#Disney Parks Experiences and Products | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

desognthinking · 20 days

Text

the pier. 9.3k. (or, more from the haunted house designers au.)

ava & (her new) co. have one and a half years to construct three groundbreaking, mindblowing, prestige haunted houses around the country, all in time for halloween. this is scouting/teambuilding trip numero uno. it's not going well so far.

---

Ava sees her at the end of the pier, a dark figure in the already-dark; a smudge of barely-moving ink on the line between wind and water. Barely, indeed – wavering less than the yearning swallow and swoop of the waves interrupted by pillars of wood, and, further back, stone.

At night, after everything’s shut, this place is quiet until the fishermen get out in the early morning. In the off-season, even more so. Rain slings down frequently, and it’s not warm enough for balmy walks by the rocks. Not many come out, if any. Ava’s one.

She calls out as she walks down the planks, only thinking belatedly that perhaps she might not want to be disturbed. Out here behind the motel, unmoving under the preliminary drizzle of rain, embraced and cocooned by temperamentally warping air. It is, after all, that tremulous transitory phase between spring and summer that borrows its faces from both, and switches its masks sharply in the slit-time of blinks.

Bian lian, Beatrice had murmured, not even looking up from her laptop. Face-changing, literally, in Sichuan opera. A flick of a wrist, a deft flourish, and an elaborate face falls and reforms in the fraction of a second.

This was in the motel’s breakfast room, the one with the dubiously cleaned burgundy felt chairs where they served a modest continental breakfast. Mostly cleared out after said breakfast, the air was stained with lingering cigarette smoke from the lounge next door, and the smell of cheap canned ham. The plastic display vases on each table had been stowed away, and in their meager place someone – probably Beatrice – had stuck a crinkly, disposable plastic bottle containing a bunch of freshly picked yellow flowers.

It was not an especially private space, what with the pale pink bellies sunning themselves right outside the glass panels, but it wasn’t as if the conversation had progressed to anything especially private. Legally speaking. Or productive, for that matter.

For the fast forty-five minutes Ava and Lilith had been busy prodding, pacing, and sending small metaphorical pockets of firework powder across the room to burst and splatter all over each others’ skin. Skating them like over wet ice so they would knock against each others’ ankles and bruise upon detonation. Camila, who’d been trying, at least, to keep the situation under control, had gone to pick out some maps and free guides, leaving them simmering in the quickly-warming confines of the space.

A lot of trivial inconsequential things, and a lot of hard, serrated words. First it was an argument of how transformative a depiction of folklore ought to be, theoretically, to balance originality and faithfulness. Then they’d snapped at each other over their personal choices of A24 horror, and Ava’s awfully ignorant lack of exposure to some obscure ‘60s Romanian indie production that Lilith really liked.

And in the corner Beatrice was curled up into a chair, laptop sitting on the flat plane formed by the side of her folded knees.

She was strangely quiet, considering the poorly-veiled spats being undertaken just a couple feet away. By Beatrice Standards, however, this was possibly normal, as Ava was learning. When, riled up, she’d gone around to get a glass of water from the lightly stained dispenser, she’d found her watching an unlisted YouTube video from a couple years ago featuring an in-house presentation Ava had given at Disney. It was about scary rides and storytelling; translating horror into immersive park experiences. A singular earbud was stuffed into her left ear.

She didn’t make any attempt to minimize or pause the video as Ava went by.

“What are you doing?” she blurted, interrupting Lilith going on and on about something or another.

Beatrice hummed. “Camila sent it to me.”

Ava waited, but that seemed to be the end of Beatrice’s explanation. Pixelated tiny Ava on the laptop screen sputtered and spread her arms out as the powerpoint slide behind her belly-rolled to its successor in a kitschy transition.

“Wait,” Beatrice said, before Ava could awkwardly walk the rest of the way to the dispenser. She bent down to scoop something up. “Here.” She held up a can of Pepsi to Ava, still cold enough that the scant condensation on it had not yet beaded up into little pearls. Ava saw that underneath her chair she had stowed a rectangular cooler box of canned drinks, with two or three more cans left in it.

Ava took the can with a soft thanks.

Beatrice quirked her head and murmured something that sounded like you’re welcome.

Beatrice said the damnedest things sometimes, amidst her quiet. Appropriate, sure, but unexpected unless you were looking out closely for the tell-tale flicker at the corner of her eyes, a horizontal dart-to and sometimes a shutter-quick sly twitch of her mouth that indicated she was preparing for an interjection.

Amused, if hardly full-blown entertained. Sharp, but never cruel. Indirect, and three layers deep. Oftentimes three planets away. Ava found it less than scrutable, and more than fascinating.

Bian lian, when they were talking about transitions between spaces and narrative divisions within Houses, which was a convoluted way to say that Lilith was getting evasive over the psychology and philosophy of putting fucking walls and doors in a haunted house. Just when the pressure was about to burst, Beatrice had piped up, and Lilith had turned around, her fists gradually unclenching.

Later, Ava repeatedly scrubbed back and forth through the timeline of a video, mesmerized and marveling by the Chinese art. A minor flourish, or a glance of a cheek and – thwp – an entranced audience guided to look wherever the artist led.

The changing of faces. The fuzzy in-between of seasons. Here on the coast it is even more stark, this time of year.

She calls out to Beatrice as she walks down the planks, and Beatrice turns around. Her hair is bunned up loosely, low and unresistant to ocean-blown stragglers

Ava walks closer when Beatrice turns around, calmly, and hovers a distance away so that Beatrice can keep a cushion of space between them, if she likes.

“It’s drizzling.”

“I know.” Beatrice doesn’t take Ava up on the offer to –leave? To chase Ava back in and away? To reassure Ava that she’d prefer to stay out here, alone? She pauses, though. Looks up, as if there was anything to see up in the sky, too dark for the clouds to distinguish themselves in plumes or pillows. Ava looks up too, just in case, but it’s a mess of splotched black-gray.

Over their heads the apertures in the sky are widening into gulfs, and the dribble of water turns into sheets.

Like the crepe streamers they used to hang up on the doorways in St Michael’s, fluttering maddeningly out of reach. The nuns had thought it was some kind of sick kindness to drape them from low enough beams that their papery ends would lap at and blow into Ava’s face as they wheeled her back and forth down the corridor like the monotone automation of a fucking metronome. Each blue and yellow and pink streamer touched her cheeks like a slap. Ava’d wanted to grip them with her teeth and pull them down.

The rain, Ava reminds herself, is cold and uncaring and holds no such malice.

Beatrice keeps staring into the ocean. “It’s beautiful out here.”

There’s words on the tip of Ava’s tongue but she holds them there and thinks; considers for once, before replying. Something about Beatrice, without saying anything aloud, asks this of her. If she recites a pun it must be good.

“It is.”

Beatrice hums. She turns her head back and inclines her head slightly as she regards Ava. Ava holds her breath.

It occurs to her faintly that she’s never spoken one-on-one with Beatrice, ever. Of her three new coworkers, Beatrice feels the most faraway. She refolds Ava’s strewn, barbeque sauce-stained maps while Ava’s in the restroom, and plugs her wired earphones into a Spotify daylist full of musicians Ava’s never heard of. She has a phone widget on her homescreen tracking migratory birds, and she goes out to the pier alone under ten-thirty p.m. rain.

Ava studied Beatrice’s folders – all their folders – back at the office, once this whole thing was confirmed. Before even they’d found out. It felt almost prying, in a way, even if Suzanne herself had invited her to sit at the desk and passed her the papers. Sure, the Houses they detailed were long public; analyzed and reviewed to death, but this was different. This seemed private. Creativity and creation, to Ava at least, were wild creatures; bounding and bold on the outside, raw and sensitive and prone to clawing themselves apart on the inside.

She switched on the reading light and thumbed through the dossiers. Lilith’s had pen gashes through each iteration, angry and decisive, her documentation otherwise sparse and terse. Camila’s included scrapbooks of fabric and postcard-sized paintings, image references taped on each page.

The shells that Beatrice left behind were schematics and scripts in perfect order and format. Comments typed out formally along margins left deliberately blank, and mechanics illustrated in labeled figures, which were different from tables and clarified as such in the appendix. Without effusion or exaggeration, and with only harshly limited information to be gleaned from a couple of drily humorous notes thrown unexpectedly into the handwritten rightmost column of her change logs.

Amendment for review: section 7d entryway from section 7c now to be approached from visitors’ 9 o’clock, she’d written. Do remind reviewer S. Masters to be awake for it.

Said jester herself stands with her back still facing Ava, just out of reach, on the pier. Her hands dig into the pockets of her oversized windbreaker as her feet dig into the wood under them. Rogue strands and locks of dark hair follow the course of the wind. It’s beautiful out here, she says, just loud enough over the waves for Ava to catch.

Beatrice takes one and a half steps, precisely, so that she’s partially, intentionally, facing Ava. She says something, blown to the wind – about the facts of this place, maybe. Ava hears the name of the town crunched around the round Rs of Beatrice’s accent, and feels her feet willed, as if by that same wind, to step closer.

Closer, closer, until she’s but an arm’s length from Beatrice, close enough she could reach out and adjust on her shoulder the crooked hood of her windbreaker, long blown off the top of her head.

Then Beatrice turns back to face the pier, and she cranes her neck to look at Ava wordlessly, and Ava finally, finally, steps up beside her.

They got to town by car yesterday afternoon, a coastal place long salted by tourism when the tides were right, and only recently rejuvenated very slightly in biology circles when a couple of the further-flung waters got identified as hotspots for particularly unique marine ecosystems.

Beatrice tells her there’s a small new outpost set up from newly-won grant money, although it’s far away from where they’re staying. She glances at Ava. There was a book at the information center, she quickly explains.

Ava knows what she’s talking about – said information center is a ten-minute walk inland, in the town center, and it’s more of a weatherbeaten cubicle with yellowed pamphlets and dusty books than a living, breathing tourist pitstop. It’s battered on all sides by the elements and seems to be standing only because it’s too difficult to dislodge from where it’s wedged between an ice cream shop and a postbox. Beatrice, all the same, peered through every peeling poster on the wall.

They’d gone there yesterday after picking up some groceries while exploring the little town. Ava reached for an easy word to describe the town and found ‘fatigued’, and then she thought some more and concluded that it was drowned in a weird heavy-light emptiness.

