Statue of Liberty.
Another two tracks have appeared on Soundcloud: the 1976-1991 morning and evening background music for Walt Disney World's Main Street USA.
It would be an understatement to say that Disney's Song of the South is a controversial film. How controversial is, however, largely proportional to the number of people who have not actually seen it. Upon its release in 1946, the film became a Disney staple and its animated cast - Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear - became company icons. That lasted until 1986, when Song of the South had its last theatrical re-release. It became a touchstone for protest over the conditions and representation of African-Americans, and despite one of Disney's best loved theme park attractions being based on it, Song of the South was pulled from distribution in the United States. For 20 years interested parties have had to be motivated to seek out bootlegged European releases, but its wide availability in the age of the Internet has done nothing to diminish its reputation as either one of the best or one of the worst Disney films, depending on who you talk to. Song of the South was based was based, in spots, on the "Uncle Remus" stories transcribed by Joel Chandler Harris through the 1880's and 90's. Three animated segments in the film adapt stories pulled from Harris' anthology of African-American folk tales, linked by a live-action narrative penned by Dalton S. Raymond, Morton Grant, and Maurice Rapf. Some unspecified problem has beset the family of little Johnny (played by Bobby Driscoll, Disney's first contract child actor and voice of Peter Pan), causing a rift between his mother and father. The implication is that the problems stem from anti-segregationist editorials penned by Johnny's father for the family newspaper. He and mother (Ruth Warrick) are left in the care of grandmother (Lucile Watson) on the old plantation. Problems with his family and with local bullies leads Johnny to Uncle Remus (James Baskett), the elder storyteller and kindly father figure of the plantation's African-American ex-slave community. Remus guides Johnny through his troubles by way of stories about wily Brer Rabbit. It is these live-action segments that fuel most of the controversy, for portraying the complicated era of the Reconstruction with all the pleasantry and frivolity of a Disney movie.
The biggest fault of Song of the Southis being a consummate Disney movie. It has real heart, and compelling characters, and good music, and fun animated sequences. Even in a culture that has not legally been able to watch it for 30 years, its essence still endures in Splash Mountain, one of the most popular Disney theme park attractions of all time. The animated sequences are as good as the best cartoons from Disney's wartime era. The controversial live-action sequences don't quite have the same scope as a comparable classic like Gone With the Wind (1939) but it still carries that same sense of Southern charm, quaintness, and moments of grandeur. Ruth Warrick is resplendent in her gorgeous period dress, doing a slightly softer Vivien Leigh. Hattie McDaniel reprises basically the same character from Gone With the Wind, and like always it is fun to watch. It is a pity that James Baskett's wonderful performance as Uncle Remus is locked away in the Disney vault though. In 1948, Baskett received an Honorary Academy Award for his kindly, paternal, sympathetic portrayal of Uncle Remus defined by his own quiet strength of character, becoming the first African-American male to receive an Oscar (the first African-American was Hattie McDaniel, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1939 for Gone With the Wind). It was especially ironic given that Baskett could not even attend Song of the South's premiere in racially segregated Georgia.
Though the African-American characters portrayed by Baskett, McDaniel, and Glenn Leedy are friendly, positive, and full of song - acting as the well-adjusted foils to the broken family of the white plantation owners - Disney nevertheless “Disneyfies” a difficult time in American history, in the immediate wake of the American Civil War, when African-Americans were technically free but had nowhere to go, dealing with the intergenerational trauma of slavery while racism was still rampant. It is offensive exactly because it is so inoffensive. The NAACP even said as much... In a press release following the film's debut, NAACP executive secretary Walter Francis White admitted (emphasis mine):
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People recognizes in 'Song of the South' remarkable artistic merit in the music and in the combination of living actors and the cartoon technique. It regrets, however, that in an effort neither to offend audiences in the north or south, the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery. Making use of the beautiful Uncle Remus folklore, 'Song of the South' unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.
