A suggestion for Disney

I keep hearing Disney canabalize itself by trying to make their theme park attractions into movies. It’s the result of Hollywood’s current trend of pretending there aren’t any ideas in the world anymore and running around trying to find quick, easy-to-wrap-your-head-around concepts that are already branded in the public eye. Of course, they’ll point whole-heartedly to Pirates of the Carribean as an example of making a movie franchise based on a theme park that goes on to gross millions. But those Pirates movies had little or nothing to do with the theme park ride. I don’t remember undead skeleton warriors, a Kraken, a witch, or even Jack Sparrow in that ride. They were just fantasy pirate movies. And remember, there are other theme park movies that utterly suck (Country Bears and Haunted Mansion [soon to be remade by Guillermo DelToro] spring to mind). Now prepare yourself for Space Mountain and Tiki Birds as they’re prepped for production.




I’m no fan of remakes and rehashes, but if they must do it, they should draw from the very best of inspiration – not effing Spinning Tea Cups: The Movie. Aside from the obvious success of Pirates, I don’t know why Disney is choosing park rides as their primary choice for film inspiration when they sit on a literal mountain of creative legacy. Geez, they could do anything. What about making The Reluctant Dragon as an actual movie and not the behind-the-scenes making-of movie the original was? Or do a new Zorro? Or a live-action Lady and the Tramp? Or anything?!? It’s Disney for eff sake. Well, I have a suggestion for a decent movie makeover. Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, Disney was entering a golden age of TV animation for the company. They never really showed anything animated on TV other than cut up versions of their old theatrical shorts, but they started animating their own stuff for TV with the Winnie the Pooh Saturday morning series, then moving to the coveted afternoon syndication slot with the Disney Afternoon block featuring Gummie Bears (which could make a decent live-action film, but not by Raja Gosnell), Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, and my all time personal favourite, and the subject of this article: Tale Spin.


I love all of the Disney Afternoon shows, but Tale Spin was awesome. It had that amazing adventure feel to it, with secret islands, artifacts to retrieve, lost cities, creepy bad guys that seemed to follow the heroes wherever they went, etc. It was Indiana Jones, but with cool air planes and air ships. For villains, there were the air pirates lead by Don Carnage (who spoke like Desi Arnaz), U.S.S.R. inspired villains, the Thembirans, who hated capitalist Cape Suzette, and Sheer Kahn, a Lex Luthor-esque corporate villain who ran the city of Cape Suzette. That town is a fortified island city, housed by giant rock walls with guns to keep the air pirates and other threats out. Don Carnage’s apprentice, Kit Cloudkicker, escapes and befriends a big, lovabale lug, Baloo, who runs a shipping company with his Sea Duck airplane. That company gets taken over by a feisty single mother, Rebecca Cuningham, and Baloo and Rebecca bicker constantly about how to run things with Baloo pointing out that he know s to fly and she doesn’t. There’s also Wildcat, the resident mechanic who can fix anything, and Louis, Baloo’s best friend who runs a bar off the coast of Cape Suzette and has connections and information on everything. The series followed Baloo’s, Kit’s and Rebecca’s adventures in running their company Higher for Hire while running into obstacles like the Thembirans, the air pirates, Sheer Kahn, or get rich quick schemes dreamed up by Baloo and Louis, leading to the aforementioned islands, artifacts, lost cities, etc.


I would replace all of the anthropomorphized animal characters with real actors, thus severing the ties even further from the obvious Jungle Book inspiration for their designs and names (sorry diehard fans). I mean, John Goodman would be obvious for Baloo. You can recast everybody and make a live-action film with fast paced action sequences involving the planes, like a rapid-clip chase through a narrow canyon, or a race to Crepe Suzette and the safety of the giant cannons before air pirates overtake the Sea Duck. Just take the 2 hour pilot movie, Plunder and Lightning, as inspiration (it was nominated for an Emmy at the time for Outstanding Animated Program). I see this as a summer tent-pole picture with whatever stars you want to bring into it for added box office clout. And please retain that amazing musical score:






Or you can actually make something original.


-Deceptisean

Prince of Mediocrity

The last time I remember us getting a big Disney live-action franchise, we got Pirates of the Caribbean...a neat first movie that overstayed it's welcome. Now, we're getting the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Jake Gyllenhaal is supposed to be Persian, and for some reason, has a in-and-out British accent in the film. Oookay... Well, it was pretty much what I expected...which isn't all that good.

Okay, let's start first with the positives. There are some neat things in this movie. I liked the Hasassins (sp?), and that they seemed to be magical assassins, not just run-of-the-mill run up and kill you guys. I liked the knifethrower, and his big code of honour. I liked the cinematography. I liked Gyllenhaal, more or less. I'm not sold if he has the ability to be a big action star, but at least he seemed to try. The set decorations, and the costumes were pretty good, as well.

Okay, that was the good. Let's go to the bad. Firstly the action scenes are once again, unwatchable. I'm tired of this. I'm going to send a letter to Hollywood, with 5 Hong Kong movies, and tell them that until they start filming action this way, I'm gone. It's terrible. What makes it even worse is that there was parkour coreographed by David Belle (The District 13 guy), that looks good, but the swordfighting is just atrocious. I couldn't see a bloody thing, and you know what, enough. I'm not going to be buying movies if the action is ass. Secondly, I didn't like Gemma Arterton, the female lead. The first half of the movie, I wanted to gag her, and then she seemed okay, but even when she was supposed to be all good, and everything, she still gave Gyllenhaal these haughty looks, like she wanted to bitch at him. They tried the whole love story thing with them, but it didn't work, mostly because her and Gyllenhaal have absolutely no screen chemistry. None. Zip. Zero.