The time of the year did it no favors. Nobody goes island hopping in the rain, and it’s not dive season at the reefs. The fishing spots are browbeaten for everyone but the seasoned local fishermen, so the commercial tourist pontoons are netted up and fenced off.

As a matter of fact, it had been so hard to get a ride to the caves, Ava had had to pay extra out of her own pocket. Lilith, of course, had nonetheless taken offense at her ‘poor planning’. Whatever. They have a ride. It leaves before dawn.

Now, side by side, Ava can’t tell if Beatrice is swaying lightly or rocking to the rhythm of the waves, or if it's just an illusion of movement on the pier.

“Sadly a lot of places are shut,” Ava states the obvious, “but at least the rooms were cheap.”

Beatrice tips her weight onto her heels, and this time Ava’s sure of it. It’s easy and balanced.

“No,” she says, after some thought. “I didn’t know much about this town before, but it was a good choice to come here. Especially now during the offseason, when it’s quieter.”

She skews her head oceanward as if trying to listen for something, and Ava follows suit, engrossed to the point of almost being bowled over by the jar of a wave hitting the wooden poles of the pier with a crunching thud.

“It’s strange,” Beatrice says very seriously, “to be congested in so much stillness and silence.”

There is nothing still or silent about the roar of the waves and the rain.

Beatrice’s work, Ava knows, has been increasingly skewing towards exploring a sort of apprehension and anxiety generated by the opposite of a traditionally suffocating enclosed-space experience. It’s strongest in her recent projects; Ava can spot it immediately – bleakly open space, elements of naturalism and realism manipulated with great technical care to subvert expectations and stir up something deeply uncomfortable and primal.

Three years ago, Supermarket Massacre had had her fingerprints all over it. The year after that, the award-winning Aquarium, with Lilith and Camila and that one guy Vincent who’d apparently slacked off then ran off. Last year she took point on her own set for the first time. And in all three, like a bloody fingerprint, the opening scenes – the first sets located immediately past the entrances – were all so characteristically, deceptively normal. Regular, in an unsettling, skin-crawling way. This was only the prelude, of course. Slowly the knife would be driven in and twisted unforgivingly.

It’s funny, because Beatrice insists, time and time again, that she doesn’t see herself as an artist or a creator. She wrote a guest article on a blog describing herself as merely an engineer organizing a space and Ava wryly thought the prose itself, elegant and clear, had given away the lie. What does a haunted house mean? How do we execute a nightmare into something feasible and tangible? Questions that had a myriad of answers and I do not believe we have yet exhausted them. There are many themes and concepts I’d like to reinvigorate beyond their traditional face value.

Subtlety, Ava sees, in last year’s factory-set After Hours. Movement, in increasingly sophisticated ways, beyond simple towering puppetry or rattling machinery or killer clowns scaring people into scurrying down claustrophobic pre-marked corridors. Soundscapes and landscapes that teeter on the brink of too-real, sped up or slowed down or taken one inch rightwards. Of course, unsettlingly unassuming opening scenes. Fear, Beatrice wrote, must be given time and space to breathe and self-propagate.

In a way, if this weekend getaway is a scouting trip less concerned with laying down concrete narrative groundwork and cultural research, and more concerned with opening a door into how each of Beatrice, Lilith and Camila see the world creatively, this bare coastal town is right up Beatrice’s alley.

The least supernatural place in the world. And yet in Beatrice’s eyes it is a town that has dotted perforation lines across its torso tempting her endlessly to tear it open to unearth something deeper and darker that adheres to the inner surfaces of its pleura.

She speaks too-softly but almost excitedly against the thunder. Underneath the reserved, controlled demeanor there’s a glint of a thirst and challenge hidden underneath her tongue.

“The park in the middle of town,” she says, “desire paths all through the long grass and not a footfall on the real ones. There’s a tape that stretches across the pavement with a warning sign dated two months ago.” Her hands have crept up their sides to prod out at waist level, tangling and twirling in the air like dancing with the rain. Or making the rain dance and twist around them.

They freeze in awareness, and the rain slaps down on them.

“Go on”, says Ava. It comes out like a request, coiled up at the end and disappearing into the air.

She thinks Beatrice smiles a tiny bit at that, her eyes unreadable, but she doesn’t go on, and Ava is disappointed.

“Well,” Beatrice’s tone is steady and tells Ava that the door is shut for now, “perhaps we’ll speak more about it after the caves.”

She says this matter-of-factly as if they’re all going to come back on that boat after sunset, sit down cross-legged in a circle with notepads and laptops, and excitedly paint a mural across the ceiling with lime-sharp ideas and skin-crawling narratives. This isn’t going to happen. Lilith nearly put a fist through the glass panels of a cabinet mere hours earlier.

Beatrice is usually the most brutally pragmatic and unsentimental of the four, and here she is talking about the future like the present is a bubble that will undoubtedly pop and reveal a rose-tinted world. Ava doesn’t know what to think of it.

The coldness of the rain is starting to gnaw at and numb her fingertips. She breathes, strange and short. The words come out too easily: “You were watching my presentation from two years ago.”

Beatrice nods. “I was, yes. I finished it over afternoon break.”

“Can I ask why?”

When Beatrice turns, Ava can’t see her face all that clearly. “Well, I wanted to know your principles and approach to designing fear experiences.” In the first flutter-crack of her composure Beatrice coughs twice. “It seemed, at least, something productive to do. And it’s important if we are to work closely together.”

The wind, walloped and fickle so that the rain beating down on Ava’s face seems to change its direction of attack every ten seconds or so, does not seem to pull them closer together, like in fanciful, romantic stories. It just tugs Ava about at her shoulders and knees like a ragdoll and makes her dizzy.

Beatrice pulls her jacket close. She gestures for Ava, shivering harder, to pull her sleeves down her elbows. Ava hadn’t even noticed, and does so now, but she’s still cold – damp-cold then air-frozen from salty windspray. She puts her hands as far as they can go in her pockets. Shifts her weight.

Beatrice’s face twists with – perplexion? Concern?

In the meager light Ava sees her glance back behind them and cock her head towards the light from which they came, questioning.

Ava shakes her head, and Beatrice doesn’t push. She doesn’t sigh out loud but her shoulders follow the trajectory of its motion as she peels off her outer layer, quickly and without fanfare. Underneath she is wearing a thick hoodie that only now begins to darken everywhere except for its already-exposed hood. Clearly, she’d planned to come out to walk, unlike Ava.

Who’d stumbled out late after dinner, full of thoughts that had nowhere to stew and nowhere to run.

They’d had a big fight over the dinner table, boiled over from where it had been bubbling the last two days. There was a slamming of fists on the table, and Ava had torn her napkin from the tablecloth and went to sit alone at the bartop.

What exactly do you want? What’s your structure? Churning in her head like an infinitely turning contraption, mixed fiercely over the anger of being asked to prove it and being goaded harder and harder towards standards that Camila and Beatrice never seemed to be asked to meet.

Full of feelings and other weird, warped rumblings that were difficult to thoroughly unpick as usual. And the messy sensation of all the air in her chest compressed from pushing frustratedly and hopelessly against a wall. Hoping the nebulous concept of Outside might put it into place or at least shove it all into boxes for her to sort out later. Ava, head hot and too-bright, lightheaded and needing to have it tamped down by the physical weight of darkness, had stumbled out into the night. She’d thought only of draining off the alcohol slightly and having it evaporate, along with everything else, from her scalp into the cool air.

It has, now, in any case.

Burned out rapidly from the initial buzz, and then she’d seen Beatrice at the edge of the ocean.

Beatrice holds her windbreaker out, pinched between her fingers. Her hands curl neatly on both sides over the shoulders, and she brushes it once, twice, to chase away the little droplets accumulating on the water resistant surface. They smooth away into a flat of smaller droplets, and she offers it up to Ava.

“Here,” she says softly, “I have a few layers on already.”

Ava hesitates, but Beatrice simply dusts off some water again and turns it with the change in the direction of the wind so that the rain doesn’t get inside. “Before the lining becomes soaked,” she urges in a whisper.

The windbreaker is soft and lined with fleece, and it slips from Beatrice’s hands as Ava takes it and turns away to shrug it on. Beatrice watches her as she pulls her hands out of the sleeves; it is large already on Beatrice’s frame, and on Ava it is almost swallowing, like a ghost encumbered by its drapes. She fumbles with the zipper, pulling it up to her neck eventually before straightening the collar and turning it up.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Beatrice says. She puts her own hands into her hoodie and looks very warm. Wet strands of hair drip down now and cling to her face, but she looks settled.

“So, why did you come to the OCS?” she asks. It doesn’t sound cutting.

Ava pouts and takes the bait. She deliberately shifts backwards onto a foot and crosses her arms so that her sleeves meet and zip with a rubbery drag.

“And what did you learn from my presentation?” Please don’t let this come off as rude please don’t let her take this the wrong way please don’t let her take offense–

“--Guilty,” Beatrice shrugs, a motion that looks almost foreign on her. “But I asked first.” She takes her hands out of her hoodie pocket and wrings them together absently, then lets them fall back down and tucks them back, relaxed, snugly into the pouch.

She looks younger, like this, with her hair mussed by the weather and comfy in her hoodie. Like the windbreaker it is oversized and of indiscernible color. Ava can almost convince herself that it’s bruised lilac or dark blue. More likely it is some shade of plain gray.

Ava exhales, and feels more than hears the wood creak beneath her feet. The water is opening up and closing shut endlessly and Beatrice is looking at her, waiting, watching, and suddenly Ava needs to move; needs to curl her toes and stretch her fingers and get somewhere else. Move somewhere.

And somehow, somewhere inside, needs also –hopes also, for Beatrice to move with her.

Ava nods quickly. The wind changes yet again and her throat is dry. Instinctively she licks her lip and finds it salty.

“How about the path behind the airstrip?”

Beatrice smiles tentatively. “Okay.”

They retreat from the water to concrete. The motel is built on part of an old private airstrip. There’s no longer sand here, just rocks and gravel petering out into the water. Behind the airstrip, though, there is a path that inclines upwards, lit by lamps until it reaches a boarded-up platform that drops harshly down into foam.