It was this same time period that Joel Chandler Harris came into when he set about to transcribe and preserve the folk tales of African-American former slaves. Born in 1845 in Georgia to an unwed Irish immigrant mother and a father who fled immediately after his birth, 16-year old Harris took up work in a print shop on the Turnwold Plantation. During his time on the plantation, he became immersed in the lives of African-American slaves, feeling less self-conscious around them on account of his Irish heritage (including a shock of red hair) and illegitimate birth. The Uncle Remus character he later invented was a composite of several storytellers he knew, and Uncle Remus’ stories were those he heard around the evening fire. After the American Civil War, Harris moved from newspaper to newspaper, becoming a valued humourist and political commentator while promoting the vision of racial reconciliation in the “New South.” Eventually he set upon the task of transcribing the folktales he heard at Turnwold as a document of past times.
Like the movie based on them, Harris' writings are controversial. Some see his transcriptions as preserving an important part of America's cultural history, while others see him as having appropriated African-American culture. Some see his simulated slave dialect as a significant linguistic artifact, while others see it as demeaning. Some see the Uncle Remus character as a crude stereotype, others point out that according to slave narratives such personalities did exist. Harris was, on the one hand, a progressive advocate of racial reconciliation and African-American rights, and on the other he was paternalistic with a ingrained sense of nostalgia about the Antebellum South. He had even interpreted Uncle Tom's Cabin, an avowed abolitionist novel, as "a wonderful defense of slavery." In short, it may just be that in a country still dealing with the intergenerational trauma of slavery 150 years later, it is simply impossible to write about it without courting controversy.
He is one of the most instantly recognizable characters in the world, if not the most recognizable. Today, on his 90th birthday, November 18, 2018, he is largely seen as an innocuous, even banal, corporate icon whose famous visage adorns theme parks and consumer goods the world over. But there was a time when he was just an up-and-coming young Hollywood hopeful. His rise to fame is, in fact, a microcosm of Hollywood's own ascendancy. I'm talking, of course, about Mickey Mouse.
I've long been a fan of vintage Mickey Mouse and his milieu. The turnaround point from seeing him as merely a banal corporate icon to becoming a genuine fan was the first time I saw the very first episode of the Walt Disney's Disneyland television series. Originally airing in 1954, the first half of the episode was devoted to setting up Disneyland as a mixed multi-media franchise. Walt, assuming a new role as weekly host and corporate icon himself, showed off the plans for his concept of a new kind of amusement park of multiple "lands" and attractions themed to different films, places in the world, and periods of American history (including the future). He introduced places like "Frontierland" and "Tomorrowland" as conceptual, imaginative spaces to be fleshed out and reinforced throughout the series, in episodes like the Davy Crockett trilogy and Man in Space. The second half of the episode was devoted to the story of Mickey Mouse. It is from this segment that Walt first uttered the famous quote "it all started with a mouse." What endeared me to Mickey was Walt's treatment of him as a genuine personality: a diminutive actor he first met when he was a shoeless farm mouse, but with whom he found success and made it big in Hollywood. It also helped that I'm a fan in general of silent and early sound films, of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and of early animation. To consider the era of Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin but not include Mickey Mouse (who began essentially as an amalgam of the two) is to leave a very important piece out.
The official origin story of Mickey is that Walt Disney was on the train back from New York to Los Angeles after he was informed that he was losing the rights to his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and most of his studio along with. Then a flash of inspiration came, which shaped itself into Mortimer Mouse. On the recommendation of his wife Lillian, Mortimer was changed to Mickey, and the rest is history. Of course, the real story is somewhat more complicated.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' reputation often precedes the actual reading of his work. Many are familiar with Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, through its various cinematic incarnations, from Johnny Weissmuller's live-action films during Hollywood's Golden Age to Disney's animated version in the late 1990's. Fewer are as familiar with John Carter than with his impact on the genre of Science Fiction. Franchises like Star Wars and Avatar owe direct debts to Burroughs' Planetary Romance, which came back to bite Disney when they released their own failed film adaptation of the first John Carter novel in 2012. Undaunted, Disney simply bought Star Wars and Avatar.
