Pixar Live!

Blue Sky Disney has an article about Pixar's plans to produce live action films with Bard Bird's earthquake movie 1906 and with Andrew Stanton's Princess of Mars. He brings up a good point that I'll take even further. A lot of people have questioned the growth of Disney's studio division as it is a hit driven business and it has a smaller and fixed slate of 10-12 movies a year. I have always said that if Walt Disney Animation could start doing Pixar numbers, it would be worth another $400-$600M just at the box office per year. But this is another growth engine. If Pixar branches out into live action with 1-2 new movies per year and those movies are blockbusters of $200M or more, that could be very significant. While its a little scary not to have Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton on animated movies, I think Lasseter is a genius for finding a way to keep these great storytellers in the fold and evolve Pixar to the next level...just as Walt Disney did.

Its a world of tears..

Anyone in Disney Park fandom knows about the current controversy over the proposed changes for Its a Small World in Anaheim which would allegedly add Disney characters into the ride as well as replacing the rainforest scene with an America scene. The debate has been very raucous and indicative of a lot of the things I have said about Disney fandom of late.

2719 Hyperion, which is an excellent, well-written blog, has weighed in on all this, not with an opinion on the changes themselves, but more on the debate. It is an excellent piece that I won't quote here because you really should read it in its entirety.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle on this whole issue. I love It's a Small World. I think its a classic attraction with a terrific message and I initially recoil a little bit at the idea of changing it just because it seems at some level like fixing the crack in the Liberty Bell.

On the other hand, Its a Small World is kind of out of date - which is part of its charm - and many of the images it portrays are pretty stereotypical. I sometimes wonder how kids from around the world feel when they visit the attraction. Do they say "hey that's not me?" It probably wouldn't be a very interesting attraction if everyone was portrayed in contemporary garb ("its a world of osh kosh, a world of gap") but there probably has to be some updating of the attraction if its to remain relevant. At some point, the antiquatedness of the imagery undermines the theme of the attraction if its not brought somewhat up to date.

As for Disney characters in the attraction, if you look at what has been done for Hong Kong, its kind of cute. I just worry that it will become a "spot the characters" attraction and distract from the message, which is about the children. Also, you have Casey Jr and the boat ride sitting right across the street which are essentially the same thing, cruising through the world as told by Disney characters.

I think we should all withhold judgement and see what the Imagineers have come up with. I can't imagine John Lasseter would have let this go forward if he couldn't get behind it, so we just have to put our trust in these guys.