Posts Tagged ‘Tron’

Main Street: Legacy

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

In honor of the upcoming Tron sequel Tron: Legacy, Walt Disney World will be celebrating by converting the Magic Kingdom’s Main Street, U.S.A., into Main Street, MCP! The transformation will take place just before the highly anticipated film is released this December, and will remain in place until 3-5 weeks after it has worn out its welcome.

According to virtual Disney cyberfan and FPS LAN party aficionado BuZZedLiteYear, the transformation will include the following:

  • A new paint job and neon lights for all Main Street vehicles (including horses).
  • A transformation of the Main Street Cinema from a turn-of-the-20th-century movie house that sells Disney art into a turn-of-the-22nd-century hyper-5D “sensua-immersion” theater that sells Disney art.
  • Occasional impromptu performances by a group of cast members who will hop off the “Tron Trolly” and sing “The Light Cycle Song.”
  • Hula-hoop playtime for children will be replaced with “flying disk battles” in which young guests can try to “de-rez” each other with special glowing Frisbees.
  • The Dapper Dans will be replaced by The Space Paranoids.
  • Because Tron: Legacy is a holiday release, Main Street, MCP’s holiday decorations will have a futuristic tone, with a gigantic procedurally rendered fractal tree as it centerpiece. There will also be visits from Tron Santa (as portrayed by Jay Maynard).

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Imitating film

Friday, March 12th, 2010

An article on AOL Health (“All The News That’s Fit for Hypochondriacs”) reports that children all around the country are being infected by salmonella, breaking out in warts, and hungering for flies after kissing frogs in imitation of Disney’s animated feature The Princess and the Frog. There have even been reports of children in France becoming so orally fixated on frogs that they are actually eating the things! The story seems ridiculous on its face (for example, not even a crazy person would eat a reptile, and everyone knows you get salmonella from salmon, not frogs), but it does have an echo of truth in it — over the years, there have been many cases of children doing silly things in imitation of Disney films.

For example:

  • In the 1950s, little boys all across the country, in imitation of their TV hero Davy Crockett, donned raccoon-skin caps and ran for Congress.
  • The popular Frisbee toy was invented to sate children yearning to imitate the disc-battling antics of their movie hero Tron.
  • After the release of Beauty and the Beast, little girls followed the movie heroine’s lead and began to read books for entertainment (much to the annoyance of film-based corporations, causing Disney to focus its next animated film, Aladdin, on a more commercial female role model — a marriage-obsessed princess in scanty clothes who hangs out with big, fluffy animals).
  • Many children who saw Toy Story subsequently wanted toys.

This is not to say that The Princess and the Frog has had no impact on children. Quit the contrary — although there are no reliable reports of children doing anything so ridiculous as kissing frogs, a number of youths in the southern U.S. have been devoured (whole or in part) while trying to teach alligators to play jazz music.

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More WALL*E inspirations

Friday, June 27th, 2008

In an interview with Underwire magazine, filmmaker Andrew “Mr. Stanton” Stanton revealed that not only was his new feature Wall*E a sequel to the classic Silent Running (as we discussed yesterday), it was also inspired by other classic Sci Fi films. For example:

Alien: This inspired the scene of WALL*E being chased through air ducts by overweight people armed with flamethrowers. The movie also inspired Stanton to cast Sigourney Weaver as a voice that “bursts from the chest” of a computer system.

Blade Runner: Referenced in WALL*E’s bizarre unicorn-dream sequence (which, at press time, it appears has been cut from the final print of the film — look for it to appear in a DVD “director’s cut” release).

2001: A Space Odyssey: The first half of WALL*E has no dialog because there is so much poetic silence in 2001.

Outland: Wall*E was clearly modeled after Sean Connery (though he’s armed with a fire extinguisher instead of a shotgun).

Planet of the Apes: WALL*E is cleaning up after the “damned, dirty humans.” Also referenced in the scene at the beginning of the film where WALL*E is dismantling the fallen Statue of Liberty.

Star Wars: WALL*E is actually Eve’s brother, but they don’t discover this until after they “kiss.” Also, WALL*E’s movements are based on those of actor Kenny Baker.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Stanton claims that “a close encounter of the fourth kind involves robots cleaning up after encounters one through three.”

Tron: As a nod to this film, Stanton suggested that Disney purchase Pixar.

So now that you know all about the film, go out and see it!

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