When one does sit down to finally read Burroughs' work, be it Tarzan of the Apes (1912) or The Land That Time Forgot (1918) or At the Earth's Core (1914) or A Princess of Mars (1912), what they find is a very breezy, readable style of pulpy adventure. Time has rendered its judgement on how enjoyable Burroughs' writing and characters are, though it is not without its flaws.
The exploits of John Carter, much like those of Tarzan, begin with an initial trilogy that set-up a lengthy series of novels. A Princess of Mars was the first, delivering our hero to Mars, continued in The Gods of Mars and concluding with The Warlord of Mars, both published in 1913. Burroughs' Barsoom series (so-named for the invented name that Martians give their planet) continue for another ten books, picking up from the heroic John Carter and following the exploits of his son. Read in rapid succession, the Carter trilogy puts the exclamation on Edgar Rice Burroughs' attributes as a manufacturer of pure escapism devolving frequently into outright wish fulfillment.
Few Disney live-action films have enjoyed the enduring legacy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Just as Jules Verne's works entered the public domain, Walt Disney took a gamble on fashioning that novel into his studio's first big-budget, Hollywood-made, live-action film. It was a gamble that paid off beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Walt, director Richard Fleischer, and screenwriter Earl Felton used the backdrop of Verne's original story to meditate on the anxieties of the Atomic Age. They captured the fears and hopes of a generation, and did so on a grand scale, with Cinemascope-sized screen, larger-than-life charismatic actors, beautiful underwater photography, and sheer spectacle. In so doing, Walt Disney helped create a new image of Jules Verne… Verne the icon of optimistic futurism.
Walt and Verne, the two optimists. Photo: Disney.
20,000 LeaguesUnder the Sea spawned a whole genre of movies based on Verne's work, including Michael Todd's Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Ray Harryhausen’s Mysterious Island (1961), and Disney's own In Search of the Castaways (1962). His adventures also translated well into three dimensions. Disneyland opened in 1955 with an exhibit of props from the film, which had originally been slated for the Opera House on Main Street U.S.A., the "opening act" of the park designed to draw guests into a sense of childlike nostalgia. That location would have reinforced 20,000 Leagues presentation of atomic anxiety as an artifact of history. Instead it ended up in Tomorrowland (mostly because of that area's pressing need for cheap attractions) where it still implicitly reinforced the idea of Verne as ultimately belonging to a happy, healthy, hopeful future. Further attractions opened with each new theme park built by the Disney company, most recently as a Tiki bar in Walt Disney World's Polynesian Village Resort.
We come most poignantly in touch with Verne the icon at Disneyland Paris. When designing the park, Imagineers were careful to highlight the connections between French culture and Disney product, no doubt in part to appease France's cultural gatekeepers who were wary of such American "lowbrow" entertainments. The effect conveys an intriguing sense that this is not simply a Disneyland in another language, but that Disney is, in many respects, "coming home" to Europe. Fantasyland has a statue of Cinderella dedicated to Charles Perrault, the Phantom of the Phantom Manor recalls the Phantom of the Opera, and Discoveryland is a version of Tomorrowland based in the Retro-Futurism of Jules Verne. Until 2004, guests could join Verne on a time-travelling adventure in Le Visionarium, soar to the moon in Space Mountain: De la terre à la lune, and investigate the Mysteries of the Nautilus. Discoveryland recreated the colourful atmosphere of an Exposition Universelle like those hosted by Paris in 1889 and 1900, directed by Jules Verne's visionary technological prophecies. Unfortunately Le Visionarium closed in 2004 and Space Mountain was (needlessly) renovated to purge Vernian imagery from its interior in 2005. The Nautilus remains, as does a touching monument to Verne that quotes his famous line: "Tout ce qui est dans la limite du possible doit être et sera accompli"... "All that is within the limits of the possible should be and will be done."