Hands in windbreaker pockets, Ava leads them farther from shore. She doesn’t know if it’s the temperament of the sky or an illusion of distraction but the drizzle is slowing down now until it is in comparison barely noticeable as they head up the slope by the lamplight.

“So, why I joined this place,” Ava huffs. Beatrice hums in acknowledgement.

“A few things, I guess. You’ve watched the video,” Ava goes on, and Beatrice nods. “It was about storytelling, and scares, and honestly there’s some truth to how much you can do behind squeaky clean Disney barricades. I said it the first day – I love horror and what the OCS has done with it.”

She tells Beatrice about the first time she went to an OCS House, years ago; they must both have been in college at the time. University, she rolls her eyes, as the corners of Beatrice’s mouth dance upwards, whatever. She’d taken two days off class with a bunch of friends just to travel, because it was the only major independent place that had good wheelchair access back then.

Ava’s not using a cane now but she’d had it with her yesterday after getting out stiff and sore after the long car ride. Beatrice doesn’t ask.

“That halloween, with all the houses – it blew me away. God. No kitschy carnival music, no colorful performers prancing around giving candy out to children at the doors. The food stands?” she gestures, “All outside the gates. No fucking carousels in the scare zones.”

Back then there were fewer Houses, and the compound was significantly smaller. Already it was a carefully calibrated maze, ready to scare in every weather contingency, with traps that would move and performers that would sit very still on steel chairs and, back then, the services of expensive external contractors to beef up the outdoor scenic design.

“But d’you know what’s scary?” Ava turns to Beatrice and stops. Beatrice doesn’t startle, like Ava had feared in the split second after she’d spun around. “Traditionally, you don’t talk about a House, right? It’s rude to put spoilers in reviews or whatever. I loved that. I thought it made it fun, like a secret you’re all in on.”

“Then the OCS comes along and says: No, actually it’s important that people have access to our Houses, and the full extent of that means discreetly available trigger warnings and official spoilers, anytime. We’ll make it a keystone of our design that every House has easy Outs in every section, and advertise it front and center.”

Ava knows Beatrice knows this, of course.

“Which people thought was stupid, right? A terrible business move at best, if not a betrayal of the values of the art.”

Everyone knows what happened next. The move turned out wildly successful: a careless, confident vaunt that the OCS could afford to go to such daring lengths and still terrify people. Daring would-be visitors, almost, to try and stay unaffected. We’re different, it said. Fucking try us then. They were free then, too, to do the worst possible things, in the safest possible environment. And nobody who didn’t need to have a look at the trigger warnings did so, while the number of first-time haunted house visitors shot up.

“Psychology,” Ava nods fiercely, “which is, as everyone knows, at the heart of manipulating fear.”

She leans forward, finally, looks Beatrice in the eye. It’s honest, and it’s terrifying. “I want that – to break the rules. All of them.”

Is that a controversial thing to say? To someone whose modus operandi famously is carefully twisted and controlled restraint, compared to the overflow and excess of most Houses. Who calculates, psychologically, the impact and ideal-slash-worst-case reactions to each moment in the House cascade, as if the mind is a kind of a machine and the House is a code passed through its system. Ava’s read what her critics say of her – that she’s cerebral to a fault. Technically masterful and horrifying; nauseating, in that cold, disturbing way, but that sometimes she fails to recognize that bombast is not a bad thing. That some excess does not the route suboptimize, or that instinct can give rise to flair and not undercooked loose ends.

Frigid, aloof. Beatrice tugs her from where she was headed towards a dead end off the slope, and nudges her up towards where the gradient beneath their feet tapers off. The back of her hand, where it brushes accidentally along Ava’s wrist, is warm.

They’re standing on an outcropping now. The rain has stopped fully and the path is more clearly illuminated by the higher density of lamps on the ground. They’re paid for by the motel, presumably, and somehow dug into the earth. There’s a bench here, too, and in sync Ava and Beatrice wordlessly sit down. The stone surface is wet, the kind that will soak into their dark jeans and leave the seats damp.

They sit, anyway, the bushes crudely truncated so that the view looks out to dark water.

Ava is one of them, now, no matter how much it doesn’t feel like it. Yet, a telltale voice quietly hopes.

The business of haunted houses is a cyclical thing, isn’t it? Unlike working in the park year-round. Sure, there are two permanent fixtures that run through the year and get refreshed every year or so to keep the base revenue going and the OCS name in people’s mouths, but ultimately that’s the side show. It’s a seasonal business and so now the main seasonal campus is dark, strewn with work lights and scaffolding and blueprints.

But even if the OCS as the upcoming season’s visitors will know it is primordial now, with nothing even to show for it yet, she’s one of them. Even if she feels out of place, knee deep in viscous fluid.

In Disney they’d hardly ever travel, because the rides she worked on were drawn from existing fictional worlds and their stories. Perhaps if she was lucky they would visit the place from which the fictional world was mined. Many other haunted house production companies, too, mostly drew inspiration from local or regional folklore or culture. Currently, the trend was, in fact, to camouflage the House itself into the very environment and location on which it stood.

Not many production companies would have her here, in a scraggly nowhere town of her own choosing, filmy with rain-gunk and algae, roofs discolored by harsh caustic cleaning sprays. Dipping her toes into somewhere unknown and parsing out something to bring back to the city and its bad 24-hour coffee vending machines and paint spills on uneven concrete and rough graffitied walls. There is, ironically, something fresh, new and strange about it all.

And it’s why Ava’s here, really. To eat food from different places. Run her toes through grass in every country. Put her tongue out to the breeze and bring it back in the form of twisting walls that cave down around the people within. To behold nothing the same way twice, and to insist on nothing as sacred. Break all the rules.

The waves are distant but the sound carries up and towards them.

“That’s what I gathered,” Beatrice says, wistfully, or thoughtfully, “from the presentation.” She sits a little way away on the bench, her hands crossed at her wrists and fingers peeking out from the thick sleeves. Under Ava’s hands, pressed down on either side, the seat is rough. And Beatrice, back straight and so calm, is soft. Like her eyes.

Beatrice looks down and runs her fingers over the grain of the bench too, coarse and stuck together, although smoothened with time. She seems to sigh, soak the air around her into her pores, and relax. Rise, like foam in a glass.

“In the beginning of the video,” she starts, “You compare a good ride to a good haunted house.” She puts up three fingers and duly counts them off. “Both tell an immersive story. Both twist away from what the audience knows to be reality. Both break convention to surprise.”

Her voice, Ava finds, is endlessly different from the only times she’s heard it at length, over a stuttering video call. Far away from the stricturing of bad connection and Zoom audio, it sounds different – just as modulated and thoughtful, but full of something, contained, yet to overflow. Ava thinks of a pot with a lid with hot, rich soup in it, sizzling lightly with a fragrance that perfuses the whole kitchen.

She talks through the presentation – Beatrice, that is, in her own words, and Ava’s maybe-kind of-perhaps bewitched. It’s the way she fits Ava’s points gently into a structure and perspective that even Ava hadn’t thought of; the way she spins Ava’s hamfisted tangent on dueling flight-or-hug-tight instincts into a dizzying fifteen-second suckerpunch insight into isolation versus community in group horror experiences. Or the way she recites her favorite of Ava’s bad jokes, word-for-word, from memory, and looks genuinely pleased by it too.

Ava doesn’t know for sure. She’s still reeling when Beatrice simply pauses and settles. She bobs her head, a tiny, barely-there smile on her face. “So yes,” she says, “that’s what I’ve learned about your design outlook.”

Her expression changes in hints and tiptoes to something more considering. “But about you, and how we – I, will work with you – that’s not so easily gleaned from one video.”

Ava laughs at that, almost speechless. Still breathless and oddly naked, in a way she’s not used to feeling. “No, no it isn’t.”

She looks up and away, registering suddenly and overwhelmingly the indistinct shapes of trees. Grass. Path markers.

It’s true. They don’t know her, and she doesn’t know the three of them. Not like they know each other, twisting like moss and creepers around each others’ spines. There is something there that’s old and impenetrable and bound in the covers of a book in a different language she doesn’t speak. And she speaks a whole bunch of languages, yes, but none like this one.

“We need to learn how to work together,” she admits. This is an understatement, Ava knows, and grossly so. She thinks about Lilith, but also about Camila and her expansive imagination, its rhythm slightly out of sync from the drumbeat of Ava’s mind, and her easy physical affection that masks an unspoken space between them. She thinks about Beatrice and her uncanny wordlessness and then her uncanny wordfulness that Ava hasn’t had the chance to learn how to anticipate. To everyone that’s not her closest circle Ava thinks she must seem like a pendulum that’s always being chased, and never getting caught, her thoughts running and pivoting a hundred miles ahead.

And together they are musical lines in a contrapuntal piece, and hell, Ava knows only four chords on a guitar.

“We will,” Beatrice decides, suddenly. Ava’s mind has slipped from the conversation, but the bite of it snaps her to alert.

“What will we– what?”

In her alarm their eyes meet. She watches Beatrice’s fingers stretch out towards her on the bench instinctively, and then quickly retract into a half-fist, drumming once, twice on the seat before slotting into her pocket to slide her phone out to sit loosely in her palm.

She wrinkles her nose apologetically. A hairball of worry in Ava’s chest untangles itself.

“I.. just know that you’ve googled us like we’ve googled you.”

As Beatrice talks she turns over her phone slowly, hypnotically. Long fingers press and flip it in a well-worn sequence: the screen forwards and over twice, then clockwise along its side, before repeating in the opposite direction.

“Earlier on you said that Lilith locks herself in a room to brainstorm.”

Huh? Oh yeah, she did. When they were arguing over timeline flexibility for their project and the frequency of check-ins. Lilith said she was flighty and ill-disciplined. Ava told her she was out of her mind and a cold-blooded reptile who’d lost touch with all shreds of human needs and interactions. She’d made a snarky joke about Lilith’s grotesquely fancy ensuite bathroom and finding someone else to try and shit on.

“Well, that piece of trivia is only found in an interview from two years back that’s out of print. You can only find its scans on some niche member-only forums.”

Ava shrugs – this is what you do with new co-workers, is it not? You do your part. And Ava is doing the best she can.

“Yeah, sure,” she concedes, “but that’s not – it’s not–” plainly, it’s not the same. What can Ava do except shrug again?

Beatrice makes a small noise.

