Disney's Live Action The Little Mermaid

[MrPromey]

I have a bad feeling Disney will destroy Spaceship Earth.

It was good while it lasted anyway.

Me too but not because it doesn't need updating* - I just don't trust the current lot to not screw it up.

*Funny enough, some of the newest changes made are what to me, are making it feel the most dated.

 

[LittleBuford]

Funny enough, some of the newest changes made are what to me, are making it feel the most dated.

The thing that makes it inoffensive to me is precisely that it feels so dated. It’s a quality I personally love, as it turns the ride into a kind of time capsule that I find both charming and fascinating. (I feel the same way about Carousel of Progress, the Tiki Room, and CBJ.) At the same time, I recognise that my taste for vintage camp isn’t shared by everyone, and it’s inevitable that the ride will one day receive a major (and, frankly, needed) update. I just hope it’s well done.

 

[MrPromey]

Really?! I know people yearn for the Irons narration, but I don’t recall anyone directly bashing Dame Judy. (“Dame” should never be followed by just the surname.)

Yeah, I don't think it's her or her voice people have a problem with so much as the script she was handed to read.

I get they were trying to make it more accessible and feel less stuffy but the changes struck me more as dumbing it down than accomplishing that.

 

[MrPromey]

The thing that makes it inoffensive to me is precisely that it feels so dated. It’s a quality I personally love, as it turns the ride into a kind of time capsule that I find both charming and fascinating. (I feel the same way about Carousel of Progress, the Tiki Room, and CBJ.) At the same time, I recognise that my taste for vintage camp isn’t shared by everyone, and it’s inevitable that the ride will one day receive a major (and, frankly, needed) update. I just hope it’s well done.

I'm talking about things like the vehicle screen and head cut-out aspect - really cool tech when it rolled out but it never did a great job of the cutouts and a free app running on a $60 cell phone can do a better job these days.

The fact that it worked at all as an automated thing was awesome at the time but today, that alone shows it's age to me far more than any animatronic from 1982.

The stylized animated imagined futures it's used with could also stand an update to better reflect actual possible futures rather than a Jetsons-like thing people only took half-seriously even when it rolled out.

That whole aspect really needs to be rethought, not because it was bad but because the world has moved on.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I don’t think it’s about offensive or inoffensive. I imagine Disney planning meetings where execs rush in doing Will Ferrell’s “more cowbell” except screaming “More screens!!”

 

[MrPromey]

I’m worried they’d downgrade the physical effects, but I do think the ride’s narrative could be expanded to include more of the world’s cultures. It is, after all, Spaceship Earth.

In other words, I’m torn.

For me personally in that regard, taking everything else out of the discussion, including the downgrading of physical effects or the greater dumbing-down of narration - all stuff I have zero confidence in them handling well - it comes down to me not wanting to lose anything.

I'm all for them adding more but they'll have to remove something existing to do it and I'm attached to just about every scene in that ride (because I literally grew up with it) besides the final ones - the disco boots never really grew on me and the tribute to Apple at the end of the upward trip would not break my heart to lose but the history timeline doesn't work in a way that would allow them to add what they need to there or in the unused space in the downward part of the trip.

The rational part of me knows that.

So what do they take out?

I'll be irrationally unhappy with just about everything they add that involves them removing something from the first half of the ride and I know they'd have to remove a few chunks to make room so for people like me, it's a no-win situation and that is my problem but because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there like me (in this regard), it's also kind of their's too.

 

[TP2000]

Am I the only person who doesn’t find the ride offensive but recognises that its scope could be expanded to cover more of the world?

If the ride were the history of the world's people, yes it should include the people that lived on all six populated continents.

But since the ride is the history of communication and how humans have improved communication technology, it would seem pandering and disingenuous (if not outright wasteful in a 15 minute long dark ride with only a half dozen major show scenes) to include human cultures who did little or nothing to advance communication technology.

The continental cultures the short ride does not cover in the story of how communication technology advanced are South America and Australia. But I can't think of any communication technology that those continents peoples advanced on that hadn't already been invented and widely in use in Eurasia or Africa centuries earlier.