“Tout ce qui est dans la limite du possible doit être et sera accompli”
Disney's adaptations of Verne's stories in theme park and celluloid appealed to, and helped create, the author as a symbol of Nineteenth century optimism and futurism. Nevertheless, the Nautilus of the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a unique creation of Harper Goff's and the Columbiad in Disneyland Paris is far more picturesque than the purely functional cannon described in literature. This visualization is stunningly beautiful, as is the park it is situated in, and it is enjoyable and entertaining in its own right, though one must inevitably be aware that it is a myth constructed over time. Le Visionarium was not based on any one Verne book, but instead the conceit of taking Verne on a trip through time to show how he prophesied the fantastic inventions of the present day. Disneyland Paris distills for us the image of Verne the icon. This Verne is, ultimately, the precursor of Walt Disney's own optimistic futurism exemplified in his original vision for Tomorrowland.
Not far from Disneyland Paris, however, we meet Jules Verne the author, Verne the husband and father and civil servant, and Verne the very mortal man with an immortal imagination and Divine hope. An hour on one of France’s high-speed trains takes you from Paris to the charming city of Amiens, in the Picardie region, a short distance from the shores of the English Channel, where one still finds La Maison de Jules Verne.
Since it was written in 1837, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid has baffled and frustrated analysts. On first glance, it seems considerably more violent and pessimistic than the popular 1989 film that rebirthed Disney animation. For example, the little mermaid loses her voice by having her tongue cut out. The sea witch in the story is just a disgusting old crone, not the emblem of voluptuous female sexuality that is Ursula (ironically based on drag performer Divine).
Though having sanitized the original story, as they are wont to do, Disney's film still has unique qualities of its own. Unlike most of Disney's Princesses, Ariel is a flawed character. She is a teenager, rebelling against her upbringing and existential nature to forge her own identity, generally making bad decisions all along the way. It is only the love she has been able to inspire in others that redeems her choices and grants a happy outcome. As with Cinderella, there is a tendency for adult critics to look down on Disney Princesses who are not already full-formed, virtuous adult characters. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that she is also somewhat controversial.
This is not the theme of the original story, however. The little mermaid does become obsessed with the surface world - she had five sisters visit it and come back with marvelous stories about it for half a decade before she was finally able to see it for herself - and there is a prince that becomes the object of her obsessions. What really troubles her, though, is the fact that mermaids lack an immortal soul. It is this puzzle that mermaids should live for 300 years and then dissolve into sea foam while humans should only live for 70 years on Earth but inherit Heaven that draws her to make the choices she does. The Little Mermaid is a deeply religious story that makes little sense without Andersen's own devoutly religious outlook.
The Little Mermaid meets the prince. Illustration by Bertall.
A film as important as Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea meant that it has always had a presence at Disney's theme parks, in one way or another. A walk-through museum of the film's sets was originally planned for the Opera House on Disneyland's Main Street U.S.A. before finding a home in Tomorrowland in 1956. Disneyland Paris stepped up the concept by floating a full-size Nautilus in Discoveryland's lagoon, allowing visitors to descend into it and examine Nemo's ship for themselves. Tokyo Disneysea took it even further and created the Mysterious Island: Nemo's volcanic base, with a full-sized Nautilus at dock and two rides based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Arguably the most archetypal was Walt Disney World's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine voyage. When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, it imported Disneyland's 1959 classic Submarine Voyage, one of the original park's most popular attractions. To differentiate the two, this trip through "liquid space" was transferred from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland and given a brand new overlay. Instead of the atomic navy submersibles of the 20th century (which were themselves no longer as futuristic as they were in 1959), these became the iron-rivet crafts of the 19th. Where Disneyland allowed guests to ride in a replica of the USS Nautilus, Walt Disney World allowed guests to ride in the Nautilus.