“I know,” she reiterates, and the deep furrows of her forehead release and smoothen, like she seems to have come to a realization.

She offers cautiously, hesitantly, “the article does say that. But it’s not true.” She inhales sharply.

“Lilith appreciates her independence, yes, but she knows better than to entirely isolate herself anymore.” Clearly, there’s a story in that. “But the deadline was at midnight, and the editor wanted to add something else in the copy they sent. Lilith was grouchy, we were drunk, and Camila made it up in the return email without telling her.”

Beatrice pauses and tilts her head. Up the curve of her chin to her cheeks, dimples reveal themselves shyly and momentarily.

“Lilith was furious. She only found out when the article was released. The only reason she grudgingly refrained from further action was because, I believe, the falsified information fit into the image of how she wanted to present herself to the world.”

She gazes straight at Ava then, curious and the most open that Ava’s ever seen her. “Nobody’s ever brought it up again,” she remarks, searching Ava. “Well. Not until you.”

Beatrice’s hands still; she wipes her phone against her shirt, and looks carefully at Ava. Ava’s intelligent; far more than people give her credit for. She knows what Beatrice is doing – trying to do, in her own way.

After a long pause, during which the drone of the waves becomes deafening and then recedes, “I won’t pretend that Lilith is merely aloof, or that the things she has said are not unkind or unfair. She’s treated you poorly.”

Ava resists a scoff, and scrambles instead to clear her throat noisily. She doesn’t bring up again the simple fact that, foremost amongst a host of reasons, Lilith is why they’re here. The last straw. The final trigger.

Beatrice regards her like she isn’t fooled.

“She is less coarse to those she’s close to, but has been known on occasion to be rather prickly, even then.” Beatrice, as if remembering something then, chuckles lowly. Gorgeously. “She’s very particular about safety standards and protocols, for example.”

“Once, she yelled at me in front of the whole crew for taking a nap on the floor of an unfinished room in a maze in the dark during lunch. She was angry, and worried, but still. I needed to get away from everyone for a break, and as you might expect, it backfired.”

“I’ll try not to do that,” Ava offers. “I’ll break into her trailer and sleep on her desk instead.”

“Oh dear,” There’s palpable mirth in it. Ava’s poker face shatters into a beam.

Beatrice probably can’t see it. It’s dark.

“Ava?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to be alright with any of it.”

Ava breathes.

“Okay,” she replies, finally. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

She lifts the palms from where they’ve been pressed tightly to old, uneven rock. The soft flesh of the heel is kissed with the pattern of the grain.

So Ava turns, on the bench, and her feet squelch most uncomfortably in the wet shoes as she adjusts herself to face Beatrice – not directly, but at the slight angle from which the light of the moon and the light at their feet call out to each other and meet on the tip of her nose.

Beatrice tucks her phone carefully in her lap and turns to Ava too.

And slowly, in dribs and drabs that spill out like the corners of dough sheets cut out from metal molds, Ava introduces herself to Beatrice.

No, not the dramatic, tragic moments – the accident, the orphanage, all that. The night is transient and thinning fast into its wee hours, and it’s the little things first, you know?

The one-coffee-one-energy-drink-one-juice combo routine that gets Ava through long days and overtime hours. The overnight movie marathon treat she grants herself at the culmination of each project. The lucky Super Mario Bros. spoon and bowl set that she’s got to eat out from the day before a big pitch.

Her hiring, Ava thinks, is still a dry and excoriated topic, and so she tries to skim over it. She tries to avoid going into detail on how she got poached, and then how she’s painstakingly combed through all their archival documents and notes, so as to understand. She doesn’t mention the fan content and critic reviews she’s pored over, the world beyond OCS doors she’s tried to immerse herself in to grasp the scale of the project and the context of her addition.

Beatrice narrows in on it, anyway. It looms, Ava supposes, far too large to avoid.

It’s sometime after one A.M. when she puts her head down slightly, and Ava feels the shift.

“You know, I’ve seen some of the forums,” Beatrice strokes down the damp strands of hair that have come loose over her ears. “They’re – not entirely true. I don’t dislike working with others.”

Ava had seen the forums too, and the flint-tipped speculation that slithered about the different pages. Usernames pockmarked with numbers, an argot of acronyms and the slang of self-proclaimed megafans. Posts that didn’t have Beatrice’s name in them but that were transparently about her, describing with vulgar flippance a cool, isolated oddness that locked crew members out from the indecipherable machinations of her mind.

Beatrice’s hands tighten over her phone. “It just takes me some time –” she forces out, and then bites her lip.

Ava thinks about Camila in the corridor this afternoon, after Beatrice had wordlessly entered her own room and shut the door – now, she knows, to watch the video. Ava had stopped for a second too long, looking puzzled after her, when Camila had brushed breezily past.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she’d laughed, “she’s like this. Once she opens up, she’s a completely different little beast.”

Ava hadn’t doubted that – there was evidently a Beatrice that bantered with Lilith and Camila in branching links of long chains that she couldn’t understand; a Beatrice that must have climbed up the towering tree at the back early in the morning to pluck yellow flowers from its crown.

This Beatrice had been ready to go ahead to the counter before Camila and Lilith had even sat down at yesterday’s lunch to place their orders on their behalf.

She hadn’t even needed to check in with them, but came over to Ava’s seat and looked over her shoulder. “What would you like?” she’d asked, and Ava rushed, panickedly, to look over the menu. She traced each line with her index finger, and looked up to find Beatrice, eyes wide and patient.

“This one, please, the burger,” she’d jabbed the flimsy laminated paper, “and a Pepsi.” Beatrice had strode off before a waiter could come over. She’d refused to let any of them pay her back, and when Ava had tried to send her money on her phone she raised her eyebrows very questioningly and Ava melted back into the plastic-backed seat.

In the end, Ava can only personally vouch for the epipelagic – the shallowest fraction of ocean pierced by sunlight. The parts of the person allowed tentatively to surface in every halting, hesitant attempt forward as a quartet. As of now, too, in the drizzly shadows of tonight.

Perhaps the light can reach only fingertip-deep, but Ava wagers there has to be water all the way down. The rest is gut feeling and instinct; slowly glowing embers like a fist in her chest.

“Beatrice,” Ava says, once it’s clear she’s still working her way out of a labyrinth of word finding, “Listen. I believe you.”

Tense shoulders quieten and flatten into a horizontal plane. Ava feels Beatrice’s eyes scan her face, go past her ears and her messy hair and the tip of her nose and then settle, finally, with a helpless little smile.

Ava calls out on the boardwalk. She listens to Beatrice whisper on this stone, and Beatrice listens back. There’s sunlight, hours away, on the horizon but at this moment there’s only secret shades of moonbeam, and those shades are all for them. It’s not enough, still. It’s not enough. Ava wants more.

She wants, she finds with some desperation, to be inside of the invisible circle. There is nothing worse than dragging her feet outside, half a step offbeat, unable to reach in and with nobody reaching out. A ghost, intangible and aware of it, when all she wants is to feel the hot flames of real life – to have Lilith’s sharp tongue lash out and scald her in the way it does Camila or Beatrice – with blunt honesty and easy comfort instead of probing malice. To have Camila’s name light up on strings of text notifications as it buzzes constantly on Beatrice and Lilith’s phones almost the moment they are apart. Beloved, joyful, alight. To have Beatrice… to have Beatrice —

The phone in Beatrice’s hands lights up, too bright, and it makes her squint. A flash of numbers – time – sears itself into Ava’s eyes before Beatrice frowns and puts it away into her hoodie. It’s late, Ava thinks, considering the boat is coming by early to bring them out for sunrise. But Beatrice doesn’t move to go back, and neither does Ava.

Of all the things Beatrice finds terrifying – enough, she’s always been quoted, to transplant them into the nightmare fuel of haunted houses – the dark now doesn’t seem to be one of them. Ava agrees, she thinks: there is no place safer now than where they are, on a rock one measly wooden fence away from a dizzying drop into rock and rushing depths. It feels, for once, and for maybe the first time –

(since the start, after that final infuriating video call when she screamed into her duvet and yelled into her shower and limped to the computer where she bit her lips raw and booked the tickets here and told a trio of uneasy still-strangers that she might struggle to pull them out their homes with her own hands and nails but they would be getting out and traveling to a coastal nowhere-town and fucking sitting down to get this partnership going –)

–it feels like she’s making headway.

Not on the Houses, not on the inspiration for them or the mechanisms and processes with which to put them together, no, although all those, too, in their own ways.

Here, far off from home, next to choppy waters, shorn into grass and trees readying themselves to be busted up by summer storms, amongst flowers somehow poking up through the salt and sand, a breath away from the touch of waves and the tiny crawling organisms that besiege it, (beside an odd girl in the giddy, open air,) – here.

Solid ground.

And maybe Beatrice is right, you know? Maybe life is more similar to the business of soul-sucking fear-buildings than people believe.

Ava’s always had, she thinks, an incredibly lucid understanding on what makes good haunted houses tick. It’s trust, essentially, and safety. How do you enter a situation that frightens more viscerally and wholly than a movie or even a 3D dark ride – and then keep walking?

Headway. The only thing that gets you out of a haunted house is burrowing deeper within.

Arms outstretched, palms open, into its guts and chest. There’s extensive academia on thrill rides: on how much of the atmospheric and storytelling work goes into the sections of the experience that precede the ride, because once the carriage croaks to life, it’s easy to close one’s eyes and lose all clarity.

Haunted houses aren’t like this.

Since she got out of St Michael’s, Ava’s gotten by on a brand of fearlessness, a reputation built on a willingness to try almost anything. But fearless perhaps isn’t the word. She’s scared, still, with every step forward. Worried out of her mind of having to work from scratch all over again. Terrified of going back to before. But this, unfortunately, or blessedly so, is life: the only way out, Ava’s found, is further in.

She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be there, already there.

Ava wants so badly to be elbow deep in the mud and wires of bringing stories to life far more fully and physically than in almost any other medium. She wants it so bad and so bare that she doesn’t even really know how to spell it out on a cloudy spring-summer night in a way that won’t chase Beatrice away with the breathless depth of her desperation to make people feel in a way they will never forget. Or frighten her with the too-much, too-fast of it all.