North America only shows up in the ride's story after Europeans got here with their far more advanced technology. The native peoples of Australia and the Americas had primarily a spoken language with very little written communication by the time Europeans arrived, fifty years after Mr. Gutenberg had invented the printing press in Germany and two thousand years after Africans invented paper and ink.

What's the story there from the new Spaceship Earth narrator? "By the year 1500 Europeans arrived in the Americas and discovered the native cultures on those continents were many centuries behind them technologically"???

 

[MrPromey]

If the ride were the history of the world's people, yes it should include the people that lived on all six populated continents.

But since the ride is the history of communication and how humans have improved communication technology, it would seem pandering and disingenuous (if not outright wasteful in a 15 minute long dark ride with only a half dozen major show scenes) to include human cultures who did little or nothing to advance communication technology.

The continental cultures the short ride does not cover in the story of how communication technology advanced are South America and Australia. But I can't think of any communication technology that those continents peoples advanced on that hadn't already been invented and widely in use in Eurasia or Africa centuries earlier.

North America only shows up in the ride's story after Europeans got here with their far more advanced technology. The native peoples of Australia and the Americas had primarily a spoken language with very little written communication by the time Europeans arrived, fifty years after Mr. Gutenberg had invented the printing press in Germany and centuries after Africans invented paper and ink.

What's the story there from the new Spaceship Earth narrator? "By the year 1500 Europeans arrived in the Americas and discovered the native cultures on those continents were many centuries behind them technologically"???

Yeah but... Did the area we know as China provide nothing?

I mean, there are thousands of years of history from civilation in that part of the world that seem to have been pretty well preserved so people over there had to have been doing something right, right?

They might deserve at least one scene, no?

 

[GimpYancIent]

Yeah but... Did the area we know as China provide nothing?

I mean, there are thousands of years of history from civilation in that part of the world that seem to have been pretty well preserved so people over there had to have been doing something right, right?

They might deserve at least one scene, no?

The "Great Wall" would have been picturesque history. If not for "The Wall" the Mongols would have changed Chinese history.

 

[TP2000]

Yeah but... Did the area we know as China provide nothing?

I mean, there are thousands of years of history from civilation in that part of the world that seem to have been pretty well preserved so people over there had to have been doing something right, right?

They might deserve at least one scene, no?

Yes, I agree, you could change the narration to acknowledge that when the Egyptians were inventing papyrus in 1500 B.C., the Chinese were only a few centuries behind them with their own type of paper. But that seems duplicitous in a short dark ride where time and space are at a premium.

The current narration needs to be updated, I agree (for many reasons just because the mid 2000's seem eons ago with technology now). But I'm at a loss for actual show scenes. Adding how far behind the cultures of the Americas and Australia were compared to Europeans, Africans and the Islamic empires seems pandering and silly to me.

 

[LittleBuford]

North America only shows up in the ride's story after Europeans got here with their far more advanced technology. The native peoples of Australia and the Americas had primarily a spoken language with very little written communication by the time Europeans arrived, fifty years after Mr. Gutenberg had invented the printing press in Germany and centuries after Africans invented paper and ink.

Paper, and printing on paper, were both invented in China.

 

[TP2000]

Paper, and printing on paper, were both invented in China.

I'm not an expert on papyrus vs. paper without spending ten minutes on Google for a topic I'm not entirely excited about, but I do know that the Egyptians invented papyrus scrolls around 1500 B.C.

Paper wasn't invented in China until around the early A.D. centuries. So the Egyptians got the concept down first, and the Islamic empires seem to have spread the concept east into Eurasia.

Which gets to my point. You can only cover so much ground in a 15 minute dark ride with a half dozen major show scenes. So let's just do hits and highlights. The Egyptians got there first by at least a thousand years, and thus deserve the mention and the show scene.

 

[MisterPenguin]

I'm upset that SSE left out the contributions of semaphore.

 

[LittleBuford]

I'm not an expert on papyrus vs. paper without spending ten minutes on Google for a topic I'm not entirely excited about, but I do know that the Egyptians invented papyrus scrolls around 1500 B.C.

Paper wasn't invented in China until around the early A.D. centuries. So the Egyptians got the concept down first, and the Islamic empires seem to have spread the concept east into Eurasia.

Which gets to my point. You can only cover so much ground in a 15 minute dark ride with a half dozen major show scenes. So let's just do hits and highlights. The Egyptians got there first by at least a thousand years, and deserve the mention and the show scene.