The Disney company was faced with challenging times throughout the late 1960's and 1970's. Walt Disney passed away in December of 1966, leaving the company rudderless. It never truly recovered from a loss in the fiscal year of 1959/60, after which it resorted ever more to inexpensively produced, live-action films with equally diminishing returns. The list of truly classic Disney films from the Sixties is short: Mary Poppins (1964), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Pollyanna (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Love Bug (1968). The Seventies were even more barren. The world changed around Disney, and by the discontented years of Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Sexual Revolution, Uncle Walt's 1950's utopian promises and quaint family movies were painfully square. Up to 70% of the company's revenue came from its two theme parks - Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida - and a growing majority of its films were theatrical re-releases of past glories.
Something daring was necessary, and it was in this spirit that Disney turned to a distinctive little adventure book written by Ian Cameron in 1961. Titled The Lost Ones, it featured an expedition to the Canadian Arctic that uncovered a mysterious society descended from the Vikings who migrated across the Atlantic a thousand years before. Though set in the modern day, producer Winston Hibler, director Robert Stevenson, and script writer John Whedon saw in it the seeds of a grand Victorian-Edwardian adventure in the tradition of Jules Verne. After all, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea proved to be a landmark film for the company in 1954, so perhaps a similar sort of story could propel them into success once again. An aspiring Imagineer by the name of Tony Baxter seized the opportunity to propose an entirely new addition to Disneyland centred on both this film and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yet studio executives got cold feet, scaled back the budget, and when The Island at the Top of the World was released in 1974, it was not the hoped-for commercial success. The film, a planned sequel, and Baxter's ideas were quietly shelved.
The archetype of the avenging swashbuckler is a very old one. Ballads of Robin Hood go back to the 15th century, and there were certainly others before him... Characters of great daring and great romance who rob from the rich and give to the poor, and otherwise seek to right wrongs and fight injustice against which others are cowardly or impotent. The legacy of the swashbuckler has distilled into the modern superhero, the Captain Americas and Batmans who fight the fight that properly constituted authority cannot. Though the swashbuckler archetype is an old one, some of its most popular and well-known manifestations are not as old as some might think. The lineage of Batman - the dilettante whose secret identity is the mask - goes back at least to Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel, the 1905 novel set in Revolutionary France. His more direct ancestor is Johnston McCulley's black-clad avenger of Alta California, Señor Zorro, who was created in 1919.
As some may have noticed, I messed up the new schedule and posted two weeks in a row, the last time being last week. In lieu of what should have been today's post, I humbly present a guest post I wrote for Carousel, the official blog of Skyhorse Publishing. They were kind enough to invite me to write a piece on their recent republication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
After several years of production, design and location shooting, Walt Disney released his first Hollywood produced live-action motion picture in 1954. If the advertising was to be believed, it was in fact the mightiest motion picture of them all. Considering that the film was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this is a credible claim.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, starring James Mason as Nemo and Kirk Douglas as Ned Land alongside Peter Lorre as Conseil and Paul Lukas as Prof. Arronax, is perhaps the single most important modern film in the genre of Scientific Romance. 20,000 Leagues came to the silver screen in a post-Hiroshima, pre-Sputnik era when Atomic Age Science Fiction was the darling of young and old imaginations alike (not to mention drive-in theatre patrons). Between voyaging to forbidden planets and fighting off prehistoric monsters, filmmakers turned their attention back to the Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. The first of these was George Pal's War of the Worlds, which updated Wells' tale by placing it squarely in the modern day.
Following Treasure Island and a series of three Mediaeval historical dramas shot in England with money tied up during the Second World War, Disney sought another live-action project for production in his studios in Burbank. In doing so, he revived his childhood love for Jules Verne. His concerns, in making the film, were very much the stuff of adulthood, however.