She wants to flood people’s imaginations and send adrenaline through their arteries; have them wrap themselves around each other until the impression of lovers’ arms are engraved around the frame of each other’s bodies, shared warmth and solidity the only things keeping them upright through the maze.

And Ava doesn’t need someone to hold her through a haunted house – god, she’s the one with her fingers tugging the strings that shift and twist its spine in circles around its terrified visitors – but it would be nice for once to stand in the control tower, eyes alight, heart racing, with hands as bloodstained as her own.

To run through second-by-second early test run footage and data with another pair of eyes over early morning coffee and buns, discussing furiously the corners where the tourniquet can be tightened or loosened. To have conversations over the mixing console worth muting the scream track for. Even if – no, especially if they have nothing to do with work; conversations past awful awkward shop talk and instead all-in on the minutiae of home furnishings and dream pets and eschatology.

There was an impermanence to the constant shuffling of working groups, the fast paced turnarounds at Disney, but truthfully, she hadn’t been unhappy there. But then the email came through to her inbox on the rare once-fortnightly day that she would sit in her office, cartoonish vampire mug in hand, daydreaming with her laptop open, and that was it.

She flew down to headquarters to meet Suzanne in December. It was quiet in the office, with everyone off on final scouting trips and finalizing plans and sourcing materials and manpower. Suzanne had therefore been able to give her a private tour, and Ava did everything to pretend her mind hadn’t been made up long before.

First there was her personal office, which was the downright coolest room Ava’d been in for a while, forest green and quietly centered around the unassuming framed family picture on the desk. Cabinets of fossils with extra labels in a child’s scrawled handwriting: Terry the trilobite :D and spoonface and illustrated stickmen with swords. Delicate, beautiful, floral watercolor diagrams mounted on the wall and a soft, thick rug with complicated, beautiful depictions of scenes from the Tempest.

Suzanne showed her the generous pantry, which would have sealed the deal if it hadn’t already been set in stone, and then they passed the meeting rooms into the archive gallery.

This was, essentially, a museum of past mazes. A large, dark place of glass and thin, sharp panes of burnished golden light. Suzanne brought her, wide-eyed, through its displays of early Houses.

“You’ve been visiting our Houses, on and off, over the last few years, correct?”

Ava nodded. Since that college trip, really, and whenever she could spare the time and the money.

“Good,” Suzanne said. “If you accept this offer, you will be joining a team of some of our best young designers, so you may be familiar with some of their work.”

Indeed, within the glass cases sat Camila’s famed dioramas, fixed in place now but ready to stir to life once hooked up to a battery. Detailed, hand-painted and assembled, its parts sliding apart into modular sections that could be split open and shifted around.

Lilith’s meticulous blueprints too, and ruthless postmortems and analyses she’d done of her own work, although those were sealed away. “I had to demand that she hand them over and not keep them pinned up at her desk hanging over her head,” Suzanne remarked beside Ava, looking up into the glass at the nondescript manila folder.

“If not you, it would have been her.”

Unsurprising. Disney had used Lilith Villaumbrosia-masterminded sections of mazes in case studies for scene-setting and scare actor interactions. And Ava had entered her House two years ago. She knew.

“I will be honest with you, Miss Silva.”

“Ava.”

“Ava. Lilith is not what you may be expecting, and it may be difficult to get across to her at first. She is as acerbic as she is brilliant.”

That was the twist that was coming, of course: that they were all good friends. That the three designers that Suzanne had long had in mind to join Ava already knew each others’ minds and neural pathways so keenly that they could probably unzip the gyri of each others’ brains like a ribbon and then put them back together.

“They don’t know it yet,” Suzanne warned, “and they will not like it at first, but I see it.” She opened up one of the cases with a key to remove a polaroid of three grinning faces, arms looped together. She held it to the light. “You’re the missing piece to the puzzle.”

But what about everything she’s still missing?

The gravelly ground is solid beneath their feet, and Ava doesn’t feel the vibrations of the waves. The world appears still and frozen even as everything is changing and morphing and blooming, and gaping thirstily for something more she can’t put a finger to.

The water could flood and Ava’s eyes might smart with exhaustion in the morning, or she might try to get two or three hours of sleep and wake up after one anyway, screaming as usual, and all the same Ava thinks she would still be chasing. Running.

There is nothing in her mind resembling gory sets and the creak of animatronics, then, as she looks to her right at a girl she can scarcely even see in the dark, yet that she finds she cannot look away from. Ava can see why the magazines call her a mystery: Beatrice says she’s always on heightened alert, and yet – and yet –

She’s gazing back at Ava in a blanket of complete calm.

The wind from the ocean is blowing, the darkness feels safe. Ava and Beatrice, on a stone bench, talking, close. Easy steps, Ava thinks. Small steps, small questions. Maybe this is how it starts.

She takes a chance. Asks.

Beatrice closes her eyes, exhales, and begins to answer.

(Here are some requirements for a successful haunted house, or a horror film, or a heart-pounding roller coaster: it must evoke emotion that travels in icy ringlets down your spine, and it must stay indelibly in your mind.)

#warrior nun #wn haunted house au #i think my phone might explode from that readmore so i'm sincerely sorry and hope your devices survive 🙏#this takes place (1.5-3??? months???) after the first excerpt i won't lie i did not sit down to sift through the timeline

39 notes · View notes

jgroffdaily · 7 months

Text

The Walt Disney Company Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Beloved “Frozen” Film With 10-Week Countdown Featuring Surprises Worth Melting For

Some films are worth melting for and, on November 27, 2013, the world was introduced to the Academy Award®-winning film Frozen from Walt Disney Animation Studios. The global sensation has warmed the hearts of all ages, and both Frozen and its 2019 sequel, Frozen 2, are among the biggest animated films of all time.

The enchanting story of sisters Anna and Elsa—along with their trusted companions Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf—has created a cultural phenomenon that has inspired fashion, theme park experiences, a Broadway masterpiece, and more. And, in 2022, Disney honored the Frozen cast – Idina Menzel (Elsa), Kristen Bell (Anna), Jonathan Groff (Kristoff), and Josh Gad (Olaf) – as Disney Legends for their work in bringing these characters to life on the big screen.

Now, almost a decade later, the film is still a storytelling icon and continues to bring joy to families around the world with more adventures ahead including a third film in the franchise.

In honor of the film’s 10th anniversary, Disney is launching a 10-week countdown celebration with collaborations across the company. From Disney Parks and consumer products to music and community outreach, the Frozen fun is crystalizing in new and exciting ways.

Over the next 10 weeks, fans of the film will enjoy surprise and delight announcements, content, and more. Kicking off the celebration, Disney has shared a special “thank you” message to the fans who keep the magic and joy of Frozen raging on. The “Frozen 10th Anniversary” spot features scenes from the beloved film, which is streaming on Disney+, as well as cherished moments from audiences around the world.

#jonathan groff #frozen

43 notes · View notes

weaselandfriends · 4 months

Text

Web Original, Recently Witnessed

In a previous post, I mentioned some web fiction I'd recently read. This time, I'll highlight some web original content outside of the literary sphere. While I have some experience with literature, I'm completely untalented in other mediums, so my assessment of this content is no better than a layman's. However, I still thought it worth highlighting.

1. Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History by Kevin Perjurer (Defunctland)

Perjurer has been putting out excellent documentary-style content on theme parks and their rides for years now, but while his production quality is consistently high, his videos often live or die based on the core level of interest his subject engenders. For instance, his video on notoriously awful ride Superstar Limo (with a general focus on notoriously awful theme park California Adventure) is an incredible watch, while his video on a random assortment of small, local Santa Claus theme parks across America isn't quite so compelling. He's no Jon Bois (of 17776 fame), a documentarian capable of rendering extraordinary seemingly the most banal of subjects.

Journey to EPCOT Center, however, is unlike anything Perjurer has ever put out before. It completely eschews Perjurer's typical voiceover narration style of documentary, instead stitching together music, audio of news reports and press releases, and dramatizations of Disney boardroom meetings to create a seamless narrative. Beyond the unique style and presentation of the piece, however, is the incredible artistry on display in several of the segments. Some of the biggest highlights:

12:00 to 16:14: A neon light animation detailing the vision and plan of EPCOT, which gradually transforms into a 3D map that the camera travels through

16:52 to 21:03: An impressively animated series of newspaper articles detailing Disney's struggles finding signatories for its world showcase; the video comments indicate some shots of the moving newspapers were created practically, with Lego conveyer belts

38:46 to 44:27: A puppet show dramatizing Disney's efforts to seek international sponsors

There are numerous other impressive, inventive, and creative segments as well, with unique animation and visual styles. The video rarely repeats the same trick twice.

The funniest part is that all of this is in service to a topic I would personally consider quite boring. EPCOT is such a Disney-buffs-only type of subject, neither Disney's greatest success nor its greatest failure. The incredible skill on display is all aimed toward depicting a fairly corporate, backroom-style story about men in suits trying to secure handshakes. There's an almost propagandistic feel to it, an extolling of capitalist bigwigs that feels completely at odds with Perjurer's visionary style.

In a way, it's reminiscent of United Passions, a FIFA propaganda film meant to make its executives look good in the wake of real-life controversy. On the other hand, though, Perjurer's exceedingly loving depiction is appropriate for Walt Disney's final passion project, Disney himself being a man who, for better or for worse, was as much of a dreamer and visionary as he was a cutthroat businessman. EPCOT, as the video tells you, was designed as an optimistic reaffirmation of the American free enterprise project, and as a complement to that vision Perjurer's video could not be more accurate. Unlike United Passions, this video was also made independently, not financed by Disney to make itself look good in the eyes of the public. Metatextually, it poses a fascinating question: Is there value to corporate art? Can a corporation create something of true beauty? Perjurer's video suggests it can.

2. The Mind Electric Animation - Lonely-Man's Lazarus by Daisy

Perjurer is probably familiar to many of my readers, so this next entry is more obscure, something I stumbled on almost by chance.

A friend of mine is big into animatics, which as far as YouTube is concerned is about setting music (usually Broadway or Disney musical numbers) to sketchy, storyboard-style art. I'm not a major Broadway fan in general, so these have never appealed to me much, although I've been shown several.