Now let's get to the story. I'm watching this movie, and not everything is making sense (i.e. the characters just seem to know where to go, and there's this hourglass, and blah, blah, blah, the movie really didn't need to be 2 hours long, for the story we got). That being said, the movie was pretty ballsy with what it was doing, and where it was going until the end. Then we got Cop Frigging Out City. In a Disney movie, of course. I was not surprised, but I reflected that in the hands of a more risk-taking company, this film's story would have been pretty good. Not Disney, though. Nope, we get homogenized crap at the end of our stories from the Mickey Mouse studio. So, that was disappointing, especially when they went against their own logic in the story to provide us the Cop Out. Zeus coming down and being the big Deus Ex Machina would have been more believeable. I called the happy ending though, so like I said, I wasn't surprised, but disappointed.

Which is what I think of the whole movie. Look, Prince of Persia has some fun parts, some neat parts, and it had potential. Lots of potential. Unfortunately, in the end, it doesn't work, and that's too bad. We had a poor comic relief character (Alfred Molina), we had the craptacular happy ending that was really forced, we had the love affair that felt forced, we had the really badly filmed action...it's not longer acceptable, not by my standards, and it shouldn't be by anyone else's standards, either.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.

I bid thee a fond goodnight.

- Stephenstein

Marvel and Disney: Two great tastes that taste great together!

Well, it's been almost a week since the announcement that Disney wanted to buy Marvel. And it's been almost a week since fanboys everywhere went batshit angry over the news, predicting doom and gloom and the end of Marvel and all its characters. Sigh. Why are fanboys so bitter about everything nowadays? What is the frickin' problem??

I actually think this is an amazing thing to happen to Marvel. Yes, it would be nice to have seen Marvel grow and flourish as its own "Disney" and become a powerhouse entertainment company relying on the strength of its intellecdtual property. But Marvel realized that strength too damn late in the game. They had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late 90's, and only then started to get their film projects up and rolling, putting their characters out there for more exposure to the general public, which has now given Spidey the same pop-culture exposure that Batman experienced in the 60's and 90's and Superman experienced in the 80's. Recently, Marvel decided to open their own film studio in a bid to make more money off of their characters (despite the couple billion dollars plus that the Spidey and X-Men movies have made over the years, Marvel sees a fraction of that since the film rights are with Sony and Fox respectively). They were taking steps in the right direction, but Disney will supply everything Marvel wanted in the blink of an eye (distribution, theme parks, multi-media exposure, etc.). And yes, as we all know now, you will still get your Iron Man 2 and such. And, Lord help us all, Fox will still try to churn or X-Men pap and "reboot" Fantastic Four, since they still have the rights to those and Sony will still try to crank out Spider-Man 4, 5 and 6 or however many they're making since they have Spidey movie rights still.

Now, for all you fanboys worried about Marvel suddenly becoming too family friendly because they're now owned by Disney -- what decade are you living in? Disney no longer means dumb talking animals in movies only a 5 year old could love. They haven't been there in at least 15 years. Because of the Disney/Pixar merger, Disney routinely puts out all-ages movies with currently the best storytelling in American cinema with their Pixar movies and they constantly garner massive crossover success with all demographics. Yes, Disney also makes stupid live-action crap like Race to Witch Mountain and Hannah Montannah, but the important thing to realize is the company's ability to separate them and develop mutiple brands for multiple audiences. Witch Mountain, Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montannah are jokey, stupid and innocuous and are for the tween set. Mickey Mouse and all his friends are currently in TV and "edutainment" content aimed at small children. The Pixar movies are a little more challenging and are for ages 5 to 90. Touchstone pictures are for grownups. See? Disney knows where to slot things. I see them making kid-friendy and also challenging Marvel movies and TV. You may get Spidey teaching children math and ABCs, but you'll also get Spidey fighting Morbius or Electro in movies, Hulk smashing stuff and maybe a hard edged Blade movie or two. And Marvel's publishing program will not be touched. If anything, Marvel would start making Mickey comics and stuff, but all of the hard-edged stroylines in Marvel comics like Civil War and Planet Hulk will remain. It's not like WB ever put a stop to Bane breaking Batman's back or Superman dying or whatever, even when they were pushing for family freindly Batman movies with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Disney won't either.

What I like is that now Marvel has access to Disney's world-wide network of entertainment. Finally, a reason to go to the Disney store! Imagine the Marvel crap they could sell in there. Imagine what Marvel attractions they could create at the Disney themeparks! And now Marvel has access to Disney animation. All that incredible cell animation work and Pixar's writing and computer animation team could be at Marvel's disposal. Much has been made of Pixar's John Lassiter's meating with Marvel execs discussing possible Marvel projects in the future and Lassiter reportedly becoming "very excited very fast". Now, all of this won't happen immediately, like you won't see a Pixar Thor movie anytime soon, but you will eventually.

In the meantime, relax. This could be very good. And if it's not, then you'll see a 20 page essay from me on why the worl sucks.

Deceptisean