Can The Great Movie Ride Be Saved?
“Awful.”
“Was that even good in the eighties?”
“That was terrible.”
I overheard these guest comments while exiting The Great Movie Ride recently at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. And I’m willing to bet they’re all fairly typical. But why? What makes it so terrible for so many and what can be done about it?
If you’re expecting a lot of photos of broken effects and a laundry list of maintenance issues you may be surprised to learn there are honestly no apparent operational issues with the ride. Quite the contrary, it looks like there may be a renewed commitment to maintenance.
I experienced the rare western bank robbery scene and subsequent real fire effects for the first time in a decade.
There was goo falling behind the Ripley animatronic in the Alien scene that I don’t remember ever having seen in person before.
The animatronic ceiling alien actually thrashed after an extended period of it being broken.
And it appeared as if the swirls of light in the Sorcerer Mickey tornado sequence have been enhanced or renewed.
But is it enough that the ride is preserved and maintained? If there really is a team of people working on fixing the aliens and goo and lights and fire, why do people still say such horrible things about it? Should it be updated with more recent movie classics? Or should it just be gutted and replaced? To start the discussion rolling let’s focus on content, execution and tone.
CONTENT
Finale montage aside, the most recent film recreated in the ride is Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1981.
And while I would be offended if they tried to install a sequence such as Avatar or some other property based solely on recent popularity or box office success, hasn’t there been a film in the last thirty years that could be considered classic enough to replace, say, the stiff Tarzan mannequin that swings by?
Yes, Weissmuller may have been the ultimate Tarzan, but is an inarticulate figure that looks like it was formed out of silly putty and hardened to an inhuman sheen really a worthy tribute to him or to the magic of Disney Imagineering? And what about relevancy? The Tarzan jungle scene is awful to me and I remember watching all those films on a Saturday afternoon as a kid. How bad must it seem to someone who’s never seen one?
I also wonder if the content problem is at least in part a licensing problem? To get such a wide range of non-Disney properties installed in a Disney attraction must make for a contractual nightmare. And perhaps the frozen, museum-like nature of the lineup is a legal necessity whereby the changing of one property would mean many others would fall out of contract.
And if they could or would swap some of the older movies for newer ones, what kind of Sophie’s Choice would you make? Which scenes would you replace with which newer films?
EXECUTION
On the execution side, the reason this attraction holds a special place in my heart is because of the richly themed environments.
Sure, the thatched roofs of Munchkinland are a little dusty if you’re looking for that sort of thing. But it’s Munchkinland, folks. And you actually get to go there.
Dimensional sets and stagecraft, animatronic characters, physical props and effects, theatrical lighting and atmospheric soundscapes have always held that spark of Disney Magic for me far more effectively than a projection on a video screen ever could.
And while attractions with more virtual elements such as Toy Story Mania may be far easier to update, nothing thrills and transports me like dark rides with tangible, traditional elements such as The Great Movie Ride.
But a theme park isn’t a museum and surely the state of the dark ride art has advanced enough that Disney could do better than the trip through Uncanny Valley this ride presents. Munchkins should be cute and fun not freaky and murderous, right?
The Great Movie Ride is a spiel ride like Kilimanjaro Safari or Jungle Cruise and, also like those rides, the experience is affected positively or negatively by the quality and ability of the tour guide. But unlike the intended authenticity of the safari guides or the post-modern, self-aware groaners from Jungle Cruise skippers, GMR CMs are expected to act.
Sometimes it works out.
But most of the time it doesn’t. All too often I get in the ride vehicle and three words into the narration realize the next twenty minutes are going to be filled with cringe-inducing, community-theater-level theatrics. That doesn’t mean the tour guide conceit can’t work.
The astonishingly good Gina hosted the first of my tours the day I was preparing for this commentary.
She can recite all those cruddy lines and somehow sound genuine and authentic, like she just came up with them extempore.
But Gina is, unfortunately, an all-too-rare exception and most of the time the ride might be much better if they went with the Studio Backlot Tour approach and just played back a prerecorded narration. But is it more important to have the human touch, however flawed or misguided, than to present a more palatable and professional show? Personally, I don’t think the problem lies in having human guides but rather what they are asked to do and how they are expected to do it. Which brings us to tone.
TONE
The outdated Disneyana cheese of it all is truly astounding.
It hearkens to a time without Internet-mobilized fans or extra features. It represents the more innocent frame of mind of late eighties film fans that were amazed by movie magic and less able to access anything behind the scenes of Hollywood that wasn’t pre-packaged and served up by studio publicity departments. Case in point, watch this vintage news report on the sound effects in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The narrator in this quaint making-of clips says, “It would be easy to assume that someone with a microphone and tape recorder simply recorded the sound of the engine. Not so!”
Would you expect anyone today except for the youngest child to be surprised at all by this supposedly earth shattering revelation? And that’s my point.
The, “Aw, shucks, folks I’m a movie fan, too” innocence of it all, the theatrical wink, wink, nudge, nudge of gangster shootouts and outlaw holdups, the “Lights, Camera, Action!” fairy dust feelings we’re supposed to get from the soundstage and marquee conceits are all stale dinosaurs that serve only our most embarrassing need for nostalgia.
Let’s face the music, here, folks. The Great American Movie Ride is now down the road at Universal and it’s called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. It captures hearts, minds and imagination and generally has a two-hour wait. Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Great Movie Ride is typically a walk on. Unless it’s raining of course. Then it’s a twenty-year-old, multimillion-dollar umbrella for the damp throngs seeking shelter.
So what do you think? Gut and replace? Refresh and renew? Or just keep it going just as it is and every now and then add another Disney film to the final montage? Share your comments at this week’s Orlando Parkhopper on MiceChat or tweet @JonathonRob.