This one, though, rather generically titled "The Mind Electric Animation" (after the song it features), caught me entirely off guard. The first notable element is that the animation is monstrously more fluid than a typical animatic, though it retains the sketchy/storyboard art style and traditional animatic sensibilities toward character design (very "Tumblr," if I had to put a word on it). Secondly, the music, rather than being from Hamilton or Heathers or some other popular musical, is from the itself rather arcane album Hawaii: Part II by Joe Hawley (under the name ミラクルミュージカル). Hawaii: Part II is, as far as I can tell, a concept album detailing the story of a man who goes insane after his girlfriend is murdered (possibly by himself), with a strange secondary subtext of possibly being metaphorical for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The lyrics are certainly open to interpretation.

The animatic combines these elements with heavy inspiration from a different concept album, potentially the most famous one ever made: Pink Floyd's The Wall, with specific nods to the film adaptation's animations for The Trial and Empty Spaces. There is no skimping on detail, with some sequences absolutely bursting with bizarre visuals. The ultimate result is absolutely trippy, abstract, and surreal, which are some of my favorite things for something to be.

Regardless, it's an impressive work of animation for a single person to make; the video description states it took 15 months, which is more time than I've spent on any one of even my longest works. The creator themselves is somewhat enigmatic from what I could tell, despite having a whole host of social media platforms. They seem to be working on a web comic, but trying to find any concrete information on what it is actually about was difficult. Nonetheless, whoever made this certainly has an abundance of creative vision and talent. Though I've seen skilled artists sit down to create something narrative before and flub it utterly (an example that comes to mind is Ava's Demon), so who knows if what is on display in this animation will make it into that web comic. Even if it doesn't, the animation by itself is incredible, so check it out.

3. The Skibidi Toilet podcast guys are for real by Mikhail Klimentov / Built By Gamers in general

Built By Gamers has been on my radar for some time (ever since seeing this video) as an absolute masterclass of performance art. The voice, the emphasis, the little oddities here and there, the way the two hosts so often ignore direct questions posed by one another, it creates something inimitably uncanny. This interview by Mikhail Klimentov, who I am familiar with primarily through his esports journalism, only adds new layers to what was already a convoluted question of irony and sincerity.

There are a few concrete insights, most shockingly to me that the creators of Built By Gamers (Todd Searle and Peter Armendariz) got their start in esports. But despite the title that seems to clearly suggest their videos are sincere, the actual interview is far less conclusive. For instance, this exchange:

It's evident to me that you guys take this very seriously. You feel as though there's a lot of craft behind these videos. Tell me about the stuff that a viewer won't see: the behind-the-scenes stuff that you're thinking about as you're working on these videos. Armendariz: A lot of people think it's ChatGPT. That's a big thing that people think that we do. But a lot of it is actually well crafted, through hours — like we'll spend hours on one script and really thinking about how we can get someone to react. It doesn't matter if it's them laughing, if it's them feeling sad, or them hating on one of us, our main goal in our videos is to get someone to feel something. The hard truth is that people don't realize how many hours we spend on one video to get that one line. I think that's what people don't really understand. We’ll spend like two hours on one line. Searle: Our tone, like how we talk — it’s on purpose. I have to get into character for it. Armendariz: Todd has a voice, bro! He didn't think he'd be good at telling stories, and I have him tell every single story because he has this campfire story voice. And sometimes he'll hit a line and I'm like, “No, no, you’ve got to hit it harder.” And we'll spend like 30 minutes trying to hit the line, or hitting the hook just the right way.

Followed immediately by:

People really don't know what to make of you guys. They don't have a sense of whether you're serious, whether you're in on the joke, whether there's a joke at all. I'm curious if you can clear that up. Searle: We want it to be everything you just said. We want people to think we're serious. We want camps of people who don't think we're serious. People who think that we're A.I. We kind of want to keep it, I guess, vague in that regard. Like we want you to believe… what we are — and that's OK. Armendariz: I think sometimes we'll play into different communities. So, like, some people will say, ‘You guys sound like you got brain surgery.’ So then we’ll make the most cringey video that's like super brain-rot, you know? We just kind of mess around and have fun.

So are they just messing around and having fun, or are they spending hours trying to nail specific lines just right? Are they sincerely trying to tell a story that gets an emotional reaction or are they just trolling, which also gets an emotional reaction? The biggest troll of the interview, targeted specifically at me, was this response:

Can you tell me what those writing principles are? Armendariz: I think a big writing principle that everyone should follow is, it's really important to show, don't tell.

People who have talked to me elsewhere know I am a massive enthusiast of the ubiquitous Mr. Beast, not necessarily because I like his content (though I do think he puts together some strong game show/Wipeout-style videos), but because of the story behind him: That he is an extreme, almost insufferable perfectionist, who analyzes video success and failure to a scientific degree, doing experiments with thumbnails, video lengths, et cetera, all to take detailed assessments of the results and perfectly calibrate his videos in mathematical fashion. It's a type of rigor that flies in the face of the casual, wastefully generous persona he cultivates in his videos proper.

I think many people have this innate idea that a work of art's quality is somehow tied to the effort expended to produce it. (Even I have it. Notice how for both of the first two entries in this post I mention the effort or time or craftsmanship of the work in question.) This is the kind of sensibility that causes a layman, who knows nothing about painting, to prefer a Caravaggio to a Rothko. But this sensibility is both conceptually and often practically wrong; Rothko, for instance, engineered his own paints, creating custom blends of materials (including non-paint material, like egg) to form paints of a perfectly specific color or gloss or sheen, a process often completely unseen by a casual glance at the finished work.

Subsequently, there's a reason they're called writer's workshops, that writing is so often described as a craft: It's an attempt to imbue writing with a sense of effort that makes it more palatable. The stereotype extends to the artist who sneers at quote-unquote "low" art, thinking "If I was willing to lower myself, I could create that slop and make millions too." In my experience, though, the people creating this "low" art are often expending absurd amounts of effort and exhibiting incredible skill to create something perfectly engineered for success. I, certainly, have found zero success in attempting to broaden my own audience, even when I make attempts at it; it's not something that's easier to do if you're just willing to try.

I also increasingly fail to believe in the stereotype of the miserable cynic artist who creates something they think is garbage because they know that'll be most popular. Those people don't last long; those who succeed in the popular sphere are people who are genuinely passionate about what they create, even if it looks like dreck to everyone else (including the millions who consume it).

I've been kicking around an idea for a story about Mr. Beast for some time now, exploring these concepts in even greater depth. That won't happen in the immediate future, but it's something to look out for.

#defunctland #kevin perjurer #lonely-man's lazarus #hawaii part ii #built by gamers #mr beast #web original

22 notes · View notes

gunsatthaphan · 1 year

Text

🏆 𝒯𝑜𝓅 𝟣𝟢 𝑜𝒻 𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟤 💫

a few anons have requested this and also I was in the mood so here are my Top 10 BLs of 2022 (only including the ones that finished this year). Also I have posted more lengthy reviews for each of these shows already so I’m gonna try and keep it short lol.

not much to say here, if you know me and my blog then you know how much this show and firstkhao have taken over my life this year lmao. I loved the story so much and everything about it felt so genuine all the way through. FK did an incredible job at actually becoming their characters and I was so in awe of their portrayal. They made something incredible out of a little budget and that’s why I cherished it so much. The plot wasn’t perfect, there were holes and weaknesses but firstkhao, paired with the watching experience, made it perfect for me. 13/10.

this one gets the award for most underrated show of the year lmao. I loved it so much. like.... what an actual masterpiece?? the cinematography was stunning and the whole concept was so captivating. jimmysea delivered big time and while there were some draggy parts in the middle, the script ultimately proved itself to be absolutely outstanding. Sadly it didn’t get the attention it deserved.

OOF. I mean. How can I not include this mess of a project lmao (affectionate). was the script oscar-worthy? no. did it make a lot of sense? nah. but did I have the time of my life watching it? hell ya. The craze that surrounded this show was insane and it made the whole thing 10x better lmao. It was hilarious, the characters were likable and the chemistries were fire from every couple involved. It was the watching experience that made me put this as my no.3 because I had a blast.

This was such a nice surprise for me because I wasn’t in the mood for another KBL after the disaster that was To My Star 2 lmao but this was absolutely amazing. The script was genius and so was the entire production quality. This was the first show I saw with the 2 leads as I didn’t watch Kissable Lips but I was very pleasantly surprised by their chemistry. I would love to see them in more stuff in the future!

GOD. This show has my whole heart lmao. I would consider it a guilty pleasure though because it’s definitely not for everyone. But it hit the nail right on the head for me. It was SO adorable and SO hilarious and I have a huge weak spot for kaownah and turbo because they are just so lovely together. Lots of crack but the best kind lmao. Perfect.

🥺🥺 what an absolute gem of a show this was. A+ comedy and also the perfect proof that you can actually make something out of what seems like the most basic bl plot ever lol. But what they made of it was amazing. MekKim were super entertaining, also Lee and Park had no business being the most adorable couple I’ve ever seen??? sickening. I love them so much. The setup was super nice and it plays with several bl clichés in a very cunning way. Loved it!!!!

YES I LOVED THIS!!!!!! This show polarized a lot when it aired, mostly because of the body swap plot and also the disney antics lol and tbh I was expecting to agree with the critical opinions as I don’t like body swap tropes but I was surprised by how much I loved it. How they handled the plot was funny and adorable, plus the whole roadtrip theme and all the sceneries were so nice! And needless to say you can never go wrong with EarthMix. they always deliver and especially Mix’s acting left a big impression with me.

This show never got a lot of attention and most reviews were not good but guess what I disagree kfjdghfd. I loved it so much. The dynamic between the mains was fantastic and with so much cuteness it made me sick dfkjghf. The power of this show lies in its minimalism for me, there were so many small endearing things and everything felt 100% natural. Also they were one of the few pairings in a KBL that actually felt like a realistic couple lol. Han Gi Chan was outstanding and considering this was Holland’s acting debut, he did a very decent job as well. Also the cinematography? stunning. I went in with zero expectations and came out with teary heart eyes lol.

I was fairly excited for this one as it was Joong’s GMMTV debut and I was not disappointed. It doesn’t hold up with some of gmm’s other highlights this year but I liked it!!! It relied a lot on JoongDunk’s chemistry which I’m not mad about though. They’re really good together. The rest of the cast was also top-notch with an A+ friend group lol. The plot wasn’t super elaborate but once again, the watching experience did it for me lol.