There's a reason paper won the day. It's a revolutionary product that is far easier and cheaper to produce than papyrus or parchment. Any "greatest hits" narrative of global communication should mention China's fundamental role in the invention of technologies and materials we still rely on today.

 

[TP2000]

There's a reason paper won the day. It's a revolutionary product that is far easier and cheaper to produce than papyrus or parchment. Any "greatest hits" narrative of global communication should mention China's fundamental role in the invention of technologies and materials we still rely on today.

Great. Add a 7 second line on that into the narration, and then add "Only losers use papyrus."

But the gist of the dark ride, and it's major show scenes and the historical story they tell, are still very solid.

To be perfectly honest, I would love for them to rip out and replace the Omnimover as that thing is a clunky old beast that should have been replaced 20 years ago and is the ride's biggest embarrassment. The story of human communication as covered by Spaceship Earth's animatronic show scenes is perfect as is, in my opinion. Thank the Phoenicians.

 

[MrPromey]

I'm not an expert on papyrus vs. paper without spending ten minutes on Google for a topic I'm not entirely excited about, but I do know that the Egyptians invented papyrus scrolls around 1500 B.C.

Paper wasn't invented in China until around the early A.D. centuries. So the Egyptians got the concept down first, and the Islamic empires seem to have spread the concept east into Eurasia.

Which gets to my point. You can only cover so much ground in a 15 minute dark ride with a half dozen major show scenes. So let's just do hits and highlights. The Egyptians got there first by at least a thousand years, and thus deserve the mention and the show scene.

But they "waste space" with things like the carving of statues and the Sistine Chapel which, while relevant to human history are not exactly major influences to world communication... and the Egyptians beat renaissance on statue making by a few thousand years, too... not to mention the Romans and Greeks would probably like a word if we're getting into that kind of thing, too.

Don't get me wrong - I don't want any of this stuff removed. I also know we can't have it both ways - something would have to be removed for something to be added so like @LittleBuford, I'm conflicted on this.

 

[LittleBuford]

But the gist of the dark ride, and it's major show scenes and the historical story they tell, are still very solid.

With all due respect, you haven't exactly proven yourself qualified to assess the historical soundness of the story the ride tells.

 

[MrPromey]

I'm upset that SSE left out the contributions of semaphore.

I'm displeased the only shout-out the Mesopotamians get in modern society is from the Ghostbusters movies.

They communicated, right? Otherwise, how could the writers of Ghostbuster have even known about them to unfavorably tie their culture to a comedy about the end of the world?

 

[Sir_Cliff]

I'm displeased the only shout-out the Mesopotamians get in modern society is from the Ghostbusters movies.

Not true! How could you neglect this masterpiece!

 

[TP2000]

With all due respect, you haven't exactly proven yourself qualified to assess the historical soundness of the story the ride tells.

I'm not qualified to assess the soundness of any story for any ride, as I'm not trained to write narration, or even trained to pick out the wallpaper for the CM break room. I'm just a reasonably intelligent theme park customer who goes on those rides.

On this topic of "including more cultures into the story" perhaps I am influenced because I am an American that has a fondness for native American cultures, particularly of the West Coast that arrived here at least 12,000 years ago, so maybe I was misunderstanding your point. As the PC craze now is to pretend all cultures are equal, even though they clearly were not when it came to technology.

You seemed to infer (again, I may have misunderstood) that Spaceship Earth needed to include many more of the world's cultures. Even though many of those cultures were thousands of years behind the cultures the dark ride is mostly covering; the Europeans and northern Africans who invented and moved human communication technology forward from 1500 B.C. to the present day.

The native cultures of the Americas and Australia were many centuries behind Europe, and they didn't invent or create anything that hadn't already been invented in Eurasia and Africa a thousand years or more before. The lone exception seems to be the Egyptian Papyrus Circa 1500 B.C. vs Chinese Paper Circa 100 A.D. issue. So add a quick line into the narration that mentions Chinese paper coming along a thousand years after Egyptian papyrus.

But to remove or replace any of the current show scenes, just so we can add in something like a Salish speaking longhouse storyteller in western North America circa 1700 A.D. seems pandering and silly to me.