I liked this one a lot!!! It was the first KBL that I thoroughly enjoyed since Light On Me and it was so much fun to watch!! The chemistry between the leads was top-notch and even though it doesn’t quite hold up with some other KBLs for me, I still wanted to put it on my list because that’s what it deserves lol.

thank you 2022 for giving us good gay food lmao. here’s to an even better 2023!! ✨

#thai bl #korean bl #bl dramas #top 10 #top 10 of 2022 #bl drama #feel free to tag me in your top 10 lol im curious!! 💜#happy new year!!!!!!!

141 notes · View notes

magnificent-nerd · 10 months

Text

The first reviews for Rogers: The Musical are in...

Read the review from The Nerds of Color:

Rogers: The Musical appears at the Hyperion Theater in Disney California Adventure Park for a limited time, June 30 through August 31, 2023

My take:

While this musical seems fun, and a visually new and exciting way to see Steve's journey, I can't help but notice Disney/MCU taking an opportunity to retroactively make Peggy's role in Steve's origin story much greater than the movies ever showed, while at the same time minimising the roles of other characters important to Steve's life, namely:

Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, and Sharon Carter.

(Would've been nice to see Sarah Rogers but she never appeared in the MCU at all, so I don't hold out hope she's in this musical.)

To anyone who sees this musical:

please report back if Sharon Carter or Sam Wilson appear at all, or are they erased entirely? I want to know!

I spotted WWII era Bucky (I'm presuming?) and Black Widow in the various production photos shared, but where are Sam and Sharon? Are they present in the musical?

It would not surprise me in the slightest if MCU/Disney wanted to erase Sharon entirely because the movies pivoted back to Peggy...

But Sam? Where is he?

That speculation leads me to the conclusion that this musical is superficial at best, and erasing important people from Steve's character at worst. (Again.)

#rogers the musical #steve rogers #disney #superhero genre #disney parks #mcu #sharon carter #sam wilson #bucky barnes #marvel

48 notes · View notes

missanthropicprinciple · 1 year

Photo

miss anthro’s film recs: May 2021

Jurassic Park 1993: Watched this for the third time in a month today to celebrate it's release 28 years ago. Like most excellent films, it was created by a lucky intersection of talent. The remarkable premise was crafted into a brilliant script by David Koepp and author Michael Crichton; it was tight, clean, fast-paced - no plot holes and unnecessary scenes. Steven Spielberg really did a fantastic job of making a cohesive production and giving it a kind of emotional continuity. The cast is outstanding. I could write an essay about each one. Richard Attenborough brings pathos to John Hammond, the delusional tycoon. Sam Neill is perfect as Alan Grant, a jaded paleontologist who finds deeper compassion. Laura Dern gives a raw performance as the resolute and charming paleo-botanist Ellie Sattler. Jeff Goldblum stars as Ian Malcolm, chaotician and prototype "rock-star scientist." Bob Peck is wonderful as the sensible game warden Robert Muldoon. Samuel L. Jackson works his magic as sardonic chief engineer Ray Arnold. And of course, excellent performances from Martin Ferrero, Wayne Knight, Joseph Mazzello, and Ariana Richards. The special and physical effects are remarkable and most of them remain so nearly three decades later, including the life-sized animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex and just the right amount of CGI. Cinematography by Dean Cundey features god-tier-level use of scale framing. Not to mention great use of color, blocking, sound, costume, John Williams' beautiful score - you name it, this film really has everything going for it. Is this a perfect film? No, but it gets bloody close. Unmissable science-fiction that examines the horror unleashed by the arrogance of mankind.

The Birdcage 1996: This 25* year old film is a real gem. While the modern viewer (myself included) could find fault with some stereotypes, etc., the classic comedy has aged quite well. There’s a lot of slapstick and hysterically funny and clever dialogue. Williams and Lane are outstanding. There’s a very touching scene between the two of them which is very romantic and sweet. And of course the whole cast is perfect. I’m always impressed by this film when I haven’t seen it in a while.

The Moon-Spinners 1964: You don’t need to be a Disney fan to love this incredible classic. Hayley Mills is well loved but I don’t think she’s given enough credit for being not only a brilliant child actor but also a great actor as she aged. Her performance is stellar. The whole movie is fun and tense, bringing Mary Stewart’s novel to life in the great and beautiful country of Greece. It’s a fun adventure from start to finish with humor and romance.

Fairytale: A True Story 1997: Want to cry your eyes out about the Cottingley fairy hoax of 1917? You may not trust me but I recommend this experience. Honestly, this movie is life-changing. This is a depiction of a real life story involving historical figures. Usually no one gets that quite right but this movie kinda does. Peter O’Toole looks nothing like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but Harvey Keitel looks remarkably like Harry Houdini. Something about the music and what they do with this story gets into your bloodstream. I couldn’t possibly spoil for anyone who knows nothing about it, but I can say that there is some incredible CGI and a scene where someone faces retribution from an unexpected and shocking source.

edit 2023:

*now 27

I found this in my drafts. Clearly, life got in the way and I didn’t continue my recommendation posts (I have the templates drafted in text form.) Also, while drafting this edit I was attacked by a small beetle. I remain unharmed and have released the beetle into its natural environment.

#missanthrofilmrecs #jurassic park #the birdcage #the moon spinners #fairytale a true story #movies #movie reviews

22 notes · View notes

zoeysdamn · 1 year

Text

Treasure Planet: a way underrated Disney movie [critic]

Hi, hello, it’s me again, rambling about a movie like I’m working for the Nostalgia Critic instead of writing next chapter or actually do my work. What can I say, I love to ramble on obscure subjects (but since at least once person enjoyed the critic I wrote on The Witcher: Blood origin I solely did to improve my writing skills, I guess it’s okay lmao) Love you and stay hydrated ♥

Time to analyze and bring justice to Treasure Planet

There are some movies that leave a mark on you, that you’ll always remember of through your life. It isn’t necessarily a good, Oscar-winning movie, or a mindblowing work, but it is an unpriceable memory to you, and that’s why it is one of your favorite movies ever. That’s how I feel about Disney’s Treasure Planet.

First thing first, I’d like to highlight an important aspect about this critic: Treasure Planet is the first movie I’ve ever seen in theaters. I was 3 years old, and seeing those incredible images of space and stars up on a big screen through my child’s eyes definitely did something to me (cue my tattoos of moon and sun I guess). So what I’m trying to say is, that even if I’ll be doing my best to make an objective critic, it definitely won’t be one. I love this movie so freaking much, do not try to stop the fangirl screaming in me. I watched it again recently with my brother, and even if I know it like the back of my hand, I couldn’t believe that a lot of people still think poorly of this movie.

That being said, let’s move on to the main subject: in what way is Treasure Planet an underrated movie? I’ll be trying to analyze why it failed to be a new success for the Disney company at a time of many mildly successful productions, and carry on about why we all should appreciate it more with a new eye, for it brought many great things.

First, let’s talk about the context of this movie’s release. In 2002, Disney wasn't in its golden nor silver age anymore. The last original movie – meaning, that isn’t a prequel or sequel of a previous franchise – was Atlantis in 2001 and Kuzco in 2000 (I’m not including Monsters Inc., given it was a Pixar co-production). The first wasn’t exactly a financial success (although it is also one of my favorite Disney ever, what can I say, I like the unloved ones), and the latter, even if I still think it’s one of the most hilarious movies they ever made, was not a great movie. So when Treasure Planet launched and turned out to be a critical business failure – 109 578 115 $ at the box-office for a 140 000 000 $ budget, and if you’re wondering, yes it is indeed a big failure – nobody ever talked about it again. The failure is even greater given not a single Disney Park has an attraction on this theme – but we’ll talk about this later. Now, not many people actually know that this movie ever existed.

Now that we have a little more context, let’s go even deeper and see the different elements that lead to this catastrophic failure within the movie. It’s important to remember that I’m not an expert either in movies analysis or the Disney company, there’s a lot of things I don’t know or don’t have any numbers to prove what I’m saying. I’m simply here to ramble and list things that seem important to me, and I’m making a hella lot of assumptions.

Given the general context of the movie release, I think that what wounded its reputation the most is the 3D used. It is – if I’m not mistaken, and I probably am – one of the first Disney animated movies that uses so much 3D. And let’s be honest…it aged badly. I’m not bad mouthing anybody’s work, I appreciate the fact that Disney tried something; with every new experiment, there have to be some clumsy first try, and yeah, we could say that Treasure Planet was this one. But remember, the movie came out in 2002: a year before, Dreamworks leveled up the 3D game by releasing Shrek, and next to it the 3D view in Treasure Planet looks cheap. The idea was interesting, the view in a gradual zoom on the moon-turning-to-be-an-harbor was really a good idea; but the messy outcome of the visual cost a lot more to the movie’s reputation.

Another thing that may have contributed to the movie’s unsuccess could be the lack of “typical” Disney elements. I’m here talking about things such as a romantic interest for the main character, a princess/royalty character, or catchy musical moments sung by characters. If we look at the Disney animated movies that had been released around the same time, it was all movies and/or sequels about princesses (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid), or already popular characters (Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, etc.). Choosing to not give a female, princess-like, and popular character was a bold and risky move for Disney; as a result, the story was led by a forgettable character who didn’t leave any mark in people’s minds. Again, I’m talking while trying to be objective, you bet I remember Jim Hawkins; we’re talking about one of my very first fictional crushes here, I’ll take the defense of this amazing character later.

Of course, the story does give a glimpse of a love story, but between two side characters. Not enough for a company who built most of its movies’ success on princesses and true love kisses. The same could be said about the lack of songs; there’s always a tune immediately blasting in your head when someone mentions Disney, the absence of such joyful musical moments certainly wounded Treasure Planet’s reputation. But on the other side, the only song within the movie (I’m not counting the outro) is really deep, and well inserted in the plot. I hardly picture any of the characters, even the main one – especially him – starting to sing their feelings out of the blue. The lack of sung serenades makes sense, but it may have not been appreciated by viewers who expected a full Broadway show.

Finally, the whole aesthetic may have been quite unsettling for most of the viewers. I think the movie came out at an in-between of steampunk glory – after the success of Lovecraft and before the 00’ return of this style’s popularity. Again, I'm a big fan of the whole design; but it was also a bit too daring for the time.

So to sum this up really quickly, I think that Treasure Planet was released too soon. It has the potential to be a bigger success, should it have been released nowadays. Beside the 3D parts that have aged badly, I honestly don’t think this movie’s outdated the slightest. I still think today that the viewers of 2002 weren’t ready for this movie, its story, characters and message. And to defend that, I’ll list the elements that make this movie a brilliant one.

First of all, the whole story inspired by Stevensons’ Treasure Island is a major good point for me. The pirate aesthetic hadn’t come back fully in pop culture yet, and the original story has very interesting material ahead. The source of inspiration was an excellent idea. It also led to the unconventional coming-of-age story; most of the plot in this kind of scenario is about someone who becomes an adult somehow, through an epic quest. They have a good life, but thrive for more, or are the “chosen one” and all. Here, Jim is, admittedly by his mother, a juvenile delinquent. This late teenager is lost in his life, torn apart between his dreams of freedom, and the love he has for his mother. He doesn’t want to let her down, or disappoint her, but he doesn’t know what to do because no one can guide him through what’s possible for him. And as a young adult who had been through such a crisis for 5 solid years (and still not completely out of it let’s be honest), it is an important subject to bring up. It’s not that Jim is lazy or inherently a bad son, he just doesn’t know what to do and what the possibilities are. The cops, the clients of the inn, even the doctor and his mom had categorized him as a good-for-nothing so he’s kind of stuck in this role, all while deeply loving his mother and trying to help her. This internal conflict between what you want to do for your own good and what your heart wants to do to keep your loved ones (especially family) safe and proud of you isn’t completely foreign in a Disney movie; but it is something that is more recurrent in later movies, such as Moana, Tangled and such.

This is a great transition to address the subject of Jim’s family, which is also depicted in a very modern way in my opinion. The fact that he only has his mom in the movie is…painfully classical in a Disney movie (I mean, the no parents policy is basically a private joke in Disney movies now). But it’s one of the first movies where the dad’s absence is clearly and loudly mentioned, either by the characters themselves or through the song. It is also one of rare cases of a parent actually leaving their families; during the song, we see Jim’s dad leaving and never coming back (probably out buying intergalactic milk, I don’t know), but we also see Jim’s mom crying, him being deeply affected by his father’s absence through different phases of his childhood, and more than that, the effect of his dad’s absence is clearly mentioned several times. We don’t know if his father actually died out of space or if he just left Jim and Sarah – although several elements seem to indicate so, such as the fact we never see his face, that Sarah doesn’t have any picture of him in the inn or in her memory-locket-necklace, or that Jim says that he doesn’t miss his dad who’s more like “going away and never coming back”. Parent(s)’s deaths in Disney movies are usually either briefly mentioned as such (Atlantis, Cinderella, etc.) or a means to bring up a more tragic backstory that serves the character’s growth (Tarzan). Here we have a very realistic, bitter case of a father leaving his child and wife for no apparent reason; for a 2002 Disney movie, it is indeed a very modern take at the subject of one parent’s disappearance, especially at how they show the effects on every concerned character.

And this is a very appreciated choice! When Encanto was released almost two years ago, I was thrilled by the serious issues such as intergenerational trauma, gaslighting within a family, and pain caused by neglect of elders someone looks up to. My first thought was “Finally, we can have a Disney movie that addresses very much real family issues, it’s a big step for them.” But then when I re-watched Treasure Planet, I realized that Disney had done that before, almost 20 years ago; and that’s why it’s a great movie. Children aren’t dumb (yes, I’m actually saying this), I do believe we can talk about any subject with them if we use words and concepts they can understand. They’re naive about a lot of things, and it’s natural they’re still kids; but if a kid can watch and understand Ariel wanting legs to seduce the good-looking fellow on the boat, they can understand that sometimes family can take different forms, including a single mother and her sons both struggling on different scales due to a husband and father abandon.

This whole setting also allowed the movie to have a slightly different type of main character. I mentioned it briefly before, but Jim is a more complex character than most of the Disney protagonists of that time - and before. Once again, let’s make something clear about typology: complex doesn't necessarily mean complicated. Jim has a rather easily understandable goal, he wants to find his place, and what to do with his life. But the fact that he’s standing in-between the brashness of late-teenage years and seriousness of young adulthood, probably triggered earlier by his dad’s disappearance, makes him more complex. He’s a morally gray character, who’s sometimes acting like a brat (trespassing several times, getting arrested and such), but who also wants to get things right, especially for his mom. So by complex, I mean that Jim has nuances; much more than traditional Disney protagonists (that is especially true for all of the princesses lore anterior to this movie). There had been some examples of that before of course, with Aladdin and Tarzan for example; Megara in Hercules is loved because she’s witty AND a complex character. But she’s only a side character; in Treasure Planet it is the protagonist and others who wear those traits (Silver, Jim, even Captain Amelia). It also reminds the turn-over of the team in the second part of Atlantis, when they all realize Rourke had gone too far while not even 10 minutes earlier they were assumed capitalist treasure snatchers regardless of Atlantean culture. So, those two big examples of more complex characters did a good job to prepare the field for their successors (Elsa in Frozen, Flynn Rider in Tangled, even Maui in Moana), but not enough to get the public satisfied enough when they came out.

Jim’s evolution through the movie is also a really interesting one, because it does once again not fit into what I’d call a “traditional” goal in Disney movies. I’d say there are two main categories in there: a romance trope (seduce and/or reunite with the love interest as in Sleeping beauty, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) or a higher, destiny-boud, epic purpose or quest (Simba avenging his father and claiming his rightful place as the king, Arthur becoming king, Hercules trying to prove he’s a divine hero, Moana saving the ocean, Miguel trying to return to the living’s world and mend some of his families’ feud, Robin Hood fighting against oppression, and on and on). Of course I’m caricaturing things here, but it is indeed quite rare to have, such as in Treasure Planet, a protagonist with a very personal, almost selfish compared to other movies, goal. Sure there’s the Flynt’s treasure hunt, but more than that, the journey is about giving Jim an opportunity to find himself, his place, and his dreams. More importantly, he finds a father/guiding figure in Silver in once again a very subtle way. Jim doesn’t need a new father, he needs someone who listens to him and gives him the tools to choose his destiny himself. That is greatly pictured at the end of the movie when Silver offers Jim to follow him in the pirate way, and Jim declines saying he has his own future now. He doesn’t reject the cyborg’s way of life, for he had learned a lot from it, he simply acknowledged the outcomes of his journey under the guidance of Silver. Through all of their adventures we see on plenty of occasions Silver teaching Jim things, and Jim trying, understanding, and then mixing those things with his own ways to create something greater, more efficient and deeply personal. This is an excellent way of depicting teaching, especially for older or young adult character growth. They are already their own person, they don’t need to be made or inherently changed; but they still need an adjusted guidance to unlock and thrive through their potential. Again, this is a good, nuanced message that the movie aced.

That being said, I’d like to talk again about the overall aesthetic of the movie. I was, and still am in awe in front of the chara-designs and ambience. Creating an animation movie using space aesthetics was brilliant, and it’s a shame there’s still not a lot of movies doing so. I mean, the color palette, patterns and design possibilities are endless, some screenshots of the movie are my favorite of all time. Plus, I really liked the design of some planets, mixing steampunk and a more Alien-like vibe. As for the characters, it’s still funny how we feel like we know what they’re partly inspired by, but at the same time being completely clueless? Like, Captain Amelia is a cat-lady or something? The scary spider-thing man? The whole pirate crew? Each character is an alien for the other and the designs are really funny to watch. And can we please talk about the absolute snack that Jim is? We��re talking about one of my very first fictional crushes here, and I said what I said. The boy is more charming than 90% of the Disney princes who had come before him, I won’t change my mind.

To sum this up, I think that the design team and artists really had fun creating this movie, and that even if the whole aesthetic failed to please the public, it’s still an excellent exercise of style for the artistic direction team.

So now, where does all of that lead to? I’ll try to make a quick conclusion about all of that. Basically I think that this movie was released too soon. The message and execution were great, there were some good ideas, but I don’t think the public was ready or expecting that. Disney needed a new success, and it should have been something like a new Aladdin, or The Little Mermaid; something more traditional they knew would absolutely work. Instead the viewers were disappointed by the new movie and turned their back on a too unconventional movie. Should it have been released ten years after, I’m pretty sure Treasure Planet would have had a better 3D and a better, well-deserved success. And honestly, the fact that some movies with interesting, new designs and plots failed to be popular is a disappointment for both the viewers and Disney itself. For example, Atlantis shares a lot of similarities with Treasure Planet on this subject. Can we stop for a second and imagine what could have happened on a larger scale if both of those movies had been successes? The impact on the way female characters are written, or people of color representation (which Atlantis was a great precursor of)? On how a good animated movie doesn’t necessarily needs a love story or a kiss (Milo and Kida never kiss, nor do they declare their undying love, because they met 3 days ago for fuck’s sake. Yes Cinderella and Snow White, I’m looking at you); or the impact on characters and universes design? Imagine the potential of both of those movie aesthetics for Disney parks attractions? For merch?

In the end, the appreciation of a movie, especially one produced by Disney that we certainly watched as a kid, is deeply personal; the success or lack of at the box-office doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad movie. A dozen parameters are to be accounted for to understand if, and why the movie had been a critical failure, including the general context of movies of the same type at the time, and a more large view of the company and expectations of both the producers and the public. So if one day you’re rewatching a movie you love that hadn’t been exactly welcomed at its time, think about it; maybe it’s a true gem, never understood by critics, maybe it had come out too soon or too late. Maybe some of the movies that are considered the greatest of all time now will never be heard of by our grandchildren. We never know what will be popular in pop-culture in a decade or two; so if you enjoy a movie nobody loves, it’s okay. You like it, no matter what the critics might be right now, it’s a comfort movie of yours. And no one can take that away.

(aesthetic is myine, I did it some years ago. Thought it was the right time to dig it from the depth of my files!)

If you want to debate about the movie, of movies critic in general do not hesitate to drop by in the comments or in DMs! I love talking with fellow movies nerds ♥

#treasure planet #disney #review #movie critic #I'm ranting #justice for treasure planet #Jim Hawkins is a snack

20 notes · View notes